by Heide Goody
“You do know the penalty for harbouring a fugitive demon, don't you?” asked Quilldust, fixing him with a penetrating gaze. “It's a one-way ticket to Hell.”
Rutspud wasn't sure if he was supposed to laugh. A nervous smile played on his lips.
“But we're already in, ah, Hell, aren't we?”
Quilldust shook his head as if Rutspud shocked him with his hopeless naivety.
“You surely don't imagine that we wouldn't keep something back? A place much, much worse, where we could send those who can't adhere to the rules?”
Rutspud held up his hands to indicate that he was innocent of imagining anything, but Quilldust continued to fix him with that unnerving stare.
“There are demons who think that they can outsmart us. Who think that they can drop out of sight and we might forget about them. We forget nobody.”
Rutspud mouthed wordlessly. He had committed none of these crimes! He'd done lots of things that he was sure Quilldust wouldn't approve of, but he was entirely innocent of this ... of what, exactly?
“Where do they go?” he asked, curiosity getting the better of him. “The demons who try to drop out of sight.”
“We've had a number try to hide out in Limbo,” said Quilldust, with a malicious smile. “They don't tend to last long. There are ‘things’ in Limbo. We've had some defect to Heaven, of course, but most of them think they can find a quiet corner in a quiet cave off one of the more inhospitable plains. We always find them. Never failed yet.”
Rutspud escaped from Quilldust's office after another page and a half of questions that ranged from the mundane to the uncomfortable and bizarre. He went through Hodshift's maintenance tunnels to return to the lab, but made a deliberate detour by the furnaces.
The thick door, warm to the touch, had a long lever handle. Rutspud pulled it down and the door flew open, bringing a blast of superheated air.
“What you doing?” squawked a demon, hobbling over, his eyes white against the blackened, melted ruin of his face. “Shut the door! Shut the door!”
Rutspud scrabbled forward into the boiling furnace room and dragged the door closed behind him.
“Precious heat lost! Precious heat lost!” the demon twittered to himself.
“Sorry,” said Rutspud. “I just came to ask you if I could have some coal?”
“Hmmm?” The demon had reclaimed his dropped shovel and waved it threateningly at Rutspud. Rutspud backed up against a soot-encrusted bank of machinery.
“I just want some coal, please,” said Rutspud.
“The precious fuel source?” said the demon. He attempted a frown but, with his melted forehead drooping down to his cheekbones, it was a barely effective expression. “Why would I give you that?”
“Because you've got loads?” said Rutspud. “I just need a bucketful, for the R&D lab.”
“What's in it for me?” hissed the demon. “I could get into trouble.”
“I've got a bottle of monk’s piss,” said Rutspud. “How would that be?”
He pulled out a bottle of the clear yellow liquid. The demon's sunken eyes grew wide with longing.
“Let me get a bucket,” he said, licking his lips or, at least, the flesh where his lips had once been.
Rutspud looked at the array of instruments and dials behind him. Among the grimy readouts and switches were relay switches, valve tubes and, in their brass brackets, some ceramic-encased fuses.
“Fuses,” he said to himself. “Hey! Mate! Can I have a couple of these fuses too?”
But the demon had limped away in search of a bucket and did not reply.
Manfred was pleased with his morning's work. He prepared the last two boil-in-the-bag crab and seaweed meal pouches, which were carefully enclosed in IV bags, ready for later. When food was in such short supply, it was important to seal in all of the nutrients, so that they wouldn't be lost in the cooking water. When the crabs were cooked, he would siphon out the delicious cooking liquor, to make a nourishing broth for lunch the next day.
A whooping sound came from outside, and he went to look. Brothers Vernon and Gillespie were behaving most oddly. Their faces were smeared with mud and blood. They carried strange spear-like weapons and were performing some primitive dance of celebration.
When they saw that Manfred was watching them, they stopped cavorting and whooping. Vernon straightened his robe, patted his Elvis quiff, and walked over to Manfred.
“We have made good use of our boxes,” he said. “Brother Gillespie and I joined forces. I had a portable ultrasound machine, which we have used to locate moles underground.”
“You can do that?”
“Yes sirree! And we used our spears to stab them through the turf.”
He illustrated this by stabbing his spear vigorously up and down.
Manfred looked at the spears in astonishment. They were scalpels lashed to bamboo canes from the shed.
“You've been hunting moles?” he said. “I had no idea there were any moles on the island. You caught some?”
“Yes!” said Vernon, with a triumphant grin. He displayed another pole with seven moles hanging off it from their short tails. Brother Gillespie whooped and danced on the spot which was as much exercise Manfred had ever seen the perennially ill monk do.
“Don't take this the wrong way, brothers,” said Manfred, “but I think a little quiet meditation might be a good idea to counter the distress of hunting.”
“Oh, we're not distressed, daddio,” said Brother Vernon, his eyes ablaze. “Quite the opposite. We're off to see what else we can hunt. Something bigger, perhaps.”
Manfred was about to caution the two of them against this path, when a shout came up from beyond the wall.
“Did you hear that?” he asked.
“No,” said Vernon.
“What did you think you might hunt?” asked Manfred carefully.
“Oh, this and that,” said Vernon, without meeting Manfred's eyes.
“We're hunting the Beast!” said Brother Gillespie with a wild grin.
“What beast is that, brothers?” asked Manfred, wondering if the interesting mushrooms had cropped again.
“No-one's seen it,” said Vernon. “But Lionel's building a trap. We want to catch it and stab it with our spears!”
Brothers Vernon and Gillespie had started up their spear dance again, when Manfred heard the shout for a second time. It sounded quite urgent, so he left the spear-wielding monks until later and went through the stone arch to see who was shouting. He knew that Bastian had been tinkering with the generator, with the idea that he might be able to run it with the alcohol-based hand gel.
He came across Bastian rolling on the floor, his habit ablaze. He was trying to put out the flames, but the pungent smell of the hand gel told Manfred that he was well-doused in an effective accelerant, and the flames leapt back up every time he succeeded in partially quelling them. Manfred ripped apart the IV bags that he carried in his hands and spilled the liquid onto Bastian, along with the crabs and seaweed that they contained.
“Thank you!” gasped Bastian as he staggered to his feet, his habit smouldering.
Manfred looked at his blackened face, eyebrows completely gone, and the livid flush on his cheeks.
“I think we must get some burn gel applied to you as quickly as possible,” he said. “You're lucky not to be toast, my friend.”
“I can go and find Brother Gillespie in the infirmary,” said Bastian.
“Perhaps not,” said Manfred. “I think he's a little preoccupied. I shall treat you myself.”
Brother Henry had taken the rowing boat. He’d teamed up with the beanpole that was Brother Terry, who had been fortunate enough to find that his box contained many yards of medical gauze.
“I don’t know a lot about fishing,” said Terry slowly. “Do we just drag this behind the boat?”
He held up a bundle of gauze in his long arms.
Henry sat back with a smile.
“Just row us out a little way and I'll show you what we need
to do. We're going to do it the smart way. You know me, if there's a way of working smarter, not harder, I'm your man.”
Brother Terry was extraordinarily tall and skinny, all elbows and knees. As he rowed the small boat, Henry relaxed and trailed his hand through the water.
“Right, this should be far enough,” said Henry, peering into the murky depths. “Let's make a scoop from your gauze.”
He pulled out a wire coat hanger and the metal pole used for opening windows. He winked at Brother Terry, who watched him with furrowed brow.
“So we make a circle from the coat hanger by pulling out the sides and, look, we'll use the top here to fix it to our fishing rod.”
He wrapped the straightened-out hook around the top of metal pole, but frowned as it wobbled a bit too much for his liking.
“Tell you what, I will donate my dressing-gown cord for the good of our fishing trip,” he said, untying it from his waist and wrapping it around the joint. “Here we go, nice and firm. Just get your gauze and knot it round the wire.”
Brother Terry managed to attach a large piece of gauze by pulling threads from the weave of the loose fabric and knotting them around the wire. He dropped it into the water and sloshed it back and forth a few times.
“It's quite heavy now it's all wet,” he reported. “You might have to help me when it's full of fish.”
He looked back at Brother Henry.
“How will it get full of fish?” he asked. “Are they just going to swim into it?”
“Watch and learn, Terry, watch and learn!” said Henry, tapping the side of his nose. “What would you say if I told you that you're in the company of a fishing guru?”
“I'd say ‘who else have you got in the folds of your dressing-gown?’” said Terry, eyeing the soggy net.
Henry leaned forward and opened the box at his feet. He pulled out two paddles attached to the case with curly wires.
“It’s a defibrillator,” he explained.
“I can see that,” said Brother Terry. “Are you sure this is wise?”
Brother Henry pressed a big red button on the case, which glowed with a lightning bolt symbol. There was a brief electric squeal.
“Frying tonight!” he cried, dropped the paddles over the side and grasped the end of the cane to help Terry haul in the soon-to-be-electrocuted fish.
The results were startling. Brother Henry felt as though he'd been kicked by a horse. His hands were rigidly locked onto the metal rod. He was unable to move or even breathe for a long, long moment, and he could sense panic rising from Brother Terry, who was frozen in place before him. After what felt like an eternity but was probably just a few seconds, he felt his muscles relax and he collapsed to the floor of the boat, Brother Terry sprawling before him. They both lay, panting with relief to be alive.
“That was horrible,” said Terry. “What happened?”
“We just got an electric shock,” said Henry. “It's all right, it won't happen again unless someone presses the button.”
“What? Where's the button?” said Terry, rolling over to look.
“It's just th – no, stop!”
There was a jolt and everything went black.
Stephen looked up as Rutspud flicked through the contents of his given box with a grimace.
“It's a bit boring, isn't it?” Rutspud complained. “What are these cards with pictures of humans on them?”
“They seem to be forms for ordering medical photographs. The doctor puts a mark where he wants the photo taken. I don't quite know what to do with them.”
“Are they men or women?” asked Rutspud, indicating the line drawing.
“I think they’ve deliberately drawn it so that it could work for either,” said Stephen.
“That would be a great improvement to humans, if you ask me,” said Rutspud. “I still think you could have done much better with your box.”
“We get what we’re given.”
“Come on. Why don't we go and steal that scooter and go joyriding?”
“No, definitely not. Father Eustace has fallen off it several times already just going round the cloisters. I don't think it would work too well on rocky paths. Anyway, I'm rather pleased with my efforts so far with the sticking plasters. Look.”
Stephen stepped back from the section of stained glass he'd been mending on the library floor. Numerous windows had shattered as a result of the unfortunate barbecue incident the other week, but Stephen was halfway through reconstructing a large angel with flesh-coloured plasters.
“I can see that you're quite enjoying that,” said Rutspud, “but it's not much of a spectator sport watching you do a jigsaw. I don't suppose we can be a bit more creative with the next one and give them dogs' heads or something?”
Stephen shook his head. It would be nice for them to work together on something, but that sounded like a recipe for disaster.
“Boring!” said Rutspud. “Let's go and see if we can make a unicycle out of that oxygen trolley.”
“I need to check the corridor first. Brother Lionel has been out there for ages making some weird contraption. We don't want to run into him.”
Rutspud jumped up onto the table.
“What would happen if the other humans found me?”
Stephen hummed in thought.
“Scientists would want to dissect you.”
“Been there, done that. Had my entire innards rearranged during the Great Harrowing.”
“Most of the monks would attempt to exorcise you.”
“Well, I don’t fancy that. That one you tried gave me a real gut-rumbling bellyache.”
“In truth, I think most people would vomit, faint or run screaming.”
“Now, that sounds like fun.”
“No, it doesn’t. You wait here a moment.”
Rutspud shrugged, and lazily tossed some pieces of glass about.
Stephen went out into the corridor and found Brother Lionel standing on a stepladder, securing a rope to the ceiling. From the rope hung a ghoulish apparition that somewhat resembled a monk. Its upper body was formed from Resusci-Annie doll, those pale, sightless eyes sweeping across the corridor as the thing swayed slightly. A monk's habit hung down from Annie's shoulders.
“What is that thing?” asked Stephen. “It's a bit creepy.”
“It's a trap,” said Brother Lionel. “Make sure you don't stand on that bit of floor down there.”
Stephen peered at a noose that was puddled on the floor just underneath the decoy.
“What are you hoping to catch?” he asked.
“I don't really want to say,” said Lionel, winding some bungee cords around a cable drum. “But I bet you I catch something tonight.”
Stephen wondered if someone had indeed seen Rutspud creeping around. Could he be the intended target?
“I really don't think you're going to catch anything more interesting than a cold standing around here,” said Stephen.
“I’m fine,” said Brother Lionel.
“Sure you don’t want to head off to the warming room for a nice cup of cocoa?”
Brother Lionel’s gaze snapped up.
“We’ve got cocoa?”
“Not really, though Brother Manfred does this thing with ground seaweed, barrel sweepings and pepper. It looks like cocoa. It’s certainly warming. Brr!” he added pointedly, by way of emphasis, wondering if he and Rutspud would ever get past.
“I'm nearly done now,” said Lionel. “You're wrong, though. I bet I do catch something. Tell you what. If I don't, then I'll let you in on a secret.”
“What secret?” asked Stephen.
“I’ll tell you if I don’t catch anything.”
“You might as well tell me now. Nothing's going to get caught in this thing, unless it's a clueless monk who's not looking where he's going.”
“Don't be so sure!” said Lionel, stepping back to admire his handiwork. “Here's the deal. If I catch nothing, I'll tell you my secret. I'm out of here when the quarantine lifts anyway.”
/>
“What do you mean?”
“I've had enough of island life.”
“But this is your home, Lionel.”
“It’s a drafty hovel.”
“What will you do if you leave?”
“I’m seventy-three, boy. I’m going to find me a nice nursing home to die in. Anyway, the other side of the bargain is this. If I do catch something then you need to pay a forfeit.”
“What? No!” Stephen thought for a moment, and curiosity got the better of him. “What's the forfeit?”
Lionel looked him in the eye.
“I've got these painful, scabby corns on my feet,” he said. “I need someone to trim them for me.”
Stephen recoiled in horror at the thought.
“I don't do feet,” he said. “Even when they haven't got scabby corns on them.”
“Shame,” said Lionel. “They cause me a lot of pain.”
Stephen hesitated. He was a monk, wasn't he, and a good Christian … What was a little bit of minor body horror if he could help to ease someone's suffering?
“All right,” he said, turning away. “As long as you wash them.”
Stephen went back into the library to find Rutspud had stuck together a stained glass angel with its head upside down in his absence.
“Nice, eh?” said Rutspud. “I bet you'll fix it when I've gone.”
“Nah,” Stephen said with a shrug. “It would be more work to take it all apart again now – nobody will notice.”
“You're lucky you haven't got someone looking over your shoulder the whole time,” said Rutspud. “There's a census going on downstairs at the moment, and they're making everyone sweat. They want to know everything about everything.”
“Oh no, you're not going to get into trouble for bringing us that coal and stuff, are you?” said Stephen. “I mean, we're really grateful, but I'd hate to see you get, er, dissected or whatever on our account.”
“I don't think so. I picked those up on the way back from my grilling by the census demon, Quilldust, but I'm sure I wasn't followed.”
“Quilldust?” said Stephen with interest. “I'm sure I saw him in here.”
He went over to the bookshelves, shifted aside a copy of Clara et Praesentis Periculi and opened the Librum Magnum Daemonum. Stephen turned the pages until he found what he was looking for.
