The Infernals

  “And he’s going for broke,” said Angry.

  “Oh dear,” said Jolly, shielding his eyes with his hands. “I can hardly bear to watch.”

  “—beautifying yourself, for example,” continued A. Bodkin, “or making something pretty for—”

  The precise purpose of the something pretty in question was lost in a torrent of white-hot fire that shot from Mrs. Abernathy’s mouth and engulfed the unfortunate A. Bodkin, consuming him entirely and leaving only a pair of smoking black boots in his place.

  The pillar of fire moved, turning to face the ranks of seated demons.

  “NOW, WOULD ANYBODY ELSE LIKE TO SUGGEST THAT I MIND MY OWN BUSINESS?” said Mrs. Abernathy.

  Thousands of heads shook simultaneously.

  “WOULD SOMEONE PREFER TO TELL ME IF A BOY WAS SEEN HERE, A BOY WITH A DOG?”

  Two rows from the front, one of the imps raised a hand.

  “YES?”

  “Please, miss, it was the size of a boy, miss, but it wasn’t a boy, miss,” said the demon.

  “Ooh, tattle tale,” said Dozy. “If he didn’t have all his pals behind him, I’d deck him for that.”

  “WHAT DO YOU MEAN?”

  “It was a little man, miss. Mr. Bodkin didn’t think he was dead, miss, so he reported him, miss.”

  “AND THIS LITTLE MAN WAS ALONE?”

  “Yes, miss. Far as Mr. Bodkin could tell, miss.”

  “VERY GOOD. WHAT’S YOUR NAME?”

  “I don’t have a name, miss. I’m just a demon imp, third class, miss.”

  “WELL, CONSIDER YOURSELF PROMOTED. FROM NOW ON, YOU MAY CALL YOURSELF B. BODKIN. THE DESK IS YOURS.”

  “Oh, thank you very much, miss. I’ll be a very good B. Bodkin, miss, mark my words.”

  The imp rose from its workbench and trotted up to the main desk as the pillar of fire narrowed and then disappeared entirely. It slipped its feet into A. Bodkin’s smoking boots. Slowly it began to increase in height, and its appearance started to change. Within seconds, it bore a startling resemblance to the original A. Bodkin, right down to the nasty little beard and the superior manner.

  “Right, back to work, you lot,” said B. Bodkin. “The show is over.”

  He settled himself into his new seat, put his feet on the desk, and picked up the newspaper. With a collective shrug of resignation, the rest of the imps returned to the grinding, carrying, and recording of bits of bone.

  “Did you see that?” said Angry. “What this place needs is a good workers’ revolution.”

  “You can organize the masses another time,” said Jolly as the dwarfs slid down the dune and headed for their van. “We need to find a way to get home. I remember now where I saw that woman. It was back in Biddlecombe. She appeared on my windscreen, and then there was a blue flash, and next thing I knew we were here.” He paused, and scratched his chin. “And there was a boy with a dachshund.”

  He looked back in the direction from which they had come, as though expecting to see that pillar of flame rising high above them and that dreadful woman’s voice asking about a boy and his dog. Slowly, Jolly began shuffling pieces of the puzzle around in his brain.

  “I wonder,” he said. “I wonder, I wonder, I wonder…”

  XIII

  In Which We Meet a Ram, and Some Old Friends Are Reunited

  SAMUEL HAD OVERCOME HIS fear and, Boswell’s leash in hand, had decided to seek cover. As the nearest shelter was the forest of crooked, leafless trees, that was where he and Boswell aimed for. Boswell shivered as they drew near to the forest, and plonked his bottom down firmly on the ground. As far as Boswell was concerned, nothing in this land smelled good, sounded good, or looked good, but this forest felt particularly unpleasant.

  “Come along, Boswell,” said Samuel. “I don’t like this place much either, but it really isn’t a good idea for us to be out in the open where anyone can see us. And not just anyone, if you know what I mean.”

  Boswell twitched his ears and lowered his head. His life had once been so normal: wake up, go outside for a sniff and a wee, have a bite to eat, play for a while, have a nap, wake up, and repeat. Had he heard the phrase a dog’s life used in the sense of one’s existence being a bit harsh, he would have been slightly worried. As far as Boswell was concerned, a dog’s life was absolutely fine. It was humans who made things complicated; humans, and those nasty creatures with horns, and big teeth, and a stink of burning about them. His senses were flooded with the scent of those creatures now. This was their place, and Boswell loathed it.

  Samuel tugged on the leash and, reluctantly, Boswell trotted along beside his master. The branches of the trees met above their heads, as though they were reaching out to one another for consolation, their extremities tangling. Their bark was pitted with hollows that looked like eyes and mouths, faces contorted in expressions of agony. He heard the leaves whispering as though a breeze had briefly blown through them.

  But there was no breeze, and there were no leaves.

  “Boy,” said a soft voice. “Boy, help me.”

  “Boy,” said another, this time the voice of a woman. “Free me.”

  “Boy…”

  “Boy…”

  “… help me…”

  “No, me, help me …”

  “Boy, I’ve been here for so long, for so very long …”

  The mouths in the trees stretched and opened, and the eyes twisted in their wooden sockets. The branches moved, stretching for him. One snagged his jacket. Another tried to pull the leash from his hand.

  “Boy, don’t leave us …”

  “Boy, listen to us …”

  Behind him the forest closed, the trees forming an impenetrable wall through which he could not retreat. Samuel picked Boswell up, shielding him beneath his jacket, and started to run, even as branches cut his face, and tore his trousers, and tried to trip him as he passed. They should not have come here. He had made a mistake, but they could not go back. Samuel kept his head down, barely able to see where he was going, and all the time the voices kept calling him: pleading, threatening, promising. Anything at all, he could have anything he desired, if only he would make the pain stop.

  A presence appeared in front of him, and a voice said, “Back!”

  The trees instantly grew silent and were still. Samuel looked up to see a hunched animal with a distorted mouth, blunt teeth, and ancient, twisted horns protruding from its head, which was bearded with shaggy white fur. It took Samuel a moment or two to see that it was a ram of sorts, but one that had learned to walk on two legs. Its upper hooves had mutated, lengthening to form two pairs of bony fingers, one of which held a long staff. Its coat was matted and filthy, and smelled of damp and smoke.

  From deep in the forest came another voice, sinister and male.

  “What right have you to claim him?” it said.

  The branches of the trees parted like courtiers before a king, and Samuel was confronted by an enormous gnarled oak with a complex root system that reminded him uncomfortably of serpents writhing. This was the tree that had spoken. It had two holes in its trunk for eyes, and a twisted gash for a mouth, from which a reeking gas emerged as it talked. It stank of rotting vegetation, and worse: the slow decay of the nonvegetative.

  “What right have you?” said the ram in reply. “He’s just a boy.”

  “He could help us. He could free us.”

  “And how could he do that? You are afflicted things. He cannot help you.”

  “Give him an ax, and let him cut us down. Let him reduce us to splinters and sawdust.”

  “And then? Do you still believe that mortal rules apply to you? The Great Malevolence would simply start again, reconstituting you into even more grotesque forms for his amusement. That will not bring your pain to an end. It will merely increase it.”

  “Then give us the boy, that he might keep us company. We can gaze upon his beauty, and remember what we once were.”

  The ram laughed, a low, bleating sound. “Give him to you so that h
e can rot slowly in your insides, more like, allowing you to visit some of your anger on him. He is lost, but not forsaken. He does not belong here, and he does not belong to you.”

  The great oak seemed to snarl, and Samuel saw deep into the racked, tortured soul of it.

  “We will not forget this, Old Ram,” it said. “Our roots grow longer, our branches sharper. We draw ever nearer to you, and soon you will wake in your hovel to find yourself surrounded by us, and our arms will draw you to us, and we will explore your body with our roots for our amusement.”

  “Yes, yes, yes,” said the ram dismissively. “Old Ram has heard it all before. You’re trees, in case you hadn’t noticed. You grow so slowly that even the Great Malevolence himself has ceased to find your misery amusing. Keep staring into your pools of stagnant water, and recalling what you once were. The child has no more business with you.”

  He nudged Samuel with his stick.

  “Come, my boy,” he said. “Leave them to their mutterings.”

  Samuel did as he was told, but as he went he could not resist looking back at the great oak; for a moment he could have sworn that he saw some of its roots emerge from the ground. But then the forest closed around it, and he could see the ancient tree no longer.

  Meanwhile, Mr. Merryweather’s elves, or dwarfs, or however they currently chose to describe themselves, had encountered a serious problem.

  Somebody had stolen their van.

  “And you’re sure this is where you left it?” said Angry. “You know, a lot of these dunes look alike.”

  “Don’t take that tone with me,” said Jolly. “We left it here. All of us. Not just me. And of course this is where we left it: you can see the tire marks.”

  “Were the keys still in the ignition? Very unwise to walk away and leave the keys in the ignition. Invitation to thieves, that is.”

  If a volcano could have assumed the form of a small human being, and had then been photographed on the verge of eruption, it would have looked not unlike Jolly at that moment. When he spoke, though, he was remarkably calm. Dangerously so, one might have thought.

  “Yes,” he said. “I left the keys in it.”

  “So that was a bit careless, wasn’t it?”

  “Well, it might have been–IF SOMEONE HAD DRIVEN IT AWAY!”

  The dwarfs looked at the space that had, until recently, been occupied by a bright yellow van decorated with a painting of a happy little person who bore no resemblance at all to themselves, even at the best of times, of which this was definitely not one. There were four marks in the dust where the van’s tires had stood, but there were no tracks indicating the direction in which it might have gone. Simultaneously all four dwarfs raised their heads, shaded their eyes with their hands, and examined the brooding skies above in the hope of catching a glimpse of their vehicle.

  “I can’t believe someone’s nicked the van,” said Dozy. “I mean, it’s not like we left it on a council estate with the doors open. It’s a desert. What kind of lowlifes do they have around here, anyway?”

  “It’s Hell,” Angry pointed out glumly. “It’s probably full of the kind of people who’d nick your feet if your legs weren’t attached to them.”

  “Suppose so,” said Dozy. “Still, that’s how a place gets a reputation for being unwelcoming to visitors.”

  “Leaseraneem,” said Mumbles.

  “You’re right,” said Jolly. “There never is a copper around when you need one.”

  Which was slightly ironic, given that (a) Mr. Merryweather’s dwarfs were not the sort to court the attention of the police at any time; and (b) generally it was not Mr. Merryweather’s dwarfs who needed the help of the police, but other people who needed it to protect them from Mr. Merryweather’s dwarfs.

  At this point, as if on cue, a police patrol car appeared on top of a nearby dune, its blue lights flashing.

  “Blimey,” said Jolly. “They’re efficient around here, I’ll give them that.”

  Angry squinted at the car as it made its way carefully down the side of the dune.

  “You know, I could be wrong, but those coppers don’t half look familiar.”

  The car drew to a halt. Its doors opened. From one side stepped Sergeant Rowan, and from the other Constable Peel. Both of them scowled at the dwarfs, and on their faces was etched the memory of incidents of assault; drunkenness; unauthorized taking of vehicles, including an ambulance and a bus; arson; breaking and entering, specifically into Biddlecombe’s Little World of Animal Wonders, and the removal of a penguin and two ferrets from same; using a penguin and two ferrets as dangerous weapons; and last, but by no means least, stealing a policeman’s helmet, namely Constable Peel’s, and allowing a penguin and two ferrets to use it as a public convenience. What these incidents had in common was that they had all involved, to some degree or another, one or more of, yes, that’s right, Mr. Merryweather’s dwarfs.

  “Oh no,” said Jolly as his brain registered the two policemen, and all of the unfortunate memories associated with them. “It’s true: this must be Hell.”

  In Which the Forces of Law and Order Assert Themselves

  SERGEANT ROWAN AND CONSTABLE Peel were deeply, deeply unhappy. To begin with, they had been hauled through an interdimensional portal, which had hurt a lot. Then they had recovered consciousness just in time to see a pink-skinned demon with three heads, too many eyes, and a mouth in its stomach steal the loudspeaker from their roof before running away while wearing it as a hat on its middle head. Then a smaller demon carrying a bucket of white sand had passed them, waved, and disappeared over the top of a dune. He had been followed by another, and another, and another, all of them identical and all of them carrying buckets of white sand. Attempts to engage them in conversation, including such beloved opening gambits as “Who are you?,” “Where is this?,” and “What are you doing with that bucket?” had met with no reply.

  “You know what, Constable?” said Sergeant Rowan as the never-ending procession of demons passed, each one greeting them with a cheery wave.

  “I don’t want to know what, Sarge.”

  “What?”

  “I mean that I don’t want to hear what you’re about to say, because I know what you’re about to say, and I know it’s not something I want to hear. So, if it’s all the same to you, I think I might just put my fingers in my ears and hum a happy tune.”

  And he did just that, until Sergeant Rowan made him stop.

  “Now, lad, don’t let’s be overdramatic,” said Sergeant Rowan. “We have to face up to the truth here.”

  “I don’t want to face up to the truth. The truth’s nasty. The truth’s walking up that dune holding a bucket. The truth has three heads and stole our loudspeaker.”

  “Which means?”

  Constable Peel looked as if he was about to cry.

  “You’re going to tell me that the portal’s opened again, and all kinds of horrible creatures are pouring out.”

  Sergeant Rowan smiled at him. “I wasn’t going to tell you that at all, lad.”

  “Really?”

  “No, that’s not what’s happening here.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Virtually certain.”

  “Oh!” said Constable Peel. He smiled with relief. “Oh, thank goodness. Phew, don’t I feel foolish?”

  “I’ll bet you do, lad.”

  “There was I, worrying that the portal had opened, and monsters were going to pop out of it and try to eat us, and the dead were going to come alive again, and, you know, all that kind of thing. Silly old Peel, eh?”

  “Silly old you,” said Sergeant Rowan. “Monsters aren’t going to come pouring through the portal.”

  “That’s a load off my mind,” said Constable Peel, then thought about what he had just heard. “But what about the one that stole our loudspeaker, and the little red blokes with the buckets?”

  “They didn’t come through the portal. None of them did.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because t
hey’re already here. It’s we who have come through the portal, Constable, not them. We’re in Hell.”

  All things considered, thought Sergeant Rowan, Constable Peel had taken the news remarkably well, once he’d stopped raving and calmed down. They had taken the decision to get away from the steady train of bucket-toting, polite, but relatively uncommunicative demons and find someone who might be able to answer a straight question, which is how they had come across four dwarfs standing on a flat patch between dunes, scratching their heads and staring at the sky. Both policemen had recognized them instantly, and their moods had immediately brightened. They might have been in Hell, but they weren’t alone, and if there were four individuals that Sergeant Rowan and Constable Peel would like to have seen consigned to Hell more than Mr. Merryweather’s dwarfs, then they hadn’t met those people yet, and probably never would.

  “Hello, hello, hello,” said Sergeant Rowan, watching with pleasure as the four dwarfs looked in vain for a means of escape. “What have we here, then?”

  “Why, I believe it’s the fabled Mr. Merryweather’s Dwarfs, Sarge,” said Constable Peel.

  “Is it really? My, my. Correct me if I’m wrong, Constable, but would they be the same dwarfs who stole your helmet and allowed two ferrets to do their business in it?”

  “Two ferrets and a penguin, Sarge,” Constable Peel corrected.

  “Oh yes, the penguin. I’d almost forgotten about that penguin. Phil, wasn’t it?”

  “That’s right, Sarge. Phil the Penguin. Filled my helmet and all.” He smiled at his own little joke. The thought of getting some revenge on Mr. Merryweather’s dwarfs was cheering him up no end.

  Sergeant Rowan looked around. “So we have the dwarfs, but where is Mr. Merryweather?” He turned his attention back to the dwarfs, and pointed at Jolly. “You, Mr. Jolly Smallpants, you’re the leader of this motley crew, but where’s the ringmaster?”

  “He abandoned us,” said Jolly.