Hell on Earth

by Philip Palmer

  ‘But how – let’s call a spade an effing shovel here, eh? – how can you bear to have these ugly bloody monsters in your house?’ Tindale snapped, aggressively. ‘While you’re asleep? Knowing they’re always there, slithering or hissing or eating babies or doing the other fucking horrible stuff they do.’ His scorn was out in the open now. Davies looked embarrassed.

  ‘They don’t eat babies.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘I don’t know if I do.’

  ‘I’m asking you to account for yourself. Why would any normal woman who isn’t a sick perve do a job like yours?’

  Sheila paused, and tried to let his anger wash over her. She failed.

  ‘I used to work for the Mayor’s Office,’ she said softly. ‘That was even worse!’ Her stock joke; it was actually true. But this time, not even Davies smiled.

  Sheila had been fostering hell-kind for nearly seven years now. It gave her a deep insight into their psychology and history. And it also meant she was the first port of call for lazy and arrogant coppers whenever there was a demonic emergency. So she was used to a certain degree of intrusion and contempt.

  But Tindale, he really was the limit.

  ‘They’re just people,’ said Sheila, ‘like you and I.’

  He shook his head, denying that. ‘Pays well this lark, does it?’ he asked, brusquely.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘The fostering. You live well.’ His eyes beadily looked around. ‘Plasma telly, even if you do pretend not to watch it. Shelves full of valuable objets d’art, I’ve not seen statuary like that outside the British Museum. Nice house. You do very well for yourself, Madam, if you don’t mind me saying so.’ His tone remained courteous in a very formal kind of way, but with an undeniable sneer. Sheila hated this man.

  But she forced herself to keep smiling. ‘Nice house, perhaps, but look at the location. Smack in the shadow of the Ghetto of the Damned!’ she grumbled. ‘John Lewis won’t deliver here, you know. Beat coppers don’t patrol our streets. Taxis draw the line at Camberwell Green, you have to walk the rest of the way, even if you have shopping. Yes, I’m paid well. It’s a service. The City of London pays me. I have six children at the moment, I get a flat fee per child per week plus subsistence. Yes, it pays well.’

  ‘No need to be snide with me, Madam,’ Tindale said, alert to the contempt in her words.

  ‘I don’t do it for the money.’

  ‘Then why?’

  Sheila wished she hadn’t said that, about not doing it for the money.

  ‘I suppose, really, I do do it for the money,’ she lied.

  Tindale had righteous wrath in his eyes. She’d seen its like before. ‘Yes, but how can you live with yourself? You provide homes for the bastard children of monsters who should never have been allowed on to Earth. I mean, for crying out loud! If you left these hell-spawn alone, they’d bloody well die. Starve or vanish into limbo or whatever the wretched beasts do. So why take them in?’

  ‘They’re God’s creatures,’ said Sheila lamely.

  ‘Clearly not,’ Tindale said triumphantly.

  ‘You know what I mean. They need caring for.’

  Davies dunked his biscuit in his tea. ‘Easy, Ronnie,’ he said, winking again at Sheila. ‘Each to their own, eh?’ He should have worn a badge on his lapel saying Good Cop, Sheila mused. It would have had rather more finesse.

  ‘The point is, we don’t know how this particular creature got into the world,’ Davies continued. ‘Whether it’s a rogue legal or an illegal interloper. Or how it can hide from us, with CCTV on every street corner.’

  ‘If it’s a shapeshifter it can assume any form,’ Sheila suggested. ‘It could spend its days as a bird, or a squirrel.’

  ‘Is that actually true?’ Davies asked. He fixed her with a fierce look.

  ‘No, not really,’ she conceded.

  ‘What then?’

  She sighed. She was on dangerous ground now, but she had to continue or they’d suspect her for sure.

  ‘Powers ebb and flow,’ said Sheila. It had taken her years to learn all this. By observing her children, and talking to other demons. ‘And the rules about demonic power differ for each creature. But as a rule of thumb, each hell-beast has a chosen form. And they need to inhabit that form for fifteen hours out of twenty-four, or ideally more. So if the demon turns into a bird, it will have to change back to its demonic form sooner rather than later. Otherwise, it’ll be stuck as a bird forever.’

  ‘That’s not what our demonologists say,’ Tindale reproved her.

  ‘What in buggery do they know?’ said Sheila scornfully. ‘These are my people. I know them. They’re not all powerful. They’re bound by rules. They have their weaknesses.’

  Davies nodded, granting her that.

  ‘So what happens when a demon who possesses a human departs that body?’ he asked. ‘This demon had a human vessel, you see, a man called Gogarty.’

  Sheila thought hard. She realised that the cops had this all wrong; but it wasn’t for her to correct them.

  ‘If it possesses a human and subsequently corporealises then – well. It can’t go back into that vessel,’ she explained.

  ‘It has to remain in demon form.’

  ‘So far as I’m aware, yes, it does.’

  ‘So if what you say is true, the demon will need another human helper,’ said Davies. ‘As well as Gogarty I mean. Someone with a home, a base. Someone willing to buy food, give it shelter.’

  ‘Yes. That would make sense.’

  Davies nodded. ‘Here, have you seen this man? This is Gogarty. As I mentioned, he was the demon’s former vesesel.’

  She looked at the photograph. It was Gogarty all right. His photo-eyes stared out at her, chillingly. Her heart stopped. But her hands remained steady, she didn’t even chink her tea cup.

  ‘Very distinctive face.’

  ‘Yes.’

  She shook her head. ‘I’ve never seen him before.’

  Davies took the photograph back, almost sorrowfully. ‘You’d think – with a face like that –’

  Sheila nodded, sympathetically. ‘I’m sure you’ll find him. Sooner or later. Perhaps this Gogarty has associates. Had you thought of that? Confederates, like-minded demon lovers. Perhaps -’

  ‘We’ll do the investigating, thank you very much,’ said Tindale, butting in.

  Sheila flushed; she realised she’d been babbling.

  ‘Well then, indeed, there we are then,’ she said, a trio of phrases which meant nothing, but filled the awkward hole in the conversation.

  The two cops looked at each other. She tried to read the vibe, but couldn’t.

  ‘That’s all very helpful,’ said Davies brightly. ‘And if you wouldn’t feel compromised, perhaps you can ask around on our behalf?’

  ‘Ask around where?’

  ‘Oh you know. Clients. Customers. Creatures who might know.’

  ‘I suppose. But only if I see anyone. I don’t mix that much with hell-folk to be honest. Not unless I’m fostering a new child. I’m a real homebody I am, I like nothing better than to stay home with Fred and my kids and just, well, be there. And read of course. I love to read you know. Ken Follett is my favourite. I’m reading the one about the cathedral at the moment.’ She was wittering; she realised she was on the verge of becoming hysterical. ‘Now, drink up. I’ve spent long enough on this nonsense.’

  Davies finished his tea. Tindale, rudely, hadn’t even started his. The two men stood up. Tindale, who was six foot and a bit tall versus Sheila’s five foot nothing, peered down at her in what she felt was an intimidatory fashion.

  ‘If you hear anything,’ he said.

  Sheila smiled. ‘Good day to you, too.’

  She ushered the two coppers into the hall. But they lingered. Sheila started to panic. She didn’t know how to get rid of them.

  Chapter 8

  Skip back two weeks.

  To the night Sheila heard the bird.

  Fred
was working late in his studio that night, as indeed he always did. He was totally immersed in his projects these days, and had been for years. Hewing marble, painting, working on a half dozen sculptures at the same time, casting in bronze as well as stone. He never stopped for lunch, but he drank water all day long to keep his throat lubricated. And every now and then – so he once bragged to her - he’d piss it all away in the sink he’d had installed in his studio. Then he’d carry on.

  Every night he came to bed smelling of dust and paint. Every morning the sheets were spotted with blood from the chisel cuts on his fingers. He rose at dawn and worked all day and most of the night, then slept till dawn again, then worked.

  Sheila hardly knew him any more.

  That evening, as per usual, Fred came downstairs at eight o’clock for dinner, famished and irritable.

  ‘Good day?’ she asked him, and he grunted.

  He washed his hands in the kitchen sink and stained the shining chrome a dull grey.

  Then he sat at the big oak kitchen table and read the paper while she cooked dinner around him. Home-made fish in batter and oven chips with mushy peas, Jacob’s favourite. Although he preferred the chips you got from the chip shop, but Sheila didn’t like to leave the kids on their own while she nipped out to the chippie, and Fred was no longer willing to babysit while she was gone.

  ‘Grub up,’ Sheila called out cheerfully. Fred put his paper down. Troy was already in his high chair. Veda ran in from the living room, giggling, wearing Thea across several of her heads like a hat.

  ‘Where’s that brother of yours?’ said Sheila, mock crossly, though she knew the answer.

  ‘Flushed down the bog?’ Thea suggested. Veda giggled. Thea rocked upon Veda’s heads, smacking her sister’s Number 3 face with her fists to show how amused she was.

  Sheila went to the foot of the stairs and shouted ‘Jacob!’ Then she rang the intercom buzzer that she’d had connected up to his room.

  It was one of Sheila’s strictest rules: the family had to eat together. However, to her abiding regret, for the last nine months - since passing puberty, and hitting their major growth spurts - Mithrai and Alazu both had to eat separately in the outhouse, where there was space for Alazu to fly and for Mithrai to spread out.

  Five minutes later Jacob arrived at the table. Fred had already started.

  ‘You didn’t tell me dinner was ready,’ Jacob complained.

  ‘Wash your hands,’ she told him. He washed his hands at the sink.

  ‘It’s filthy,’ he complained. Fred grunted.

  ‘I’ll have a beer, Sheila love,’ said Troy cheerily. Sheila opened the fridge and gave her baby a bottle of Grolsch. She had to open it for him, but Troy was adept enough to hold the bottle in his chubby fingers and swig. He couldn’t hold an actual beer glass but he preferred it from the bottle anyway.

  ‘D’you know, there was a funny story on the news earlier,’ Sheila began.

  ‘Do we have to have this?’ Jacob complained.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Small talk.’

  ‘It’s called conversation.’

  ‘Not when you rehearse it it’s not.’

  ‘Better that than –’

  ‘I mean can’t you just accept you’re an alien and we have nothing in common with you?’ Jacob informed her.

  ‘ – silence,’ Sheila persisted.

  ‘You’re just deluding yourself. Let’s just eat and forget the one big happy family bullshit.’

  ‘Jacob! Penny in the swearbox.’

  ‘There is no swearbox, and a penny is no longer legal tender, the currency starts with the fifty p coin now, or didn’t you know?’

  ‘And tuppence ha’penny in the smartypants box,’ Sheila retorted.

  ‘There is no tuppence ha’penny either! And there - We could go on for hours like this! You have no comprehension of –’

  ‘And a thruppeny bit in the “doesn’t know when he’s lost the argument” box,’ Sheila concluded triumphantly.

  ‘ – rational debate. All right! I’m silent! Mute!’ Jacob mimed zipping his lips. ‘Pass the mushy peas by the way.’

  Sheila passed them.

  ‘You’re being rude, Jacob,’ said Veda. ‘Very very rude. That’s because you’re a rude pig. Tell me mummy, what was the funny story?’

  ‘Well,’ said Sheila, ‘it was about -’

  ‘Not interested!’ screamed Veda, blocking all her ears with all her hands.

  Sheila shrugged and smiled: acknowledging she’d been had.

  The meal continued in silence.

  Veda kept using her fingers to pick up chips, but Sheila had lost interest in rebuking her. Jacob noshed in with relish. Troy, in his high chair, expertly spooned mashed fish-with-chips into his mouth, hardly staining his bib at all. And Fred ate with total focus, blocking out his surroundings, a stranger to the fact he had a family.

  ‘What’s the book you’re reading at the moment?’ Sheila asked Jacob. He was always reading a book, so it was a guaranteed conversation-starter.

  He brightened. ‘It’s a Michael Chabon. About two comic book artists in the 1930s. It’s called Kavalier and Clay.’

  ‘Would I like it?’

  ‘Well how would I know that?’

  ‘What’s it about?’

  ‘I just told you, didn’t I?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘There’s a minor character. A golem. It’s cool.’

  ‘Is that why –’

  ‘No! Don’t be silly. I don’t only read books about my own kind, do I?’

  Fred grunted.

  ‘Another beer?’ suggested Troy.

  ‘You’ve had enough.’

  Troy made a pouty face, as if about to bawl.

  Sheila sighed and got up.

  ‘I’d like a beer too!’ said Veda.

  ‘You’re too young,’ Sheila told her.

  ‘But he’s a baby.’

  Troy belched: his way of rebuking those who belittled him.

  ‘Not at the table,’ Sheila admonished.

  Fred grunted.

  Thea picked up a chip with her tail and threw it in the air and caught it in her mouth.

  ‘Thea!’

  Thea chattered with annoyance. Veda giggled.

  ‘It’s like a zoo in here,’ observed Jacob.

  After a scant twenty minutes Fred made his excuses and went back to work.

  ‘I’ll clear away, shall I?’ suggested Sheila, though she always did.

  ‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ said Jacob brusquely, getting up from the table. Not realising he was echoing his foster father to a T.

  ‘No! Don’t go to your room. We’ll play a board game.’

  ‘Don’t want to play a silly board game.’ Jacob scowled. His dark grey features wrinkled with annoyance.

  ‘I do,’ said Veda.

  ‘Monopoly,’ Sheila decided. Jacob sighed theatrically.

  ‘Carry me in,’ Troy ordered. Jacob lifted his foster brother out of the high chair and carried him carefully out of the kitchen and into the living room, taking care not to let Troy’s big head flop unsupported.

  Veda scampered ahead, with baboonesque Thea once again bouncing on her heads.

  Sheila loaded the dishwasher, and ticked a box on her mental tally. It was now eleven months since Fred had actually spoken to anyone over dinner. She wondered if she should tell him that. Probably, she reasoned, he hadn’t realised what he was doing. Or rather, what he was not doing.

  While Veda was counting out the Monopoly money, and getting it hopelessly wrong – as she always did - Sheila nipped to the outhouse with some choc ices for Mithrai and Alazu.

  They were playing basketball, and snacking on raw steaks in between games. Sheila watched them for a while, awed at their energy. The ball flew around the court, bouncing against walls and ceiling, the thump-thump-thump sound like a bass guitar riff. Mithrai was surprisingly nimble on his feet, able to change direction in a trice; while Alazu was fast as sunlight. Sheila h
ad once or twice tried to play with them. But she couldn’t compete against the height and raw power of Mithrai – who was only slightly smaller than a rhino – or the sweeping grace of Alazu, who had the knack of balancing the basketball between his beak and his chest and flying over his opponent.

  The outhouse was two storeys high and there was just one basket, fastened to a wall about twenty feet in the air. It had taken Sheila two days to secure it in place, using borrowed scaffolding. She’d painted the lines herself too, after copying the pattern from the internet. In fact, she’d drawn a lacrosse court but who cared?

  ‘Time out,’ Sheila said. But Alazu carried on, first dribbling the ball with his tongue, then dropping it in the hoop by letting it slip from his beak ledge.

  ‘Foul tongue,’ Mithrai observed.

  ‘Choc ices,’ Sheila told them.

  Alazu flapped his wings loudly.

  ‘Cool,’ Mithrai observed, in his loud bell-like tones.

  Alazu flapped his wings again, in agreement.

  Mithrai lumbered over to Sheila, his mouth hanging open, the inevitable slobber dripping. And Alazu soared and arched through the air like a sunbeam through cloud; then was instantly next to her, opening the ice cream wrapper with his claws. The choc ices vanished in seconds. Mithrai picked up another piece of steak and dropped it in his cavernous mouth. Sheila made a face. But she’d given up trying to teach these two the etiquette of human dining.

  ‘You should finish eating first, then play,’ Sheila did tentatively suggest.

  ‘Time in,’ said Mithrai, and the game began again.

  Sheila smiled, then went back out into the garden and through the French doors into the dining room to discover she’d been lumbered with the Scotty dog as her piece. Jacob was the banker and he made his usual joke about the international conspiracy of Jewish bankers: intended with the darkest of satirical irony of course.

  That was when they heard the bird, flapping in the hall.

  Sheila went out to see what was happening, but foolishly she didn’t take her Smith and Wesson. It was only a bird after all!

  And there it was, in the downstairs hallway. A desperate raven, black and large, darting around and smashing into the walls in its efforts to escape. Sheila smiled as she saw the creature’s confused frenzy, and tried to figure out how to catch it and release it again outside.