The Infernals

  Samuel knew better. Mrs. Abernathy wanted revenge: on Samuel, on the Earth, and on every living creature that walked, or swam, or flew.

  Which brings us to the other reason why Samuel couldn’t forget. He hadn’t defeated Mrs. Abernathy and the Devil and all of the hordes of Hell alone. He’d been helped by an unlucky but generally decent demon named Nurd, and Nurd and Samuel had become friends. But now Nurd was somewhere in Hell, hiding from Mrs. Abernathy, and Samuel was here on Earth, and neither could help the other.

  Samuel could only hope that, wherever he was, Nurd was safe.7

  In Which We Delve Deeper into the Bowels of Hell, Which Is One of Those Chapter Headings That Make Parents Worry About the Kind of Books Their Children Are Reading

  AFTER OUR BRIEF DETOUR to Earth, and that lesson in love, life, the importance of good eyesight in relationships, and the perils of killing grandfathers, let’s return to Hell.

  As has already been noted, the woman currently striding purposefully through the dim recesses of the Mountain of Despair while wearing a severely tattered floral-print dress, was Mrs. Abernathy, formerly known as Ba’al. Mrs. Abernathy had been making a daily pilgrimage to the Great Malevolence’s lair ever since the attempt to break into the world of men had come to naught. She wanted to present herself to her master, explain to him what had gone wrong, and find a way to insinuate herself into his favor again. Mrs. Abernathy was almost as ancient and evil as the Great Malevolence himself, and they had spent aeons together in this desolate place, slowly creating a kingdom out of ash, and filth, and flame.

  But now the Great Malevolence, lost in his grief and madness, was apparently refusing to see his lieutenant. Mrs. Abernathy was cut off from him, and the demon was troubled by this; troubled and, yes, frightened. Without the protection and indulgence of the Great Malevolence, Mrs. Abernathy was vulnerable. Something had to be done. The Great Malevolence had to be made to listen, which was why Mrs. Abernathy kept returning to this place, where foul creatures watched from the shadows in amusement at the sight of one of the greatest of demons, the commander of Hell’s armies, reduced to the status of a beggar; a beggar, what’s more, who seemed troublingly keen on wearing women’s clothing.

  Oddly enough, Mrs. Abernathy, having initially been distinctly unhappy at being forced to take on the appearance of a lady in her forties, had grown to like wearing floral-print dresses and worrying about her hair. This was partly because Mrs. Abernathy had, until quite recently, been neither male nor female: she had simply been a distinctly horrible “it.” Now she had an identity, and a form that wasn’t mainly teeth, and claws, and tentacles. Ba’al might originally have taken over Mrs. Abernathy’s body, but something of Mrs. Abernathy had subsequently infected Ba’al. For the first time there was a use for a mirror, and nice clothes, and makeup. She worried about her appearance. She was, not to put too fine a point on it, vain.8 She no longer even thought of herself as Ba’al. Ba’al was the past. Mrs. Abernathy was the present, and the future.

  As she descended deeper and deeper into the mountain, she was aware of the sniggers and whispers from all around her. The great bridge along which she walked was suspended over a gaping chasm so deep that, if you were to fall into it, you would keep falling forever and ever, until at last you died of old age without ever nearing the bottom. Metal and chains held the bridge in place, linking it to the inner walls of the mountain. Set into it were countless arched vaults, each hidden in shadow, and each inhabited by a demon. The vaults stretched upward and downward, as far as the eye could see and farther still, until the flaming torches set haphazardly into the walls, the sole source of illumination to be found in the chasm, became as small as stars, before at last they disappeared entirely, swallowed up by the gloom. Here and there beasts peered from their chambers: small imps, red and grinning; fiends of fire, and fiends of ice; creatures misshapen and creatures without shape, formless entities that were little more than glowing eyes set against smoke. There was a time when they would have cowered from her presence, fearful that, even by setting eyes on her, they might incur her wrath. Now, though, they had begun to mock her. She had failed her master. In time, his cries would cease, and he would remember that she should be punished for her failings.

  And then, what fun they would have!

  For now, though, the wailing continued. It grew louder as Mrs. Abernathy drew closer to its source. She saw that some of the demons had stuffed coal in their ears in an effort to block out the sound of their master’s grief, while others appeared to have been driven as mad as he was and were humming to themselves, or banging their heads repeatedly against the walls in frustration.

  At last the vaults were left behind, and there were only sheer dark walls of stone. In the murk before her, a shape moved, detaching itself from the shadows the way that someone might detach a shoe from sticky tar, tendrils of blackness seeming to stretch from the entity back into the gloom as though it were part of the darkness, and the darkness part of it. It stepped beneath the flickering light of a torch and grinned unpleasantly. In aspect it resembled a vulture, albeit one with somewhat human features. Its head was pink and bare, although the light caught the tiny bristles that pocked its skin. Its nose was long and fleshy, and hooked like that of a bird of prey, joining a single lower lip to form a kind of beak. Its small black eyes shone with inky malevolence. It wore a dark cloak that flowed like oil over its hunched shoulders, and in its left hand it held a staff of bone, topped with a small skull. That staff was now extended before Mrs. Abernathy, blocking her progress.

  The creature’s name was Ozymuth, and he was the Great Malevolence’s chancellor.9 Ozymuth had always hated Ba’al, even before Ba’al began calling itself Mrs. Abernathy and wearing odd clothing. Ozymuth’s power lay in the fact that he had the ear of the Great Malevolence. If demons wanted favors done, or sought promotion, then they had to approach the Great Malevolence through Ozymuth, and if their favor was granted or they received the promotion that they sought, then they in turn owed Ozymuth a favor. This is the way that the world works, not just Hell. It’s not nice, and it shouldn’t happen, but it does, and you should be aware of it.

  “You may not pass,” said Ozymuth. A long pink tongue poked from his beak and licked at something invisible upon his skin.

  “Who are you to tell me what I may or may not do?” said Mrs. Abernathy, disdain dripping like acid from her tongue. “You are our master’s dog, and nothing more. If you don’t show me some respect, I will have you taken to pieces, cell by cell, atom by atom, and then reassembled just so I can start over again.”

  Ozymuth sniggered. “Each day you come here, and each day your threats sound emptier and emptier. You were our master’s favorite once, but that time is gone. You had your chance to please him and you threw it away. If I were you, I would find a hole in which to hide myself, and there I would remain in the hope that our master might forget I had ever existed. For when his grief ceases, and he remembers the torment that you have caused him, being taken to pieces will seem like a gentle massage compared to what he will visit upon you. Your days of glory are over, ‘Mrs. Abernathy.’ Look at you! Look at what you have become!”

  Mrs. Abernathy’s eyes blazed. She snarled and raised her hand as if to strike Ozymuth down. Ozymuth cowered and hid his face beneath his cloak. For a moment they stayed like that, these two old adversaries, until a strange sound emerged from under Ozymuth’s cloak. It was laughter, a hissing demonstration of mirth like gas escaping from a hole in a pipe, or bacon sizzling in a pan.

  “Tsssssssssss,” laughed Ozymuth. “Tssssssssssssssssssssss. You have no power here, and if you strike me, then you strike our master, for I am his voice, and I speak for him. Leave now, and give up this senseless pilgrimage. If you come here again, I will have you taken away in chains.”

  He raised his staff, and the small skull glowed a sickly yellow. From behind him, two enormous winged beasts appeared. In the dim light they had looked like the images of dragons carved into the walls
, so still were they, but now they towered above the two beings on the walkway. One of them leaned down, revealing its reptilian skull, its lips curling back to expose long sharp teeth of diamond. It growled low and threateningly at Mrs. Abernathy, who responded by smacking it on the nose with her bag. The dragon whimpered and looked embarrassed, then turned to its companion as if to say, “Well, you see if you can do any better.” The other dragon just shrugged and found something interesting to stare at on the nearest wall. That bag, it thought, was a lot heavier than it looked.

  “You have not heard the last of this, Ozymuth,” said Mrs. Abernathy. “I will rise again, and I will not forget your insolence.”

  She spun on her heel and began to walk away. Once again, she was aware of the sound of the Great Malevolence’s cries, and the whispers from demons, seen and unseen, and the hissing of Ozymuth’s laughter. She endured the long walk through the bowels of the Mountain of Despair, seething with hurt and humiliation. As she passed through the entrance and back into the desolate landscape of Hell, a voice spoke from somewhere around the level of her shoe.

  “Have a nice day, now,” said Edgefast’s detached head.

  Mrs. Abernathy ignored him, and moved on.

  As Ozymuth watched the retreating figure, his laughter slowly ceased. A second form appeared from the shadows, tall and regal. The torches cast light upon his pale features, imperious and cruel. His long black hair was braided with gold, and his clothing was of rich, red velvet, as though blood had been woven into cloth. His cloak, also red, billowed behind him even when the air was still, like a living extension of its wearer. He reached out a bejeweled claw and stroked absentmindedly at one of the dragons, which purred contentedly like a large, scaly cat.

  “My lord Abigor,” said Ozymuth, lowering his head in a gesture of utter subjection, which was a very wise idea when in Duke Abigor’s presence, as people who forgot to lower their heads around Duke Abigor often found their heads being lowered for them, usually by having them removed from their shoulders with a large blade.

  It is said that Nature abhors a vacuum, but so too does power. When someone falls out of favor with a leader, a line will quickly form to take that person’s place. Thus it was that when Mrs. Abernathy failed the Great Malevolence, a number of powerful demons began to wonder how they might take advantage of her misfortune to promote themselves. Of these, the most ambitious and conniving was Duke Abigor.

  “What say you, Ozymuth?” said Abigor.

  “She is stubborn, my lord.”

  “Stubborn, and dangerous. Her persistence troubles me.”

  “Our master will not see her. I have made sure of it. With every chance I get, I whisper words against her into his ear. I remind him of how she failed him. I stoke the fires of his madness, just as you asked of me.”

  “You are a loyal and faithful servant,” said Abigor, his voice heavy with sarcasm. Abigor made a note to himself to have Ozymuth banished at the first opportunity once he achieved his goal, for anyone who betrays one master cannot be trusted not to betray another.

  “I am loyal to the Great Malevolence, my lord,” replied Ozymuth carefully, as though Duke Abigor had spoken his doubts aloud. “It is better for our master if his lieutenants do not fail him. Or dress in inappropriate women’s clothing,” he added.

  Abigor stared at the predatory visage of the chancellor. Abigor was not used to being corrected, however gently. It made him even more intent upon disposing of Ozymuth as soon as he could.

  “I will remember you when I come to power,” said Abigor, and he let the double meaning hang in the air. “Our time draws near. Soon, Ozymuth, soon…”

  Abigor faded back into the shadows, and then disappeared. Ozymuth released a long, ragged breath. He was playing a dangerous game, and he knew it, but if he distrusted Duke Abigor, then he hated Mrs. Abernathy more. He gripped his staff and headed deeper into the Mountain of Despair, wincing as the howls of his master grew louder. At the entrance to the inner chamber, he paused. In the gloom, his keen eyes espied the massive shape of the Great Malevolence, curled in upon himself in grief.

  “It is I, my master,” he said, poison dripping from every word. “I bear you sad tidings: your faithless lieutenant, Mrs. Abernathy, continues to speak ill of you …”

  In Which We Reacquaint Ourselves with Nurd, formerly “Nurd, The Scourge of Five Deities,” Which Was All Something of a Misunderstanding, Really

  FROM A PERFECTLY MODEST cave in the base of a Not Terribly Interesting mountain in a Nothing to See Here, Move Along Now part of Hell, there came the sound of tinkering. Tinkering, as you may be aware, is essentially a male pursuit. Women, by and large, do not tinker, which is why it was a man who originally invented the garden shed and the garage, both of which are basically places to which men can retreat in order to perform tasks that serve no particularly useful purpose other than to give them something to do with their hands that does not involve eating, drinking, or fiddling with the remote control for the television. Very occasionally, a useful invention may result from tinkering, but for the most part tinkering involves trying to improve pieces of machinery that work perfectly well already, with the result that they stop doing what they were supposed to do and instead do nothing at all, hence requiring more tinkering to fix them, and even then they never work quite as well as they did before, so they have to be tinkered with some more, and so on and so on, until eventually the man in question dies, often after being severely beaten by his wife with a malfunctioning kettle, or a piece of a fridge.

  Inside the cave was a car. At one point, the car had been a pristine Aston Martin, perfectly maintained by Samuel Johnson’s father, who had kept it in the garage behind their house and only drove it on sunny days. Unfortunately the car had been one of the casualties of the demonic assault on Biddlecombe. Without it, though, there might not have been a Biddlecombe at all, or not one that wasn’t overrun by Hellish entities. Samuel’s dad hadn’t seen things that way, though, once he found out that his car was missing.

  “You mean it was stolen by a demon?” he had asked, staring at the empty space in his garage that had until recently been occupied by his pride and joy. Samuel had watched his dad as he searched behind stacks of old paint and bits of lawn mower, as though expecting the car to jump out from behind a tin of white emulsion and shout “Surprise!”

  “That’s right.”

  It was Samuel’s mum who had answered. She seemed quite pleased that her husband was upset at the loss of his car, mainly because Samuel’s dad had left them to go and live with another woman while expecting his abandoned wife and son to look after his car for him, which Mrs. Johnson regarded as being more than a little selfish.

  It wasn’t quite true that the car had been stolen. In fact, Samuel had given the keys to the demon Nurd so that he could drive it straight down the mouth of the portal between Hell and Biddlecombe, thus collapsing it and preventing the Great Malevolence from escaping into our world. Samuel had nevertheless been grateful to his mother for clouding the truth, even if he felt that it was unfair to Nurd to describe him as a thief.

  That same Nurd was now standing with his arms folded, staring at what had once been Mr. Johnson’s Aston Martin but was now Nurd’s. The car had passed through the portal relatively unscathed, which came as a nice surprise to Nurd, who had half expected that he and the car would be ripped into lots of little pieces and then crushed into something the size of a gnat’s eyeball. He had also been relieved to find that the pools of viscous, bubbling black liquid dotted throughout Hell were wells of hydrocarbons and other organic compounds: or, to put it another way, every one of those pools was a miniature petrol station waiting to be put to use.

  Unfortunately the petroleum mix was somewhat crude, and the landscape of Hell had not been designed with vintage cars in mind. Doubly unfortunately, Nurd knew next to nothing about how internal combustion engines worked, so he was ill-equipped to deal with any problems that might arise. Nurd fancied himself a good driver, but s
ince driving in Hell required him to do little more than point the car in a given direction, put his foot down, and avoid rocks and pools of crude oil, Nurd was not as expert behind the wheel as he liked to think.

  But sometimes fortune can smile unexpectedly on the most unlikely of faces, and Nurd’s, being green and shaped like a crescent moon, was unlikelier than most. For being particularly annoying, Nurd had been banished to one of Hell’s many wildernesses by the Great Malevolence. To keep Nurd company, the Great Malevolence had sent with him Nurd’s assistant, Wormwood, who looked like a big ferret that had recently been given a haircut by a blind barber with a pair of blunt scissors. Now, Wormwood was many things—irritating, funny-smelling, not terribly bright—but, most unexpectedly, he had proved to have an aptitude for all things mechanical. Thus, aided by a manual that he had found in the trunk of the Aston Martin, he had taken responsibility for the maintenance and care of the car. It went faster than before, drove more smoothly, and could turn on a penny.

  Oh, and it now looked like a big rock.

  Nurd knew that Mrs. Abernathy and her master, the Great Malevolence, would not exactly be pleased that their plan to create Hell on Earth had been foiled. Neither of them seemed like the forgiving type, which meant that they’d be looking for someone to blame. The Great Malevolence would blame Mrs. Abernathy, because that was the kind of demon he was, and she was supposed to have been in charge. Mrs. Abernathy, in turn, would be searching for someone else to blame, and that someone had last been seen hiding under a blanket and driving a vintage car into Hell. Nurd wasn’t sure what would happen if Mrs. Abernathy ever got her claws on him, but he imagined that it might involve every atom in his body being separated from the next, and then each one being prodded with a little pin for eternity, which didn’t appeal to him in the slightest.