“It’s the ears, isn’t it?” said the demon. “I just can’t seem to get those right.”
The young man leaned forward and whispered something threateningly into one of the ears in question.
“You know,” said the demon in reply, “I don’t think you can flush something all the way to China from here.”
As it turned out the demon was right: you couldn’t flush something all the way from Biddlecombe to China.
Still, he had to give the young man credit.
He certainly tried.
Over on Lovecraft Grove, Maria’s mum, Mrs. Mayer, was washing the teatime dishes when she saw movement among the rosebushes in her back garden. The rosebushes were her husband’s pride and joy. Mr. Mayer was not a man with very green fingers. In fact, he was the kind of man who, by and large, couldn’t even grow weeds, and yet something strange and wonderful had happened as soon as he put his mind to the cultivation of roses. When he and Mrs. Mayer had bought the house on Lovecraft Grove, there had been a solitary, sad-looking rosebush at the end of the back garden. Somehow, it had survived neglect, bad weather, and the deaths of the other rosebushes that had, judging by the rotting stumps, once grown there. Mr. Mayer seemed to find a soul mate in that rosebush, and was determined to save it. Mrs. Mayer didn’t hold out much hope, given her husband’s previous forays into horticulture, but she held her tongue and did not suggest that he try a cactus instead.
So Mr. Mayer had bought every book on the cultivation of roses that he could find. He consulted experts, and haunted garden centers, and lavished the little rosebush, Mrs. Mayer sometimes felt, with more care and attention than he did his wife and children.
And the rosebush began to flourish. Mrs. Mayer could still recall the morning that they had woken to find the first bud poking tentatively from its branches, soon to be followed by others that burst into bright, red bloom. It was the only time she had ever seen her husband cry. His eyes shone, and a pair of big, salty tears rolled down his cheeks, and she believed that she had loved him more in that moment than ever before.
Over the years, other bushes had been added to the garden. Mr. Mayer had even begun hybridizing, creating strange new flowers of his own. Now it was the experts who came to Mr. Mayer, and he would make them mugs of strong tea and they would spend hours in the garden, in all weathers, examining the rosebushes. Mr. Mayer was generous with both his expertise and the flowers themselves, and rarely did a visitor leave the garden without a cutting from one of the roses in his hand. Mr. Mayer would watch them go, happy in the knowledge that the sisters and brothers of his roses would soon flourish in strange new gardens.
Only one bush was not permitted to be touched, and that was the original one that Mr. Mayer had found in the garden. Now big and strong, its flowers were the brightest and prettiest in the beds. It was Mr. Mayer’s pride and joy. If he could have taken it to bed with him each night to keep it warm in winter, then he would have, even if it meant being pricked occasionally by its thorns. That was how much Mr. Mayer loved the rosebush.
Now there were shapes moving through the beds. It was foggy out, so Mrs. Mayer could not discern precise forms, but they looked big. Teenage trick-or-treaters, she thought,pretending to be monsters. Silly sods. Her husband would have their hides.
“Barry!” she shouted. “Bar-eeeeee!”
Oooh, he’d teach them a lesson, make no mistake about that.
Upstairs the Mayers’ son, Christopher, was putting together a model aircraft at the desk by his bedroom window. Actually, he was sort of putting it together. He had been distracted by a message from his sister on his cell phone. It had been a bit garbled, but a few words had stood out. Those words had been “monsters,” “Hell,” “demonic horde,” and “warn Mum and Dad.”
Christopher had not, of course, warned his mum and dad. He might have been younger than his sister, but he wasn’t stupid. If he started babbling about demons and Hell to his dad, he’d be locked up, or at the very least given a sound telling off. Still, Maria had sounded very serious about it all. If it was a joke, she’d clearly been doing her best to convince her brother otherwise.
He was mulling over all this, and wondering how he was going to separate two parts of a tank that had accidentally stuck to each other, when he caught sight of the figures in the rose garden. Christopher’s eyesight was very keen and, aided by a brief break in the fog, he had a different impression from his mum of the beings currently trampling his father’s beloved bushes. They weren’t trick-or-treaters, not unless trick-or-treaters had somehow found a way to grow seven feet tall, add spectacular horns to their heads, and contrive to make their eyes glow a deep, disturbing red.
“Crikey,” he said aloud. He knew that Maria hadn’t been lying. Maria never lied.
It was the demonic horde. There were really were demons here.
“Bar -eeeeeeeeeeeee!” Mrs. Mayer called for the third time, just as her son burst into the kitchen.
“Mum!” he said. “It’s—”
“Not now, Christopher,” said Mrs. Mayer. “There are people trampling around in your dad’s rose garden.” She walked to the end of the stairs and shouted, “Barry! I’m talking to you.”
“What is it?” came an irritated voice from upstairs. “I’m in the bathroom.”
“There’s someone in your rose garden.”
“I said—”
“It’s not people, Mum,” Christopher interrupted. “It’s things. It’s the demonic horde.”
“The what?”
“The demonic horde.”
“Oh.”
She walked to the kitchen door. “Barry! Christopher says the demonic horde are in your rose garden. They must be a band or something.”
“What? In my rose garden?”
They heard scuffling from above, and a toilet flushing. Seconds later, Mr. Mayer appeared at the top of the stairs, fixing the belt on his trousers.
“I hope you washed your hands,” said Mrs. Mayer.
“Washed my hands?” said Mr. Mayer. “I know what I’ll do with my hands.”
Christopher’s dad was a big man who had boxed at the amateur level until he started being knocked down too often for his liking. He now worked for the telephone company, and Christopher and his mum had once passed in the car while his father and another man who was nearly as big were together lifting wooden telephone poles, unaided by machinery. It was one of the most impressive sights Christopher had ever seen.
Unfortunately, while Mr. Mayer might have been the equal of most men, and was still pretty good with his fists, Christopher didn’t believe that he was fully aware of the threat currently making its way toward the house from the direction of the rose garden.
“Dad,” he said. “I think you should hang on for a moment.”
“Hang on?” said his father incredulously. “Hang on? There are roses at stake, son. Nobody, and I mean nobody, messes with my roses.”
“That’s just it,” said Christopher, his frustration growing. Didn’t anyone in this family listen? “It’s not a ‘body,’ it’s a—”
But it was too late. His dad had flung open the back door, and was preparing to unleash the full force of his rage upon the unfortunates who had trespassed on the most sacred patch of his little empire. His face was bright red, and his mouth was open, but no sound was coming out. Instead, he was staring at the enormous demon standing five feet away from him. It looked like a hairy black yak that had managed to stand up on its hind legs and modify its hooves with hooked claws. Along the way it had clearly decided that chewing grass was infinitely less fun than chewing something much meatier, so its blunt vegetarian molars had been replaced with sharp, white, tearing teeth. Its eyes were bright red, and smoke was pouring from its nostrils. It drew back its lips from its teeth and growled at Mr. Mayer.
“Right,” said Mr. Mayer. “Well, we’ll say no more about it, then.”
He closed the door and said, in a very small voice, “Run.”
“Sorry, Barry?”
said Mrs. Mayer, whose view of what lay on the other side of the door had been blocked by her husband, and who was still under the impression that something needed to be done about the trick-or-treaters in their back garden.
“Run,” said Mr. Mayer, in a slightly louder voice, then: “RUN!”
A heavy body hit the back door very hard, rattling it in its frame. Mr. Mayer grabbed his wife with one hand, his son with the other, and dragged them into the hallway just as the door burst from its hinges and landed on the kitchen floor. Mrs. Mayer looked over her shoulder and screamed, but her scream was drowned out by a bellowing from behind them.
“It’s okay, love,” said Mr. Mayer, slamming the kitchen door, although he wasn’t entirely sure how much good that would do, given what had just happened to the back door. “Don’t be frightened.” He didn’t know why he was telling his wife not to be frightened, as there seemed a perfectly good reason to be very frightened, but that was what one did at times like this.
“Frightened?” said Mrs. Mayer, yanking herself free from her husband’s grasp and storming into the living room. “I’m not frightened. That’s a new kitchen, that is. I’m not just going to stand by while some bull thing destroys it.”
She moved with determination to the fireplace and picked up a poker.
“Mum,” said Christopher. “It’s a demon. I don’t think a poker will hurt it.”
“It will where I’m going to put it,” said Mrs. Mayer.
Mr. Mayer looked at Christopher, and shrugged.
“You have to stop her, Dad,” said Christopher.
“I think I’d rather face the demon,” said Mr. Mayer as his wife pushed past him. ‘You know your mum when she has her mind set on something.”
He grabbed a pair of coal tongs and followed his wife. From behind the kitchen door came another bellow, and the sound of dishes smashing on the tiled floor. Mrs. Mayer entered the kitchen to find the demon standing amid the wreckage of her second-best crockery.
“Right, you!” said Mrs. Mayer. “That’s quite enough of that.”
The demon turned, bared its teeth, and caught a poker straight between the eyes. It staggered slightly, then seemed about to recover itself when the next blow sent it to its knees. Meanwhile a second demon, smaller than the first, had just entered through the back door. Mr. Mayer caught it by the snout with the coal tongs and twisted hard. The demon let out a pained howl as Mr. Mayer forced it backward and then, holding on to the tongs with his left hand, began to bang the demon across the head with a dustbin lid.
“That’s.” Crash! “For.” Smash! “Messing.” Thud! “Around.” Whack! “With.” Thump! “My.” Whomp! “Roses!”
When he had finished, the demon lay unmoving upon the ground. The red light faded from its eyes, before disappearing entirely. In the kitchen, Mrs. Mayer was growing tired of hitting the demon with the poker, which was just as well as it had stopped moving some time before, and its eyes had also gone dark.
Mr. Mayer stood in the yard, the tongs in one hand, the dustbin lid in the other, like a knight of old, albeit one who couldn’t afford proper weapons. From the rose garden, two more demons watched him warily as their fallen comrades began to disappear in wisps of foul-smelling purple smoke.
“Now listen here,” said Mr. Mayer. “I’m going to count to five, and by then you’d better be off those roses, or you’ll get what your friends got. One.”
While the demons had no idea what Mr. Mayer was saying, they were smart enough to understand what he meant.
“Two.”
He began moving in their direction. Mrs. Mayer appeared behind him, brandishing the poker. The demons exchanged a look, and the universal nod of those who have decided that it would be a smart thing to make themselves very scarce as soon as demonically possible. They squatted down, and with a single leap propelled themselves over the six-foot-high garden wall, then, not to put too fine a point on it, scarpered.
Mr. Mayer walked to the rose garden where he stared down upon his beloved bushes, now trampled into the dirt. Only one remained standing: the original bush. It had survived everything that man and nature could throw at it, and it wasn’t about to be crushed by any horde, demonic or otherwise.
Mr. Mayer lay down his tong sword and dustbin lid shield and patted its bare branches fondly.
“It’s all right, little one,” he said. “We’ll start again come spring …”
XXI
In Which the Verger Is Assaulted, and a Very Unpleasant Person Comes Back to Life
THE VICAR AND VERGER were preparing the Church of St.Timidus for the following day’s early morning service when they heard what sounded like a brick dislodging from the stonework high above their heads and falling to the ground outside. Both men looked a little concerned, as well they might. The church was very old, and in a poor state of repair. Reverend Ussher was always worried about the roof falling in, or the brickwork collapsing. Now it seemed that his worst fears were coming true.
“What was that?” he asked the verger. “A slate falling?”
“It sounded a bit heavier than a slate,” said Mr. Berkeley, who was a fat little man. Both the vicar and the verger were fat little men. They had played Tweedledum and Tweedledee in the local drama society’s version of Alice in Wonderland earlier that year, and very good they were too.
The two men went to the front door of the church and unlocked it. They were about to step outside when a small, stunned stone gargoyle staggered from a nearby holly bush, its heavy wings beating slowly. It was a most ugly creature, more so even than the average gargoyle. Bishop Bernard the Bad had supervised its creation, just as he had every other detail of the church’s construction. This explained why it was a dark, gloomy building, and why all of the faces and creatures carved on its stonework were hideous and scary.
The vicar and verger watched, openmouthed, as the gargoyle rubbed its head. Small streaks of blue lightning flashed across its body. It coughed once, and spat out what looked like old pigeon feathers.
The gargoyle was very confused. It had wings, but it didn’t seem able to fly. When it had come to life, the first thing it had done was attempt to soar elegantly into the air. Unfortunately, things made out of stone don’t tend to soar terribly well, so the gargoyle had simply dropped off its perch. Even though it wasn’t very intelligent, it knew the difference between flying and falling. It now also knew the difference between landing and just hitting the ground very hard.
More gargoyles, each one uglier than the last, began to descend upon the church lawn. One of them struck a tree and broke on impact, but most seemed to survive the drop more or less intact. Once they had recovered from their shock, they began to converge on the main door of the church where Reverend Ussher and Mr. Berkeley were standing, rooted to the spot in amazement. They might have remained that way too, had the verger not been hit on the side of the head with a sharp piece of masonry.
“Oh, you’re in trouble now,” said a voice. Mr. Berkeley looked to his left and saw that the faces carved into the stonework of the church had also come to life, and the head of a monk, with a pair of hands supporting his chin, was talking to him. At least the hands should have been supporting his chin, but one of them had clearly just thrown a piece of brickwork at the verger’s head.
The verger tapped the vicar’s shoulder.
“The monk on the wall is talking to us,” he said.
“Oh,” said the vicar. He tried to sound surprised, but couldn’t quite manage it.
“Oi!” said the stone monk. “Fatties! I said, You’re in trouble now.’”
“Why would that be?” asked the vicar, tearing his eyes from the approaching gargoyles.
“End of the world,” said the stone monk. “Hell is opening up. The Big Bad is coming. The Great Malevolence. Wouldn’t want to be in your shoes. He doesn’t like humans.”
The stone monk seemed to consider something for a moment.
“Actually he doesn’t like anyone, but especially not humans.”
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“I say,” said the vicar, “you’re part of the church’s stonework. Aren’t you supposed to be on our side?”
“Nah,” said the stone monk. “Infused with the bishop’s evil, we are. Couldn’t be nice if we tried.”
“The bishop’s evil?” said Reverend Ussher. He thought about that for a moment, until another piece of masonry was picked from the church and thrown hard at the verger, who did a little skip in order to avoid it.
“Oooh,” said the monk. “Tubby’s a dancer.”
“You’re a nasty piece of stonework!” said the verger.
The monk stuck its fingers in its ears and blew a raspberry at him.
“Sticks and stones, Tubby,” it said. “Sticks and stones …”
One of the gargoyles reached the vicar’s foot, opened its mouth, and bit down hard. Fortunately, the vicar had been working in his garden that afternoon, and was still wearing his favorite steel-toed work boots. The gargoyle lost its fangs and immediately looked a bit sorry for itself.
“Inside,” said Reverend Ussher. “Quickly!”
He and the verger retreated into the church and locked the door. Outside, they could hear gargoyles beating against the wood and scratching at the lock, but the door was very old and very thick, and it would take more than a bunch of foot-high stone monsters to break it down.
“What do we do now?” asked the verger.
“We’ll call the police,” said the vicar.
“And what’ll we tell them?”
“That the church is under siege from gargoyles,” said the vicar, as if this was the most obvious thing in the world.
“Right,” said the verger. “That’ll work.”
But before he could say anything else he was distracted by another sound, as of one stone rubbing against another, coming from the little room, to the right of the main altar, used mainly to store old candlesticks, spare chairs, and the verger’s broken bicycle. The room was kept unlocked, since there was little in it that anyone would be bothered to steal. The floor was made entirely of stone, but one of the slabs had a name on it, and it was this slab that was now moving up and down, as though something was pushing at it from beneath.
The Gates (2009) Page 13
