The Infernals aka Hell's Bells Read online

  Funny, thought Samuel. Really funny. His bag, and his heart, felt very heavy.

  Outside the gates, Samuel’s pet dachshund, Boswell, was waiting. Boswell had the worried air of one who suspects that bad news is imminent, and its arrival has only been delayed by the fact that it’s looking for some more bad news to keep it company. A series of frown lines creased Boswell’s brow, and at regular intervals he would give a sigh. He was a familiar sight around the town of Biddlecombe, but particularly at the school, for Boswell was Samuel Johnson’s faithful companion, and was always present to greet his master when the bell struck four.

  Boswell had always been a somewhat sensitive, contemplative dog. 15 Even as a puppy, he would regard his ball warily, as though waiting for it to sprout legs and run off with another dog. He displayed a fondness for the sadder types of classical music, and had been known to howl along to Mozart’s Requiem in a plaintive manner.

  But recent events had given Boswell good cause to think that the world was an even stranger and more worrying place than he had previously thought. After all, he had witnessed monsters emerging from holes in space, and had even been injured by one as he attempted to save his master from its clutches. One of his legs had been broken, and ever since he had walked with a slight limp. Being a dog, although a very clever one, Boswell wasn’t entirely clear about the nature of what had occurred during the invasion. All he knew was that it had been very bad, and he didn’t want it to happen again. Most of all, he didn’t want anything to happen to Samuel, whom he loved very much, and so each morning, regardless of the weather, Boswell would trot along beside his beloved master as Samuel walked to school, and would be waiting for him when he emerged from school at the end of the day. A flap in the front door of the house meant that he could come and go as he pleased. Boswell’s duty was to protect Samuel, and he intended to fulfill it to the best of a small dog’s ability.

  That day Boswell detected a change in Samuel’s usually sunny disposition. While some dogs might have made an effort to cheer up their master under such circumstances, perhaps by chasing their tail or showing them something that smelled funny, Boswell was the kind of dog that shared his master’s mood. If Samuel was happy, then Boswell was content. If Samuel was sad, Boswell stayed quiet and kept him company. In this, Boswell was wiser than most people.

  And so the boy and his dog, each bearing some of the weight of the world upon his shoulders, made their way home, and had anyone taken the time to give them more than a passing glance, they might have noticed that both the boy and the dog kept their heads down as they went. They did not look in shop windows, and they avoided puddles. They did not seem to want to see themselves. It was as if they were frightened of their own reflections, or scared of being noticed.

  People still occasionally shot funny looks at Samuel and indeed at Boswell, but not as often as they used to, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the funny looks they shot were of a general kind-“He’s an odd kid, and his dog makes me feel sad”-rather than the specific kind, such as, “There’s Samuel Johnson and his dog, who were involved with all of that demonic business that I’d rather not remember, thanks very much. Actually, now that I see them again, I feel a bit angry at them because I don’t want to be reminded of what happened, but by their presence here they remind me of it anyway, so I think I’ll just blame them for everything instead of the demons because it’s easier to be angry at a small boy and a smaller dog, and less likely to result in me being eaten, or whisked off to Hell, or some similarly horrible consequence.”

  Or words to that effect.

  Samuel had almost ceased to notice the reactions of other people to his presence, but that was not why he and Boswell kept their heads down. It was true to say that they did not want to be noticed, but it was not their neighbors in Biddlecombe who worried them. The individual who concerned them was much farther away.

  Farther away, yet strangely close.

  Most of us do not think very hard about the nature of mirrors. We see the reflection of a room, or of ourselves, in a glass and we think, “Oh, look, it’s the couch,” or “Oh, look, it’s me. I thought I was thinner/fatter/better-looking/uglier/a girl.” 16 But it’s not your couch, and it’s not you. It’s a version of you, which is why the artist René Magritte could paint a picture of a pipe and write beneath it, in French, Ceci n’est pas une pipe, or “This is not a pipe.” Because it’s not a pipe: it’s an image of a pipe. As Magritte himself pointed out: “Could you stuff my pipe? No, it’s just a representation. So if I had written on my picture, ‘This is a pipe,’ I’d have been lying!”

  The painting in question, from 1929, is called The Treachery of Images. (Treachery, meaning to trick or deceive, is another great word, especially if you roll that first r on your tongue and really stretch it out: “Trrrrrrreachery!” you can shout, in a demented way, while waving a sword and alarming the neighbors.) In other words, you can’t trust images, because they’re not what they pretend to be.

  Samuel had become very familiar with this concept, and not in a good way. He had begun to suspect that mirrors were very strange indeed, and that, far from simply providing a reflection of this world, they might in fact be a world of their own. 17 He felt this because very occasionally he would glance at a mirror, or the window of a shop, or some other reflective surface, and he would see a figure that should not have been there. It was the figure of a no-longer-quite-beautiful woman in a floral dress. It was Mrs. Abernathy.

  For Mrs. Abernathy, Samuel had decided, walked in the world of mirrors. She couldn’t get back into this world, but somehow she could see into it by moving behind the glass. Samuel had caught glimpses of her in the mirror of his bathroom cabinet, in the glass of his front door, even once, most peculiarly, on a spoon, where she was distorted and upside down. She seemed to prefer to come at night, when the windows were dark and the reflections more distinct in the glass, as though the clarity of her own image in turn made the world at which she gazed easier to discern.

  And each time her eyes were filled with a blue light, and they burned with her hatred for Samuel.

  Samuel’s mother greeted him from the kitchen as he opened the front door and dumped his bag in the hall.

  “Hello, Samuel. Did you have a good day?”

  “If, by good, you mean embarrassing and soul-destroying, then, yes, I had a good day,” said Samuel.

  “Oh dear,” said his mum. “Sit down at the table and I’ll make you a nice cup of tea.”

  What was it about mothers, wondered Samuel, that led them to believe all of the problems of the world could be solved with a nice cup of tea? Samuel could have walked in with his head under his arm, blood spurting from his neck and his back quilled with arrows, and his mother would have suggested a nice cup of tea as a means of salving his wounds. She would probably even have tried to rub some tea on his severed head in an effort to stick it back on his shoulders.

  But the funny thing was that, more often than not, a cup of tea and a consoling word from your mum were enough to make things at least a little better, so Samuel sat down and waited until a steaming mug of tea was placed in front of him. It really did smell good. He could almost feel it warming his throat already. Today had been bad, but perhaps tomorrow would be better. Tea: our friend in times of trouble.

  “Oh bother,” said Samuel’s mother. “We’re out of milk.”

  Samuel’s forehead thumped hard against the kitchen table.

  “I’ll go,” he said.

  “There’s a good lad,” said his mum. “I’ll have a fresh cup waiting for you when you get back. Will you get some bread while you’re at it? I don’t know: even with your dad gone, we’re still getting through as much food as ever.”

  Samuel winced. He didn’t know which hurt more: to hear his mother grow sad when she talked about his dad’s absence, or to hear her remark upon it so casually. His mother seemed to notice his discomfort, for she moved to him and enveloped him in her arms.

  “Oh, y
ou,” she said, kissing his hair. “I don’t mind you eating. You’re a growing lad. And your dad and I, well, we’re talking, which is something. I’m not as angry with him as I was, although I’d still hit him over the head with a frying pan given half the chance. But we’re okay, you and I, aren’t we?”

  Samuel nodded, his eyes closed, taking in the comforting smell of flour and perfume from his mother’s dress.

  “Yes, we’re okay,” he said, although he wasn’t sure if it was true.

  His mother pushed him gently away, and held him at arm’s length. She looked at him seriously.

  “There’s been no more, um, strangeness, has there?” she asked.

  “You mean demons?”

  Now it was his mother’s turn to look uncomfortable.

  “Yes, if that’s what you want to call them.”

  “That’s what they were.”

  “Now, I don’t want to get into an argument about it,” said his mum. “I’m only asking.”

  “No, Mum,” said Samuel. “There’s been no more strangeness.” Not unless you include glimpses of a woman with her face stitched together, staring out at him from mirrors and glass doors. “There’s been no more strangeness at all.”

  VII

  In Which We Pay a Visit to Mrs. Abernathy’s House. Which Is Nice. Not.

  BEFORE WE GO ANY further, a quick word about evil.

  Evil has been in existence for a very long time, long enough to be part of the birth of everything billions and billions of years ago following the Big Bang that brought this universe into being. Unfortunately, for a while after the Big Bang there wasn’t much for Evil to do because there wasn’t a great deal of life about, and what life there was consisted of little single-celled organisms which had quite enough to be getting along with just trying to become multicelled organisms, thank you very much, without having to worry about being unkind to one another for no good reason as well. Even when these multicelled organisms grew incredibly complex, and became sharks, and spiders, and carnivorous dinosaurs, they still didn’t provide much amusement for Evil. These beasts operated on instinct alone, and their instinct was simply to eat, and thus to survive.

  But then man came along, and Evil perked up a bit, because here was a creature that could choose, which made it very interesting indeed. Being good or bad is not a passive state: you have to decide to be one or the other. Evil did everything it could to encourage people to do bad instead of good, and because it was clever it disguised itself well, so that people who did bad things found ways to convince themselves that they weren’t really bad at all. They needed more money to be happy, and hence they stole, or they cheated on their taxes; and then they told lies to hide what they’d done, because they were kind of sorry for it, but not sorry enough to admit what they’d done, or to stop doing it. In the end, most of it came down to selfishness, but Evil didn’t mind. You could call it what you wanted, as far as Evil was concerned, just as long as you kept on being bad.

  And Evil wasn’t just busy in this universe, but in a lot of others too, for ours was but one in a great froth of universes known as the Multiverse, each one its own expanding bubble of planets and stars. You might think that this would require Evil to spread itself a little thinly, because there can only be so much Evil to go around, but you’d be surprised what Evil can do when it puts its mind to it. On the other hand, no matter how hard Evil tries, it can never quite match up to the power of Good, because Evil is ultimately self-destructive. Evil may set out to corrupt others, but in the process it corrupts itself. That’s just the way Evil is. All things considered, it’s better to be on the side of Good, even if Evil occasionally has nicer uniforms.

  • • •

  Mrs. Abernathy, who was very evil indeed, sat in a high chamber in her palace, a terrifying constuct of spars and sharp edges carved from a single massive slab of shiny black volcanic rock, and stared intently at the shard of glass before her. She had “borrowed” it a long, long time before from the Great Malevolence, for he had many such shards, and she had convinced herself that one more or less would make no difference to him. They were his windows into the world of men, each revealing to him some facet of the existence that he hated, yet also, in the pit of his being, secretly craved. He would watch the sun set, and lakes turn to gold. He would see children grow up to have children of their own, and become old among those whom they loved, and who loved them in turn. He would gaze upon husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, upon puppies, and frogs, and elephants. He would even gaze upon goldfish in bowls, and hamsters who ran around inside wheels to distract themselves from their tiny cages, and flies struggling in the webs of spiders, and he would envy each and every living thing its freedom, even if it was only the freedom to die.

  For so long, Mrs. Abernathy had shared her master’s desire to turn the Earth into a version of Hell, but something had changed. What that something was might be guessed from the fact that the windows of her dreadful lair, which, in its way, had long been nearly as awful as the Great Malevolence’s Mountain of Despair, but considerably smaller, and with better views, had been decorated with net curtains. The curtains were black and, upon closer inspection, seemed to have been used at some point to catch horrible mutated fish, as the remains of a few were still caught in their strands, but at least someone was making an effort. A long table constructed entirely of tombstones now had a yellow vase at its center, a vase, furthermore, that bore a pattern of dozing cats. Admittedly, the vase was filled with ugly bloodred flowers that hid sharp teeth inside their petals, and those teeth would have made short work of any real cats that made the mistake of falling asleep within snapping distance, but it was a start, just like the curtains, and the doormat that read “Please Wipe Your Cloven Hooves!,” and the jar of potpourri made from the husks of poisonous beetles and scented with stagnant water.

  What Mrs. Abernathy had discovered, even if she refused to admit it to herself, was that if you go to a place intent upon changing it, then sometimes that place may end up changing you instead. She had returned to Hell, but she had brought back a little of the human world with her, and now she was being altered in ways she did not fully understand.

  Mind you, she still hated Samuel Johnson, and his dog. Just because she wanted to make her lair a bit prettier, and maybe spent a few minutes longer than before on making sure her hair was just right before she went out, didn’t mean that she wouldn’t tear them both limb from limb at the first opportunity. Thus it was that she watched them through the fragment of glass as they trudged from the house, the boy’s head low, the dog intent upon his master. Samuel looked unhappy, she thought. That was good. She liked it when he was unhappy. She willed him to look up, to catch a quick sight of her in one of the windows as he was passing. It always gave her pleasure to see him react with fear when she appeared, even if she couldn’t do him any real harm, not yet, but he seemed intent upon not noticing her.

  She stretched out a pale hand and stared at her fingers. The nails were red, and slightly chipped. She would have to paint them again, once she managed to get a decent supply of suitable blood.

  From above her head came the sound of wings flapping. The chamber narrowed into a steeplelike structure at its center that protruded high above the surrounding plains. At its peak was an opening that now darkened as a figure entered and began to descend. Her Watcher had returned.

  When Mrs. Abernathy had fallen out of favor with the Great Malevolence, many of those demons who had previously been loyal to her had sought new masters. After all, if someone had failed the Great Malevolence so dreadfully that he had cut her off entirely, refusing even to stare upon her face, it could only be a matter of time before he decided that ignoring her was insufficient punishment, and something more imaginative might be called for. In that case, he might decide that he wanted to stare upon her face again after all, but only if the face had been removed first and nailed to a wall, with the other parts of her body arranged alongside it in an interesting if unconventional
manner. When that happened, as most of the cleverer demons seemed to think was increasingly probable, then any of those who had remained close to her were likely to end up in a similar position, albeit slightly lower down the wall.

  In a sense, demons were the embodiment of the law of conservation of matter, which states that matter cannot be created or destroyed, but only transformed from one state to another. 18 When applied to demons, this meant that they could not die, but could still be transformed into various alternative painful versions of existence, and their torments could be made to last an eternity. Nobody wants to spend eternity with his face pinned to a wall and his severed legs crossed underneath his chin, like some ghastly coat of arms, so the general wisdom in Hell was that it was unwise to be involved with Mrs. Abernathy, because Mrs. Abernathy was doomed and would, in turn, doom all those around her.

  But there were creatures that had remained loyal to her: some because they were too stupid to know better, some because they hoped that Mrs. Abernathy might discover a way to improve her situation, and some because they were as cruel and vicious and intelligent as she was, and couldn’t find a better employer, even in Hell. The Watcher appeared to be one of those. It was strong, and tireless, and seemed unquestioningly faithful to its mistress, even if it was a bit disturbed by the changes that had taken place in her appearance recently. It had grown used to serving a monstrous, tentacled demon four times its own height, not a small, blond woman in a print dress. Still, you had to be open to new experiences, that was its philosophy, as long as those new experiences sufficiently resembled the old ones in terms of hurting other beings.

  The Watcher was pleased with itself, and it knew that Mrs. Abernathy would in turn be pleased with it. But before it could begin to speak, its mistress spasmed. Her arms shot out from her sides and her back arched. Her mouth gaped and her eyes opened wide. Beams of blue light shot from her jaws, her ears, and the sockets of her eyes. Smaller splinters of energy erupted from every pore of her skin, and she hung suspended in the air like a blue sun.