Hell on Earth

by Philip Palmer

  ‘Have you come to kill me?’ Veda asked shrewdly.

  ‘Why would I do that?’

  ‘Because you’re a bad creature.’

  Sheila-dybbuk made a ‘oh, me?’ face. ‘I promised Jacob not to hurt you,’ said Sheila-dybbuk softly. ‘And I always keep my promises, you know.’

  ‘You won’t hurt me?’ said Veda, daring to hope.

  ‘Quite the opposite,’ Sheila-dybbuk said. ‘You see, I’ve laid a curse upon you.’

  And she smiled again in that un-smiling way. Then calmly explained the particulars of the curse she had laid upon the demon-child.

  ‘I’ve planted it already, you see,’ Sheila said. ‘The curse. It’s there in your mind. Like a seed. A little acorn that becomes a great big oak tree. Except it’s not an acorn and it won’t be an oak tree. It’s an atom of pure evil. A part of me. It’s quiescent now, but when you dream it will feed upon your dreams. And it will grow. And it will become you. And the part of me that’s inside you will become all of you. And it won’t harm you, nor can you ever harm yourself - that’s part of the curse. But the part of me that’s evil will possess you entirely. And then, when the evil is full-grown, you will kill, and you will rape, and you will torture small children; and you will do even worse things.

  ‘And just to be clear, because you’re only a stupid child after all, this is how it works.

  ‘If you stay awake, you will be safe, my sweet.

  ‘But if you get drowsy, if you drift off into sleep, and if you dream - even for a moment - the evil in you will grow. That’s my curse, that I laid upon you when your idiot brother wasn’t looking.’ And Sheila smiled again. ‘No need to thank me, sweet girl.’

  Veda had stared back. Understanding, but not understanding.

  She knew this wasn’t her mother really. Yet even so, it was impossible to believe her own mother could do a thing like this to her!

  Ever since that moment, ever since the police had rescued her and brought her to this safe house, she had not slept and she had not dreamed.

  Veda knew that she was in fact a very smart girl, not stupid at all. And she had a powerful will. So she had compelled herself not to feel drowsy. And she had made her mind go blank, in case her thoughts or mental images turned into dream images. She had forced her subconscious self into obedience; she had forbidden herself sleep.

  And when her strategy threatened to fail - when she felt sleepiness creep upon her like a predator stalking its prey - she would make herself switch off. She would die a little death, lapsing into dreamless coma, rather than perpetrating a dream.

  She had entered this coma state twice already. Her two close protection officers thought she was epileptic, and she’d encouraged them in this belief.

  They were her friends now, so they said, these two cops, Sharon and Toby. The nearest she had to a family, since Jacob turned evil.

  Many times since yesterday Veda had wished she could end it all by committing suicide. But she wasn’t able to harm herself; that was part of the curse. The worst part of it, in her view. The curse would last, the dybbuk had told her, for all eternity. Or, she guessed, until the dybbuk himself died; because surely his spells would die with him?

  However the dybbuk had often bragged that nothing or nobody could kill him. He was too powerful, too wily. And indeed he was already many hundreds of thousands of years old. He was older, in fact, so he’d bragged, than any other warlock in London. As old very nearly as the dawn of history.

  She remembered the night when, drunk and eloquent, the dybbuk-as-Sheila had told Veda and Jacob a long and elaborate story about those early golden days when he first came into his warlock powers.

  He told them that he had been the friend and the mentor of one the greatest warriors of all time. And he narrated to them a long and fantastical and wonderful tale of adventures and quests and betrayals and glass bridges and enemies slain, and she didn’t believe much of it.

  But she liked the bit about when the warrior king took part in a Wild Hunt. He and his knights riding through the sky, chasing phantoms and ghosts and demons and slaying them. An army of naked men and naked women riding upon powerful, sweating horses through the white icy clouds; muscles taut; swords black with demon blood. He painted a picture in words of how their hunt had filled the dawn-lit sky; how multi-limbed shadows had writhed in pain as the knights slew monsters from other dimensions with their magical swords and holy spears.

  And the roar of monsters had filled the air! And the birds had cowered, afraid to take flight! And the beasts of the field had scattered as black blood rained upon them and turned verdant fields into swamps of simmering demons’ blood. The Hunt was wild indeed and terrible, and glorious.

  That was the tale that dybbuk-as-Sheila had told them. And it was as good if not better than any the stories the real Sheila used to tell them, back in the house in Walworth.

  ‘Those were the days,’ the dybbuk who wore the body of her mother had said. ‘Those were the glory days!’

  ‘What happened to the warrior?’ Veda had asked.

  Sheila-dybbuk seemed unhappy to be asked that question. ‘He died.’

  ‘What happened to you?’

  ‘I died too,’ said the dybbuk in the body of her mother, tears in her eyes. ‘His men killed me. For they believed I had betrayed their leader, and so they killed me. They cut off my head and chopped my body in half and cursed my bleeding torso and I died with my blood spilling on the blessed grass. I died, and I deserved to die, for my treachery. But, don’t you know, my spirit lived on.’

  The dybbuk told that story a lot. He spoke of the Battle To Come as well, a battle between a warrior and a warlock, fought by a river, a battle that would determine the future of humanity; or so he said.

  Veda remembered every word the monster had said about the Wild Hunt, and she would have dreamed about it too. If only she dared to dream.

  Veda hated the dybbuk. And she hated what he had done to her. She was glad that he was dead. But she didn’t understand how, if he WAS actually dead, as her police officer friends kept telling her, his curse still possessed her. As she knew it did.

  She knew that for certain, because within hours of arriving in the safe house Veda had gone to the toilet, and there she had tried to slit her wrists with a silver knife stolen from Sharon’s handbag; and she could not. That familiar mind-numbing paralysis had come upon her. Proof that the dybbuk’s spell-binding was still active. Yet how could that be?

  She had no answer to that.

  She stared up at the ceiling, her head upon her pillow. She thought about Jacob, and the real Sheila, and all those she had lost. And still she did not sleep; and still, she dared not dream.

  The door to her bedroom opened and the police constable called Sharon came in and called out: ‘Are you all right, love?’

  Veda burst into tears.

  Skip back twelve hours. To the closing moments of the Battle of Mitre Square.

  Jacob and Sheila sat on the fourth floor of Prior House, looking out as the Harriers and Apache attack helicopters fired missiles at the magic protective shell that surrounded their building. It was like being inside a fireworks display. Shell after shell detonated against Sheila-dybbuk’s invisible ring of power; sending coronas of flame and sparks dancing in the air. Jacob loved the sense of invulnerability he was getting.

  ‘How long can you keep this going?’ he asked.

  ‘A long time,’ Sheila-dybbuk admitted. ‘You see, the power I have comes from all those people we slew.’

  Jacob’s stomach lurched. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, I get a good deal of my power from the organs of the humans we murdered, which I have mashed up and turned into enchanted incense that I inhale each night. And also, I should add, from their souls, which I have eaten.’

  ‘Their souls?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You can eat souls?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking, yes.’

  Jacob’s eyes were dazzled b
y the flashes from the exploding missiles outside. Sheila-dybbuk’s face was partially occluded by floating globes of light as he stared at her.

  ‘And that’s why –’

  ‘Four hundred and forty souls in ten months. All consumed and sublimated into my essence. It makes me the most powerful warlock on earth.’

  Jacob now understood. All he had done, all the murders he had committed, were for this reason, in the service of this cause. Not motiveless malignancy after all; never that.

  The dybbuk always had a motive for his malignancy.

  ‘But your power will run out eventually.’

  ‘Oh yes. Eventually.’

  ‘Then we should make our move soon. Just in case you, you know, become depleted. Better to be safe, isn’t it, than sorry?’

  ‘Don’t rush me. I’m enjoying myself.’

  ‘Yeah but –’

  ‘Trust me! And stop nagging.’

  ‘All right already!’

  ‘You stupid kid.’

  ‘Stupid yourself.’

  Sheila-dybbuk grinned. Jacob grinned back.

  ‘Pass me the ner tamid.’

  Jacob passed over the bronze lamp. He’d released most of the demons in the City earlier that day. But some he’d kept back for this current battle.

  ‘You know what to do.’

  ‘Unscrew the top, chant the chant, let ’em rip.’

  ‘Wait till I’m dead first,’ Sheila-dybbuk said.

  Jacob had his e-berry; he could get the live news feeds on that.

  ‘I got it, I got it. Now go.’

  ‘Goodbye, my child,’ Sheila-dybbuk said.

  ‘What about Veda?’ Jacob said, suddenly anxious.

  ‘She’ll be safe by now. The police have her. No harm can come to her.’

  ‘There’s nothing about it on the news.’

  ‘She’s safe. Trust me.’

  Jacob nodded. ‘Then I do. I trust you. So go and die. You bastard.’

  Sheila-dybbuk smiled and left the room.

  Five minutes later Sheila was dead.

  The moment he saw the e-berry news footage of Sheila’s head being lopped off by Brigadier Wilson, Jacob opened the lamp and released the demons. The dybbuk had taught him the binding spell and also the releasing spell. And it was a huge thrill to let loose the monsters of war.

  The tiny flying demons swarmed past him; then flew in a black mass out of the open window and into the air of the Square. They soared like dragonflies, around and around, then downwards. Until finally they landed on the pavement beneath the office block. There they grew, like mountains being created out of ant-hills, in seconds.

  Jacob watched the whole scene from the window. It proved to be a great battle. The monsters fought and won and fought and won. But eventually they lost. The lightning trick was impressive.

  Three minutes after the last demon was slain, the smart missile flew up the stairs and crashed into Jacob. And he exploded into a thousand bloody parts.

  It hurt: a lot.

  Which meant, Jacob realised, he was still alive.

  This wasn’t meant to happen. Sheila had cast a protection spell that was supposed to keep him safe. But the fucking thing hadn’t worked properly.

  The pain was agonising, though not as bad as the agonies he could have expected at the hands of the demonic and damnèd soldiers and the Hell Hounds, if they had only realised he was still alive. For he was conscious during all the long period in which soldiers tramped around the building. He was aware too of the Hell Hounds sniffing through the wreckage, sometimes finding chunks of his corpse to be taken away and destroyed. That was a particularly horrible experience; to know that gobbets of his own body were being carried away in buckets.

  But enough of him remained. His face, his brain, most of his heart, and about one third of his body mass; broken into fragments, indistinguishable from the rubble amongst which he was splattered.

  Once the army had left the scene, it took Jacob six hours to reconstitute these fragments. Which he did by remembering his own body shape. In effect, he willed himself back into life, moulding dead shreds of himself into coherent unity with his mind.

  Eventually he crawled out of the wreckage of 32 Mitre Square He was not a golem at this point, just a blob of clay. He was a sixth of his normal size and had only one arm. Protuberances jutted from his torso that were more like tentacles than legs. His head was only loosely connected to his body. He had no mouth or nose and only one eye - a vast oval thing, as if drawn by a delirious child.

  His staggering, slithering journey out of the blown up building was a slow and painful process. But at least the troops had dispersed by now, and the journalists had gone home.

  The square was empty and desolate now. The ground glowed green from the residue of enchanted missile and bullet fragments. Flies and birds and feral dogs fed upon the remnants of dead human soldiers that the paramedics had been too indolent to scoop up.

  Now at least he stood a chance of surviving. He remembered all he’d been told of the golem of Prague and how he had been brought to life by his Rabbi master. He knew what he had to do.

  The bombs had gouged a huge crater in the ground in Mitre Square, revealing deep levels of thick London clay. So Jacob used his only hand to take out his clumsily moulded cock. He waggled it, and stretched it a little; then pissed upon a patch of clay. When he was all out of piss, he picked up a clump of wet clay with his roughly fingered hand and began to shape it. And when the clay was well-kneaded in his palm, he slapped it on the place where his other arm ought to be. And he spoke an incantation.

  The clay began to grow. And grow.

  After some time his shoulder stump was host to a flaccid lump of clay that dangled down to his hip; but which he could move. And he spoke another spell, and the clay began to turn into a fully formed arm.

  With tireless care, and numerous additions of fresh and urinous clay, he did the same with his leg stumps. Until he had two full grown legs - though without toes, just blocks for feet. Then he went to work on his torso.

  And so, bit by bit, limb by limb, organ by organ, Jacob rebuilt his own body.

  ‘A victory parade,’ insisted Brigadier Wilson.

  Callum stared at the Brigadier, awed by his charisma and physical size. The Brigadier clearly worked out every day. He had biceps that threatened to burst out of his shirt. And he had angry eyes too and an impatient stare, and big hands that threatened to strangle without realising they were doing so.

  ‘But Brigadier –’

  ‘I insist. Tickertape. Fucking well see to it.’

  Callum Alderton, the Mayor of London, yielded. This man was, after all, the hero of the Battle of Mitre Square.

  ‘Whatever you say, Brigadier.’

  ‘You don’t seem happy?’ Wilson taunted.

  ‘The collateral damage was –’

  ‘You have a problem with the way we fought the legendary Battle of Mitre Fucking Square?’

  The Brigadier glared. His eyes seemed almost red with rage. Callum Alderton physically quailed at the power of that angry stare.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good. Tickertape.’

  ‘Tickertape,’ said Callum, former Tory MP and quiz show host, now the warlock-appointed Mayor of London though not of Demon City, ‘it is.’

  The crowds were gathered in Trafalgar Square. Thousands of them. Men, women, children, teenagers, babies in prams pushed by their euphoric mums and dads. Many of celebrants wore specially printed T-shirts saying BATTLE OF MITRE SQUARE ROCKS. Or FUCK THE DEMONS!!!

  It was Wednesday the fourteenth of August, 2024: three days after the triumph of Mitre Square, in which the dybbuk and his golem sidekick were slain.

  The convoy came along Waterloo Bridge on to the Strand, sweeping past the Aldwych, with St Clement Dane’s up its chuff. Brigadier Wilson was at the head of the procession, standing in the turret of the Challenger Tank that led the way, its huge tracks cracking the tarmac beneath.

  Behind him trundled
the armoured personnel carriers, the jeeps, the other tanks, the howitzer with its dancing barrel; and ranks of battle-weary soldiers who marched each side of the vehicles, deliberately out of step. Shockingly, some carried flags that were made of the hides of slaughtered demons, acquired during their earlier purges.

  Tickertape rained down from first and second floor windows – rented out for the day - or fired out of pop tubes sold by street vendors.

  Wilson’s tank slowly trundled past the Wellington and the Lyceum pubs. The Coal Hole Pub and the Savoy Hotel and Theatre were on his left. Along the Strand he journeyed – crowds cheering – tickertape billowing down like paper rain – down the long stretch of dead-straight road. Past Stanley Gibbons Stamps and the Vaudeville Theatre on one side, with Shell-Mex House opposite; then on past the art deco Adelphi Theatre. Eventually reaching John Nash’s West Strand Improvements with their pepper pot towers, level with the tower memorial to Queen Eleanor that guards the entrance to the Charing Cross railway station.

  Wilson stood up high, with no protective head gear, letting the wind whip his silver hair, proud of the convoy that followed him down London’s greatest boulevard. Proud too of all that he had achieved in the last few days in London. All the mayhem, murder, anarchy, and terror. It had been, in his view, a magnificent purge: hundreds of potentially dissident shitbag monsters had been killed, or degraded, or both.

  And to cap it all, his troops did actually get to fight the fucking golem! Making a truth out of their outrageous cover story lie. And he had also personally slain the fucking dybbuk! (which for some reason was in the body of a middle-aged woman, but best not to enquire further there). Yes, he and his soldiers had extir-fucking-pated the fucking pair of ’em! An unexpected treat, to say the least.

  Wilson was basking in pride; back ramrod straight in his full dress uniform; a rainbow of medal ribbons filling one breast. His hugely muscled arm was raised up in the air, in triumph.