The Infernals aka Hell's Bells

by John Connolly

  “I’ll deal with Nurd later,” she said. “For now, Samuel Johnson is our priority. You should have come to me before now, Watcher. I am disappointed in you.”

  Had the Watcher been an entity of a different stripe, it might have felt obliged to protest at the unfairness of this, if only to obscure its other reason for remaining silent. After all, Mrs. Abernathy had been variously unconscious, overconcerned with her own vanity, and too keen on finding out the identities of those who were plotting against her to even allow the Watcher into her presence. It wasn’t entirely its fault that it had taken so long to relay Old Ram’s news to her. But the Watcher was not the kind of entity to complain, and had it done so, Mrs. Abernathy would not have listened, so it forced such thoughts from its mind, even as it wondered if thinking them was enough to make it a complainer after all.

  Mrs. Abernathy spun on her heel, and the Watcher followed. Behind her lair was a stone courtyard, and in the courtyard a massive crested basilisk 34 stood, saddled and ready. It hissed a greeting at its mistress as she climbed into the saddle. Spurs of bone emerged from Mrs. Abernathy’s heels, and she urged the creature toward the Forest of Broken Forms, the Watcher shadowing her from above.

  Samuel was no longer angry at his mother. In fact, Samuel could no longer remember what his mother looked like. He knew that he had a mother, once, but he could not picture her in his mind. Likewise his father was a blur, but it didn’t matter. Nothing really mattered. The void coursed through him, emptying him of all feelings and memories, turning him into a husk, a hollow being. Beside Samuel, Boswell whined and tried to lick his master’s hand, but his strength was seeping from him. The sound caused Samuel to turn. He stared down at the dog and struggled to recall his name. Bos-something? Was that it?

  And then even that was gone as the light in his eyes began to die.

  Mrs. Abernathy’s basilisk stopped at the edge of the Forest of Broken Forms, beside the ruins of Old Ram’s home. She searched among the stones, half expecting to see Samuel Johnson buried in the rubble, but there was no sign of the boy, or of Old Ram. She examined the ground, and saw the tracks left by the Great Oak, and she knew what had happened there. With the Watcher at her heels, she entered the forest, the trees recoiling in terror, clearing a path for her until she and the basilisk reached the Great Oak. Unlike its smaller brethren, it showed no fear of her. If anything, it was Mrs. Abernathy who seemed wary of the massive tree, with its coiling roots and its twisted branches. Mrs. Abernathy might have been evil incarnate, and capable of acts of immense cruelty and harm, but the Great Oak was ancient, and strong, and dangerous. The vestiges of its humanity made it so.

  The Great Oak was also insane, the result of millennia of misery and painful, crooked growth. Its madness rendered it unpredictable, and Mrs. Abernathy knew that it would not be beyond the Great Oak’s capabilities to try to hurt her, or trap her with its roots and keep her here for its own amusement, torturing her as it had been tortured for so long, avenging some of its pain by visiting pain on another. She knew she was especially vulnerable now that she was no longer under the protection of the Great Malevolence, and she was glad of the Watcher’s presence beside her.

  “It has been a long time since last you set foot here,” said the Great Oak. “You were not welcome then, and you are not welcome now.”

  “What have you done with Old Ram?”

  “No more than he deserved,” said the Great Oak, and its trunk split open beneath its gaping mouth like a vertical wound, revealing a hollow interior in which Old Ram hung suspended by ivy, moaning softly as branches tugged and tore at him, and roots dug into his flesh.

  “There was a boy with him,” said Mrs. Abernathy.

  “Boy?” said the Great Oak. “I saw no boy.”

  And Mrs. Abernathy heard the surrounding trees laugh.

  “Don’t lie to me. Do you have the boy?”

  “There is no boy here,” said the Great Oak, and Mrs. Abernathy sensed that it spoke the truth.

  “Then let Old Ram go,” she said.

  “And why should I do that, when I enjoy toying with him so much?”

  “I must talk with him, and I can’t do that while you’re hurting him.”

  The ivy uncurled, the roots and branches retreated, and Old Ram was released from bondage. He climbed through the gap in the tree and knelt before Mrs. Abernathy.

  “Thank you,” he said, stroking her feet with his clawed upper hooves. “Thank you, kind mistress, thank you.”

  “The boy,” said Mrs. Abernathy. “Tell me about the boy.”

  “Old Ram was holding him for you, him and his dog. He was sleeping, and he trusted Old Ram. Then Great Oak came and tore Old Ram’s home apart, and the boy escaped. Old Ram saw him crawl away, but Old Ram could do nothing to stop him. It is all the fault of the Great Oak. Punish him! Punish him!”

  Mrs. Abernathy turned to the Great Oak.

  “Is this true?”

  The Great Oak creaked and rustled. “Old Ram had hurt us. It was Old Ram who had to be punished. I did not know that the boy was yours. It was my mistake.”

  The Great Oak lowered two of its biggest branches, as though they were arms and he was extending them in supplication. Suddenly, they slashed at Mrs. Abernathy, smaller branches as sharp as knives radiating from their ends. Its roots erupted from the ground at her feet, twisting around her legs. The Watcher grabbed Mrs. Abernathy and tried to take flight, but now the surrounding trees were closing in and there was no room for the Watcher’s wings to unfold. Mrs. Abernathy’s basilisk spat venom, instantly rotting branches and roots, but the trees were too many, and lengths of ivy coiled around the basilisk’s mouth, holding it closed; and mud and filth were forced into its eyes, obscuring its lethal gaze. Meanwhile Old Ram cowered in the dirt, his hooves curled over his head, bleating in misery and alarm.

  Six thick tentacles erupted from Mrs. Abernathy’s back, topped with sharp beaks that snapped at the branches and nipped at the roots, but the Great Oak was too strong, and too intent upon hurting Mrs. Abernathy now that she was within reach. Slowly, she and the Watcher were being enveloped. Already the Watcher’s arms were pinned to its sides, and Mrs. Abernathy was concealed from the waist down by twisted roots.

  “Come to the Great Oak,” said the old tree. “Come, and be part of us.”

  Mrs. Abernathy’s eyes began to glow whitely. She opened her mouth and clicked her tongue, and a small blue flame appeared between her teeth. She drew a deep breath into her lungs, then exhaled. Fire burst from her lips, a torrent of light and heat that struck at the heart of the Great Oak, igniting it both inside and out. It roared in pain, and instantly its branches and roots began to retreat, freeing Mrs. Abernathy and the Watcher. The Watcher spread its wings and carried them both upward and out of the forest as the other trees bent away from the flames, crying out in fear as the Great Oak’s struggles sent blue sparks in their direction. The basilisk freed itself and tore a path through the remaining trees, and Old Ram fled with it, running on all fours until he found himself at last beside what was left of his home, where Mrs. Abernathy was waiting for him.

  “The boy,” she said. “Which way did he go?”

  Old Ram pointed to his right. “He was hiding behind those boulders, and that was the last Old Ram saw of him, but he could not have gone far. He is a child in a strange land, with only a dog for company. Let Old Ram come with you. Old Ram can help you find him. Old Ram is tired of this place.”

  He looked back at the forest as blue flame rose from its heart, and he shivered.

  “And the Great Oak will recover, and will come again for Old Ram,” he whispered.

  Mrs. Abernathy strode to her basilisk and mounted it. As she did so, she saw two pale demons circling high above, drawn by the flames in the forest, and she knew them to be Abigor’s.

  “Go where you will,” she said. “But if anyone asks you about the boy, deny all knowledge of him. If you do otherwise, I will hear of it, and I will have you tied and bound, a
nd let the Great Oak have its way with you.”

  Old Ram nodded, and thanked her again. Mrs. Abernathy and the Watcher waited until Abigor’s demons had descended to the forest before they took off themselves, traveling fast and true, until the basilisk found the trail of footsteps and paw prints left by Samuel and Boswell.

  And they knew that he was near.

  XXIV

  In Which We Speculate on What, If Anything, Might Be Worse Than Evil

  IF THERE IS ANYTHING worse than evil, it is nothingness. At least evil has a form, and a voice, and a purpose, however depraved. Perhaps some good can even come out of evil: a terrible deed of violence against someone weaker may lead others to act in order to ensure that such a deed is not perpetrated again, whereas before they might have been unaware of the reasons why an individual might behave in such a way, or they might simply have chosen to ignore them. And evil, as we saw with the Blacksmith, always contains within itself the possibility of its own redemption. It is not evil that is the enemy of hope: it is nothingness.

  As Nurd felt Samuel’s life force ebb away, so too did he come to realize just where the boy was. Even in the grim, blasted regions of Hell, there was only one place that could cause such a loss of self, eating away at all the substance of an individual, all that he loved and hated, all that he was and ever would be. It was the Void, the Emptiness, the Eternal Absence that even the Great Malevolence himself feared. So Nurd kept his foot pressed hard upon the accelerator and found himself pulling away from the ice-cream van, loaded down as it was with dwarfs, policemen, and rapidly dwindling supplies of ice cream. But as he drew closer to Samuel, the light in Samuel’s soul was fading. Nurd felt as though he were trying to reach a candle flame before it flickered for the last time, that he might wrap his hands around it and feed it the oxygen it needed to survive. Nurd knew that if Samuel continued to stare into the Void he would eventually be lost entirely, and nobody would ever be able to bring him back. Samuel and Boswell would become like statues of flesh and bone, with an empty place where their spirits once were (for animals have spirits too, and let no one tell you otherwise). Having endured so much, and having been separated by space and time only to be offered the chance of a reunion at last by Mrs. Abernathy’s vengeance, Nurd did not wish to see his friend’s essence sacrificed to the emptiness that underlay the chaos of Hell.

  Faster and faster he drove, until Wormwood put a hand on his arm in warning, for now there were sharp and treacherous stones beneath their wheels. Were they to suffer a puncture or, worse, rupture the engine or break an axle, then Samuel and Boswell would not be saved. Reluctantly Nurd slowed down while high above their heads unseen eyes watched their progress, and reported it to others.

  • • •

  Samuel was almost entirely still. His eyes did not blink, his lips did not open, and he barely seemed to be breathing. Yet had anyone been watching him, they would have seen one small sign of movement. For even as all that had made him what he was-every memory, every thought, every spark of brightness and eccentricity-was being subsumed, his right hand continued to stroke Boswell’s fur, and, in response, his dog’s tail contributed the barest thump on the ground, but a thump nonetheless. Had Boswell not been present, Samuel would already have ceased to exist, leaving nothing more than the shell of a boy seated on the edge of a dark sea; and if Samuel had not been present, Boswell would have been little more than a stuffed animal withering away. But if a child loves an animal, and is loved in turn, there will always be a connection between them: they are spirits intertwined. And if the Void had feelings, which it clearly did not, it might well have experienced a sense of frustration at its inability to break down the defenses of the boy and the dog. Deep inside each of them was a wall protecting the best of themselves, but it was crumbling at last, like a dam finally giving way to the flood, and soon they would be drowned. The movements of Samuel’s hand began to slow, and the thumps of Boswell’s tail became less frequent, and their eyes grew dark as never-ending night fell upon their hearts.

  A hand touched Samuel’s shoulder, and gently turned him from the void. And Boswell was carefully gathered up, and words of comfort were whispered into his ear.

  “Good dog. Loyal dog. Brave Boswell.”

  Samuel heard a name being called, over and over, and he understood that it was his own.

  He looked up and saw four dwarfs, two policemen, and a man dressed in white offering him an ice cream. He saw Boswell being held by what looked like a bald rodent in overalls, and the little dog was licking the rodent’s face.

  And he saw Nurd. Samuel buried his head against his friend’s chest, and for the first time since his arrival in that terrible place, he allowed himself to cry.

  Old Ram left the forest behind, sulking and muttering his discontent all the way, his gaze focused inward, fixed upon his own sufferings. Sometimes a good turn is the worst that you can do for a certain type of individual, because he will hate you for putting him in your debt. Mrs. Abernathy had spared Old Ram any further misery, and had permitted him to leave the place of his banishment, but Old Ram had wanted more: he had wanted influence, and recognition. He had wanted power. Instead he had been left to wander in the wilderness. He began to think that he was now worse off than he had been before. After all, he used to have a roof over his head, and fuel for his fire, but what did he have now? No roof, no fuel, and the cold was seeping into his bones. For this, he blamed Mrs. Abernathy.

  “She hates Old Ram,” he whispered to himself. “She thinks Old Ram is worthless, but Old Ram is not. Old Ram was great once, and Old Ram could be great again, but none will give Old Ram the chance that Old Ram deserves. Poor Old Ram! Poor forsaken Old Ram!”

  So caught up was he in bitterness that he failed to notice the winged horse alight before him, and the flight of demons that quietly descended behind him. It was only when the horse blew a bad-tempered blast of air through its nostrils in warning that Old Ram looked up to find Duke Abigor staring down at him.

  “You are far from home, Old Ram,” said Abigor. “Were you not banished, and forbidden to leave the precincts of the forest?”

  “I was, my lord, but Mrs. Abernathy freed me.”

  “Did she, now? And why would she do that?”

  Old Ram, mindful of Mrs. Abernathy’s injunction to remain silent about the circumstances of his freedom, said nothing, but Duke Abigor was as clever as he was ruthless. He knew much about Old Ram, and was aware that, like so many who had found themselves damned to the Infernal Regions, his vanity was his weakness. Were Abigor to threaten him, or torture him, Old Ram might simply endure his sufferings with clenched teeth, if only to prove to Abigor that, humbled though he might be, Old Ram had his pride. No, there were easier ways to deal with Old Ram.

  “Well, no matter,” said Abigor airily. “It strikes me only that you don’t sound very pleased, even though your long period of exile has come to an end. Surely such generosity of spirit, such magnanimity, on the part of Mrs. Abernathy merits a greater show of gratitude?”

  He watched Old Ram twist and writhe, a pantomime of hurt, and envy, and loathing.

  “Gratitude.” Old Ram spat the word. “For what? It cost her nothing, and left Old Ram with nothing. Old Ram tried to help her. It’s not Old Ram’s fault that-”

  Old Ram stopped talking. Mrs. Abernathy had warned him not to speak of the boy, but she wasn’t here. Duke Abigor was here, though, and Old Ram wondered why that might be. Abigor’s presence, thought Old Ram, might be used to some advantage.

  “Go on,” said Abigor. “I’m listening.”

  “Old Ram has been alone for a long time, my lord,” said Old Ram carefully. “Old Ram seeks a master. Old Ram would be a good servant.”

  “I already have more servants than I need. You would have to offer me something that no one else can.”

  Old Ram’s yellow eyes narrowed with cunning.

  “Mrs. Abernathy made Old Ram promise not to tell, but it may be that Old Ram was wrong to make that pro
mise.”

  “Promises are made to be broken,” said Abigor. “Particularly promises made in the face of a threat.”

  “Old Ram has no duty of loyalty to Mrs. Abernathy.”

  “No, he does not. After all, what fealty do you owe to the one who banished you? The greater fault is hers, not yours. So, what can you offer to prove your loyalty to me?”

  “I can offer you news,” said Old Ram, “news of a human child.”

  Mrs. Abernathy’s basilisk reached the edge of the Void just behind the Watcher, and she quickly turned her mount’s head away from the emptiness so that neither of them looked upon it for too long. Even the Watcher kept its head down as it examined the tracks upon the ground. Its words echoed in her head, for she could hear its thoughts.

  It is the boy and his dog. They were here. Others came and took them away.

  “Others?” demanded Mrs. Abernathy. “What others?”

  The Watcher sniffed the ground.

  Nurd. And humans. Seven humans.

  “Can you track them?”

  The Watcher stared out over the stony ground, finding the places in which the stones had been disturbed, distinguishing the marks of wheeled vehicles.

  Yes, but they travel fast.

  “Then we will travel faster.”

  She moved on, not even checking to make sure that the Watcher was following, and so she did not see it pause, its red brow furrowing. All of this was wrong, thought the Watcher. It has all spiraled out of control. My master is mad, and my mistress may be madder still. Something must be done. The bells have been silent for too long. Perhaps the time is coming when they must peal again…