“How is your delightful son?” Mrs. Abernathy asked. “Samuel, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Johnson, who couldn’t remember anyone calling Samuel “delightful” before. “Samuel.”
“I was wondering if he ever mentioned me to you?”
Mrs. Johnson heard the words emerge from her mouth before she was even aware that she was thinking them.
“Why, yes,” she said. “He was talking about you only this morning.”
Mrs. Abernathy smiled, but the smile died somewhere around her nostrils.
“And what did he say?”
“He seemed to think …”
“Yes?”
“… that you were trying …”
“Go on.”
“… to open …”
By now, Mrs. Abernathy was leaning in very close to Mrs. Johnson. Mrs. Abernathy’s breath stank, and her teeth were yellow. Her lipstick was bright red, and slightly smeared. In fact, thought Mrs. Johnson, it looked a little like blood. Mrs. Abernathy’s tongue flicked out, and for just a moment, Mrs. Johnson could have sworn that it was forked, like a snake’s tongue.
“ … gates …”
“What gates?” said Mrs. Abernathy. “What gates?” Her hand reached for Mrs. Johnson, gripping her shoulder. Her nails dug into Mrs. Johnson’s arm, causing her to wince.
The pain was enough to bring Mrs. Johnson out of her daze. She took a step back, and blinked. When she opened her eyes, Mrs. Abernathy was standing farther away from her, a strange, troubled look on her face.
Try as she might, Mrs. Johnson couldn’t remember what it was they had been talking about. Something about Samuel, she thought, but what?
“Are you all right, Mrs. Johnson?” asked Mrs. Abernathy. “You look a little unwell.”
“No, I’m fine,” said Mrs. Johnson, although she didn’t feel fine. She could still smell Mrs. Abernathy’s perfume and, worse, whatever it was the perfume was being used to disguise. She wanted Mrs. Abernathy to go away. In fact, she felt that it was very important for her to stay as far from Mrs. Abernathy as possible.
“Well, take care,” said Mrs. Abernathy. “It was nice talking to you. We should do it more often.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Johnson, meaning, “No.”
No, no, no, no, no.
When she arrived home Samuel was sitting at the kitchen table, drawing on a sheet of paper, using crayons. He hid it away when she entered, but she glimpsed a blue circle. Samuel looked at her with concern.
“Are you okay, Mum?”
“Yes, dear. Why?”
“You look sick.”
Mrs. Johnson glanced in the mirror by the sink.
“Yes,” she said. “I suppose I do.” She turned to Samuel. “I met—,” she began to say, then stopped. She couldn’t remember who she had met. A woman? Yes, a woman, but the name wouldn’t come to her. Then she wasn’t certain that it had been a woman at all, and seconds later she wasn’t sure she’d met anyone. It was as though her brain were a big house, and someone was turning off the lights in every room, one by one.
“Met who, Mum?” asked Samuel.
“I … don’t know,” said Mrs. Johnson. “I think I’m going to lie down for a while.”
Mrs. Johnson was beginning to wonder if she might not be coming down with something. The day before, she could have sworn that she’d heard a voice coming from the cupboard beneath the stairs, just as she was putting away the vacuum cleaner on the way out to meet her friends.
She left the kitchen and Samuel heard her go upstairs. When he went to check on her minutes later, his mother was already asleep. Her lips were moving, and Samuel thought she might have been having bad dreams. He wondered if he should call one of her friends, maybe Auntie Betty from up the road, then decided that he would just keep a close eye on his mother. He would let her sleep for now.
Samuel went back downstairs, and finished his drawing. He worked very slowly and carefully, trying to capture exactly what he had seen in the Abernathys’ basement. It was the third such drawing he had done. He had thrown the first two away because they weren’t quite accurate, but this one was better. It was nearly right, or as close to it as he was going to get. From a distance it looked more like a photograph than a drawing, for if there was one thing that Samuel was good at, it was art.
When he was done, he hid it carefully in his big atlas. He would show it to someone. He just had to decide who that someone should be.
Mrs. Johnson didn’t get up until later that evening. Samuel stayed downstairs and watched television, reckoning that his mum wouldn’t mind, despite what she had said earlier. After a time, he got bored and did something else that he wasn’t supposed to do.
He went out to the garage at the back of the house to sit in his dad’s car.
The 1961 Aston Martin DB4 Coupe was his dad’s pride and joy, and Samuel had been for only a handful of trips in it before his dad left, and even then his dad had seemed to resent Samuel’s presence slightly, like a child forced to allow another child to play with his favorite toy. Because his dad was living in an apartment in the north, with no garage, he had decided to leave the car in Biddlecombe for now. In a way Samuel was pleased, because he believed that meant his dad might return home at some point. If he took the car away permanently, though, there would be nothing of him left. It would be a sign, thought Samuel, a sign that the marriage was over and it was now just Samuel and his mum.
When Mrs. Johnson rose, they ordered in pizza, but his mum couldn’t finish hers and went back to bed. Every time she tried to recall what had happened at the supermarket her head began to hurt, and intermingled smells came to her, perfume and something rotten and bad that the scent would be able to hide for only so long.
That night, Mrs. Johnson had bad dreams, but they were only dreams.
Samuel Johnson’s nightmares, on the other hand, came alive.
X
In Which We Learn of the Difficulties Involved in Being a Demon Without a Clearly Defined Form
SAMUEL WOKE TO FIND there was a monster under his bed. He didn’t just think there was a monster under there, the way very small boys and girls sometimes do; Samuel was no longer a very small boy and had accustomed himself to believe that, in all probability, monsters did not inhabit the spaces under beds. They particularly did not occupy the space under Samuel’s bed because there wasn’t any, every spare inch being taken up by games, shoes, candy wrappers, unfinished model aircraft, and a large box of toy soldiers with which Samuel no longer played but which he was most reluctant to get rid of, just in case.
Now all those objects were scattered across his bedroom floor, and a sound was coming from beneath his bed that resembled pieces of jelly being tossed from hand to hand by a troupe of tiny jugglers. In addition, Boswell was standing on the bed, trembling and growling.
Samuel felt a sneeze coming on. He tried every trick he knew to stop it. He held his nose. He took deep breaths. He pressed the tip of his tongue against the top row of his teeth, the way that Japanese samurai used to do when they didn’t want to reveal their presence to an enemy, all to no avail.
Samuel sneezed. It sounded like a rocket taking off. Instantly, all noise and movement from below his bed ceased.
Samuel held his breath and listened. He had the uncomfortable sense that a very squishy creature was also holding its breath, if it had any to hold. Even if it didn’t, it was definitely listening.
Maybe I imagined it, thought Samuel, even though he knew that he hadn’t. You didn’t imagine something squishing under your bed. Either it squished, or it didn’t, and something had definitely squished.
He looked around, and saw one of his socks lying at the end of his bed. As an experiment he leaned down to pick up the sock, then dangled it over the edge of the mattress before dropping it on the floor.
A long pink thing that might have been a tongue, or an arm, or even a leg, grabbed the sock and pulled it under the bed. Samuel heard chewing, and then the sock was spat out and
a voice said, “Ewwwww!”
“Hello?” said Samuel.
There was no reply.
“I know you’re under there.”
Still no reply.
“Look, this is silly,” said Samuel. “I’m not getting off this bed. You can stay there for as long as you like. It’s just not going to happen.”
He counted to five in his head before he heard a sigh from beneath the mattress.
“How did you know?” said a voice.
“I heard you squish.”
“Oh. I’m new at this. Still getting the hang of it. You tricked me with that sock thing. Very clever, that. Tasted horrible. You need to get something done about your feet, by the way. They must stink something awful.”
“It’s a gym sock. I think it’s been there for a while.”
“Well, I suppose that explains it, but still. You could knock someone dead with a sock like that. Lethal weapon, that sock. It’s made me feel quite ill.”
“Serves you right,” said Samuel. “You shouldn’t be hanging around under people’s beds.”
“Well, it’s a job, innit?”
“Not much of a job.”
“Agreed, but you try being a demon of no set form in this day and age. It’s not like I’m going to get work looking after puppies, or singing babies to sleep. Frankly, it’s this or nothing.”
“What do you mean, ‘no set form’?”
The demon cleared its throat. “Technically, I’m a free-roaming ectoplasmic entity …”
“Which is?” asked Samuel, a little impatiently.
“Which is,” said the demon huffily, “if you’ll wait for me to finish, a demon capable of assuming almost any shape or form, based on psychic vibrations given off by its victim.”
“You’ve lost me,” said Samuel.
“Oh look, it’s not that complicated. I’m supposed to become whatever scares you. I just picked the whole slushy tentacled thing because, well, it’s a classic, isn’t it?”
“Is it?” asked Samuel. “So you’re a bit like an octopus, then?”
“A bit, I suppose,” admitted the demon.
“I quite like octopi.”
“Octopodes,” corrected the demon. “Don’t they teach you anything at school?”
“There’s no need to be rude,” said Samuel.
“I’m a demon. What do you expect me to be? Pleasant? Tuck you in and read you a story? You’re not very bright, are you?”
“No, you’re not very bright, turning up here in the dead of night and being caught out by an old sock. And you haven’t assumed a form that scares me. You’re an octopus.”
“I’m like an octopus,” said the demon. “But scarier. I think. It’s hard to see under here.”
“Whatever,” said Samuel. “If it’s all about psychic vibrations, then why didn’t you take the form of something else?”
The demon muttered something.
“I beg your pardon,” said Samuel. “I didn’t quite catch that.”
“I said, ‘I can’t do psychic vibrations.’” The demon sounded embarrassed.
“Why not?”
“They’re hard, that’s why not. You try it, see how much luck you have.”
“So you just take a form and hope that it will be scary? That all sounds a bit casual, to be honest.”
“Look, it’s my first time,” said the demon. “Are you happy now? It’s. My. First. Time. And I have to say that you’re being very hurtful. You’re not making this easy, you know.”
“I’m not supposed to make it easy,” said Samuel. “What would be the point in that?”
“Just saying, that’s all,” said the demon. Samuel heard it sniff dismissively.
“Okay,” said Samuel. “I’m not very keen on spiders.”
“Really?” said the demon.
“Yes.”
“You’re not just saying?”
“No, I really don’t like them very much at all. Why don’t you start with that and see how you get along?”
“Oh, I will. Thanks very much. Very nice of you. Give me a minute, will you?”
“Take your time.”
“Right you are. Much appreciated. Don’t go anywhere, now.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” said Samuel.
He sat on the bed, humming to himself and patting Boswell. From under the mattress came various squelching sounds, and the occasional grunt of effort. Finally, there was silence.
“Er, a question,” said the demon.
“Yes?”
“Do spiders have ears?”
“Ears?”
“You know, huge big flappy things.”
“No. They feel vibrations with the hairs on their legs.”
“All right, all right, I didn’t ask for a lecture. It was just a simple question.”
There was silence again.
“What are the things with big flappy ears, then?” said the demon.
Samuel thought about the question. “Elephants?” he suggested.
“Elephants! They’re the ones. Right, are you scared of them?”
“No,” said Samuel.
“Awwww,” said the demon. “I give up. Let’s forget about the whole shape-shifting thing. Just climb off the bed and we’ll get this over with.”
Samuel didn’t move. “What will you do if I climb off the bed?”
“Well, I can eat you, or I can drag you down to the depths of Hell, never to be seen or heard from again. Depends, really.”
“On what?”
“Lots of things: hygiene, for a start. After tasting that sock, I don’t fancy eating any part of you, to be honest, so it’ll have to be the depths of Hell for you, I’m afraid.”
“But I don’t want to go to the depths of Hell.”
“Nobody wants to go to the depths of Hell. I’m a demon, and even I don’t want to go there. That’s the point, isn’t it? If I told you that I was going to take you for a nice holiday, or on a trip to the zoo, it wouldn’t be much of a threat, would it?”
“But why do you have to drag me off to Hell?”
“Orders.”
“Whose orders?”
“Can’t say.”
“Can’t say, or won’t say?”
“Both.”
“Why not?”
“She wouldn’t want me to.”
“Mrs. Abernathy?”
The demon didn’t reply.
“Oh come on, I know it’s her,” said Samuel. “You’ve already given most of it away.”
“Right then,” said the demon. “It’s her. Happy now?”
“Not really. I still don’t want to be dragged off to Hell.”
“Then we have what’s known as an impasse,” said the demon.
“How long can you stay down there?”
“First sign of daylight, then I have to depart. Them’s the rules, just like I can’t get you unless you step on the floor.”
“So if I just stay up here, then you can’t touch me?”
“I just said that, didn’t I? I don’t make the rules. I wish I did. This whole business would run a lot more smoothly, I can tell you.”
“Then I’ll simply stay here.”
“Great. You do that.”
Samuel folded his arms and stared at the far wall. From under the bed, he heard what sounded like tentacles being folded. Lots of tentacles.
“Not much point in you hanging around, though, is there, if I’m not going to set foot on the floor until you’re gone,” said Samuel.
The demon thought about this. “Suppose not,” it said.
“So why don’t you just leave? It can’t be very comfortable under there.”
“It’s not. Smells funny, too. And there’s something poking into me.”
Samuel heard scuffling from beneath the bed, and moments later a stray toy soldier was tossed against the wardrobe. “You don’t even want to know where that was,” said the demon.
“Whatever,” said Samuel. “Are you going to leave?”
“Not m
uch else I can do, really,” said the demon, “not if you’re going to be difficult about it.”
“Off you go, then,” said Samuel.
“Right. Bye.”
There was a great deal of squelching, then silence.
“You’re still under there, aren’t you?” said Samuel.
“No,” said a small voice, slightly ashamedly.
“Fibber.”
“Fine, I’ll go. Don’t know what I’m supposed to tell her, though.”
“Don’t tell her anything. Just keep a low profile until dawn, then say that I didn’t get up during the night.”
“Might work,” said the demon. “Might work. You promise not to get up to use the bathroom or anything?”
“Cross my heart,” said Samuel.
“Can’t ask for more than that,” said the demon. “Well, pleasure doing business with you. Nothing personal about all this, you know. Just following orders.”
“You’re not going to come back, are you?”
“Oh no, I shouldn’t think so. Took a lot of power for her to summon me up. Can’t imagine she’ll try that one again. She has a lot on her mind, what with keeping the portal open and all. Very unstable, that portal. Someone could do themselves an injury in there if they’re not careful. She might look for another way to get at you, though. Then again she might not. Soon, it won’t matter much either way.”
“Why not?” said Samuel.
“End of the world,” said the demon. “Won’t be any beds left to hide under.”
And with a squish and a pop, it was gone.
XI
In Which We Encounter the Scientists Again
NO GOOD EVER COMES of someone sticking his head round his boss’s door, a worried expression on his face and a piece of paper in one hand that, if it could talk, would shout, very loudly, “Bad! This is bad! Run away now!”
But thus it was that when Professor Stefan, CERN’s head of particle physics, saw Professor Hilbert hovering on his doorstep, with both a) a worried expression; and b) a piece of paper that, despite being white and bearing only a series of numbers and a small diagram, also managed to look worried, he began to feel worried too.