The Box of Demons

by Daniel Whelan

  ‘You know very well it’s Lucy. And I’m not your apprentice, I’m on work experience.’ Lucy stretched out her hand. Ben blushed, and was so dumbstruck that he forgot to take it. Lucy stepped out from behind the counter, picked up Ben’s limp hand, and shook it.

  ‘Very nice,’ sniggered Tegwyn. ‘Now if you two lovebirds are finished, there are Dark Elves to be catalogued Out-the-Back.’

  ‘It was nice to meet you.’ Lucy smiled again, and passed through the curtain.

  ‘She is my apprentice really,’ said Tegwyn after she’d gone.

  ‘No, I’m not,’ shouted Lucy.

  ‘You wouldn’t understand,’ said Tegwyn in a noticeably quieter voice. ‘What do you want, anyway, arsewipe? Here to buy nothing, as usual?’

  ‘I want the Bone Lords,’ said Ben. They were a regiment he had long wanted to add to his army, and thanks to his grandmother, who had given him twenty-five pounds, he could finally acquire them.

  ‘Ooh, big spender,’ said Tegwyn. ‘What’s the magic word?’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Manners cost arse all. Nnnn, girl,’ he shouted Out-the-Back. ‘Look for a Bone Lords, part code nine-one-nine-two-zero-two-zero-seven-zero-one-zero.’

  ‘Look yourself. And my name’s Lucy.’

  Tegwyn grunted, and reluctantly got up from his swivel chair. ‘Try not to break anything while I go Out-the-Back.’

  This was something Tegwyn said whenever he left Ben alone in the store, a habit that he had adopted after an incident when Ben had first started to get into the hobby. The demons had all manifested in the store at once while Tegwyn was Out-the Back, and the limited space in the poky shop had led to Orff knocking glue all over the Orc Wolf Chariot that Tegwyn had been working on at the time. Ben had been barred from the shop until he could pay for the ruined model.

  As much as Tegwyn liked to believe himself a rebel, ecomagician, and dangerous threat to the system, he was at heart a businessman, which was why he soon returned from Out-the-Back with a sun-faded box containing a set of Villagers and Townsfolk. Ben immediately recognized it as the one that had sat in the window most of the previous summer.

  ‘No Bone Lords. Buy this. They don’t make it any more.’ (This was because, Ben knew, models of peasants with pitchforks are not as popular as undead samurai.)

  ‘You said you had two last week.’

  ‘That was last week. Now I’ve got this. Take it or leave it.’

  It wasn’t an offer Ben had to think about for long. ‘I think my grandad might be going to Chester next week. He can get one there.’

  He found it impossible to look Tegwyn in the eye as he said it. If he had, he would have seen the older man’s face drop on hearing the C-word. Instead, he just heard his reaction in the irritated, resentful tone of his reply.

  ‘Nnnn. Forgot to check the new delivery, didn’t I? The girl hasn’t finished unpacking it yet. Wait here,’ he said, and went clattering Out-the-Back again.

  While he waited, Ben wandered over to the bookshelves. The sign above them said ‘A Cornucopia of Tomes’ in Celtic script. Scrawled beneath the sign was a handwritten note: ‘YE CORNUCOPIA IS NOT A LIBRARY. YE MUST PAY THE TOLL.’

  The shelf covered every aspect of fantasy, from novels by Terry Pratchett and David Gemmel through to Practical Model Painting Guides. Ben had either read or already owned most of them. There was also a small section dedicated to Tegwyn’s other interests: there were a few volumes on folk music and real ale, but these shelves were mostly given over to pagan rituals and magic. These were books that no one ever touched, bar the occasional member of the local druidic circle. They’d turn up in battered old cars wearing knitted jumpers, and would quickly buy some book about the winter solstice or something before racing back to their vehicles. Ben had seen similar behaviour from the customers of ‘The Garden of Love’ (five doors down, next to the Arachnid Emporium).

  These books all had bizarre titles, and seemed hell-bent on combining the magical with the mundane: Bringing Witchcraft to the Washing-Up was one of them; The Moon Goddess for Chartered Accountants another. But towards the end of the section was a run of local-history titles, and one in particular caught his eye. It was called Sacred Orme: Neolithic Monuments on Llandudno’s Ancient Beachhead.

  Maybe the Prime One really does provide, thought Ben as he levered the book off the shelf. It was a hardback, much heavier than the books Ben was used to reading. It even had a dust jacket: a black and white photograph of what he supposed must be the Orme, with the title in large red letters. The author was called Terry Owens.

  Ben opened the book and felt his heart flutter. He flicked straight to the index, and ran his finger down the G column. No luck. He moved to the letter L, hoping for ‘Lair of the Greyhound’. As he looked, he felt movement in his satchel: the familiar feeling of claws digging into leather.

  ‘He’s gone, has he?’ said Kartofel. ‘Chubs smelt him go, so I reckoned I’d come out and have a look round.’

  ‘He’ll be back in a second,’ said Ben. ‘He’s only gone Out-the-Back.’

  ‘Tch. I bet he’s got freezer full of corpses back there. What’s that?’

  ‘A book.’

  ‘What’s it about?’

  ‘What do you care? Get back in the Box.’

  ‘Nnnnnn. Talking to yourself, are you?’ Ben had been so absorbed in his search that he had not noticed Tegwyn return. Startled, he slammed the book shut and looked up. He felt colour rise to his cheeks.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then who were you talking to? Imaginary friend?’

  ‘Who are you callin’ imaginary?’ grumbled Kartofel. ‘I’ll give you imaginary . . .’

  ‘What you got there?’ said Tegwyn.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Ben.

  ‘Doesn’t look like nothing. Looks like a Tome to me.’

  ‘I was just looking up something I heard about. The Greyhound’s Lair.’

  ‘Yeah. Llety’r Filiast,’ said Tegwyn. ‘What about it?’

  Ben did Welsh at school, but like most subjects, he wasn’t very good at it: too much demon distraction in the classroom. In Welsh, the problem was Kartofel. He had taken a bizarre shine to the teacher, Mrs Thomas, who was one of the strictest in school.

  ‘Llety’r Filiast,’ said Kartofel. His Welsh pronunciation was immaculate. ‘Where’s that? Why do you want to know about that?’

  ‘Llety’r Filiast,’ said Tegwyn again. ‘The Greyhound’s Lair. You’ll find it under LL. For Llety.’ He overemphasized the Welsh sounds each time. Ben flicked back to the index, running his finger down the letters until he found the right entry. He flipped quickly through the book, impatient to see this mythical place.

  ‘Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah,’ said Tegwyn, tapping the ‘Pay the Toll’ sign. ‘You know the rules.’ Ben looked longingly at the book, then up at Tegwyn, who was holding a factory-sealed Bone Lords box.

  ‘I just want to look it up. It won’t take a sec,’ said Ben.

  ‘Then it’ll be an expensive second, won’t it?’ said Tegwyn.

  Ben turned to the inside cover and found the price on the dust jacket: £24.99. It was one or the other. His eyes flicked from book to box and back again. The Bone Lords looked exciting. Ben could imagine the thrill of digging a fingernail into the vacuum-packed plastic, releasing that new-box, new-figure smell. The book, on the other hand, was mostly pictures of old rocks and goats and had been written by some spotty fat bloke called Terry. It looked like the most boring book ever written.

  ‘Just buy your little skeletons so we can get out of here, will you?’ said Kartofel.

  There was no contest.

  ‘I’ll take the book,’ said Ben.

  Chapter Eight

  Pilgrim’s Progress

  By the time Thursday rolled around, Ben had become something of an expert on the Great Orme. Sacred Orme was his constant companion, and its perfect fresh pages were soon dog-eared and grubby, its dust jacket battered and torn. It was a shame that none of his lessons a
t school required an encyclopaedic knowledge of Stone Age monuments in the local area, because he was certain he could ace any test on the subject.

  The first thing he’d learned about Llety’r Filiast was that it was nowhere near as exciting as its name suggested. He had expected flaming torches and cobwebbed catacombs, with a fearsome beast guarding the door. He was relieved (and secretly a little disappointed) to discover that white horehound was a nondescript plant of the genus Marrubium that had been used by druids to cure sore throats, and that the monument itself was just a pile of wonky slabs that had been dumped in the middle of the most unremarkable field in Wales. It seemed that giving boring things fantasy-style names was a speciality of ancient Welshmen: other underwhelming ruins included a lump of rock called Tudno’s Cradle, and a feeble stone circle called the Place of the Deer.

  The speed at which he had absorbed this knowledge was only possible because the demons allowed it. Once Kartofel had seen the book, there was no putting off talking to them about The Seraph, and so a summit had been convened and Ben had related almost everything the angel had told him (though he left out the part about having the power to unleash the Apocalypse – he thought it wise).

  ‘You want to send us to Hell?’ said Kartofel.

  ‘It’s not like that,’ said Ben.

  ‘It sounds like that. You want us to agree to go to Hell.’

  ‘You’re making it sound really negative.’

  ‘It’s Hell!’ bellowed Kartofel.

  ‘Yes, but you’re meant to be there. You’ll like it. See, at the moment you’re prisoners, and The Seraph will set you free.’

  ‘You want to send us to Hell AND you want us to trust an angel? We’re demons!’

  ‘Exactly. You’re meant to be in Hell.’

  ‘Bog off,’ said Kartofel. ‘I’m not standing around listening to this.’

  He scuttled over to the Box and made a great show of letting the lid slam shut behind him. Almost immediately Ben heard a subtle change in the music as it opened again a tiny crack.

  ‘Don’t you want us any more, Ben?’ said Djinn, nervously playing with his fingers. ‘Because you tried to throw us away, and now you’re sending us to live in Hell.’

  ‘No, it’s not that,’ Ben lied. ‘It’s just that you were never meant to be in this world in the first place. Hell is where you’re supposed to be.’

  ‘Is it scary?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Ben. ‘Probably not to you. Lots of demons live there.’

  Orff slowly cleared his throat. ‘The worst thing about this existence,’ he said, ‘isn’t that inside the Box is cold, and dank, and probably crawling with germs and allergens that bring you out in hives or give you whooping cough or rubella. It’s not even that it robs you of any sense of time, so that seconds pass like hours and centuries go by in minutes, which is particularly confusing to me with my thyroid condition. It is that every now and again a green glow passes by that illuminates and warms us. And then it is gone, and we are left as before. Once you feel that glow, you yearn for it to return.’

  Orff was no longer looking at Ben, or Djinn, but straight ahead, into the centre of the room. There was a heaviness in the air, as if his unburdening had infected even the oxygen molecules. ‘If that is not Hell, then how can Hell itself be worse? It will be warm there, at least. It will be good for my tuberculosis.’

  Djinn nodded. Inside his head, Ben heard the Box lid close completely.

  Thursday brought loud and blustery winds, and Ben woke up to a Box that was as choppy as the weather. From first light, it constantly varied the speed of its music, setting Ben’s nerves on edge.

  At school, every class was abuzz with excited gossip about the weather: rumours spread that the strength of the winds would mean that the school would close early. It was the kind of excitement that the reluctant pupil longs for, something to break up the monotony of the school day, but to Ben, it still dragged. The hours ground against each other, churning out slow second upon slow second.

  Sacred Orme was intended to double up as a rambler’s guide (although no rambler worth their salt would ever lug a hardback book around with them) and so it provided directions to all the ‘sacred’ sites on the Orme. Ben was confident that finding Llety’r Filiast would be easy enough. It was getting to Llandudno that was the hard part. He resolved to sneak out and take the last train of the day. Although the bus ran later, and so offered the best chance of cover, it was possible to bunk the train, which is what he needed to do, having no money to pay for a ticket.

  He went to bed early, to much sympathetic clucking from his grandmother. Once upstairs, he had set about fashioning a decoy in his bed out of pillows and spare blankets. It wasn’t particularly convincing, but Ben thought that in the darkness it would probably be OK. Then he packed the Box in his satchel, along with Sacred Orme and a torch he had borrowed from his grandad’s tool box. He was dressed in black, or at least as much black as he could muster: his grey trainers, his black school trousers, and a black T-shirt with a big picture of a green troll holding the severed head of a dwarf on it. He also had his anorak on, although he knew from experience that it would be little help in the rain. As ready as he would ever be, he took a deep breath, and opened his bedroom window.

  It immediately blew back on its hinges, slamming against the side of the house. Ben threw his leg over the windowsill, straddled it for a moment, then swung his other leg round too; moments later he was standing on the sloping brown brick tiles of the roof. He gripped the frame tightly. The wind was strong and fast, and Ben felt that if he let go, he would probably be blown clear off the roof.

  He took a series of short, sharp breaths, promised himself he would go after three again and again until suddenly and recklessly he let go. He turned round, sat down violently, and dug his heels into the tiles to slow what he was sure would be a quick slide to the gutter. Instead, the wind knocked him back against the wall beneath his window and pinned him there.

  The tiles were not at all slippery. It took a lot of effort for him to pull himself into the wind, using his feet to drag himself towards the gutter. Once there, he felt elated. This, he thought, was the easy part. Adrenalin flooded his system. He placed his heels into the plastic trough. It bent a little, which was worrying, but he was still confident it would take his weight. After all, people shinned up and down drainpipes all the time in films.

  He twisted at the waist and then, his feet still hooked in the guttering, tried to move into a crawling position. As he turned the bottom half of his body round, he was caught by a gust of wind which threw him diagonally across the roof, scraping him along the coarse tiles. His arms flailed wildly for anything that he could cling on to, finally finding the guttering again. He held tightly to the far corner of the roof, where the drainpipe ran down the side of the house, his legs swinging in mid-air.

  He clung on, panting. Now it was just a case of easing himself down and dropping gently to the grass in the front garden below. Or so he thought. He began to feel the guttering bend where it met his belly, and before he really knew what was happening it buckled under his weight, and the plastic clamps that attached the pipe to the awning of the house cracked. The roof got further and further away, until he landed with a thud on the muddy ground, the gutter still in his hand.

  The Box complained as it hit the dirt, and Ben felt a blunt pain in the small of his back where he had landed on it. Without waiting to check his injuries, he clambered to his feet, threw the guttering on to the grass, and ran. His back hurt, but he was too full of endorphins to let it bother him. He raced down the middle of the road, through the neighbouring streets, and on towards the station.

  The train toilet was cramped, and bore all the signs of a full day’s use. A soggy trail of toilet paper had wound itself around the base of the metal bowl, and there were a series of strangely gloopy puddles on the floor. It was not a very pleasant place to spend the forty-minute journey, but it was the only option for the ticketless traveller. />
  With the buzz from his rooftop escape wearing off, all Ben could now feel was pain. He stripped off his T-shirt, taking care not to touch anything in the rank cubicle as he did, and slung it over his shoulders. His chest was covered in scratches and friction burns from the roof tiles. He turned his skinny torso away from the mirror, and looked over his shoulder at the damage on his back. A large Box-shaped bruise spread across the base of his spine, a perfect copy in yellow and purple.

  His left ankle hurt when he put weight on it, which made it difficult to dodge the streams of urine that were flowing along the floor in time with the train’s rickety movement. He closed the toilet lid and sat on it, his feet hovering above the ground as he dabbed at his wounds with damp paper towels.

  At Abergele & Pensarn station, Djinn appeared, turning a dirty amber colour as he did. He was quickly followed by Kartofel, who, on seeing the state of the floor, elected to perch himself on top of the satchel.

  ‘It stinks in here,’ he said.

  ‘I know,’ said Ben.

  ‘It’d probably be all right if you just sat in the carriage.’

  ‘Or the buffet car,’ said Djinn.

  ‘No one ever checks tickets on these things.’

  ‘How do you know?’ said Ben.

  ‘Dunno,’ said Kartofel. ‘Demons’ intuition.’

  There were three hard knocks on the door. Everyone froze. The person knocked again, harder, more insistent. Ben held his breath. He hoped it was a passenger, but dared not call out in case it was a ticket inspector.

  The train pulled off, slowly getting up to speed. No more knocks came, and Ben let out a sigh of relief. The next station was eight minutes away. After that it was twenty minutes non-stop to Llandudno. He just needed to get past Colwyn Bay – then if he got caught he’d be ejected at Llandudno anyway.

  ‘Probably some drunk,’ said Kartofel. Immediately, the banging on the door began again. It was no longer a stern sharp knock, but a constant, authoritative pounding.

  ‘Ah, get lost, you old wino,’ said Kartofel.