Hell on Earth

by Philip Palmer

  And now they were fifteen. For Taff was back from the pub, reeking of whisky and beer, his fat body tottering on his stumpy short legs.

  ‘I aresholed it, butty,’ Taff admitted.

  ‘Go home, Taff,’ Dougie said, reluctantly.

  ‘I’ll be fine. I’ll sober up.’

  ‘Let’s go. Now,’ said Fillide impatiently.

  ‘Who made you the boss, you fucking cop killer?’ Dougie snapped. Unfair, but old habits die hard. Fillide shrugged, with the insolent expressiveness of both her generation and nation.

  ‘Don’t push me. I’ll fight the dybbuk on my own if it comes to it,’ she said coldly.

  Taff puked. It was a controlled puke. A single torrent of beer and digested pasty and chips that spurted out and laked across the concrete floor of the police garage, but was carefully aimed to avoid splashing any of his colleagues. ‘Tissue,’ he muttered.

  Gina gave him a tissue. Taff wiped off his mouth, hacked up a few last remnants, and dumped the tissue on the floor.

  ‘I’m fine now.’ Taff said, forcing a grin.

  He was fifteen stone of blobby Welshman with a bulbous red nose and still exceedingly pissed.

  ‘No you’re not,’ said Gina.

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘Go home,’ said Dougie.

  ‘Give me strength!’ wailed Fillide.

  ‘I’m fine. I’m fine. Try me,’ Taff insisted.

  Dougie stepped forward abruptly and threw a punch at Taff’s head. It was a fast and brutal punch; Dougie knew his stuff.

  Taff rolled and ducked under the punch effortlessly and came up smiling.

  Dougie kicked his leg out from under him. But Taff anticipated, lifted his leg so Dougie’s leg sweep went harmlessly past, and used the momentum to shove Dougie off balance. Dougie almost fell, but managed to thrust his weight hard down and came back with an elbow strike to the face.

  Taff weaved calmly, as if dodging an annoying breeze, then seemed to roll around Dougie from all directions, before coming back with a one two three combination of face slaps that rocked Dougie on his heels. Dougie shook his head. He raised a hand: enough!

  Fillide looked at Taff. His eyes were clear, his stance was balanced, he commanded the air around him. She remembered he’d once been a boxer.

  ‘Pulling my punches, see,’ said Taff.

  Fillide was impressed.

  ‘Let’s go,’ said Gina.

  ‘What the hell happened to you?’ Taff said. He was staring at Tom.

  They all turned, and stared. The Tom they knew had vanished. Instead there stood a slender monster with a face disfigured with black oozing terrible scars.

  ‘Bloody fucking Hades,’ observed Dougie.

  Tom stared back, defiantly. He didn’t bother to switch his glamour back on. ‘This is what I really look like,’ he said. ‘After what happened to me at St Paul’s. Normally I, well, I conceal it from view.’

  ‘How? Magic glamour?’ said Taff.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘So what happened?’ Taff gestured at Tom’s monstrous face.

  ‘You know what –’

  ‘I don’t mean then, I mean now. Why did the glamour suddenly fuck off?’

  Dougie was listening: interested in this.

  ‘Well,’ said Tom. ‘Sometimes, it lapses. When I’m – distracted, I guess. I lose focus, and my real self shows through. I thought Dougie was going to hurt you, you see,’ Tom admitted.

  ‘And you were going to come to my rescue?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Thank you, boyo,’ said Taff, amused.

  ‘Distraction, Taff,’ said Dougie.

  Taff caught the ball.

  ‘Aye, guv,’ said Taff quietly.

  ‘What?’ said Gina.

  ‘Let’s go.’

  They drove through the Rotherhithe tunnel in an operational serial of two vans, then skirted South London until they reached Waterloo Bridge. Here the checkpoints were manned by coppers, and Dougie was able to blag his way through. They’d loaded each of the TSG vans with guns and swords and grenades. Gina, Catriona, Seamus, Lisa, Tom, and Fillide were in the first van, driven by Dougie. Alliea drove the second van with the rest of the team: Hyun-Shik, Alice, Lisa, Tony, Shai, Andy and Taff.

  Gina in Van One was up front in the passenger seat next to Dougie, who was driving. She held his hand briefly. He squeezed it. A shudder of something passed between them. He took his eyes off the road for a moment to look at her, intently. She mouthed a word: Duck. He grinned. Duck, he mouthed back.

  ‘Goose,’ she said out loud, but very quietly.

  Then the hand-clasp was over. Dougie returned his eyes to the road. The van drove on.

  Lisa was directly behind them, on a bench seat. She noticed the vibe between the two guvnors. She hid a smile. She was a romantic, deep down. She loved it when old farts found true love.

  Seamus, sitting to Lisa, saw Lisa’s smile, and thought it was aimed at him. He looked at her approvingly. Thinking that if he survived the day, maybe he should give it a shot with her?

  Catriona, beside Seamus, was thinking about her wife Gemma. They’d been together fifteen years, since they were probationer cops. She wondered if she’d ever see the cheeky Scouser lezza bitch again.

  Tom and Fillide were opposite Catriona, sharing a bench. From time to time, Tom glanced at Fillide, his eyes full of a toxic blend of love and fear and lust. She pretended not to notice.

  ‘Why did you come back?’ he muttered.

  ‘No personal questions,’ ordered Dougie over his shoulder, from the front seat.

  ‘I saw the Brigadier,’ said Fillide curtly. ‘On TV.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And? And? He was clearly possessed. You think I don’t know Gogarty, after all this time? It’s my case too,’ said Fillide angrily. ‘The Gogarty case. My case too.’

  ‘Number Seven Murder Squad say you’re their chief suspect for the Roy Hall killing,’ Cat mentioned to Fillide, mildly.

  She laughed, overflowing with delight.

  ‘I should fucking say I am chief suspect. I left my fucking fingerprints on the knife!’

  ‘That’s Seven Squad for you,’ Cat said smiling. ‘Always willing to consider the blindingly obvious.’

  ‘Fillide -’ said Tom.

  She shook her head, and gave him a warning look. He shut up.

  ‘Tom, are you going to do that thing?’ Dougie bellowed back at him.

  ‘Yes, guv.’

  ‘Then do it now.’

  Tom took out his phone and began texting.

  Skip back two days.

  It was Monday the twelfth of August, 2024. The day after the Battle of Mitre Square. Two days before the tickertape parade and the Trafalgar Square Massacre.

  Jacob had spent nearly four hours reshaping his body amid the ruins of Mitre Square. And when the moulding was complete, at about 11am, Jacob walked away from the wreckage of rubble and exploded ordnance. He was fully limbed and as tall as an average man by now, and naked, with a small cock but no balls.

  He began to run.

  He ran swiftly - literally as fast as the wind - legs pounding and arms beating the air. So fast that no one could see that he was naked, or that he was a golem.

  He ran like a thunderclap from Mitre Square on to Commercial Street. Then above the bounds of the City and on to Great Eastern Street and City Road; then along Pentonville Road and Euston Road. The Victorian rococo of St Pancras Hotel went by as a flash in his peripheral vision. He cut down Gower Street past the University of London buildings and turned right into Bedford Square, before reaching the concrete and glass obelisk of Centrepoint; his speed adding an additional clash of winds at the base of Richard Seifert’s Brutalist tower block.

  Then into Oxford Street, dodging pedestrians with almost infallible skill – leaving behind only a few screams and yells of pain – then down Soho Square, through Carlisle Street and into Dean Street.

  He started to slow. The Soho Theatre on his left, Quo Va
dis, and the black unnamed building that looked like a den for warlocks but was in fact the Groucho Club.

  Jacob stopped, and his vision rocked as he returned to normal-speed reality.

  A man walked into him and bounced off. Jacob snarled with annoyance. The man got up. He was wearing a grey Paul Smith jacket that had seen better years. Jacob glared. The man cowered a moment, then hurried away, and vanished through the revolving doors of Groucho’s.

  Jacob crossed the road. The entire block opposite Groucho’s - from the corner of Old Compton Street as far as Black’s - was a dark incense den now. Everyone knew what went on there, no one bothered to put a stop to it.

  Jacob banged on the bright red door. There was no sign, no plaque, no number, but he remembered it well from the day before.

  No reply.

  He banged again. There was a CCTV camera trained on him and he peered into it and said, ‘Let me in!’ But still the door didn’t open. He guessed how terrifying he must look. He kicked the door with a big and grey and still only crudely formed foot, until there were only fragments of wood left. Then he went inside.

  The electric lights were off and the dwelling was lit by hundreds of small wall-mounted bulbs that left the ceilings shrouded in blackness, and cast a flickering glow on all within. The smell of incense made him gasp and choke. He guessed that animal organs were part of the admixture, and he could detect traces of sweet sea-snail galbanum, opium, and of course the lemony-conifer tang of aphrodisiacal frankincense, generously portioned.

  He looked around. The walls to the block next door had been knocked down, and the walls beyond that too, to create a dimly-lit tunnel of depravity and indulgence. Naked men and women were sprawled upon couches or on the filthy floor, a few fornicating listlessly, most of them beyond the prospect of sexual pleasure. Many had full potties beside their bunks, breathing in the smell of shit and intoxicant air, bodies scrawny and malnourished.

  Jacob began to wade his way through, sniffing for Sheila’s scent, looming angrily over drugged orgiasts, scowling at living skeletons who had spent their life savings on incense and would never leave this den alive. He seized and turned over woman after woman, so that he could see their faces: but did not find what he sought.

  Slowly he made his way back to the entrance to where the staircase was. He could see shadowy figures waiting for him in the hallway area.

  ‘Wait,’ he called, and one of them did not wait but raised his gun and fired a bullet. It was an anointed silver bullet. Jacob could feel the bitter sting as it bounced off his body and hit a drowsy incensiant, splashing blood but causing barely a yelp.

  Jacob continued walking until he was at the doorway then he seized the gunman by the jaw with his hand and crushed the head in his palm. He died, soundless. Jacob let the body fall to the ground.

  ‘I’m looking for a woman,’ Jacob said to the gunman’s companions.

  ‘You should have said,’ a young and oily gangster replied, warily. He was thin and good looking in a feminine way and had facial hair that was neither beard nor moustache, just a line of hair that defined his jaw and upper lip.

  ‘Her name is Sheila.’

  ‘None of the women here are called Sheila,’ the gangster reproved him.

  Jacob rolled his eyes. ‘That’s her real name.’

  ‘You were here yesterday.’ Memory blossomed in the young pimp’s eyes.

  ‘I’ve come to claim her back.’

  ‘Ah, now.’

  ‘My companion paid a price. It was generous.’

  ‘You’ll have to pay again.’

  Jacob smiled.

  ‘Maybe you don’t have to pay again.’

  ‘Walk ahead of me, tell your friends not to shoot.’

  ‘Bullets don’t seem to work on you,’ the gangster pointed out, as if rebuking him.

  ‘I have thick skin.’

  The gangster led him upstairs, to the first floor brothel area. Jacob was vexed; this wasn’t the deal that had been struck. Clearly there was no limit to the treachery of these whoremongering smoke dealers.

  On this floor the original architecture had been kept intact. In other words, there was a rabbit warren of separate rooms, though new doorways had been knocked through to connect the once separate buildings. Jacob walked through dozens of rooms, and saw scores of punters and whores. He quickly became weary of the sight of human carnality unalloyed by love.

  In the fifteenth room on the third floor of the brothel complex he found an unconscious woman on a bed about to be fucked by two Eastern European men. The woman was not Sheila; but she smelled of Sheila. He had found her.

  ‘Tell them to stop,’ Jacob told the gangster.

  ‘Very well. Stop, gentlemen, please.’

  The men swore at the gangster, and continued with their intent of fucking the lifeless Sheila. But then, to their astonishment, they realised they weren’t able to touch her. The air between them and her had turned to thick tar, pushing them away - thanks to the dybbuk’s warding spell. Even so Jacob grabbed the first man with a big hand and crushed his skull. The second man turned around, fat and tumescent and indignant. Jacob punched his face and the fat man’s head toppled off his shoulders.

  The gangster who had escorted him was visibly shaken. ‘That’ll cost.’

  ‘Fuck off,’ said Jacob.

  ‘Hey, don’t shoot the messenger.’

  ‘Sheila,’ Jacob said. But the stranger lying on the bed did not reply.

  The gangster left. Jacob didn’t know if he’d run away, or gone for help. But he picked his mother up and cradled her.

  ‘Sheila,’ he said.

  The unconscious prostitute began to stir. Jacob flinched again at the sight of her malformed nose, her wasted limbs, her surgically enhanced bulging breasts upon a skeleton-thin body.

  Jacob uttered the spell that the dybbuk had taught him.

  And the whore’s features began to waver. Ligaments rippled. Bones stretched. Skin swelled. The prostitute morphed as Jacob watched. She shrank an inch and gained two stone. Her breasts diminished but her buttocks swelled; her hair changed colour; and her skin took on a healthy chubby-person’s hue. Eventually, the whore became Sheila Whittaker, bursting out of her skimpy basque and fish-net stockings.

  ‘Where am I?’ Sheila said.

  ‘You’re with me, mum,’ said Jacob. ‘And you’re safe. Safe. No one will ever hurt you ever again. Never. Never, I swear it.’ Tears dampened the clay of his cheeks, softening the shape of his face. He still had only three fingers on each hand and no thumbs. He was a badly moulded brute. But his heart was full of love.

  Sheila kissed him on his wet cheeks.

  ‘It’s okay,’ she whispered. ‘My brave boy, you saved me. Thank you. Thank you. Now let’s get out of here.’

  Jacob heard footsteps outside.

  ‘Hug me,’ he said. Sheila wrapped her arms around him.

  The door opened and the pimp re-entered the room – his face a snarl, an automatic pistol in his hand, accompanied by four bouncers each armed with heavy machine guns. From their confident demeanour Jacob guessed they’d loaded up with armour-piercing anointed bullets; even he couldn’t survive that.

  Without missing a beat Jacob kicked a hole in the wall, and leaped out. Moments later, a giant grey golem crashed to the pavement in Dean Street, creating footprints like craters.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Jacob asked Sheila, as she let go of her grip on him.

  ‘Dazed.’

  He heard gunfire from above.

  ‘Let’s go.’

  Jacob ran off; dodging bullets; leaving crumbled kerb and pavement behind him.

  Chapter 25

  Skip back one more day.

  It was 12 noon on Sunday the eleventh of August. Two and a half hours before the start of the Battle of Mitre Square; one hour before Jacob seeded the City of London with aerial demons. Jacob and Sheila-dybbuk were sitting in the long bar of the Cittie of Yorke pub in High Holborn, as they had been for some time.


  ‘Today at Mitre Square,’ explained Sheila-dybbuk. ‘I will die and be reborn. And then we will create a true and just Hell on Earth.’

  Jacob shrugged.

  ‘Yeah, I got all that. And I will – yeah - be King.’

  ‘And you,’ said the dybbuk, ‘will be the King of this new realm. And I will be your advisor, your wizard, and all will be well again.’

  Jacob shook his head. ‘Not going to work.’

  Sheila-dybbuk was taken aback by his brusque tone.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘You’re out of your league, dybbuk.’

  Jacob was squiffy; and also cocksure. He was in his ‘no one can tell me anything’ mood. When the real Sheila used to talk politics to Jacob while he was in this mood, she always regretted it.

  ‘I seriously doubt that,’ said Sheila-dybbuk. ‘With respect, my child, you have no idea what league I –’

  ‘You’re old.’

  Sheila-dybbuk blinked.

  ‘I’m old?’

  Jacob nodded; playing ‘tough guy’. He was, he realised, getting good at it. ‘Yeah. And past it,’ he said calmly. ‘Not up to date. Yesterday’s news. You’re like a parent, man, but even worse.’

  Sheila-dybbuk’s affable mood faded.

  ‘I was born,’ she said stiffly, ‘with the gifts of second sight as well as hindsight, and magic powers beyond compare. So I don’t think you can -’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. You’re old. Your plan won’t work. I foresee an epic fail. End of.’ Jacob hugged himself with his own arms, a foible of his.

  Sheila-dybbuk sighed. ‘You’re so sure of yourself.’

  ‘That’s because I’m right.’

  ‘So why don’t you tell me what I’m doing wrong?’

  ‘It won’t work,’ Jacob insisted, annoyingly. ‘Capture Demon City, you still lose the war. The humans are too powerful.’

  Jacob was sure of this. He’d studied the art of war in considerable depth; and he knew all there was to know about the Occlusion and the birth of Partitioned London.