Old Ram’s mouth curled into what might have been a smile.
“Mrs. Abernathy,” he said. He bleated his laughter. “A demon obsessed with being human is a demon no longer. She has fallen from power. Another will take her place, unless she can find a way to make up for her failure.” He glanced slyly at Samuel. “How did you come here, boy?”
Samuel began to tell him everything, then stopped. “There was light, a blue light. It flashed as I was walking home with Boswell, and I woke up here.”
“And you saw nothing more, only a light?”
“That’s all,” Samuel lied. He chose not to mention his knowledge of Mrs. Abernathy to Old Ram. He could not have said why, but he was sure that it would not be a good idea.
Old Ram nodded his head and was silent again. The stone hive was uncomfortably warm, and the smoke was making Samuel drowsy. His eyelids grew heavy. He saw Old Ram watching him, and felt the intensity of the creature’s regard, but he was so tired. He lay down and closed his eyes, and was soon fast asleep.
Samuel dreamed. He dreamed that Old Ram was standing over him, and scattering dust upon the flames. There was a sour, acrid smell, and then a face appeared in the fire, black-eyed and insect-jawed. In the dream, Old Ram said: “Where is your mistress?” and the creature in the fire responded with a series of clicks and hisses that Old Ram seemed to understand.
“When she returns, tell her that Old Ram has a prize for her. Old Ram is tired of this exile. Old Ram wants a place of honor at her table. As she rises again, so shall Old Ram. Tell her this.”
The face in the flames disappeared, and Old Ram sat down again. That was Samuel’s dream. But when he opened his eyes, the sour smell was still in his nostrils, and Old Ram was not sitting in quite the same place that he had occupied before Samuel fell asleep.
“Rest more,” said Old Ram. “You’ll need your energy. Old Ram will take you to someone who may be able to help you, but first we must wait.”
“Why must we wait?”
“It’s too dangerous to travel now. Later, it will be safer.”
Samuel stood, and Boswell stood too.
“I think Boswell and I should leave,” he said. “We’ve stayed here long enough.”
“No, no,” said Old Ram. “Please, sit. Old Ram has things to tell you, important things. You must listen.”
But Samuel was already leading Boswell to the door, although he did not turn his back on Old Ram. Old Ram scrambled upright, and in the light of the fire his eyes took on a red glow.
“You must stay!” he said. “Old Ram must rise again!”
Thunder roared in the skies above, and lightning flashed, as though the fighting souls had heard Old Ram’s cry, but Samuel thought that he discerned another sound hidden beneath the great tumult: a grinding, moaning noise like a mighty engine in motion.
Suddenly, Old Ram moved. He grabbed his staff and swung it at Samuel, barely missing the boy’s head.
“Nobody leaves!” shouted Old Ram. “Nobody leaves until the Dark Lady arrives!”
He made as if to swing the staff again, but instead spun it in his hooves and used it to trip Samuel, who fell heavily to the floor. Boswell snapped and barked, but now Old Ram was standing above them, the staff held high, ready to bring it down on Samuel’s skull.
And then the staff was snatched from Old Ram’s hooves and disappeared through the hole in the roof, drawn upward by a snakelike length of wood. The hut began to collapse: stones tumbled down from the ceiling, and fissures appeared in the walls. Black roots and branches thrust their way through, winding themselves around Old Ram’s body and neck and legs. The door exploded inward, and Samuel saw the face of the Great Oak grinning and leering in the gap.
“Old Ram,” said the tree, “I warned you. We were tormented enough without you adding to our misery. Now we will add to yours instead.”
Old Ram struggled in its grasp, but the ancient tree was too strong for him. More stones dislodged themselves, and an opening appeared close to where Samuel lay. As quickly as he could, he held Boswell under his left arm and pushed himself through the hole. Outside, he got to his feet and ran until he came to a boulder which was big enough for him to hide behind. Only then did he risk a look back at the house.
The Great Oak towered above the scattered stones of Old Ram’s dwelling, its branches swinging wildly, its roots twisting and curling. Old Ram was held high above the ground, his frightened face close to the Great Oak’s features. The Great Oak was laughing at him, and taunting him. Behind it, the contorted trees swayed and cried as the Great Oak took its prize and returned to the forest, and the fire in the ruins turned to ash and went out for the last time.
XVI
In Which Hell Gets Stranger, and the Scientists Grow More Curious
NOT FOR THE FIRST time, Mr. Merryweather’s Dwarfs and the forces of law and order were having a disagreement.
“You can’t arrest us,” said Jolly.
“I beg to differ,” said Sergeant Rowan. “I can, and I have.”
“But someone’s nicked our van. It hardly seems fair to arrest us when somewhere out there is a criminal driving a stolen van.”
“But there are four criminals right here,” said Sergeant Rowan. “A dwarf in the hand is worth two in a van, or words to that effect.”
“Er, Sarge,” said Constable Peel.
“Not now, Constable. I’m enjoying my moment of triumph.”
“It’s important, Sarge.”
“So is this.”
“No, really important.”
Sergeant Rowan, still keeping a firm grip on Jolly’s collar, turned to Constable Peel and said, “All right, then, what is-”
He stopped talking. He looked around.
“Constable, where’s our car?” he said.
“That’s just it, Sarge. It’s gone. Someone’s nicked it.”
Sergeant Rowan returned his attention to the dwarfs, who all held up their hands in gestures of innocence that, for the first time ever, they actually meant.
“Wasn’t us,” said Angry.
“Serves you right,” said Jolly. “I told you there was a thief about.”
“Nobody saw anything?” said Sergeant Rowan.
“We was too busy being arrested, Sarge,” said Dozy. “Our rights was being infringed.”
“Nojidell,” said Mumbles.
“Absolutely,” said Angry. “You have no jurisdiction in Hell. The minute you felt our collars, it was assault. We’re going to sue.”
Sergeant Rowan raised a fist in a manner suggesting that, if he was going to be sued for something, he planned to make the most of it and add charges of inflicting serious bodily harm to a dwarf to his list of offenses.
“Calm down, calm down,” said Jolly. “This isn’t helping anyone. Look, we all want the same thing here, right? We want to find our vehicles, and get home.”
Dozy’s face suddenly assumed an expression of grave loss. “The booze!” he said.
“What?” said Constable Peel.
“The last of the Spiggit’s: it was in the van. It’s gone. Oh, the humanity!”
Dozy fell to his knees and started to sob, moving Constable Peel sufficiently to pat him on the back and offer him a paper tissue.
“There, there,” he said. “It was probably for the best. Makes you mad, that stuff. And blind.”
Dozy began to pull himself together. Constable Peel helped him to his feet. Together, they listened to “(How Much Is) That Doggie in the Window?” being played badly on what sounded like bicycle bells.
“I think all of that beer is making me hear things too, Constable,” said Dozy.
“No, I can hear it as well, and I’ve never touched a drop of Spiggit’s,” said Constable Peel.
“We can all hear it,” said Sergeant Rowan, as an ice-cream van appeared from around the back of a nearby dune and pulled up alongside them. Seated on its roof was a plastic mannequin wearing a peaked cap and holding a plastic ice-cream cone while grinning manically. Red
writing on his cap announced him as “Mr. Happy Whip.”
The driver of the van rolled down his window. He wore very thick glasses, which made him look like an owl in a white coat.
“Hello!” he said. “Which way is the sea?”
“What?” said Angry.
“The sea: where is it?” The driver squinted at Angry. “Hey, son, fancy an ice cream? Just a pound. Two pounds with sprinkles.”
Angry, who was about to thump the driver for mistaking him for a child, found a more immediate outlet for his rage.
“Two pounds with sprinkles? You’re having a laugh. What are you sprinkling them with, gold dust?”
“Top-quality chocolate, son. Only the best.”
“Listen, I expect to bathe in chocolate if I’m paying an extra pound for it. And stop calling me ‘son.’ I’m a dwarf.”
“Right you are, son. Anyway, which way is the sea, there’s a good lad.”
Angry looked back at his comrade. “I’ll ’ave him,” he said. “I mean it. He calls me ‘lad’ or ‘son’ again, and I’ll sprinkle him, I swear.”
The remaining three dwarfs, and Constable Peel and Sergeant Rowan, gathered around the van.
“I’ll have a choc ice, please,” said Constable Peel.
“Now is not the time, Constable,” said Sergeant Rowan. “Sir, you would be-?”
“I’m Dan,” said the driver. “Dan, Dan the Ice-Cream Man, actually. Changed my name legally when I bought the van. Thought it might be good publicity.”
“Right, Mr. Dan. Do you have any idea where you are?”
“On a beach.”
“No, not quite. It’s not a beach.”
“Oh, I thought the tide had gone out,” said Dan.
“Where, on the Sahara?” said Jolly.
“It did seem a bit big,” admitted Dan.
“You’re in Hell,” said Sergeant Rowan.
“Nah,” said Dan. “I’m near Biddlecombe.”
“Not anymore. Remember a blue flash? A feeling like every atom of your body was being torn apart?”
“Sort of,” said Dan. “I thought I’d just taken a funny turn.”
“You did take a funny turn: to Hell. Same thing happened to us.”
Dan thought about this for a while. “Hell is hot, right?”
“Warm, so rumor would have it,” said Dozy.
“Good place to sell ice cream, then,” said Dan brightly.
The dwarfs and the policemen stared at him. It was clear that Dan, Dan the Ice-Cream Man was an incurable optimist. If you told him that his shoes were on fire, he’d have toasted marshmallows on them.
“What did you do before you sold ice cream?” asked Angry.
“I was an undertaker,” said Dan.
“Nice change of pace for you, then.”
“Oh, it’s fantastic. I get out. I meet people. I suppose I met people when I was an undertaker as well, but the conversations were a bit one-sided.” He tootled his horn merrily. “If nobody wants any ice cream, I’ll be off, then.”
“Hang on, hang on,” said Sergeant Rowan. “You don’t seem to have grasped the gravity of the situation. You’re in Hell. Constable Peel and I have some experience of these matters, and we can say, with a degree of authority, that your time as an ice-cream salesman is going to be very short here, and will probably end with something very large nibbling on you like an ice lolly.”
“You won’t like it,” said Constable Peel solemnly. “It’ll hurt.”
“In addition to this, you may have noticed that Constable Peel and I appear to be stranded, and we are therefore forced to commandeer your van in order to unstrand ourselves.”
“Lovely,” said Dan. “I like a bit of company.”
“What about us?” asked Jolly.
“You can commandeer your own ice-cream van,” said Constable Peel.
“Really? And what do you think are the chances of another ice-cream van coming along anytime soon, then?”
“Somewhat slim, I would have said,” said Constable Peel. He did not look unduly troubled by this fact.
“Come on, you can’t leave us stuck here. Something might happen to us.”
“That’s what I was hoping.”
“That’s not very nice of you.”
“You should have thought of that before you encouraged Phil the Penguin to relieve himself in my hat.”
Sergeant Rowan intervened. “Constable, much as I am tempted to agree with you, I think we have a responsibility as policemen to ensure the safety of civilians, even ones as nasty and criminal-minded as this lot. All right, everybody in the back. I’ll take a seat up front with Mr. Dan here, and we’ll see about getting us home, shall we?”
Everybody did as Sergeant Rowan suggested, because the sergeant just had that way about him. Even though they were trapped in a region that was generally agreed to be the last place in which anyone wanted to end up, with no idea of how they had got there, and no idea of how they were going to get back, they were willing to follow Sergeant Rowan because he had Authority. He had gravitas, which means “seriousness” for those who don’t have a dictionary to hand.
And he had a big truncheon that he waved meaningfully at the dwarfs in order to encourage them to make the right decision. In these situations, Sergeant Rowan had found, waving a big stick always helps.
Meanwhile, back in that small room supposedly being used for the storage of cleaning products and brooms, Professor Hilbert was engaged in an animated conversation with Victor and Ed. He had just concluded a similar conversation with Professor Stefan, a consequence of the small loss of energy that had occurred shortly after the Collider had been turned on again. Professor Stefan, Hilbert felt, had become slightly hysterical at the possibility that all those demons might start popping up again, although this stemmed as much from his understandable fear of being eaten as from his concern that, if the gateway to Hell did open for a second time, someone would find a way to blame him for it. It had taken all of Professor Hilbert’s considerable diplomatic skills to convince Professor Stefan not to close down the Collider again, or not yet. Now, in the broom closet with Victor and Ed, he was using some of his other skills, namely the ones linked to bullying staff in a gentle manner in order to get his way.
Professor Hilbert was a believer in the “hidden worlds” theory, the idea that there might be universes other than our own somewhere beyond the realm of our senses. He also felt that particle physicists were spending far too much time worrying about the nature of atoms, and refracting light, and other relatively mundane matters related to this world that actually exists, and too little time speculating on the nature of worlds that might exist elsewhere.
Here’s the thing: We know that everything we can see around us is made up of some fairly elementary particles, and that various forces, like gravity, help to keep the whole process of existence moving along smoothly without people floating off into the ether or spontaneously collapsing into a muddle of atoms. But suppose that there were other particles, and other forces, operating alongside us, which we couldn’t perceive because they were beyond the limits of our powers? That would indicate that the cosmos was a great deal more complicated and interesting than it already appeared to be.
In one way, we already know that there are hidden forces at work in our own universe, because only 4 percent of the stuff of the cosmos is visible to us. Roughly 70 percent of what remains is labeled “dark energy,” and is the force causing our universe to expand, sending galaxies racing away from one another. The other 25 percent is called “dark matter,” detectable only by its effect on the mass and gravity of galaxies. Dark matter, then, could be part of the hidden world, and where you have matter, you can, in theory, have planets, and life-dark life-assuming that the forces involved are strong enough to hold them all together, as the forces in our own universe are. And what do we know about dark matter? Well, it doesn’t cool down, because if it did it would release heat, and we would be able to detect it.
Hmm. A hidden wo
rld. Dark life. Heat. See where Professor Hilbert was going with this? Ed and Victor could, and just in case they were in any doubt, he wrote the word in big letters upon a sheet of paper and showed it to them. The word was:
HELL
“Suppose,” said Professor Hilbert, “that the portal didn’t really connect us to Hell at all, because all that stuff about Hell and the Devil is just nonsense. It’s a myth. Hell doesn’t exist, and neither does this ‘Great Malevolence.’ What we could have instead is a dark matter world, filled with dark life, and the only way we can connect to it is through the Collider. If we turn the Collider off, we’ll be turning our backs on the greatest scientific discovery of this, or any, age, and endangering the future of the ILC. 26 There’s a Nobel Prize in this, mark my words.”
“Will we get the Nobel Prize too?” asked Ed.
“No,” said Professor Hilbert, “but if I win it, I’ll give you a day off, and a muffin basket.”
“But what about the energy loss?” asked Victor, who knew that they had about as much chance of sharing in Professor Hilbert’s potential Nobel Prize glory as they had of growing feathers and winning first prize at a “Lovely Parrot” competition.
Professor Hilbert smiled in that mad way scientists have of smiling just before the lightning strikes and the monster made up of bits of dead people comes to life and starts looking for someone to blame for plugging him into the mains and lighting him up like a Christmas tree.
“But that’s the best part!” he said. “We should be losing energy!”
“From a vacuum?” Victor did not sound convinced.
“It’s like I told Professor Stefan,” said Hilbert. “We’re searching for the Higgs boson, right?”
“Right,” said Victor, thinking, he’s lost it.
“And we realize that the Higgs boson may be the theoretical link between our world and the hidden universe?”
“Okay.” Really lost it.
“And we’re assuming that the Higgs boson, if it does exist, is present somewhere in the aftermath of the explosions in the Collider?”
The Infernals aka Hell's Bells Page 10
