The Box of Demons

by Daniel Whelan

  ‘Oh,’ said Ben, disappointedly. ‘It’s just that my mum saw the demons today, and she’s always talking about angels and—’

  ‘She is gravely ill, I know,’ interrupted the angel. ‘I can only assume that it is this sickness, combined with the tumult in the Veil, that allowed her to glimpse the infernals. I am sorry to say that she could never have met one of my kind. I would counsel you not to broach the subject of my coming, lest you agitate her, or worse, join her in that place.’

  Ben bit his lower lip and bowed his head. The Holy Seraph of the Strident Blasts tentatively placed a comforting arm on his shoulder. It was an awkward gesture, as if he had only ever seen it done and never tried it.

  ‘I did not intend to upset you, Ben Robson.’

  ‘That’s OK. But do you think you could call me Ben? Just Ben?’

  ‘As you wish.’

  ‘And what can I call you?’

  ‘I am The Holy Seraph of the Strident Blasts, First Oblate of the Cult of the Four Winds—’

  ‘I’ll call you “The Seraph”, then.’

  The Holy Seraph of the Strident Blasts paused for a moment. His red eyes narrowed, and he pursed his lips. ‘As you wish.’ He stood up from the bed and crossed over to the window, resting his hands on the sill. ‘If The Adversary is successful, he will unleash the Apocalypse. Chaos will reign. My kind mean to prevent it, which is why I have come to you.’

  ‘Me? Why me?’

  ‘I would have thought it obvious.’ The angel stared intently into Ben’s eyes for a moment. ‘But I can see it is not. You are the keeper of the Box.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘It is the prison of which I spoke.’

  Ben laughed. ‘I think you might have the wrong Box.’ The demons were annoying, and he hated them, but they weren’t evil. They certainly didn’t have the power to start the Apocalypse, that was for sure. Orff could barely walk.

  ‘It is no laughing matter,’ said the angel, and his sombre expression was enough to make Ben agree completely. ‘Towards the end of the Grand War, Pestilence, Famine, War and Death were made flesh. The Adversary summoned them to his aid with a promise that they could divide Creation between them when the battle was won. Fortunately we prevailed, and were able to seal them inside the Box. The wretches that torment you are little more than collateral damage. Its true prisoners are the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.’

  ‘I think the demons would have said something if they had been sharing with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,’ said Ben.

  ‘How would they know? The Horsemen can only take form when they are released from the Box. Until then, they exist only as potential energy. Why do you imagine The Adversary sent his personal herald to stop you destroying it?’

  ‘Then why didn’t it just take it? It had it in its hands.’

  ‘And I imagine it suffered for it, did it not? The Box cannot be touched by celestial hand or infernal claw without grievous injury. It is the only thing that has the power to erase either from the Creation. If The Adversary plans to release the Horsemen, he will need a human to accomplish it. He will need you. I mean to prevent it.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I will use the will of the Prime One to divorce you from the Box and banish the demons to Hell. Then I will destroy it, and the Horsemen along with it.’

  ‘Great,’ said Ben. ‘Where do you want me to stand?’

  ‘Patience,’ said The Seraph. ‘The Veil will soon shift again, and I must depart. The next fluctuation will be during the dying hours of the twenty-fifth day of January.’

  It took Ben a little time to work out what The Seraph meant. ‘You mean Thursday? This Thursday?’

  ‘Yes. You will have to guard the Box with your life until then.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘The Adversary will stop at nothing to possess it. The rites we will perform require a sacred place. There is a neolithic burial ground not far from here: the Box was interred there when it was first forged. It is known as the Greyhound’s Lair, and it lies atop a limestone crag. A place where feral goats roam among white horehound.’

  ‘That sounds far away. And dangerous.’ Ben wasn’t sure which bothered him more, the feral goats or the white horehound.

  ‘It is not. In the current vernacular, the place is called Llandudno.’ He pronounced it precisely, as if he were a native. ‘The crag is known as the Great Orme. Bring the Box there at midnight on Thursday, and I will take care of the rest.’

  ‘Llandudno?’ said Ben.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That is far away.’

  ‘It is only fifteen point seven three miles to the west of here, as the angel flies.’

  ‘But I’m not an angel.’

  ‘There are other forms of transport, are there not? Thursday. Midnight. That is when the conditions will be perfect.’

  An urgent whispering in an unfamiliar language filled the room. It seemed to be coming from all around them, as if it were being transmitted from the very particles of the air.

  ‘What’s that?’ said Ben.

  ‘It means my time here draws to a close.’

  ‘Wait. How am I supposed to find this place?’

  The Seraph opened the window. As he did, the orange glow around him began to fade, and the whispering became quicker, more intense. ‘The Prime One will provide.’ He hoisted himself through the window, and with a beat of his giant crow wings he once again faded back into the darkness. ‘Creation is in your hands, Ben Robson. I mean Ben.’

  Ben felt a sudden gust of wind on his face, and ran to the frame. There was nothing to see, save the freezing dark of Monday morning stretching out across Rhyl. The whispering noise cut out as abruptly as it began, and it was quiet once more.

  He shut the window. The Greyhound’s Lair didn’t sound like somewhere that would be clearly signposted. And even if it were, it would be dark when he was looking for it. As he stumbled towards the light switch, arms outstretched in the angel-black gloom, the Box crept back in. It began to clatter beneath the bed, and the music grew stronger until it was clear and confident, as if he were a radio that the Box was tuning in.

  Kartofel tumbled out on to the floor with a thud.

  ‘What in Asmodeus’s name is going on?’ he said. ‘I was sleeping, right? And then the lights come on, and I think, righto, Ben’s up, let’s go. But I can’t. I’m only chained to the flippin’ wall, aren’t I? So I shouted over to Bulk and Skeleton, and I said “can either of you move?” and Chunk starts crying, so I know he can’t, and the Old Fart starts up with the creaky door sound he makes in the morning, so I know he’s awake too. And so I start to think, something ain’t right here, it’s too quiet. No music. But then it starts, and pfft, the chain is gone and I can move again, so I think, I’m getting to the bottom of this. And I go to get out, and the lid won’t open. I had to give it a shove, which takes some doing when you’re built like I am, just to get it open a crack. And then pow, it swings open, and I come rolling out. So, I ask you, what the clanging bell is going on?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Ben. ‘I don’t know how the Box works, do I?’

  ‘It’s damn weird if you ask me.’

  ‘Go back to bed, or the abyss, or wherever it is that you go,’ said Ben. ‘I don’t know anything about it, all right?’

  ‘Bloomin’ cheek,’ grumbled Kartofel, but went all the same, muttering obscenities. Ben waited for the lid of the Box to fall shut, and then got back into bed.

  His last conscious thought of the night was not of his mother, or Druss, or any of the day’s traumatic events. It was this:

  Llandudno. How the hell am I going to get to Llandudno?

  Chapter Seven

  The Broken Forge

  Ben was usually a reluctant riser, but the next morning his head was too full of white horehounds, apocalyptic battles, and angels the colour of night for him to stay in bed. When his grandmother came to knock on his door at seven thirty, as she did every morning, he was already up and dresse
d. She eased the door open and crept into the room almost on tiptoes, as if the tiniest disruption would send him into a never-ending spiral of despair.

  ‘Poor thing,’ she said. She sat on the edge of the bed and pulled him towards her. ‘Me and Grandad have been talking, and we’ve decided it might be best for you to take the day off school.’

  ‘Hmpf?’ said Ben, his mouth full of the distinct taste of old-lady dressing gown. He never missed school. Never. Despite his best efforts, he had a perfect attendance record. He had tried putting thermometers on radiators, sucking ice cubes, sleeping with the window open, talking in a ‘poorly’ voice. None of it had ever convinced his grandmother to keep him home before. He thought of The Seraph, and how he had said the Creation was in flux. Maybe this was the kind of thing he meant.

  ‘You just take your time coming down now, but when you’re ready there’ll be breakfast waiting.’ She smiled, and then ludicrously quietly, as if to avoid waking him, she shut the door behind her.

  It was not long before the smell of bacon wafted up the stairs, and Ben realized that they would be having a fried breakfast. That proves it, he thought. The world is in flux.

  The Box lid eased open and Djinn rose out of it nose-first. He curled once about the room then drifted down to the floor a juicy pink colour.

  ‘Bacon,’ he said. ‘I like bacon.’

  Kartofel scurried out from under the bed. ‘What’s all this then? We not going to school?’

  ‘No,’ said Ben, ‘I’m staying home.’

  ‘Nice, throwing a sickie, are we? Did you use laxatives? I told you, that’s the way to do it. Nobody argues with diarrhoea.’

  Thursday suddenly felt a long way off. ‘Gran said I didn’t have to go. And so I’m not.’

  Kartofel’s flame flickered, and he impatiently scratched his talons along the carpet. ‘Right, that’s it. There’s definitely something weird going on around here. I want to know what it is.’

  ‘As do I,’ said Orff. ‘The incident last night has caused havoc with my bedsores. Terrible way to treat someone in my condition. And that’s before we even get to what it’s done to my arthritis.’

  ‘There’s bacon,’ said Djinn, dreamily.

  ‘So?’ said Kartofel. ‘There are more important things than food, you know.’

  ‘You take that back,’ said Djinn.

  ‘We can’t go on pretending like nothing has happened,’ said Orff. ‘The sooner that something is done about it, the better. My neuralgia could strike at any moment and then I’ll be no use to anyone.’

  Kartofel sniggered.

  ‘I can’t talk now,’ said Ben. ‘My breakfast’s ready.’

  ‘Food can wait,’ said Kartofel, ‘I want answers. Your mum sees us, you try to drown us, we meet a weird dog-demon, and then we finish the day chained to the wall, and you reckon you can just go and eat breakfast like that’s normal?’

  ‘What do you know about normal? Two-foot talking flames aren’t normal.’

  ‘I’m as normal as the next demon, I’ll have you know.’

  ‘We can’t let him miss breakfast,’ said Djinn, jigging around as if he was about to wet himself.

  ‘We’ll talk about it later,’ said Ben, ducking out the door. Three days, he thought. In three days I will be free.

  The music of the Box had been turbulent ever since he’d woken up, as if it were unsure of what its opinions of the last twenty-four hours were. But it recognized that one thought, free, as familiar, and played a little fanfare to greet it.

  Ben’s grandad was already sitting at the breakfast table, reading the paper over a cup of tea. His grandmother was in the kitchen, supposedly cooking, but mostly making passive-aggressive clanging noises with the frying pans. Before long, she emerged with three fried breakfasts. As they ate, the only sounds were those of their cutlery as it scraped along the plates. Ben kept catching his grandmother looking at him with a concerned smile, and whenever their eyes met, she would tousle his hair or pat him on the head. Both annoyed him greatly.

  The portions were huge, and Ben found finishing was beyond him. He tried to force as much of it down as he could, and as his grandmother took away his half-full plate, he winced, expecting a lecture about starving babies in Africa. She said nothing. Ben’s grandad, however, peered over the top of his paper, saw the uneaten food, and tutted.

  ‘Is there anything you’d like to do today, Ben?’ asked his grandmother. ‘You don’t have to do anything at all if you don’t want to.’ Ben’s grandad dropped his paper and mumbled something under his breath.

  ‘What was that, Paul?’ trilled Ben’s grandmother, ‘I didn’t quite catch it.’

  ‘I said, “Don’t mollycoddle the boy, Annette, for God’s sake.”’ He folded the paper up and tucked it under his arm. ‘I’m going for a walk.’

  His grandmother’s rosy facade slipped for the briefest moment. ‘Never mind Grandad,’ she said after he’d gone. ‘He’s just upset about the garden. Nothing to do with you at all. So, is there anything you’d like to do?’

  Ben certainly did not feel like staying at home. There was one place left he could go that he knew would not be subject to the shifting sands around him, one place that never changed, regardless of whether the Veil was fluctuating or not. ‘I was thinking,’ he said, ‘maybe I could go to the Forge, if that’s all right?’

  His grandmother tousled his hair again. ‘Do you need any money?’ she said.

  Creation in flux. Definitely.

  War is a hungry beast. No matter how well funded or well supplied a military force is, it will always cry out for more: more money, more guns, more lives. In that respect, Ben’s army of painted die-cast skeletons was no different to the US Military, except that Ben’s army had fewer helicopters. But then the USMilitary didn’t have a Zombie Dragon, which in a real-life situation Ben reckoned could probably take out several helicopters in one go.

  When Ben’s army needed supplies, it was to the Broken Forge that he went. The Forge was Ben’s nearest stockist of fantasy wargaming products, and it was situated in Towyn, yet another seaside resort not even ten minutes’ drive from Rhyl. If Rhyl was a dog of a town, then Towyn was a length of dental floss trailing out of the dog’s bum after the dog had been through the rubbish.

  The shop was tucked away on a side street, although Towyn was the kind of place where you could not be sure if any given side street was, in fact, the high street. The road in question, which was hidden behind a row of candy floss stalls and amusement arcades, also housed other long-forgotten shops that were of little interest to tourists or locals. They included a taxidermist, a fruiterer ‘specializing in watermelons’ according to their sign, and a closed-down TV repair shop that had such an impressive cobweb display in the window that it put its near neighbour, Towyn Arachnid Emporium, to shame.

  At first glance, a passer-by might assume that the Broken Forge had suffered a similar fate to the TV shop. The paint on the windowsills and door frames was cracked, and the window display – a selection of Warmonger boxes – had been touched too much by the sun, and not enough by a duster.

  The run-down facade made what was inside all the more special. For Ben, passing through the rickety door was like passing into his own private Narnia: the smell of paint and glue, the rough wooden racks, and the well-stocked shelves of fantasy and folklore books were every bit as magical. The limited floor space was dominated by a huge gameboard with two opposing armies ready to fight: Feral Tigermen versus Orcs and Goblins. It was Tegwyn Price’s pride and joy, and represented a small fraction of the army he had created.

  Tegwyn was the shop’s owner, manager, and sole employee; he was in his late forties, bearded and bespectacled, with a messy moptop of mousey brown hair. He was a scruffy man of average build, with a prominent stomach hanging over his trouser belt, but to his teenage clientele, he was a god. A vengeful, petty, Old Testament sort of a god. He was usually to be found behind the counter squinting into a magnifying glass, or else the loud ding of
the brass bell would bring him skulking out from the mysterious land of Out-the-Back, a stockroom which lay beyond the bead-curtain-covered doorway behind the counter.

  Not, however, on this occasion. Instead, Ben was greeted by the sight of a girl not much older than he was. She was dressed completely in black, and was either naturally pale or had made herself up to look so. She was tall, with long, straight hair that went all the way down her back. She made Ben think of an elf, albeit one that wore cool spectacles with thick black frames.

  ‘Hello,’ she said. Her smile was warm, and kind, and completely at odds with her severe make-up. That she should smile so nicely put him on his guard: the mistrust of the terminal victim.

  ‘Um . . .’ said Ben. He knew female gamers existed: he had read about them in Table Gamer. But he thought they were something that only happened in places like London or Nottingham.

  ‘Nnnn,’ said Tegwyn, as he came through the curtain. He started every sentence with a vocalized sneer, as if speaking was a huge inconvenience, and conversation was only to be participated in with the utmost reluctance. ‘Shouldn’t you be at school? What do you want, you little turd?’

  This was Tegwyn’s standard greeting for the majority of his customers. The Broken Forge was the oldest wargames stockist in North Wales, but faced stiff competition from bigger stores in Llandudno and Chester; the locals who could afford to travel, did – not only for the wider product range, but also for the pleasure of not dealing with Tegwyn. He was unable to put the same dedication into customer service as he had into learning the codexes for every Warmonger army off by heart, and so he was unable to accept that his brusque manner was the reason he had been left with the less mobile corner of the market. Instead, he blamed the success of the other stores on the government, who he suspected of trying to shut him down because he was a pagan, and therefore a danger to the established order.

  ‘We’ve got a teacher-training day,’ said Ben. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘This is my apprentice.’ He turned to face the girl. ‘What’s your name again?’