The Book of Doom

by Barry Hutchison

  The light dimmed, but before it did, Zac caught sight of the top of his granddad’s head, visible just above the chair’s high back.

  “Granddad?” he said, but the word came out as a croak. “Granddad, it’s me. It’s Zac.”

  The old man in the chair did not move. Zac shook some life back into the torch and stepped further into the room.

  “This is a trick,” he reminded himself. “This is not real.”

  And yet it was so real. Almost too real, as if everything that had happened since the days in this flat were a dream from which he was only now waking, like they’d never moved to the new house, never escaped this grotty little place.

  The goldfish bowl sat on the table beside the radio. The water was grey and murky, with green scum on the glass. The fish was no longer zipping through the water, but floating limply near the top instead.

  The dead fish made horrible sense. Of course it was dead. It had to be dead. In the other world, the fish had been alive for Zac’s entire life, and that was impossible. Unless the other world was a dream, and this was the real one.

  Zac saw his granddad’s hand, withered and frail on the arm of the chair. His fingers were hooked round his little blue and green stress ball. Zac stared at the globe pattern for a moment. He felt a tingle at the back of his head, as if there was something significant about the ball that he couldn’t quite put his finger on.

  Before he could dwell on it too much, the ball slipped from the old man’s fingers. It bounced once on the threadbare carpet, then rolled to a stop by the table. Zac followed it with the torch and carried on staring at it for a few moments, as if the answer to everything was written across its surface, if only he could see it.

  He took another step forward and his granddad was revealed in profile. The old man looked even more ancient than usual. His grey hair had come out in clumps, leaving only a few wispy remnants behind. His skin seemed too tight for his face, but puckered and wrinkled at the same time, like an overripe fruit left out to rot.

  Phillip’s eyes were closed. His chest was still. Zac didn’t expect any answer when he whispered, “Granddad?” into the dark. But he got one.

  “Zac?”

  The old man’s voice was dry and brittle. It came out without help from his parched, unmoving lips.

  “I’m here, Granddad,” Zac said, but he hung back, unable to go to the old man’s side. This isn’t real, he told himself, but the voice in his head had lost all its conviction.

  Phillip’s eyes opened, revealing pupils that had turned milky and white. They gazed unseeing at the ceiling. “Why did you leave me, Zac?” he croaked. “Why did you leave me on my own?”

  “I didn’t,” Zac said. “I didn’t leave you. I mean... not like this.”

  “I waited for you, Zac. Why didn’t you come back?”

  Zac knelt by his grandfather’s chair. The old man’s skin felt like dry leaves as Zac took hold of his hand. “I did come back, Granddad. I am back. I’m here.”

  Phillip’s head nodded slowly. His mouth flapped open and closed. “Stay with me, Zac,” he wheezed. “Please don’t leave me again.”

  “I won’t leave you again,” Zac promised. “I’ll stay with you.”

  “For ever.”

  Zac tightened his grip on the withered hand. “For ever.”

  Angelo stared at the chubby demon in the ill-fitting clothes. He seemed to wilt beneath the boy’s gaze.

  “Aren’t you going to say something?” Murmur asked. “I just told you I’m your father.”

  “No, you’re not,” Angelo said. “That’s not true.”

  Murmur stood up. Angelo almost became one with the wall behind him. “Search your feelings,” urged the demon. “You know it to be true.”

  Angelo blinked. “That’s from Star Wars. You nicked that from Star Wars.”

  Embarrassment darted across Murmur’s face. “What? Um. Yes, well—”

  “The Empire Strikes Back. The bit at the end.”

  “Yes, well, I wasn’t sure how to break it to you. It’s big news, let’s face it. I thought I’d better do some research first.”

  Angelo stared in disbelief. “And you thought Darth Vader was a good role model to follow? Darth Vader? What’s next? Chopping my hand off with a light sabre?”

  “I haven’t got a light sabre,” Murmur said, shaking his head. He smiled at the thought. “Although, wouldn’t that be brilliant?”

  “It would be brilliant,” Angelo conceded. “But can we get back to the point? You’re not my father.”

  “Search your feelings, Angelo,” said Murmur. “Oh, wait, I’ve done that bit, haven’t I?”

  “Yes.”

  Murmur nodded. “Right. Sorry, I’m not making a very good...”

  He sat back down on the bed and words began to tumble out of him. “We were in Limbo. You know, on one of them team-building weekends? Archery, abseiling, goat sacrifice. The usual. I was sent to the Junk Room – that’s where they keep all the equipment.”

  The demon’s voice trailed off into a wistful smile. “And that’s where I met Laila. That’s where I met your mother.” He gave himself a shake, snapping himself back to the present. “Turned out Heaven was having its own team-building thing, and she’d been sent to the Junk Room too. I was picking up some chainsaws; she was bringing back a canoe.”

  “A canoe?”

  “Yes. Don’t know why. No water in Limbo, but it didn’t occur to me to ask. I was too busy staring. She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. We started to talk, really hit it off, despite everything. We arranged to meet again later that night. One thing led to another and, well, I’m sure you can figure out what happened next.”

  Angelo’s brow furrowed. “What happened next?”

  Murmur’s cheeks reddened. “You know.”

  “No, I don’t,” said Angelo blankly. “What happened next?”

  The demon twitched nervously. “We, uh, well, we... had a baby.”

  Angelo drew in a sharp breath. “Me.”

  “You.”

  “No, that’s not...” Angelo began, but he ran out of steam there. He stared at the demon. “Are you telling the truth?” he asked. “Are you really my dad?”

  Murmur nodded. “’Fraid so,” he said.

  “No, but that means...” Angelo felt his stomach twist as the realisation hit him. “No, but that means I’m half... half...”

  “Demon.”

  “That means I’m half demon!”

  Murmur nodded again. “You are.”

  “But, but I don’t want to be a demon,” said Angelo. His jaw tightened as he fought against tears. “Demons are evil.”

  “Mostly,” the demon conceded. “But you’re only half demon. You don’t have to be evil. You can be anything you like.”

  They looked at each other in silence for a long time. It was Angelo who eventually broke it.

  “So what now?” he asked.

  Murmur shrugged. “Wrestling?”

  “Wrestling?”

  “That’s a suitable father-son activity, isn’t it? Or fishing? You can catch some big ones in the Styx. Unless they catch you first. Or we could build a tree house? I don’t know. I’ve never done this before. You’re the only son I’ve got.”

  A low creak made the room vibrate. Murmur’s eyes went wide. “No, no, no,” he said. “Not yet. Not already.”

  “What is it?”

  “They’ve found us.”

  “Who’s found us?”

  “Them. Haures and the others. I wasn’t supposed to be here. I wasn’t supposed to tell you any of this, but, well... I had to see you,” he swallowed, “son. I had to see you just once.”

  The creak became a rumble. Half a dozen of Angelo’s books vibrated off his shelves. “What’s happening?” Angelo asked.

  Murmur’s voice was a whisper. “They’re coming. Shout for your friend.”

  “What?”

  “Your friend. Shout for him. You’re safer together than apart.”
<
br />   Murmur gestured towards the wall. The door was suddenly back where it had always been. Angelo reached for the handle, but a sharp cry from Murmur stopped him.

  “No! Don’t go out there, you’ll get lost. Call for your friend.” He grabbed Angelo by the upper arms. There was fear flickering behind the flames in the demon’s eyes. “You hear me, son? Call your friend. I know I’ve got no right to say this, but you have to trust me. Call your friend. Now!”

  Angelo hesitated, then he turned to the door, opened his mouth and shouted Zac’s name as loudly as he could.

  Zac turned towards the kitchen door. “What was that?”

  In the chair, Phillip shook his head. “Nothing. Ignore it. Stay here with me.”

  Another shout came, even more panicked than the last.

  “Angelo?”

  Zac tried to stand, but his grandfather’s hand clamped his like a vice. “Stay here with me,” he said, and his wheeze became a menacing growl. “Don’t leave me again.”

  Angelo was screaming, calling out for help.

  “I have to check on him,” Zac said. “I’ll be back in one minute, OK?”

  “Don’t you dare leave me,” Phillip warned, and now the growl had become a roar. Zac looked down at the chair, and panic made him yank his hand away. The person sitting there was no longer his grandfather. It had his grandfather’s skin, but things wriggled inside it as if trying to force their way free. The withered hand grabbed for his again, but Zac was backing away, making for the door.

  Phillip’s mouth opened, and Zac saw poisonous shapes twisting there at the back of the throat. “Stay... with... me,” a chorus of voices insisted. “I’m... your... grandfather.”

  “No,” said Zac. “You’re not.”

  The kitchen door was blocked from the other side. That didn’t stop him. He powered a kick at it, driving his foot against the wood. There was a splintering crack and the door flew wide open.

  He saw Angelo standing in what looked like his bedroom. A demon lurked right behind him. In one fluid movement Zac reached into his jacket. There was a thwip as he used up the last tranquilliser dart and the demon slumped down on to the floor. Angelo turned as he fell, and stood staring at him until Zac spoke.

  “You all right?”

  Angelo shook his head. “Not really,” he said. “That was my dad.”

  “Oh. Right. Well, um, sorry I shot your dad.”

  “My dad’s a demon,” said Angelo, his voice trembling.

  Zac looked down at the slumbering Murmur. “God, yeah. So he is. Who knew?”

  “He got parenting tips from Darth Vader,” Angelo continued. He turned to Zac, and Zac realised the boy was smiling. “How great is that? My dad likes Star Wars. He’s just like me.”

  Angelo spotted the writhing shape in the doorway. It was squirming on the ground, black goo dripping from its nose and mouth.

  “Ugh, what’s that?” he asked, recoiling in horror.

  “No one important,” Zac said, pushing the door closed. There was a loud hammering on it almost at once. Angelo yelped in panic.

  “Zaaaaaaac,” wheezed a voice on the other side of the wood. “Heeeelp meeee, Zaaaaaaac.”

  Another low drone made the room shake. “What was that?” Zac asked.

  “My dad said more demons are coming,” Angelo said. “What do we do?”

  “I have absolutely no idea,” Zac admitted.

  “Pleeeease, Zaaaaaac. Heeeelp meeee.”

  “Oh, cut it out,” Zac said, thudding a fist against the door.

  “Pray!” Angelo suggested. “We should pray!”

  “I told you, I’m not praying.” He grabbed the handle of the door and held it closed. He looked back over at Angelo, and that was when he saw the cat.

  It appeared to step from thin air right beside Angelo. It looked lazily up at them both in turn. The animal’s fur was ragged and filthy and coming out in clumps. It was the size of a kitten, but looked to have lived through at least eight of its nine lives.

  Zac and Angelo watched the cat in silence as it sat down on the floor, wagged its tail and said, “Woof.”

  “E’S FOUND ’EM,” bellowed a voice from within the cupboard. “Toxie’s found ’em. They’re in here.”

  The bedroom around them went fuzzy at the edges. Zac felt the door handle melt away in his grip as the room became wispy like smoke. Far overhead a series of powerful lights flickered on, revealing what looked like a vast empty warehouse.

  Where the poster of Jesus had been there now stood demons of assorted sizes. They ranged from around twenty centimetres in height to well over two metres, and they all carried ropes or nets or baseball bats with nails through them. The smallest demon seemed to be the brains of the outfit.

  “There they is,” he sneered, hopping up and down on spindly, frog-like legs. “There they is!” He scratched the cat behind the ears. It involved standing on tiptoes. “Who’s a good Hellhound? Who’s a good Hellhound? Toxie is. Toxie is!”

  “Hellhound?” said Zac. “That thing’s supposed to be a dog?”

  The little frog-demon ignored the question. “Thought you could give us the slip, eh?” he asked, glaring tiny daggers at Zac and Angelo. “You’re lucky we found you when we did or things could’ve gotten right messy.”

  The monstrous group parted as another figure stepped from thin air directly behind them. This demon was the largest of the lot. There was something different about him too. Something about the way he stood that said he was someone you really ought to be paying attention to. The smallest demon fired off a perfect salute as the newcomer stepped over him.

  The stench of death and burning flesh caught at the back of Zac’s throat as the demon stopped in front of him. “This is them?” the monster demanded.

  “Yeah, that’s them, Mr Haures, sir,” nodded the little one. “Told you we’d catch ’em. It was Toxie here what did—”

  Haures clicked his scaly fingers. There was a brief scream and the little demon vanished in a plume of angry flame. “Shut up,” said Haures absent-mindedly.

  The big demon looked down at Murmur asleep on the floor, and shook his head in annoyance. He turned his gaze on both boys. His lips drew back into an approximation of a smile. “I’ve been waiting for you,” he told them. “I’ve been waiting for you for a long, long time.”

  “Wh-who are you?” Angelo stammered.

  Haures fixed him with a fiery stare. He said nothing for a while, as if contemplating the question.

  “You will find out soon enough,” he said at last. Turning away, he motioned to the larger members of the demon group. “Take them down to ten,” he instructed. “Carefully. Anyone harms them and they will answer to me.”

  The other demons nodded hastily, bowing low as Haures swept past. There was a collective sigh of relief from them as he vanished into thin air. A moment later, he reappeared again.

  “Oh, and notify the Master,” he ordered. “He will want to see these insects for himself.”

  “Watch who you’re calling an insect,” Zac warned.

  With a twitch of irritation, Haures snapped his fingers again. Something went pop inside Zac’s head. He felt his ankles wobble, then his knees buckle. He probably felt the floor as he crashed down on to it, but he couldn’t say for sure. Zac’s eyes closed. The voices of the demons and the screams of Angelo sounded far away along a tunnel.

  The last thing he heard before he surrendered to unconsciousness was the mad barking of the flea-bitten cat.

  A jet of water woke him up. It was warm and smelled unpleasantly sour. He really hoped that it was water, but he had his doubts.

  Spluttering, he looked up. A hunchbacked creature with too few eyes and too many teeth leered as it squirted murky yellow liquid at him from a plastic bottle. “He’s awake,” the demon said, in a surprisingly feminine voice.

  She gave the bottle another squeeze, spraying Zac with more of the copper-coloured liquid. He tried to make a grab for it, but discovered his hands were shackled to
a steel frame above his head. He tried to move his feet, but thick chains held those in place too.

  He heard a whimper from his right and saw that Angelo was chained up exactly as he was. The boy’s eyes were closed, but his head was moving, as if he were just waking up too.

  Zac quickly glanced around the room, trying to get his bearings, but he was somewhere he had never seen before. The room was a stark, clinical white, with stainless steel worktops lining the walls on every side. There were no windows that he could see, and no doors, either. No way in or out.

  A chair stood in the middle of the room, like something from a dentist’s surgery – reclined fully back with a movable spotlight mounted above it. Zac wished he hadn’t spotted the straps and buckles on the armrests, but they were the first things he had seen.

  “Thank you, Eliza, that will be all.”

  A man just a little taller than Angelo stepped into view. He appeared human, more or less, with only two sawn-off stumps of what must once have been horns to suggest his true nature.

  The man looked to be in his late sixties, with thinning grey hair and deep-set wrinkles. He was dressed in a black suit, which may originally have been tailor-made, but which now looked a size or two on the large side. His rumpled shirt was also black. He wore the top button open, with a blood-red tie hanging loosely round his neck.

  His eyes were hidden behind a pair of designer sunglasses. He had rings on almost every finger and a gold watch on his wrist that was tarnished and scuffed. The man stared back at Zac and took a long, deep draw on a cigarette.

  “Who are you supposed to be?” Zac asked.

  There was a loud crack and pain tore across his back. He cried out with the shock and the heat of it. The old man puffed on his cigarette, unflinching.

  “You do not address the Dark Lord,” Haures snarled. He stepped into view, coiling his tail in his hands like a bullwhip.

  Zac hissed through his teeth, breathing out the worst of the pain. “Dark Lord?” he frowned. “You mean...?” He looked the grey-haired man up and down. “Nah.”

  “Silence!” Haures roared. He flicked the tail and Zac felt a wasp sting across his cheek. “And bow your head before the Father of All Lies.”