“Yep, apart from all that,” said Nurd.
“Maria?” asked Samuel. “What are you thinking?”
“Nurd here said that he flipped back and forth between worlds. I’m just wondering what that might mean for our plan. It may be that we’re wrong about the nature of the portal.”
“Plan?” said Nurd. “What plan?”
Nobody spoke.
“Oh, I see,” said Nurd. “Don’t trust the demon.” He sighed. “Well, can’t say I blame you with that lot outside. And for your information, I didn’t just flip back and forth, happy as a demon with two tails. The first time I got crushed, and found myself back in the Wasteland, and the second time a big truck hit me, and the same thing happened. The third time I was with Samuel, and then I wasn’t with him. That was the only time that something bad didn’t happen.”
He gave Samuel a little embarrassed smile.
Maria looked pleased. “Oh, so the rest of the time you died. Sort of. That’s all right then.”
“Thanks very much,” said Nurd. “It wasn’t all right for me. You should try dying some time. I guarantee that you won’t care much for it.”
But now Maria was really interested. “What’s it like, traveling through a portal?” she asked Nurd.
“It hurts,” said Nurd, with feeling. “It’s like being stretched for miles, and then squeezed into a tiny little ball.”
“That’s because of this,” said Maria, pointing at a drawing she had made of an hourglass shape, her pencil poised where the hourglass was at its narrowest. “That’s the point of compression. You shouldn’t have been able to pass through it at all, because you should have been torn apart, or squashed to almost nothing. It sounds like this portal has some of the qualities of a black hole, and some of a wormhole. Theoretically, again, it shouldn’t exist, but then demons shouldn’t exist either, and yet one is drinking tea with us at this precise moment.”
“Your point being?” asked Tom, now getting somewhat impatient because he couldn’t follow most of what Maria was saying.
“My point being,” said Maria patiently, “that Nurd here may be the solution to our problems.”
“Solution?” said Nurd nervously. “This solution isn’t going to hurt, is it?”
“Might do, a bit,” said Maria. “Scientifically it has lots of holes in it. It may not work at all.”
“Well, it’s better than no plan,” said Samuel. “Assuming Nurd is willing to try.”
“It can’t be any worse than what’s happened to me already,” said Nurd gloomily. “Explain away.”
So they did.
“Right,” said Nurd, when they had finished, “that sounds so foolhardy, dangerous, and completely impossible that it just might work. Now, all we need is a car.”
He looked up from the table, and his expression changed.
“There is just one more problem,” he said.
“What’s that?” asked Samuel.
Nurd pointed a shaking finger at the window, to where a pair of demons, one a toad, the other a spider, now stood at the garden gate.
“Them!”
XXX
In Which Mrs. Abernathy Loses the Battle, but Sets Out to Win the War
THE CHILDREN CROWDED AT the window, staring out at the demons.
“Ugh,” said Maria, wrinkling her nose at the sight of the ten-legged spider and the great toad. “They’re horrid.”
“The servants of Ba’al,” said Nurd. “They look awful, and they are awful, but Ba’al is like a thousand of them rolled into one, with added nastiness. I’m in trouble now.”
Samuel stared at the two demons. There was something strangely familiar about them. It took him a second to realize that they both still wore the remains of tattered black robes.
“They’re not after you,” he said to Nurd. “I’m not even sure they know you’re here.”
“Then who are they after?” asked Tom.
“Me, I think,” said Samuel. “They’re two of the people from the Abernathys’ basement, or they used to be. Mrs. Abernathy must have sent them.”
“Why?” asked Tom. “You didn’t even manage to stop her. The gates are open. She has what she wanted.”
“I got in her way. I don’t think she likes people crossing her. I’m not sure if anyone has ever crossed her before, not like that. She wants to punish me, and you lot as well if you’re caught with me.”
He turned to Maria and Tom. “I’m sorry. I should never have got you involved in all this.”
Tom patted him on the back. “You’re right, you shouldn’t have.”
“Tom!” said Maria, appalled.
“I was only joking,” said Tom. “I really was,” he added, as Maria continued to glare at him.
“So what do we do now?” asked Maria. “Run away?”
“Running away sounds good,” said Dr. Planck from somewhere beneath the blanket.
“No,” said Samuel. “We have to face them.”
“Look,” said Tom, “hitting little flying skulls was all very well, but I don’t think those two are going to let any of us get close enough to knock them on the head with a bat.”
“We go ahead with the plan,” said Samuel. “We send Nurd through the portal.”
“There is just one thing,” said Nurd. “I’d rather if they didn’t know it was me. Could create difficulties at the other end, assuming I don’t get spread over half the universe if the portal collapses. Perhaps you have a disguise of some kind that I could use?”
Mrs. Johnson whipped the blanket from Dr. Planck, made two holes in it with a pair of scissors, and handed it to Nurd.
“But where do we get a car?” asked Tom.
“Mum,” said Samuel. “Keep an eye on those things. Tom, stay with her. Nurd, Maria, come with me.”
“Where are you going?” asked Tom.
“To steal my dad’s car,” said Samuel, and saw his mum smile.
Samuel, Maria, and Nurd stood in the garage at the back of the house, looking at the car that Samuel’s father had spent years lovingly restoring.
“‘Aston Martin,’” read Nurd. He stroked the car gently. “It’s lovely. Is it like a Porsche?”
“No,” said Samuel. “It’s better than a Porsche, because it’s British.”
“Right,” said Nurd. He wasn’t sure that he agreed. He really had liked the Porsche, but this was still a splendid car.
“Are you sure you can drive one of these?” asked Maria.
“I drove a Porsche,” said Nurd. “I got the hang of that fairly quickly.”
Samuel was having second thoughts about letting Nurd have the car. Samuel’s dad would go crazy when he found out.
“You will look after it?” said Samuel to Nurd. “It’s such a beautiful car.”
“Samuel,” said Maria, “he’s going to drive it through a transdimensional portal and, if things go right, end up back in Hell, or, if things go wrong, in tiny little pieces scattered throughout a wormhole, or even compressed to almost nothing. It’s not entirely fair to ask him if he’s going to look after it.”
Samuel nodded. “Perhaps it’s better not to know.”
Samuel handed Nurd his father’s spare car keys. Nurd climbed into the driver’s seat and put the key in the ignition as Samuel raised the garage door that opened onto a lane at the rear of the house. Maria stood beside the open passenger-side window, and spoke to Nurd.
“Do you know where you’re going?”
“Toward the big blue light,” said Nurd. “It won’t be hard to find.”
“No, I suppose not. You’ll need to build up quite a head of speed if this is to work.”
“I don’t think that will be a problem,” he said.
“Right. Good luck, then,” said Maria. “And, Nurd?”
“Yes?”
“Please don’t let us down.”
“I won’t,” he said.
“Your dad is going to have a meltdown when he finds out, isn’t he?” said Maria to Samuel as he returned from open
ing the door.
“If Nurd fails, or if you’re wrong, my dad will have better things to worry about,” said Samuel.
“You’d think so,” said Maria, “but he’ll still find time to kill you.”
“I don’t care,” said Samuel. He was not frightened, but neither was he quite as angry as before. In a terrible way, he was getting his own back on his dad for leaving. If they weren’t quite even, they were getting there.
“Give us a few minutes, then get going,” said Samuel to Nurd. “We’ll distract those things at the gates, just in case they have come for you.”
Nurd gripped the steering wheel expectantly.
“I’ll count to one hundred,” he said.
“Great,” said Samuel. “Well, like Maria said, don’t let us down.”
He patted the car once more in farewell.
“Is your dad really going to be annoyed?” asked Nurd.
“He’ll get over it. After all, it’s for a good cause.”
“I hope he understands,” said Nurd. “You just seem … like the sort of person who should be understood.”
“I wish you could stay around,” said Samuel. “I’d like to have gotten to know you a little better.”
“You were the first person who was nice to me, ever,” said Nurd. “That counts for something, whatever happens.”
They shook hands, and then Samuel gave Nurd a hug that, after a moment of surprise, the demon returned. For the first time, Nurd began to understand how it was to feel sorrow at parting with a friend, and even as it hurt him he was grateful to Samuel for giving him the chance to experience something of what it was to be human.
“Come on,” said Maria. “Let’s go and help the others. That will keep your mind off things.”
“I expect so,” said Samuel. “Being eaten by a spider or a toad will do that …”
The demons had not moved. They were simply staring at the house, but it was the huge spider that most concerned Samuel, its mouthparts moving, dripping clear venom that turned the leaves black. Samuel’s brain was filled with shrieking voices telling him to run. He had always been frightened of spiders, ever since he was a very small child. He couldn’t explain why. Now he was being forced to confront a spider so vile that even in his worst nightmares he couldn’t have come up with anything like it, even if it did have a pair of human legs sticking somewhat incongruously out of its bottom.
Samuel opened the front door and stepped into the garden. From the back of the house, he heard the sound of the Aston Martin starting up.
A flickering figure, like a picture shown on a cinema screen, apppeared on the path before him, surrounded by blue light. It was Mrs. Abernathy, or a projection of herself.
“Hello, Samuel,” she said. “I’m sorry I can’t be there in person to witness your death, but I’m sure my servants will make it as uncomfortable as possible.” Her head turned, as though she were listening to something, then she clicked her fingers and the toad demon, in response to her command, hopped away.
“Was that the sound of your little friends trying to escape?” sneered Mrs. Abernathy, and Samuel knew he had been right: Mrs. Abernathy had not been aware of Nurd’s presence.
Samuel shrugged.
“Well, they won’t get very far. Naroth will find them, and kill them. It will be a swift death, pleasant compared to what I have planned for you.”
Her ghostly hand touched the remaining spider demon, causing the hairs on its body to stand on end.
“Chelom,” she said. “Eat him. Slowly.”
Nurd was approaching the end of Poe Street when a large, dark shape appeared on the road before him, its body tensed to jump. Naroth’s face was not capable of showing feeling, but if it had been it would have displayed utter astonishment. Instead of the expected children, and the adult woman, there was a single figure behind the wheel of the car, its body draped with a blanket in which two eyeholes had been cut. Naroth’s senses detected something familiar about the figure, but it couldn’t decide what it was.
Nurd stopped the car and stared at Naroth.
“Horrid thing,” said Nurd.
As though it had heard the words, Naroth jumped on the hood, causing Nurd to shriek in fright. Nurd put his foot down on the accelerator and the car jerked forward, but Naroth was holding on tight with its sticky toes. It spat concentrated venom onto the windshield, which immediately began to smoke and melt.
“Oh no you don’t,” said Nurd. “I’m not having you ruining this nice car.”
He braked hard, and Naroth was thrown off with such force that it left one of its legs caught in the side mirror. It landed on its back and began to twist in an effort to right itself. It heard the sound of the engine growling, and redoubled its efforts, finding its feet just as its head was struck by the front of the Aston Martin and its body was dragged beneath its wheels. It had just enough time to think, “Ouch, that—,” before it stopped thinking altogether, and everything went black.
Nurd looked in the rearview mirror at the mangled remains of Naroth, and the satisfying green smear that the toad demon had left along the lower half of Poe Street.
“Serves you right for messing with my motor,” said Nurd. “You should have more respect …”
• • •
Chelom began to climb over the garden wall, the weight of its body causing the hedge to collapse. It landed heavily and lumbered toward Samuel. As it did so, an arrow whistled by Samuel’s ear and buried itself in the spider demon’s body, causing yellow liquid to spurt from the wound. The spider demon reared up, then resumed its progress as a second arrow flew toward it. This time it struck one of the black eyes on the demon’s head and the demon arched its body in agony, one leg raised as if in an effort to dislodge the arrow from its flesh.
Maria appeared beside Samuel, Samuel’s toy bow raised, and another arrow already nocked, its tip sharpened with a blade.
“Now, Tom!” she shouted.
Tom emerged from the kitchen carrying a container of liquid from which a plastic pipe connected to a nozzle in his hand. He squeezed the nozzle and a jet of fluid landed on the grass at Chelom’s feet. The spider demon reacted as though the ground were hot when the sensitive taste buds at the tips of its legs came into contact with the liquid. Tom kept pumping, and more of the fluid squirted onto the demon’s body and into its eyes and mouth. It tried to retreat, but Tom pursued it relentlessly, until at last the demon began to twist and writhe before falling on its back. Its legs curled in upon its body, and it stopped moving.
Samuel wrinkled his nose.
“What is that stuff?”
“Ammonia and water,” said Tom. “Maria thought of it.”
But Maria was not listening, and neither, suddenly, was Samuel. Their attention was now concentrated on the image of Mrs. Abernathy, who was gazing upon them in fury.
“Come and get me,” said Samuel. He wanted to distract Mrs. Abernathy from the portal. He had to buy Nurd some time.
But Mrs. Abernathy simply disappeared.
XXXI
In Which Mrs. Abernathy Reveals Her True Colors
MRS. ABERNATHY STOOD OUTSIDE what remained of the house. It was almost time. She had wanted to kill Samuel, but that would have to wait. She would find him, though, and when she did he would wish that the spider had consumed him. Again and again he had defied her, and Mrs. Abernathy was not one to tolerate defiance.
The portal had grown to such an extent that all that was left of the house were two walls and a chimney breast. The doors and windows were entirely gone, replaced by a huge spinning vortex with a dark hole at its center. There were no longer creatures coming through it. All such activity had ceased for a time, and those demons and monsters not otherwise occupied in sowing chaos throughout the town were waiting expectantly for the arrival of their master, the Great Malevolence himself. Winged, purple forms dangled upside down from lampposts, like great bats, their heads simply elongated beaks filled with jagged teeth. Around them flew insects as big as seagu
lls, their iridescent green bodies ending in long, barbed stingers. A phalanx of vaguely human figures had assembled by the corner of Derleth Crescent, dressed in ornate gold armor that was itself alive as the dragons and snake heads with which it was decorated slithered and snapped at the night air, the armor both a means of defense and a weapon. The armor had no face guard, and beneath each jeweled helmet there was blackness broken only by the flickering of red, hostile eyes. Above their heads, a banner flew: flames in the shape of a flag, burning in honor of he who was to come.
Mrs. Abernathy raised her arms in the air, and closed her eyes in ecstasy as a great cheer arose from the demons before her.
Nurd watched all that was happening from a side street nearby, the Aston Martin purring softly underneath him. He shivered as the woman lifted her arms, blue energy crackling around her.
There were ranks of demons in Hell, but the very worst of them had hidden themselves away with the Great Malevolence, and were rarely seen by the rest. They were monstrous beings, their appearance so awful that they shrouded themselves in darkness, unable to tolerate even the reaction of other, lesser demons to their blighted state.
Yet there was one great demon that felt no such shame, that did not seek to hide itself. It had become the Great Malevolence’s most trusted lieutenant, the demon that knew his every secret and to whom he revealed all of his thoughts, a demon that had studied the humans with hateful fascination, altering itself as it did so, its mind becoming both male and female, although it had always preferred the female side, sensing that the female was smarter and shrewder than the male.
Even dressed in the skin of Mrs. Abernathy, Nurd recognized the entity before him. After all, it had been responsible for his banishment.
It was Ba’al.
He sank back against the wall.
“I’ll never get past her,” he said bitterly. “I’m done for. We’re all done for.”
Mrs. Abernathy began to speak.
“Our time has come,” she said. “Our long exile in the void is at an end. Tonight we have begun to claim this world as our own, and soon we will reduce it to a charred ruin. See! Our master approaches. Gaze upon his might! Feel his majesty! Behold him, the destroyer of worlds!”