The Book of Doom

by Barry Hutchison

  From below they heard the sound of someone whistling along with the muzak. Quietly, they leaned out over the edge and looked down at the corridor beneath the one they were on. They couldn’t see much from where they were, but they spotted a leathery green arm and part of a clawed foot striding along on the second circle.

  The hand carried what looked like a battery-operated drill. The drill bit whizzed round a few times, then the creature stopped whistling. They heard him clear his throat, a door creaked open, and the muzak was drowned out by a chorus of wretched moans.

  “Right then, you ’orrible little buggers,” cried the demon with the drill. “Say hello to my little friend!”

  The groans grew in volume, before the door slammed closed and silenced them. Angelo looked sideways at Zac.

  “Well, maybe it’s not that nice.”

  Zac turned away from the edge and looked along the corridors. “Still, this isn’t what I expected,” he said. “I thought Hell was all labyrinths and dungeons and lakes of fire, not... not... carpets and corridors and—”

  “Escalators,” said Angelo.

  Zac paused. “What? Where?”

  “Over there,” Angelo said, pointing to a spot about a third of the way round the top corridor. Two sets of moving stairs stood side by side, one leading down, the other coming back up.

  Zac’s eyes followed the second circle round until he saw another pair of escalators connecting it with the floor below. A few dozen metres along from those, more moving stairs went between the third and fourth circles.

  “No,” Zac frowned. “It can’t be that easy. Can it?”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, because it’s Hell. Hell’s not supposed to be easy.”

  “Stop complaining,” Angelo grinned. “You always want things to be harder than they are.” He pointed right down to the bottom floor. “The book’s down there, isn’t it? The Book of Everything?”

  “Apparently so.”

  “Come on, I’ll race you. Last one to the stairs is a Judas Iscariot.”

  “Angelo, wait!”

  It was no use. The boy was off and running, his bare feet thudding on the zigzag carpet, his arms pumping furiously as he sped towards the escalator.

  And then a door was opening just along the corridor in front of him.

  And then a demon was stepping out, a blood-stained cleaver in his misshapen hands.

  The demon looked up. Angelo stumbled to a stop. Their eyes locked.

  And that was when the screaming started.

  HE DEMON CONTINUED to scream for just a few seconds, then stopped almost as suddenly as he had started.

  “What in here’s name do you think you’re playing at?” he demanded, clutching at his bare chest. He nudged the door closed behind him and shot Angelo a dirty look. “You nearly gave me a sodding heart attack!”

  Angelo glanced at Zac, then back to the figure in the doorway. “Um... sorry.”

  The demon was short and squat with a big nose and pointed ears. His skin was a burned shade of brown, with red nodules growing from his cheeks like tiny mushrooms. He wore a very small, very tight pair of satin gold pants, and it was only as he glided slowly forward that Zac realised he was also wearing roller skates.

  “So you should be. Running about like that, scaring people. It shouldn’t be allowed.” He wiped his nose on the back of his arm, and eyed the tattered remains of Angelo’s clothes. “Here, you ain’t escaped, have you?”

  Angelo quickly shook his head.

  “You sure?” He looked both boys up and down. “Where you come from, then, if you ain’t escap— Ulk!”

  The tip of a dart dug into the demon’s flesh where his neck met his shoulder. A long green tongue unfurled from within his mouth and his eyes rolled backwards in their sockets. His feet slid out from beneath him and his forehead hit the carpet with a slightly hollow thunk.

  Angelo stared accusingly at Zac’s gun. “Do you have to shoot everyone we meet?”

  “Well, maybe if you listened to me and didn’t go running off, I wouldn’t have to! In future, do as you’re told, OK?”

  “Why, what will you do? Shoot me too?”

  Zac pushed past him. “Wouldn’t be the first time,” he mumbled, stepping up to the slumbering demon. They both peered down at him.

  “Maybe you should steal his clothes,” Angelo suggested. “You know, so you’re in disguise. That’s what Indiana Jones does.”

  Zac’s eyes went to the gold satin hot pants and skates. “Yeah. I think I’ll leave it,” he said. He turned to Angelo. “I think you should wait here.”

  “What? Why?” asked Angelo.

  “Because I don’t know what else we’ll meet, and I’ve only got one dart left.”

  Angelo counted on his fingers. “You’ve got six left. You’ve only shot two and Argus gave you eight.”

  “I dropped some,” Zac replied, thinking fast.

  “That was clumsy, Mr Butterfingers,” Angelo scolded. “It doesn’t matter, I’m coming. Gabriel said I had to stick close to you, so that’s what I’m going to do. Besides,” he added, “I feel safer with you around.”

  “I wish I could say the same,” Zac said. He sighed. “Fine. But remember, the lower we get, the more dangerous it becomes. Keep calm. The last thing I need is for you to freak out on me.”

  Angelo gave a little laugh. “I don’t freak out.”

  “Yes, you do,” Zac replied. “You just never remember afterwards.” He stepped on to the escalator and began the descent to the circle below. “Now, come on. Stay close and stay quiet.”

  The second circle of Hell was virtually identical to the first. The carpet was the same. It had the same frosted-glass barrier round the inside curve. The only difference was the doors.

  The doors on the floor above had been glossy white. The ones on the second circle were a sort of creamy brown colour. Aside from that small difference, and the fact that there was no unconscious demon lying on this floor, the circles were virtually indistinguishable.

  They moved quietly, keeping low so the glass would hide them from anything that might emerge from one of the doors on the opposite side of the circle. Zac slipped the gun back inside his jacket. He wanted to keep the last dart until he really needed it. If something stepped out of one of the doors ahead of them, he’d have to find some other way of dealing with it.

  Fortunately, nothing did. They made it to the second escalator in under a minute and let it carry them down to the floor below. The third circle looked just as empty as the others. The doors were a coppery shade of brown and the muzak sounded just a little louder and more grating, but otherwise it was nothing they hadn’t seen before.

  “See,” Angelo grinned. “Easy. I told you you worry too much.”

  As if it had been standing in the wings waiting for its cue, an alarm began to ring. It was an old-fashioned clang-clang-clang, like someone was repeatedly striking a bell. The sound drowned out the muzak and carried all the way from the first circle to the last.

  On every floor, doors began to open. Demons and monsters and things Zac couldn’t describe stepped into the corridors, grumbling in annoyance or looking around in confusion. It was only a matter of time before—

  “Oi!” shouted someone by the door on their left. “You two. What you playing at?”

  “Run!” Zac cried, grabbing Angelo and powering along the corridor. They clattered past another door, then the next one along swung open and something large and heavily armoured ducked out and blocked the way.

  “What do we do?” Angelo yelped. “What do we do?”

  Zac turned and grabbed for the handle of the door they had passed. “In here,” he said, throwing open the door and shoving Angelo inside.

  “No, no, what are you doing?” the boy squealed, but Zac leaped in behind him and pushed the door closed with a slam. He jammed his foot and his shoulder against it, trying to stop the demons from coming in. But no demons came. The door did not move.

  Still keeping h
is weight against the wood, Zac turned and looked into the room they had entered. It was dark in there. The only light came from an illuminated EXIT sign directly above his head. It threw a weak glow down the door, and in a faint puddle round his feet.

  “Angelo,” he whispered into the darkness. “You OK? Where are you?”

  The only reply was a soft hissing, like static on a radio or rain falling on a window far overhead.

  “Angelo?” he said again. “Stop mucking about. Where are you?”

  The darkness kept hissing, but from Angelo there came no reply.

  Zac dragged his foot a few centimetres from the door, ready to jam it again if anything tried to come through. Nothing did. Whatever the demons were doing, they weren’t trying to get into this room.

  “Come on, Angelo,” he said, raising his voice a little. “I swear if you’re messing around I’ll kill you myself.”

  He opened the backpack and pulled out a slim black torch Argus had given him. It was waterproof, but not completely Styx proof, it seemed. The glow flickered erratically when he switched it on, sending shadows scurrying spider-like up and down the walls.

  He turned the light towards the nearest wall. It blinked and flashed like the Morse Code of a madman, but the light was enough to let Zac see the wallpaper. In that first glimpse, he’d thought he had recognised it. Now he knew he did, and it made the blood become ice in his veins.

  It was his wallpaper. Or rather, it had been. It was the wallpaper from the flat he and his granddad had lived in years ago, before Zac had scraped enough money together for them to rent a bigger place. The walls here were all mottled with damp and riddled with rot.

  Around him, the hissing grew just a little louder. Zac turned away from the wallpaper, pointed the flickering torch, and stepped onwards into the dark.

  “Zac? Zac? Where are you?”

  Even to himself, Angelo’s voice sounded shrill and pathetic, but he was lost and afraid and he couldn’t care less what he sounded like right at that moment.

  He had been shoved through into a room that was in near darkness. Then the closing door had cut off all light from the outside and the blackness had swallowed him whole. He had been trying to find the door and Zac ever since, but whichever direction he reached out in he found nothing.

  Eventually, when he realised he was completely, hopelessly lost, Angelo sat down on the carpeted floor and crossed his legs. There was only one thing for it.

  He screwed his eyes tight shut, as he had been taught to do centuries ago. He gripped his knees and clenched his jaw and concentrated with everything he had. His face turned a worrying shade of purple in the darkness.

  “Hng. Come... on...” he hissed through his gritted teeth. It had been a long time since he had attempted this, and even longer since he’d succeeded. But it had to work now. It had to. “Do... or do not. There is... no... try! Hnnnng.”

  A small circle of light fizzled into existence above his head, like a mini version of the neon O in the Eyedol sign. Angelo’s body sagged as he let out a shaky breath. He reached up and touched the halo. It hummed faintly beneath his fingers. His hand moved down to his temple. He rubbed it gently and groaned as he stood up.

  “I’m going to pay for that in the morning,” he mumbled, but at least he could now see, even if it was only a few metres in every direction. What he saw was nothing. Nothing but carpet on all sides.

  Angelo pointed north, south, east and west. “Eenie, meenie, minie, mo,” he whispered, then he picked a direction and he began to walk.

  The beam of the torch fizzled and flashed. Zac gave the lens a tap and the light settled for a few seconds. Not that he really needed it. His feet remembered the way all by themselves.

  His bedroom led out into a narrow hallway – bathroom to the right, everything else to the left. Six or seven shuffled steps took him to the other end of the hall. Four doors stood there. One led out on to the communal stairway. Another was a cupboard crammed full of toys and other old junk.

  The door directly on his right led through to the living room, which in turn connected with the kitchen. The door just ahead and on his left had been his granddad’s bedroom. He shone the flickering torch at that door and saw the handle was still hanging limp and broken, just as it had been when they’d moved out.

  The hissing of the static was louder on his right, and so that was where he decided to go. Gripping the torch handle tightly, Zac pushed open the living-room door and stepped through into a nightmare.

  NGELO STOPPED BEFORE a familiar white door. It was his door. The one that led into his bedroom. That much was clear. What wasn’t clear, was why it was in Hell.

  But it was his door, and in Angelo’s mind that made it safe. Or safer than doors that weren’t his, at least. With the glow of his halo lighting the way, he pushed the door open and stepped into his bedroom.

  A demon waited for him inside. Angelo knew it was a demon because he was dressed like a demon. He wore what looked like red pyjamas and a red cape and he held a trident – also red – in one clawed hand. He had a tail with an arrowhead tip. It drooped down and touched the floor behind him. His horns were small, his stomach wasn’t. The bottom of it bulged out beneath the pyjama top and hung hairy and bare over the waistband of the pyjama trousers.

  The demon wasn’t much taller than Angelo. What was left of his thinning hair was scraped across a head that looked to be around twenty per cent larger than it should have been. All in all, he would’ve just looked like a slightly odd, middle-aged man in an ill-fitting Halloween costume, had it not been for the tiny flickering flames at the centre of each of his eyes.

  “There you are,” said the demon, more cheerfully than might have been expected. “At last. I’ve been wondering when you’d turn up.”

  Angelo screamed and turned to run, but there was no door behind him, just a blank bedroom wall. Pressing his back against the wallpaper, Angelo faced the demon.

  “Wh-who are you?” he gulped. “What are you doing in my bedroom?”

  The demon glanced back briefly over his shoulder. “What, me?”

  “Yes, you!”

  “Right, yes,” said the demon. “Sorry.” He drew himself up to his full, unimpressive height. “I am Murmur, Earl of Hell, and I have been tasked with—”

  “My poster!” Angelo cried sharply. He stared in horror at his poster of Jesus. A moustache and beard had been drawn on to Christ in black marker pen. “Who did that? Was that you?”

  Murmur’s eyes went down to the pen in his hand, then back to Angelo. He quickly hid the hand behind his back. “Uh... nope.”

  “It was so! You drew a beard on Jesus.”

  Murmur looked mildly embarrassed. “OK, yes. Well, I’m a demon. I had to do something to it. What would everyone else say if I’d passed up a chance like that?”

  Angelo shook his head in dismay. “But, I mean... why did you draw a beard? He’s already got a beard.”

  “I know, I know,” Murmur said. “Well, I mean, I didn’t want to ruin it, did I?”

  “Didn’t you?” asked Angelo, surprised at that.

  “Course not,” said Murmur. He leaned in closer, forcing Angelo to press himself harder against the wall. “Between you and me, I think it’s one of his better ones. He’s usually all crucified and that. Nice to see him cracking a smile for once.”

  Angelo looked the demon up and down. So far, he didn’t appear very demonic.

  “What do you want? Why are you here?”

  “What? Oh, yeah, right,” Murmur said. He raised a clawed finger, then began patting across the front of his pyjama top. “One sec. I know it’s here somewhere. Aha, here we go.”

  There was a rustle of paper as the demon unfolded a yellowing sheet of A4. He gave a shy smile as he positioned a pair of reading glasses on the bridge of his nose.

  “Here we are now,” he said, leaning his head back and squinting down at the paper. “By order of Lucifuge Rofocale, Grand Governor of Hell, upon encountering an intruder I am in
structed to tear their flesh asunder and rip open the very...” Murmur’s voice trailed off. His lips continued to move as he read in near silence. “Disembowl,” he mumbled with a frown. “Feast on...”

  The demon’s puffy red skin paled a shade. He brought the page closer to his face, as if unable to believe what he was reading. “That’s a bit much,” he concluded, and he quietly refolded the paper and slipped it back into his inside pocket. Next he took off his glasses. The arms gave a click as he folded them together. “No, don’t think we’ll bother with that,” he said. “Not really got the stomach for it these days.”

  Angelo was still pressing himself flat against the wall. His legs were beginning to ache from the effort. “So can I go, then?” he asked.

  Murmur gave a long, sad sigh. “No, ’fraid not.” He glanced up and around, as if checking they were alone. “I don’t have much time. I’m not really supposed to be here, but, well, there’s something I want to talk to you about.” He lowered himself down on to the end of Angelo’s bed, idly picked up a comic from the bedside table and flicked quickly through it. He put the comic back down, then quietly cleared his throat.

  “Tell me, Angelo,” the demon said. “Gabriel and Michael. What did they tell you about your father?”

  “What’s it got to do with you?” Angelo asked.

  “Please,” said Murmur. “What did they tell you?”

  Angelo faltered. “That he was human. They told me he was human.”

  Murmur stood up. He nodded, as if a lifetime of suspicions had just been confirmed. “Yeah, I thought they might have said that. But, well, you see, they were lying, Angelo,” Murmur said. He opened his arms wide and smiled in a way that looked like an apology. “I am your father.”

  Zac had been right. The hissing was static from a radio. Specifically, it was static from his granddad’s radio, which sat on the coffee table in the centre of the small living room.

  In the flickering glow of the torch, he saw his granddad’s armchair. It faced away from the door, as it had always done, angled so the old man could sit and look out of the window at the world beyond. But the window was gone. In its place was a rectangle of grey bricks, the mortar between them crumbling away.