The Box of Demons

by Daniel Whelan

  This one’s for Alex,

  and for Lynne,

  but above all . . .

  for Sylwia

  Contents

  1 Come, Armageddon! Come!

  2 The Furies

  3 Bedlam

  4 Paradise Lost

  5 The Tide Turns

  6 Thus Spake The Seraph

  7 The Broken Forge

  8 Pilgrim’s Progress

  9 The Greyhound’s Lair

  10 The Grand Druid

  11 Death and the Maidens

  12 Love and Warmonger

  13 The Cult of the Four Winds

  14 Revelation

  15 The Salutation of the Tide

  16 Inside the Box

  17 Into the Darkness

  18 Requiem

  19 The Beginning of the End

  20 The Valley of Death

  21 ‘Abandon Hype, All Ye Who Enter Here’

  22 The Augean Stables

  23 The Fifth Strident Blast

  24 The Coming of God

  25 The Last Battle

  26 The War Games

  27 The End Times

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter One

  Come, Armageddon! Come!

  The Apocalypse began in Rhyl, during the second-to-last weekend of January. It was the perfect place for the world to end: a neglected seaside resort on the North Wales coast, its best days far behind it. The sort of town where a cataclysmic global event could unfold unnoticed by the locals and ignored by the world at large.

  The weekend started, as all weekends should, at some point on Friday afternoon. Freezing rain lashed down in the early evening gloom whilst the wind howled through the shuttered-shop streets, spraying water from the murky expanse of the Irish Sea on to the deserted promenade. Discarded chip papers and crisp packets were tossed around like tumbleweeds, the only evidence that the empty streets had recently been full of schoolchildren on their way home.

  It was the beginning of the dead time between the closing of the shops and the opening of the nightclubs, and it was utterly miserable.

  It suited Ben Robson’s mood perfectly.

  He walked as quickly as he could, the rain soaking through his hand-me-down anorak, chilling him. He was late for tea, and knew his grandparents would be waiting. He turned off the road and into a side alley, intending to cut across the muddy patch of waste ground that lay between the street and his road. He managed to get a quarter of the way across before plumes of blue smoke started to slowly rise out of his schoolbag. After a full minute of billowing, during which the rain managed to discover previously unknown parts of Ben to soak, Djinn finally materialized, gasping as if he had just climbed several flights of stairs. He ran a gaseous finger around the stone collar on his neck, as though it were a tie he sought to loosen.

  ‘Bennnnnn,’ he whined, ‘can’t we go the other way? I’m hungry.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Want food.’

  ‘What for? You can’t eat it.’

  ‘Yeah but still. Can’t we get chips? I like chips,’ he said, licking his lips.

  ‘You’ve never had chips.’

  ‘It’s the smell. Can’t we just walk past the shop?’

  Djinn was the largest of the three demons that lived in the Box: completely without corporeal form (and so impervious to, say rain), he looked like he weighed at least fifty stone, which is quite a feat for a creature made entirely out of blue gas.

  ‘Please, Ben. Pleeeeease?’

  Ben looked out at the muddy field. If he ran across, he’d only have to duck down the alley and he’d come out on to Fford Heulwen. A hundred metres more and he’d be out of his wet clothes and safely ensconced in his room, working on the latest recruit to his undead army. Alternatively, he could turn round, tramp down several dreary roads with (depending on whether you spoke Welsh or not) either bafflingly unpronounceable or laughably ironic names, in order to stand outside a chip shop for the benefit of an invisible demon.

  He hardly had time to consider it before he felt a kicking from inside his bag.

  ‘That’s great Djinn, just great,’ he said, putting the satchel on the ground, ‘because you know who’s getting out now, don’t you?’ He hunched his body over the bag as he undid the straps, hoping to protect its contents from the elements. Immediately he felt a whoosh of heat on his face, as if he had just opened an oven, and instinctively took a step back. Kartofel scuttled out, his short furry spider’s body scurrying away lest the flap be shut again before he could escape. His talons, eight sharp little claws which were all he had in place of legs, left small dents in the soft mud as he skittered about, and the crimson and yellow flame that formed his head flickered with each gust of wind, causing the position of his eyes and mouth to sway with the movement of the fire. He too wore a collar, though for him it could just as easily be called a belt.

  ‘Get back in the Box,’ said Ben. He had already been out in the rain for too long, and was not looking forward to having to placate two demons.

  ‘Get lost,’ sneered Kartofel. ‘It’s bobbins in there. I could put up with it if you had anything good in your bag, but you don’t. Too many books. You’re nearly fifteen years old. You should be out vandalizing bus shelters or something.’

  ‘We’re going to the chippy,’ said Djinn, with a big, infantile grin on his face.

  ‘I never said that,’ said Ben quickly.

  ‘Oh right, so that’s it, is it?’ said Kartofel. ‘You were going to give Porkins here a treat, but there’s nothing for old Kartofel. Forget him – he’s a pushover, he is.’

  ‘Do we have to do this now? Can’t we just get home? I’ve had a rubbish day.’

  ‘All your days are rubbish.’

  ‘And whose fault is that?’

  Kartofel rolled his eyes.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ said Djinn, and began to do a strange hopping dance, like an excited dog waiting to be fed.

  ‘Shut up, Fatso,’ said Kartofel.

  ‘I’m not fat. I’m big-boned,’ said Djinn. ‘Tell him, Ben.’

  ‘You haven’t got any bones,’ snapped Ben. ‘Look, both of you, just get back in the Box, OK?’

  ‘Make me,’ said Kartofel.

  ‘Fine,’ said Ben, picking up his satchel and starting to walk away. ‘Get stretched. See if I care.’ Kartofel’s flickering eyes looked nervously towards Djinn, who was again playing with his collar. Ben smiled.

  ‘You wouldn’t dare,’ said Kartofel.

  Ben shrugged, and put the bag on his back. Djinn made a whining, whimpering noise. ‘It’s not fair,’ he said. ‘I haven’t done anything. It’s him.’

  ‘Shut up, idiot. He’s bluffing,’ said Kartofel. Ben increased his walk to a slow jog.

  ‘No, Ben. Wait. I’ll be good. Please,’ called out Djinn. ‘Anything but the stretching.’

  Ben stopped, put the satchel on the floor, and stood with his arms crossed, waiting. Djinn bowed his head and wisped his massive bulk over to the satchel.

  ‘Judas,’ said Kartofel.

  ‘I don’t want to get stretched,’ said Djinn, sucking himself back inside. Ben found himself wondering how it was possible for gas to slosh and wobble like that.

  ‘You weren’t going to really do it,’ said Kartofel when Djinn had gone. ‘Were you? Because it would be so easy for me to accidentally-on-purpose knock paint over your little toys while you’re downstairs having your tea.’

  Ben sighed. ‘Kartofel,’ he said, ‘if I stay out in this any longer, I’ll catch a cold. And you know what Gran’s like when I’m ill. I’ll be confined to bed all weekend. No visit to Drylands Hall. Do you want that?’

  Kartofel’s flames flickered for a moment as he thought about it. He gr
unted, and scurried over to the satchel. He climbed up the side deliberately slowly, his claws digging into the stiff leather. It was covered in little pockmarks from years of him getting in and out.

  ‘Just get back in before Orff gets out,’ said Ben. ‘Or do you want to have to stand here and listen to what the rain does to his lumbago?’

  ‘Tch, that old bore.’ Kartofel flopped over the top, his flame dimming as he fell. As Ben did up the buckles, he heard a low, dry groan from inside the Box, followed by a loud expletive from Kartofel. Orff was awake, and, as usual, in pain, which meant that the others would be stuck listening to him complain all the way home. Suddenly, even though the rain was still coming down hard, Ben felt like taking his time crossing the few hundred metres between where he was standing and his house.

  Tea had been ready for a good quarter of an hour by the time Ben got home, and it was not the only thing waiting for him: as soon as he got through the front door, his grandmother appeared in the hall, wiping her hands on her apron.

  ‘Benjamin Gabriel Robson,’ she said, waving a spatula at him, ‘where have you been? Look at you – you’re soaked through. And covered in mud. If you were younger I’d put you over my knee.’

  ‘It’s raining,’ said Ben.

  ‘I can see that. Get upstairs and get changed. Your grandad’s waiting.’

  ‘I need to feed Druss.’

  ‘You can do that later. Humans come first in this house.’

  That’s easy for you to say, thought Ben as he stomped up to his room. He closed the door and tipped his satchel out on to the bed. Anything that was made of paper had water damage, including his exercise books, and – more importantly – his well-thumbed copies of the latest Fantasy Miniatures catalogue and the Warmonger rulebook. He threw his games kit into the corner of the room where it would eventually be joined by his wet clothes, and picked up the Box.

  He had never treated it with any care whatsoever. Not that it mattered, for the Box was always pristine. It regularly got dropped, bashed or slammed into walls (mostly while the satchel was still on his back) but it looked, as it always did, brand new. It even had that freshly cut new-wood smell, which it had not lost in all the years he’d been carrying it around.

  As he handled it, its music swelled in his head: a warm, comforting melody that purred with satisfaction like a well-stroked cat. It was solid wood, with a natural bold red colour, and perfectly rectangular. The joints and corners were reinforced with iron brackets that were always cold to the touch, and the hinges were made of the same bizarrely rustless metal.

  The lid was carved with four strange rune-like symbols that were duplicated on the demons’ collars. As Ben ran his fingers over them, he felt a tingling sensation, and the Box responded positively; he spent a few seconds in this reverie before the sound of his grandmother calling caused him to snap out of it. He tossed the Box on the floor, kicked it into its default position under the bed, and quickly changed before heading downstairs. The Box protested meekly at its rough treatment, before resuming its usual background refrain once Ben was out of the door.

  Downstairs, Ben’s grandad was already sitting at the dining room table, hunched over the North Wales Weekly News. He barely looked up when Ben entered. As the reheated dinner was brought from the kitchen, and the smell of it wafted through the hall, the music of the Box changed. The scent had clearly reached his room where, he now knew, Djinn was greeting it with open nostrils.

  After dinner, Ben barged through his bedroom door and straight into a cloud of fetid blue gas. An unpleasant smell filled his nose and left a horrible rotten-egg taste in his mouth. ‘Djinn!’ he yelled between retches. ‘How many times have I told you not to hover behind the door?’

  ‘Was it nice, Ben? Was it? It was sausages, wasn’t it? I know it was, it was sausages. From the market.’

  ‘I did try and tell him Ben, but no one listens to me,’ said a dusty old voice. Orff was lying stretched out on the bed, perfectly straight, as if he had rigor mortis. His gaunt humanoid body was swaddled in rotting bandages, although patches of yellowing translucent skin peeped out, decorated with lesions, liver spots and bruises. His head was made of sackcloth, which fused to the skin around his shoulders. He had two deep round onyx eyes and a long yellow beak which curved down towards his collar: he was part plague doctor, part hooded falcon.

  ‘Don’t lie on the bed, Orff; I’ve told you before. You make it smell old,’ said Ben.

  ‘Well, I’m sorry if one of the inconveniences of being old is that you smell old. My sciatica was playing up, and I needed somewhere soft. Would you begrudge an old man that?’ He spoke slowly, as if moving the necessary muscles to make speech was a great effort.

  ‘No, I wouldn’t. But you’re not an old man. You’re a demon. So get off the bed.’

  ‘I am, at the very least, thousands of years old. I can’t just get up and go. Especially with my eczema and my psoriasis as bad as they are. I never know how much of myself I’m going to leave behind.’

  ‘Just do it, OK?’ snapped Ben, and sat down at his desk. He swung his mounted magnifying glass over the workspace, picked up a paintbrush, and started work on a new skeleton soldier for his army, although ‘army’ was probably too grand a title for his collection of die-cast miniatures. His forces were too meagre to win any respect on the local wargaming scene, but that didn’t stop him taking great pride in their upkeep. It took intense concentration to complete each figurine, and while he was working on one he was able to block out the overwhelming rubbishness of his life and lose himself in the world of Warmonger.

  Kartofel belched loudly and Ben’s hand slipped, painting a thick brown stripe across the chest of the standard bearer he was working on. He cursed, thrust the brush into a jam jar of water and swivelled his chair round in time to see Kartofel creeping out from under the bed.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Ben said, dabbing at the skeleton with a cloth.

  ‘I was looking to see if you’d stashed anything exciting under there. You haven’t. You’re the worst teenage boy in history. Not so much as a catapult or an illegally procured firework.’ He crawled up the bedpost and scampered on to Orff’s chest, digging his claws in like a smug cat; Orff’s sores seeped into the musty bandages, releasing a stale odour. Djinn involuntarily took on a pus-coloured hue at the smell of it.

  ‘It’s going to be very hard for me to get off the bed with him doing that, Ben, what with my myalgic encephalomyelitis,’ coughed Orff.

  ‘You see, all these monsters and dragons and things, they’re not good for you,’ said Kartofel, dancing a little jig. ‘You should get interested in the proper army instead. You might even get to blow something up. Them Territorials, they’d take you. It’d be fun.’

  ‘For you.’

  ‘Of course for me. Why the hell else do you think I suggested it?’

  ‘I’m not joining the Territorial Army, Kartofel.’

  ‘Spoilsport. What about the Cadets then?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Look, all I’m saying is that your little hobby might be the cause of all your social problems, that’s all. No one else at school bothers with all this, do they?’

  ‘No one else has you three to deal with,’ said Ben.

  Chapter Two

  The Furies

  The next day, after Ben had eaten his breakfast and done his chores, he returned to his room to find Kartofel and Orff engaged in a game of Scrabble. Or rather they were engaged in an argument about a game of Scrabble, since the board had been turned over and the tiles were spread out all over the floor.

  ‘You can’t just upturn the board if things don’t go your way,’ said Orff.

  ‘Who says?’ said Kartofel. ‘Does it say that in the rules? Bet it doesn’t.’

  ‘Some things don’t need to be written down. They’re common decencies.’

  ‘I’m telling you, “idioty” is a word.’

  ‘Use it in a sentence then.’

  ‘Orff is really idioty.’
>
  Ben grabbed the copy of The Elfstones of Shannara he’d taken out of the library, and headed for the door.

  ‘Oi, oi, oi! Where do you think you’re going?’ said Kartofel.

  ‘The garden. I’ve got to feed Druss.’

  ‘Tch. Someone should skin that thing and put it in a stew. It eats books now, does it?’

  ‘I might sit out and read while I’m there.’

  ‘Did someone say stew?’ said Djinn, billowing out of the Box.

  ‘We’re talking about the blasted bunny,’ said Kartofel.

  ‘Oh,’ said Djinn, crestfallen.

  Druss was the large, lazy angora that lived in a hutch in the garden. He was also Ben’s only friend. He was the latest in a line of rabbits that had been recruited into the family after Social Services had first taken Ben off his mother and put him in the care of his grandparents: he could hardly remember the first, a brown lop called Dandelion, but Dandelion’s successor, Muffin, had lived to the ripe old age of four. Druss had joined them shortly before Muffin’s death and had become the first rabbit Ben had taken care of on his own.

  ‘I hope you’re not staying out there all day,’ said Kartofel. ‘It’s Saturday. We should do something.’

  ‘I am doing something,’ said Ben. ‘I’m going to feed Druss and then I’m going to read my book.’

  ‘That’s nutty. It’s flippin’ freezing.’

  ‘Oh, you don’t need to tell me,’ said Orff. ‘I can feel it to the very marrow of my bones. I do suffer so when it’s chilly. You’re not going to spend the whole day out there, are you?’

  ‘So what if I am?’ said Ben. ‘What are you going to do about it?’

  ‘Just remember to wash your hands after you handle that rodent, that’s all. A dose of myxomatosis is all I need.’

  The weather outside was crisp and dry, and so once Ben had changed Druss’s food and bedding, he settled down in a deckchair to read. At his feet, Druss lazily hopped around the special wire enclosure that been erected to prevent an assault on the vegetable patch.

  The garden was as far away from the Box as Ben could go without provoking a reaction: if he went too far, the music would get hectic and impatient, missing beats and hitting bum notes, until it filled his head with an unbearable maelstrom of noise. Happily, it was also too far away for the demons to be able to follow him, and so the garden was his sanctuary, the only place he felt truly safe. It had high brick walls and a solid white wooden gate, and it was populated by an array of plants and vegetables, all lovingly planted by his grandmother.