The Gates Read online

  Nurd glanced at Boswell. “What’s that?”

  “It’s my dog. His name is Boswell. And I’m Samuel.”

  Boswell wagged his tail at the sound of his name, then, remembering that he was supposed to be ferocious, showed some teeth and growled again.

  “He doesn’t seem very happy to see me,” said Nurd. “Then again, nobody ever is.”

  “Well, you did pop up a little unexpectedly.”

  Nurd sighed. “Sorry about that. Not my fault. Would you mind if I stopped cowering now? I’m beginning to get a cramp.”

  Samuel had a good instinct for people. He could tell a good person from a bad one, often before the person in question had even spoken. Although his experience of demons was rather more limited, something told him that, if Nurd wasn’t exactly good— and, being a demon, it was hardly part of the job description (“Wanted: demon. Must be good …”)—he was not entirely bad either. He was just himself, like most ordinary people.

  “All right,” said Samuel, then added, because he’d once heard someone say it in a police movie, “but no sudden movements.”

  “Does shooting off into another dimension count?” asked Nurd.

  “No.”

  “Fine, then.” Nurd sat on the chair, and looked around the room. “Nice place.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You decorate it yourself?”

  “My dad did most of it.”

  “Oh.”

  They were silent for a time.

  “If you don’t mind me saying so, you don’t look very happy,” said Samuel.

  “I think I’m in shock,” said Nurd. “You try being wrenched from one dimension to another, then being hit by a truck, sent back home again for long enough to start hurting, and then have the whole thing begin all over. It’s not conducive to a healthy outlook on life, let me tell you.”

  Nurd put his very large chin in his hands and frowned.

  “Anyway,” he said, “it’s not like you look overjoyed either.”

  “I’m not,” said Samuel. “My dad’s left us, my mum cries in the evenings, and I think the woman down the road is trying to kill me. Are you sure she didn’t send you?”

  “Quite sure,” said Nurd, and for the first time in many years, he felt sorry for someone other than himself. “That’s not very nice of her.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “Well, like I said, I live in a wasteland. There’s nothing to see, nothing to do, and Wormwood and I have run out of things to talk about. In fact, this interdimensional travel has brightened up my days no end, or it would have if I didn’t keep being injured by hard metal objects. This is such an interesting place.”

  He moved to the window and gazed out. “Look,” he said, and there were eons of longing and sadness in his voice. “You have fluffy white clouds, and sunshine. What I wouldn’t give to be able to see sunshine every day.”

  Samuel picked up a bag of jelly beans from his nightstand.

  “Would you like a sweet?”

  “A what?”

  “A sweetie. They’re jelly beans.”

  Tentatively, Nurd reached into the bag and came out with a red bean.

  “Oh, those ones are lovely,” said Samuel, popping an orange one into his mouth and chewing thoughtfully. Nurd followed his example, and seemed pleasantly surprised by the result.

  “Ooooh, that’s good,” he said. “That’s very good. Fluffy clouds. Jelly beans. Big metal things that move fast. What a world you live in!”

  Samuel sat down on his bed. Leaving the window, Nurd returned to his chair.

  “You’re not going to hurt me, are you?” asked Samuel.

  Nurd looked shocked. “Why would I do that?”

  “Because you’re a demon.”

  “Just because I’m a demon doesn’t mean that I’m bad,” said Nurd. A piece of jelly bean had stuck to his teeth, and he worked at it with a long fingernail. “I didn’t ask to be a demon. It just happened that way. I opened my eyes one day, and there I was. Nurd. Ugly bloke. No friends. Even other demons don’t care much for my company.”

  “Why? You seem all right to me.”

  “I suppose that’s it, really. I’ve never been very demonic. I don’t want to torture, or wreak havoc. I don’t want to be frightening, or terrible. I just want to potter along, minding my own business. But they told me I had to do something destructive or I’d be in trouble, so I tried to find a role that wouldn’t attract too much attention, or cause a lot of bother to people, but all those jobs were taken. You know, there’s a demon who looks after the little bit of toothpaste that you can’t squeeze out of the end of the tube, even though you know it’s there and there’s no other toothpaste in the house. There’s even a demon of shyness, or there’s supposed to be. Nobody’s ever seen him, so it’s hard to know for sure. I quite fancied a job like that.

  “Eventually, some of the other demons just got irritated with me trying to muscle in on their action, and I was banished. It all seemed pretty hopeless, and then suddenly I started popping up here. I just feel like I could make something of myself in this world. There are so many opportunities.”

  “This world is hard too,” said Samuel, and there was something in the boy’s voice that made Nurd want to reach out to him. The demon picked up the bag of jelly beans, and offered one to Samuel. He picked a green one.

  “You can have another too,” he said to Nurd.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Nurd tried a black one. It tasted a bit funny, but it was still better than anything else he had ever eaten, except for that first jelly bean.

  “Go on,” said Nurd. “You were saying?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Samuel.

  “No, it does. I want to know. Really.”

  So Samuel told him. He spoke of his mother and his father, and of how his dad had left and maybe it was Samuel’s fault, and maybe it wasn’t. He spoke of how the world doesn’t listen to children, even when it should. He spoke of Boswell, and of how he would be lost without the little dog for company.

  And Nurd, who had never had a mother and father, and who had never loved or been loved, marveled at the ways in which a feeling so wonderful could also leave one open to so much pain. In a strange way, he envied Samuel even that. He wanted to care about someone so much that it could hurt.

  Thus the boy and the demon sat as the day grew brighter, talking of places seen and unseen, of hopes and fears. The only shadow cast upon their conversation was Samuel’s description of the events in the Abernathys’ basement, which made Nurd uneasy, even as he struggled to understand what they might mean. It sounded to him as though there might be other demons in this world, demons with a plan. Well, Nurd had plans of his own, assuming he could find a way to stay in the world of men permanently and not simply spend the rest of his existence whizzing painfully between dimensions.

  At last, Nurd’s fingers began to tingle again.

  “I have to go,” he said, with regret. He smiled, a movement so unfamiliar that at first his muscles struggled with it. “It really has been very nice talking to you. When I work out how to rule this world, I’ll make sure that you’re well looked after.”

  Just as Nurd was about to vanish, Samuel thrust the bag of jelly beans into his hand, so that when Nurd arrived back in the Wasteland he might have something with which to cheer himself and Wormwood up.

  Nurd reappeared on his throne. He opened his eyes to find Wormwood staring anxiously at him.

  “What’s wrong with your face?” asked Wormwood.

  Nurd tested his mouth with his fingers.

  “Wormwood,” he said, “I appear to be smiling. Here, have a jelly bean …”

  XIII

  In Which Samuel Decides to Consult an Expert on Demons and Hell, but Doesn’t Get Anywhere

  REVEREND USSHER, THE VICAR, and Mr. Berkeley, the verger, were standing outside the Church of St. Timidus, greeting the congregation as its members filed out on that bright S
unday morning.

  The church was named after St. Timidus of Biddlecombe, a very holy man who died in 1380 A.D. at the age of thirty-eight. St. Timidus became famous when, in 1378 A.D., he decided to go and live in a cave outside Biddlecombe so that he would not be tempted to do bad things. It wasn’t a very large cave, and when people came to bring him food Timidus would sometimes be able to see them coming, or hear what they were saying. He decided to dig himself another cave next to the one in which he was living, so that there would be absolutely no chance of seeing or hearing someone and being tempted to sin. (It’s not entirely clear what sins Timidus was afraid of committing, since he never said, but it probably had something to do with ladies. It often does in such cases.)

  Unfortunately, while he was digging the second cave Timidus caused the first cave to fall in on him, and he was buried alive under a large pile of rocks. It was decided that Timidus should be made a saint because of his commitment to avoiding bad things, and also because Biddlecombe didn’t have any saints at the time, and there’s nothing like a good, old-fashioned saint to bring believers to a place and encourage them to spend money. So it was that plain old Timidus became St. Timidus of Biddlecombe.

  Now you or I might wonder if Timidus might not have been better off leaving his cave and doing nice things for other people, such as helping old ladies cross the road or feeding the poor, instead of hiding himself away and not talking to anyone. After all, not doing bad things is not the same as doing good things, but that is why you and I will never become saints. On the other hand, you and I are unlikely to be buried under a big pile of stones as a result of bad engineering practices, so these things even themselves out in the end.

  The bishop of Biddlecombe at the time was named Bernard, but he was known far and wide as Bishop Bernard the Bad. Obviously, this wasn’t what his parents named him, as that would have been a bit foolish. I mean, if you name someone “the Bad” then, really, you’re just asking for trouble. It would have led to conversations like the following:

  Bernard’s Parents: Hello, this is our son Bernard the Bad. We hope he’ll become a bishop someday. A nice one, of course. Not a bad one.

  Not Bernard’s Parents: Er, then why did you name him “the Bad”?

  Bernard’s Parents: Oh dear …21

  Bishop Bernard the Bad was given his nickname because he was extremely nasty. Bishop Bernard didn’t like people who disagreed with him, especially if they disagreed with his decisions to steal lots of money, kill people who had anything that he might want, and have children, even if he wasn’t supposed to have children because he was a bishop. In fact, he wasn’t supposed to do any of those things, but that didn’t stop Bishop Bernard. Bishop Bernard also believed there were few problems in life that couldn’t be solved by sticking a hot poker up somebody’s bottom. If that didn’t work, which was rare, he would put his enemies on a rack and stretch them until they said, “Ow!” very loudly, or just kill them, often in a slow and painful way. Bishop Bernard knew that people called him Bernard the Bad behind his back, but he didn’t care. He rather liked the idea that people were terrified of him.

  By the time St. Timidus of Biddlecombe, who wasn’t bad at all, just a little confused, died in his cave, Bishop Bernard the Bad was getting old. He decided that a church should be built and named after St. Timidus, and when he died, Bishop Bernard would be buried in a special vault in the church. That way, Bishop Bernard could pretend that he had something in common with the saint and perhaps, over time, people might forget that he was bad, as he would be the one buried in the church.

  People aren’t that stupid.

  Instead, when he died, Bishop Bernard was buried beneath a little room at the side of the church, and the only sign that he was there was a stone in the floor with his name on it. Thereafter, he was always mentioned when visitors were brought on tours of the chapel, but they were only told of the bad things that he had done, mainly because he had never done anything good.

  So there you have it: the history of the Church of St. Timidus. Why all that is so important we shall discover later. For now, it is enough to know that Reverend Ussher and Mr. Berkeley were standing outside its doors, being very polite, when Mr. Berkeley saw Samuel approaching and nudged the vicar.

  “Look out, Vicar,” he said, “it’s that strange Johnson boy.”

  The vicar looked alarmed. Samuel Johnson was only eleven years old, but he sometimes asked the kinds of questions that would challenge elderly philosophers. Most recently, the vicar recalled, there had been a lengthy discussion about angels and pins, which was something to do with a school project, although he couldn’t imagine what kind of school, other than a theology college, might require its students to debate the size and nature of the angelic host. To be perfectly frank, it had made Reverend Ussher’s head spin. He thought that Samuel Johnson might be some kind of child prodigy or genius. Then again, he might simply be a rather annoying small boy, of which, in Reverend Ussher’s experience, there were already too many in the world.

  Now here Samuel was again, his brow furrowed in the kind of concentration that suggested the vicar’s knowledge of matters divine and angelic was about to be severely tested.

  “Hello, Samuel,” said the vicar, composing his face into some semblance of goodwill. “And what’s on your mind this morning?”

  “Do you believe in Hell, Vicar?” asked Samuel.

  “Um, well.” Reverend Ussher paused. “Why are you asking about Hell, Samuel? You’re not worried about going there, are you? I can’t imagine that a young man like you could have much cause to fear, er, eternal damnation. Or even temporary damnation, come to that.”

  Beside him Mr. Berkeley stifled a cough, suggesting that he would be quite happy to see Samuel Johnson suffer in a hot, fiery place, if only for long enough to discourage him from asking the vicar awkward questions.

  “It’s not so much that I’m afraid of ending up there,” said Samuel. “It’s more that I’m afraid of it ending up here.”

  The vicar looked confused. He’d known that he was likely to become confused at some point in the conversation; he just hadn’t imagined that it would happen so fast.

  “I’m not sure that I follow you.”

  “I mean, is there a chance that Hell could come here?”

  “Come here?” said the verger, intervening. “It’s Hell, not the number forty-seven bus.”

  Samuel ignored him. He’d never thought much of Mr. Berkeley, who always seemed to be scowling, even on Christmas morning when nobody had any business to be scowling at all.

  The vicar quieted Mr. Berkeley with a wave of his hand.

  “No, Samuel. Even if Hell does exist, and I’m not entirely convinced that it does, it has nothing to do with this earthly realm. It is distinct, and of itself. People may end up there, but I can say, with some confidence, that it will never end up here.”

  He beamed beatifically at Samuel. Samuel did not beam back. Instead he seemed about to offer some further argument, but Mr. Berkeley had had enough. He gripped the vicar by the elbow and steered him toward less challenging company, namely Mr. and Mrs. Billingsgate, who ran the local fish-and-chip shop and rarely asked anything more awkward than whether or not one might require vinegar with that.

  Samuel stared glumly as the two men walked away. He’d wanted to say much more to the vicar, but it didn’t look like that was going to happen. The vicar seemed very certain about things he couldn’t possibly know for sure, but Samuel supposed that was all part of being a vicar. After all, it wouldn’t have done for the vicar to stand up before the congregation in church on Sunday and ask if there was any point in their being here. As a vicar, you had to learn to take some things on trust.

  As Samuel returned to his mum, who was chatting with friends, he saw Mrs. Abernathy by the church wall, watching him. He noticed that she was careful to remain outside the church grounds. She hadn’t been at the service either. Samuel would have noticed her.

  She beckoned to Samuel, but Sam
uel merely shook his head, trying to ignore her.

  Samuel.

  He heard her voice in his head as clearly as if she were standing next to him. He glanced at her again. She hadn’t moved, but a small smile was playing on her face.

  Samuel, her voice came again. We need to talk. If you don’t come to me, I’m going to find your little dog, and I’m going to kill him. What do you think of that, clever Samuel Johnson? Would you sacrifice your dog’s life because you’re too frightened to face me?

  Samuel swallowed. Mrs. Abernathy was like the witch in The Wizard of Oz, threatening Toto to get back at Dorothy. He left his mother, and approached the woman at the wall.

  “How are you, Samuel?” she asked, as though they were friends who had just happened to meet on a pleasant Sunday morning.

  “I’m fine,” he answered.

  “I’m disappointed to hear that,” said Mrs. Abernathy. “In fact, I was hoping you wouldn’t be here at all.”

  Samuel shrugged. Mrs. Abernathy’s eyes, already blue, seemed to brighten a shade, drawing his gaze toward them.

  “You sent the monster who hid under my bed,” said Samuel.

  “Yes, and I’m going to have words with him, when I find him. I expended rather a lot of energy bringing him here. The least he could have done was eat you alive.”

  “Well, he didn’t,” said Samuel. “He seemed quite nice, actually.”

  Mrs. Abernathy’s calm expression altered for an instant. She might have been a demon but, in common with most of the human adults who had encountered Samuel Johnson, she wasn’t sure if he was being deliberately cheeky, or was just a very unusual child.

  “I’m here to seek a truce. I don’t know what you saw, or thought you saw, in our basement that night, but you’re mistaken. There’s nothing for you to be concerned about. We’re just … visiting for a time.”

  Samuel shook his head. There was something strangely insistent about Mrs. Abernathy’s voice. Samuel recalled a play that they had read about in school, one in which a king was murdered by having poison poured into his ear. Listening to Mrs. Abernathy, he felt just as he imagined the king must have felt as he started to die.