Thursday Next in First Among Sequels

by Jasper Fforde

  “…so I says to him, ‘Yo, Dracula! Have you come to watch the eclipse with us?’ You should have seen his face. He was back in his coffin quicker than shit from a goose, and then when he heard us laughing, he came back out and said with his arms folded, ‘I suppose you think that’s funny?’ and I said that I thought it was perhaps the funniest thing I’d seen for years, especially since he’d tripped and fallen headfirst into his coffin, and then he got all shitty and tried to bite me, so I rammed a sharpened stake through his heart and struck his head from his body.”

  He laughed and shook his head. “Oh, man, did that crease us up.”

  “My amusement might have ended with the sharpened-stake thing,” I confessed, “but I like the idea of Dracula falling flat on his face.”

  “He did that a lot. Clumsy as hell. That biting-the-neck thing? He was going for the breast and missed. Now he pretends that’s what he was aiming for all along. Jerk. Is this number eight?”

  It was. We parked, got out and knocked at the door.

  “Major Pickles?” said Spike as a very elderly man with a pleasant expression answered the door. He was small and slender and in good health. His snow white hair was immaculately combed, a pencil mustache graced his upper lip, and he was wearing a blazer with a regimental badge sewn on the breast.

  “Yes?”

  “Good morning. We’re from Acme Carpets.”

  “Jolly good!” said Major Pickles, who hobbled into the house and ushered us to a room that was devoid of any sort of floor covering. “It’s to go down there,” he said, pointing at the floor.

  “Right,” said Spike, who I could tell was in a mischievous mood. “My associate here will begin carpeting operations while I view the selection of tea and cookies on offer. Thursday—the carpet.”

  I sighed and surveyed the room, which was decorated with stripy green wallpaper and framed pictures of Major Pickles’s notable war time achievements—it looked as if he’d been quite a formidable soldier. It seemed a shame that he was in a rather miserable house in one of the more rundown areas of Swindon. On the plus side, at least he was getting a new carpet. I went to the van and brought in the toolbox, vacuum cleaner, grippers and a nail gun. I was just putting on my knee pads when Spike and Pickles came back into the room.

  “Jaffa cakes!” exclaimed Major Pickles, placing a tray on the windowsill. “Mr. Stoker here said that you were allergic to anything without chocolate on it.”

  “You’re very kind to indulge my partner’s bizarre and somewhat disrespectful sense of humor,” I said. “Thank you.”

  “Well,” he said in a kindly manner, “I’ll leave you to get along, then.”

  And he tottered out the door. As soon as he had gone, Spike leaned close to me and said, “Did you see that!?!”

  “See what?”

  He opened the door a crack and pointed at Pickles, who was limping down the corridor to the kitchen. “His feet.”

  I looked, and the hair on the back of my neck rose. There was a reason Major Pickles was hobbling—just visible beneath the hems of his trouser legs were hooves.

  “Right,” said Spike as I looked up at him. “The cloven one.”

  “Major Pickles is the devil?”

  “Nah!” said Spike, sniggering as if I were a simpleton. “If that was Mephistopheles, you’d really know about it. Firstly, the air would be thick with the choking stench of brimstone and decay, and we’d be knee-deep in the departed souls of the damned, writhing in perpetual agony as their bodies were repeatedly pierced with the barbed spears of the tormentors. And secondly, we’d never have got Jaffa cakes. Probably rich tea or graham crackers.”

  “Yeah, I hate them, too. But listen, if not Satan, then who?”

  Spike closed the door carefully. “A demi-devil or Junior demon or something, sent to precipitate mankind’s fall into the eternal river of effluent that is the bowels of hell. Let’s see if we can’t get a make on this guy. Have a look in the backyard and tell me if you see anything unusual.”

  I peered out the window as Spike looked around the room.

  “I can see the old carpet piled up in the carport,” I said, “and an almost-brand-new washing machine.”

  “How does the carpet look?”

  “It seems perfect.”

  “Figures. Look here.”

  He pointed to an old cookie jar that was sitting on the mantelpiece. The lid was half off, and clearly visible inside was a wad of banknotes.

  “Bingo!” said Spike, drawing out the hefty wad. They were all fifty-pound notes—easily a grand. “This is demi-demon Raum, if I’m not mistaken. He tempts men to eternal damnation by the sin of theft.”

  “Come on!” I said, mildly skeptical. “If Lucifer has everyone that had stolen something, he’d have more souls than he’d know what to deal with.”

  “You’re right,” agreed Spike. “The parameters of sin have become blurred over the years. A theft worthy of damnation has to be deceitful, cowardly and loathsome—like from a charming and defenseless pensioner war veteran. So what Raum does is stash the real Major Pickles in a closet somewhere, assume his form, leaves the cash in plain sight, and some poor boob chances his luck. He counts his blessings, has a good few evenings out and forgets all about it until Judgment Day. And then—shazam! He’s having his eyeballs gouged out with a spoon. And then again. And again…and again.”

  “I…get the picture. So this Raum guy’s a big deal, right?”

  “Nah—pretty much a small-timer,” said Spike, replacing the money. “First sphere, tenth throne—any lower and he’d be in the second hierarchy and confined to hell rather than doing the cushy number up here, harvesting souls for Lucifer and attempting to engineer the fall of man.”

  “Is there a lot of this about?” I asked. “Demons, I mean—hanging around ready to tempt us?”

  Spike shrugged. “In Swindon? No. And there’ll be one less if I can do anything about it.”

  He flipped open his cell phone and dialed a number, then pointed at the floor. “You better get those grippers down if we’re to finish by lunchtime. I’m kidding. He doesn’t want a carpet; we’re only here to be tempted—remember all that stuff in the backyard? Hi, Betty? It’s Dad. I’ve got a five-five in progress with a tenth-throner name of Raum. Will you have a look in Wheatley’s and see how to cast him out? Thanks.” He paused for a moment, looked at me and added, “Perhaps it wasn’t Felix8 at all. Perhaps he was…Felix9. After all, the linking factor between the Felixes was only ever his face, yes?”

  “Good point,” I said, wondering quite how Spike might be so relaxed about the whole demon thing that he could be thinking about the Felix problem at the same time.

  “Betty?” said Spike into his phone. “I’m still here…. Cold steel? No problem. Have you done your homework?…Well, you’d better get started. One more thing: Bowden said he’d do the washing for us, so get all the curtains down…. Love you, too. Bye.”

  He snapped his phone shut and looked around the room for something made of steel. He picked up the nail gun, muttered, “Damn, galvanized” then rummaged in the toolbox. The best he could find was a long screwdriver, but he rejected this because it was chrome-plated.

  “Can’t we just go away and deal with Raum later?”

  “Doesn’t work like that,” he said, peering out the window to see if there was anything steel within reach, which there wasn’t. “We deal with this clown right now or not at all.”

  He opened the door a crack and peeked out.

  “Okay, he’s in the front room. Here’s the plan: You gain his attention while I go into the kitchen and find something made of steel. Then I send him back to the second sphere.”

  “What if you’re mistaken?” I asked. “He might be suffering from some—I don’t know—rare genetic disorder that makes him grow hooves.”

  Spike fixed me with a piercing stare. “Have you even heard of such a thing?”

  “No.”

  “Then let’s do it. I hope there’s a Sab
atier or a tire iron or something—it’ll be a pretty messy job with an eggbeater.”

  So while Spike slipped into the kitchen, I went to the door of the front room where Major Pickles was watching TV. He was seated on a floral-patterned settee with a cup of tea and a slice of fruitcake on a table nearby.

  “Hello, young lady,” he said amiably. “Done already?”

  “No,” I said, trying to appear unflustered, “but we’re going to use the nail gun, and it might make some noise.”

  “Oh, that’s quite all right,” he said. “I was at Tobruk, you know.”

  “Really? What was it like?”

  “My dear girl, the noise—and you couldn’t get a decent drink anywhere.”

  “So a nail gun is no problem?”

  “Nostalgic, my dear—fire away.”

  Spike hadn’t yet reappeared, so I carried on. “Good. Right, well—Hey, is that Bedazzled you’re watching?”

  “Yes,” he replied, “the Brendan Fraser version—such a broad head, but very funny.”

  “I met him once,” I said, stalling for time, “at the launch party for the Eyre Affair movie. He played the part of—”

  “Thursday?”

  It was Spike, calling from the kitchen. I smiled and said to Major Pickles, “Would you excuse me for just one moment?”

  Pickles nodded politely, and I walked to the kitchen, which was, strangely enough, empty. Not a sign of Spike anywhere. It had two doors, and the only other entrance, the back door, had a broom leaned up against it. I was about to open the fridge to look for him when I heard a voice.

  “I’m up here.”

  I glanced up. Spike was pinned to the ceiling with thirty or so knives, scissors and other sharp objects, all stuck through the periphery of his clothing and making him look like the victim of an overenthusiastic circus knife thrower.

  “What are you doing?” I hissed. “We’re supposed to be dealing with the Raum guy.”

  “What am I doing? Oh, just admiring the view—why, what do you think I’m doing?”

  I shrugged.

  “Thursday,” added Spike in a quiet voice, “I think he’s on to us.”

  I turned to the door and jumped in fright because Major Pickles had crept up without my realizing. But it wasn’t the little old gent I’d a seen a few moments ago; this Pickles had two large horns sticking out of his head, yellow eyes like a cat’s, and he was dressed in a loincloth. He was lean and muscular and had shiny, bright red skin—a bit like those ducks that hang in Chinese-restaurant windows. He also smelled strongly of sewage.

  “Well,” said Raum in a guttural, rasping voice that sounded like a box of rusty nails, “Thursday Next. What a surprise!” He looked up. “And Mr. Stoker, I presume—believe me, you are very unpopular from where I come from!”

  I made a move to thump him, but he was too quick, and a moment later I was thrown to the ceiling with a force so hard it cracked the plaster. I didn’t drop; I was held, face pointing down, not by any knives or scissors but the action of an unearthly force that felt as if I were being sat upon by a small walrus.

  “Thursday,” added Spike in a quiet voice, “I think he’s onto us.”

  “Two unsullied souls,” growled Raum sadly. “To His Infernal Majesty, worthless.”

  “I’m warning you,” said Spike in a masterful display of misplaced optimism, “give yourself up and I’ll not be too hard on you.”

  “SILENCE!” roared Raum, so loudly that two of the kitchen windows shattered. He laughed a deep, demonic cackle, then carried on. “Just so this morning hasn’t been a complete waste, I am prepared to offer a deal: Either you both die in an exceptionally painful manner and I relinquish all rights to your souls, or one of you gives yourself to me—and I free the other!”

  “How about a game of chess?” suggested Spike.

  “Oh, no!” said Raum, wagging a reproachful finger. “We don’t fall for that one anymore. Now, who’s it going to be?”

  “You can take me,” said Spike.

  “No!” I cried, but Raum merely laughed. He laughed long and loud. He laughed again. Then some more. He laughed so long, in fact, that Spike and I looked at each other. But still Raum laughed. The plates and cups smashed on the dresser, and glasses that were upside down on the drainer broke into smithereens. More laughter. Louder, longer, harder, until suddenly and quite without warning he exploded into a million tiny fragments that filled the small kitchen like a red mist. Released from the ceiling, I fell to the floor via the kitchen table, which was luckily a bit frail and had nothing on it. I was slightly dazed but got up to see…the real Major Pickles, standing where Raum had been, still holding the steel bayonet that had dispatched the demon back to hell.

  “Hah!” said the elderly little gent with an aggressive twinkle in his eye. “They don’t like the taste of cold steel up ’em!”

  He had several days of stubble and was dressed in torn pajamas and covered in soil.

  “Are you okay?” I asked him.

  “He thought he could keep me prisoner in the garden shed,” replied the pensioner resolutely, “but it was only fifteen yards nornoreast under the patio to the geranium bed.”

  “You dug your way out?”

  “Yes, and would have been quicker, too, if I’d had a soup spoon instead of this.”

  He showed me a very worn and bent teaspoon.

  “Or a spade?” I ventured.

  “Hah!” he snorted contemptuously. “Spades are for losers.” He looked up and noticed Spike. “I say, you there, sir—get off my ceiling this minute.”

  “Nothing I’d like better.”

  So we got Spike down and explained as best we could to the sprightly nonagenarian just who Raum was, something that he seemed to have very little trouble understanding.

  “Good Lord, man!” he said at last. “You mean I killed a demon? There’s a notch for the cricket bat, and no mistake.”

  “Sadly, no,” replied Spike. “You just relegated him to the second sphere—he’ll not reappear on earth for a decade or two and will get a serious lashing from the Dark One into the bargain.”

  “Better than he deserves,” replied Major Pickles, checking the cookie jar. “The rotten blighter has pigged all my Jaffa cakes.”

  “Spike,” I said, pointing at a desk diary I’d found on the counter, “we’re not the only people who have had an appointment this morning.”

  He and Major Pickles bent over to have a look, and there it was. This morning was the first of three days of soul entrapment that Raum had planned for the house-call professionals of Swindon, and we had been the third potential damnees. The first, an electrician, Raum had crossed out and made a note: “sickeningly pleasant.” The next, however, was for a new washing machine, and Raum had made three checks next to the name of the company: Wessex Kitchens. I rummaged through the papers on the counter-top and found a job sheet—the workman had been someone called Hans Towwel.

  “Blast!” said Spike. “I hate it when Satan obtains a soul. Don’t get me wrong, some people deserve to be tortured for all eternity, but damnation without the possibility of salvation—it’s like a three-strike life sentence without the possibility of parole.”

  I nodded in agreement. Obscene though the crime was, eternal damnation was several punishments too far.

  “All this defeatist claptrap is making me sick to the craw,” growled Major Pickles. “No one is going to hell on my account—what happens if we get the money back?”

  Spike snapped his fingers.

  “Pickles, you’re a genius! Mr. Towwel doesn’t join the legion of the damned until he actually makes use of his ill-gotten gains. Thursday, call Wessex Kitchens and find out where he is—we need to get to him before he spends any of the cash.”

  Ten minutes later we were heading at high speed toward the Greasy Monk, a popular medieval-themed eatery not far from the rebuilt cathedral of St. Zvlkx. I had tried to call Towwel’s cell phone, but it was switched off, and when I explained that there was a substan
tial sum of money missing from Major Pickles’s house, the boss of Wessex Kitchens said he was horrified—and promised to meet us there.

  The restaurant was filled to capacity, as the cathedral of St. Zvlkx had just been nominated as the first GSD drop-around-if-you-want-but-hey-no-one’s-forcing-you place of worship/contemplation/meditation, and the many followers/adherents/vaguely interested parties of the single unified faith were having lunch and discussing ways in which they could best use the new multi-faith for overwhelming good.

  As soon as we pushed open the doors Spike yelled, “Hans Towwel?” in his most commanding voice, and in the silence that followed, a man in a navy blue coverall signaled to us from behind a wooden plate of bread and dripping.

  “Problems?” he said as we walked up.

  “Could be,” said Spike. “Did you pay for that meal with the money you pinched from Major Pickles?”

  “Did I what?”

  “You heard him,” I said. “Did you pay for that meal with the money you stole from Major Pickles?”

  “Ballocks to you!” he said, getting up. Spike, who was pretty strong, pushed the man hard back down into his seat.

  “Listen,” said Spike in a quiet voice, “we’re not cops, and we don’t give a shit about the money, and we don’t give a shit about you—but we do give a shit about your soul. Now, just tell us: Have you spent any of the cash or not?”

  “That’s well sweet, isn’t it?” growled Towwel. “Some cash is missing so you blame the workingman.”

  “Towwel?” said a crumpled and untidy-looking man in a crumpled and untidy-looking suit, who had just arrived. “Is what they say true?”

  “Who are you?” asked Spike.

  “Mr. Hedge Moulting of Wessex Kitchens,” said the untidy man, offering us a business card. “I must say I am shocked and appalled by our employee’s behavior—how much was taken?”

  “Now, look here!” said Towwel, growing angrier by the second, which caused Mr. Moulting of Wessex Kitchens to flinch and hide behind Spike. “I don’t steal from people. Not from customers, not from pensioners, not from you, not from anyone!”