Hell on Earth

by Philip Palmer

  Sheila screamed and then her hand caught fire, it became a ball of flame at the end of her wrist. And the sprinklers came on and water poured down and the clay monster melted till it was just a puddle.

  And her hand fell off but she had another one underneath, with baby skin that was fresh and lovely.

  Then everything that had just happened hadn’t happened. Sheila was in her own body as a little girl, back in Miss Davies’s class, doing sums.

  She looked at the quadratic equation she had been attempting and realised this wasn’t nearly so hard as the other sums she’d been doing in the other dream. But even so she’d got it wrong. So she changed it and made it come out right. Then she realised she was doing an exam and she shuffled through her exam paper and she realised that she’d answered every single one of the questions wrongly. One question said ‘What is 10 to the power of 3?’ and she’d answered ‘Blancmange’. Now that was DEFINITELY wrong.

  So she picked up the paper and shook it and all the wrong answers fell out and scuttled on the desk like ants. And she smashed them with her hand, one by one, SLAM, SLAM, SLAM. Until all the wrong answers were dead. And Miss Davies was standing over her and said, ‘You’re a very silly girl, Sheila Whittaker,’ so Sheila slammed her too, SLAM, and she was dead.

  Then there was a knock at the door.

  Sheila got up from her desk. She was conscious that she’d forgotten to put her skirt on and she wasn’t wearing knickers either but she decided to make that not true so she was wearing a ball gown and she was twenty-one years old and beautiful. But a bit scrawny and flat-chested, so she brushed her breasts with one hand and enlarged them slightly. And she answered the door. And a huge naked clay-skinned monster was standing there. ‘Jacob,’ she said.

  ‘Sheila,’ the monster replied.

  ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘Duh, you’re dreaming.’

  ‘Dreaming. So I’m asleep?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘I hate this school. I was never happy here.’

  ‘Let’s leave.’

  She was by a lake. There was a waterfall. The water spilling down the waterfall was red. Red as blood. Red WITH blood. Sheila wanted to puke but when she tried to do so, a baby emerged from her mouth. Head first. It wriggled out all the way as Sheila gagged and choked, then it kicked her in the face with a bloody foot as it leaped free. And -

  ‘Get me –’

  ‘We’re going.’

  Sheila was in the garden of her home in Walworth. It was a lovely garden. The spring flowers were out and the trees were in full leaf. Veda was bouncing on the trampoline, screaming with joy, her many arms waving as if she were signalling a flagship. Troy the talking baby was chuckling at the sight from his cot, his fat face full of momentary joy. Sheila had a glass of wine in her hand. She was wearing her grown-up body this time. And she remembered who she was.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Sheila asked.

  ‘You’re still dreaming,’ Jacob explained. ‘But it’s lucid dreaming. And I really do exist. I’m in your dream in my real body, I actually look like this.’

  Jacob was the Jacob she remembered. His body was solid now, not made of oozing clay. He looked big and awkward and stupid.

  ‘How are you doing this?’

  ‘It’s a power I learned. I had a friend who was an incubus.’

  ‘You can enter human dreams?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘Jacob, that’s an invasion of my privacy.’

  ‘That’s not important, Mum. What’s important is –’ Bullets came from nowhere and they hit Veda’s body and punched it full of holes and she screamed and fell bloodily from the trampoline. Sheila screamed too.

  ‘That’s not real. It didn’t happen,’ Jacob said reassuringly.

  ‘I know it’s not real. I’m dreaming, not stupid,’ she chided him.

  ‘Do you remember what really happened?’

  Thea leaped down from the branches of a tall beech tree with her tail swinging and cradled the head of Veda in her furry arms and she wept. Mithrai howled. He sat back on his haunches, his vast mouth open, the noise of his bull-howl making the air tremble.

  Meanwhile Alazu was hovering in the air, his great golden wings beating, afraid to land. ‘Mum, help me!’ Alazu screamed, though Sheila had never heard him speak before. ‘Mum!’

  ‘No,’ said Sheila. ‘I don’t remember what happened.’

  ‘Try. You were shielding Gogarty, do you remember that?’

  ‘Who’s Gogarty?’

  ‘A monster. A killer. When the cops came to arrest him, his spirit took over your body. He possessed you, just like a demon does, except he’s not a demon. And when you ran out of the house he was hiding inside you, waiting. He ordered the Gogarty body to give itself up to the police, and the cops shot Gogarty to death, we were there, we saw it happen. Then some other cops took us to the station and asked us lots of stupid questions and we all lied our heads off and eventually they let us go. And on the way to the hotel, in a park where the dossers hang out, Gogarty took over your mind totally. And then you killed Thea.’

  Sheila froze. This couldn’t be true. It had to be a dream still. Just a dream. Nothing but a stupid untrue dream. She had to end this dream!

  ‘You killed Thea,’ Jacob continued remorselessly, ‘because she was annoying you.’

  ‘No, I would never do that.’

  ‘It wasn’t you, it was –’

  ‘I would never do that. Thea was my baby. My little demon-baboon baby. I loved her. When she was – I used to –’

  ‘It wasn’t your fault.’

  The Thea in this dream was doing forward rolls on the grass now, using her tail to help her spring up in the air. She was grinning wildly, in that wonderfully over-enthusiastic way she had.

  ‘Look Mum!’ Thea called out as she leaped on to the trampoline and began performing acrobatic leaps.

  ‘My little Thea,’ said Sheila. She looked at Jacob. ‘She used to trick you into being naughty. Remember that? She taught you how to hide my purse when I was going out. You were only two years old. Once, you made me a milk shake with Tabasco in it. That was Thea’s influence. I knew of course. And I drank it, of course. Just to see the look on your face; you were so amused! That was Thea. A real bad influence, she was. A scamp. A wicked child in many ways. She made shitballs and threw them at my friends. She –’

  ‘It wasn’t your fault,’ Jacob said.

  ‘She was my baby,’ Sheila sobbed.

  ‘It wasn’t your fault.’

  Sheila tried to stop her tears from falling but they fell anyway. Her cheeks were damp.

  ‘She was so wild. But when she looked at me – those big eyes – she could be so funny. Without Thea I –’

  ‘You were possessed. It wasn’t your fault. But you or rather he, that bastard Gogarty - the soul of Gogarty or whatever it is - he was annoyed with Thea. Because Thea kept teasing him and calling him a silly, and she even made a shitball and threatened you - I mean him - with it because you wouldn’t laugh at her jokes, and you didn’t like that. So you, or he, or whatever, you cut her head off with a silver knife and poured holy water down the neck stump, where the head used to be. And the holy water sizzled inside her body. And that’s what killed her. She’s not in Hell now. She’s not on Earth. She’s no place. She’s been ‘extirpated’, that’s what they call it. Death without parole. I don’t know where you – I mean he – got the knife. Or the holy water. Magic I guess. But he killed Thea, wearing your body. I can see you – it wasn’t - And then you dumped the little monkey’s body parts in a bin and walked on. Two alkies saw what had happened and you gave them a tenner each to keep their gobs shut. But they didn’t care. One less demon, right?’

  Sheila gasped. She couldn’t bear to listen.

  Jacob continued, matter of factly, recounting her sins:

  ‘Thea’s body was in the bin for two days before someone cleared it away. I know that because I read about it in the paper. I was fo
nd of Thea. I really was. I know I never – I never said a nice thing – too late now.’

  ‘It’s okay, she knew you loved her.’

  ‘No! Don’t lie!’

  ‘She knew,’ said Sheila. It was the truth.

  Jacob’s cheeks were damp with tears; his face shimmered, as if close to dissolving. But he continued: ‘Then two days later you killed Alazu –’

  ‘No!’ Sheila screamed.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Please. I don’t need to –’

  ‘You need to. You need to know. To fight him, to fight that fucker Gogarty, you need to know everything.’

  Sheila looked at her dream hands. She touched her dream hands to her dream face. She could feel nothing.

  But inside she could feel. And what she felt was pain.

  ‘Tell me. Tell me how I killed Alazu.’

  ‘He annoyed Gogarty too.’

  ‘Now why doesn’t that surprise me?’ Sheila’s tone was bitter. She was remembering Fred, his last reproachful glance. She’d sacrificed him – for what?

  ‘You booked us into a hotel room. Me and Veda and baby Troy. And you cast a spell and Alazu and Mithrai became invisible so that they could stay in the park. Because they were both too big for any hotel room. And the next day we went for a walk in the park and you fed the ducks. You - I mean Gogarty as you - trained the invisible Mithrai to chase and kill squirrels and dogs, and you thought it was funny. Seeing these dogs run around chasing squirrels, then suddenly the dog was gone, and the squirrel was gone too. And all that was left after Mithrai ate them were the patches of blood on the grass. And the owners were shouting for their pets and not finding them.

  ‘But then you told Alazu to start killing children in the same way, like a hawk kills rabbits, and he refused. So you commanded him and he still refused. And you realised then how very powerful this flying demon was. He actually could defy you. And you were afraid of that. So you made him visible and you told him to stay still so you could stroke his feathers. And he did what he was told. Not because Gogarty commanded it, but because he thought it was you. His mum. And he trusted you. Alazu was only four years old by the standards of his demon-kind, he was a toddler with the body the size of a dragon. That’s why Gogarty couldn’t command him, I think, he was too young. But Alazu loved you, so he sat still when you asked him to. And then you chopped his wings off, with the silver knife again, and Mithrai and I just watched. Because we couldn’t move, you know how it works, we can’t move if you tell us not to move. Or even if you just think it. We are your slaves. As surely as you, the real you, the real Sheila inside that body, are his slave. Oh Mum –’ Jacob broke off.

  ‘Tell me everything, Jacob. Don’t hold back. I need to know. I cut off my darling’s wings. What then?’

  Jacob recovered his resolve.

  ‘You cut off his wings, and then his legs, and his beak, and you were still in the park but no one could see because you’d cast a spell over the place where you were doing your butchering. Only we could see what was happening, me and Veda and Mithrai, but not Troy because you’d left him behind in the hotel room. And we watched you butcher Alazu but at the end of it he was still alive. And then you told us to, me and Veda and Mithrai, you told us to – his body was – we had to - I can’t – And after we’d done it, after we’d eaten Alazu’s still living body, all of him, you made us drink holy water and it was like acid in our guts, and that’s what truly killed Alazu. He died in our guts.’

  Sheila was silent a long time.

  ‘Gogarty must die.’

  ‘I hoped you’d say that.’

  ‘Forgive me, Jacob.’

  ‘There’s nothing to forgive.’

  ‘Forgive me anyway.’

  ‘I forgive you. I love you, Mum. Please, Mum. Don’t blame yourself. Just hate. Just find a way to – kill him, kill Gogarty, please?’

  ‘What else did I do?’

  Jacob sighed.

  ‘Nothing can be worse than what you just said. What else did I do?’

  ‘You sent Mithrai out to drown himself in Kenwood Lake, next to the Witch Wood.’

  ‘I know where it is. Why did I do that?’

  ‘I don’t know. Just to test your power, to prove how much you can control your creatures. I think you were angry at Alazu’s defiance. And shocked that – well that love can be more powerful than magic. So you got angry with Mithrai and you made him dance for you, after he’d eaten the larger portion of Alazu. And then you made him eat his own paw. And he screamed with pain when the gristle of his own flesh touched the holy water that was still in his belly.

  ‘But even that wasn’t enough. So you gave him his instructions, and he left, the big awkward beast, he ran from South London to Kenwood and he never came back. He’s still there, drowning himself. He can’t die, but every day he drowns himself. There was an article about it in the paper. It’s considered to be an unexplained mystery. People watch it as a show now. It’s like the London Dungeon. They don’t care. They don’t think the drowning-itself monster might have feelings, or friends.

  ‘And that’s what you did to us, that’s how you killed your family. It’s just me and Veda and Troy now.’

  ‘I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry I did those things,’ Sheila said, appalled. ‘I love my children, all of them. I would never have -’

  ‘We know it’s not you. It’s creepy as anything, though, because it looks like you, it sounds like you, and yet you do these – these – these terrible things.’

  Jacob’s face was made of oozing clay again, as in the dream: he was weeping.

  Sheila wished she could wake up. But she couldn’t. And her memories were flooding back.

  She remembered Gogarty. She remembered his enslaved demon Naberius, the two of them living in Fred’s studio. She remembered hiding them there for weeks.

  And she remembered the phone call. The police raid. The demon Naberius bursting out of the house and fighting the police in mid-air. And, as Naberius’s flying body was riddled with the bullets of the cops, Sheila had watched and marvelled. And she’d thought, she’d honestly thought, that they were safe.

  Then she felt him inside her. Gogarty. His sly, whispering, evil presence.

  ‘What else has been happening?’ she asked Jacob. ‘I mean, what do I actually do?’

  ‘Not much. You sit and watch a lot of television. Mostly porn and Fox News. It’s been six months since Gogarty’s body died,’ Jacob said. ‘We’ve been living in a hotel room, near Bayswater. You drink a lot. Rum is your favourite, but it makes your breath smell horrible. After you’d killed two of your children, you or rather I mean Gogarty got very morbid. You said you were lonely. Which was pathetic but – no matter. That’s when the prostitutes started to come. There was a lot of that. It was not nice to watch. Then one night, you went out with me into Cardboard City, by the Embankment.’

  ‘No, no. No!’

  ‘Yes. You told me you needed a new hobby. And so you made me kill a homeless man and an old woman, who were sleeping in the same cardboard box. They were so drunk they didn’t wake up even when I was killing them. And I broke their bones and cut their limbs away from the bodies. There were no witnesses. Then we gathered the body parts up and put them in a big suitcase and dropped it in the Thames. Near Hungerford Bridge, at dawn. That was the first night of the slayings.’

  ‘So Gogarty is killing again.’

  ‘Oh yes. He’s an addict. And he enjoys making me do his dirty work. Two nights ago I killed a second time. Three women. Young women. Nice women, by the look of it. So far as I could tell, when I was in the process of - He has such a terrible power over me, you see. Whatever he tells me to do, I have to do. Mum, I can’t bear it. I can’t.’

  ‘Calm down, Jacob.’

  ‘Help me. Help me, please.’

  ‘Where am I now?’

  ‘In the hotel. We’re watching television. It’s the X Factor, the new version. You enjoy it, you like the auditions, people looking stupid, being humiliat
ed. You hate it when the good acts start. You’re drinking red wine. You drink six bottles a night, as well as a bottle of rum. He’ll wreck your liver at this rate. But when he is wearing your body, he can taste the booze and feel the drunkenness but he doesn’t get the hangovers.

  ‘I’m bored and frightened all of the time, Mum. It’s just me, and Veda, and Troy. We three. And you. We all hate you, of course. And that’s the hardest thing of all.

  ‘And later tonight, I’ll go out and kill someone else. You told me that earlier. Just to get me anxious and remorseful in advance. I can’t live like this, Mum.’

  ‘The police. What about the police?’

  ‘They have no idea what’s happened. They think that because the demon Naberius is dead, and because Gogarty is dead, it’s all over. You’re not a suspect. You’re just an innocent witness. They have no interest in you now. No one knows what Gogarty has done to you.’

  ‘Wake up,’ said Sheila’s voice: cold and angry.

  Jacob woke up.

  The dream had ended.

  Sheila was sitting opposite him in her chair. She was pissed, and smiling in the dangerous way of drunk people whose violence is normally sedated by sobriety.

  ‘What have you been doing, Jacob?’

  He stared at her. Sullen, angry, fearful.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Dabbling in my mind?’

  ‘No. No.’

  ‘She can’t escape, you know,’ Sheila said. Her lips were purple with wine, her eyes out of focus. ‘Poor sad bitch.’ The voice was Sheila’s, the intonations were Gogarty’s.

  ‘I know that, master.’

  ‘Don’t be a kiss-arse.’

  ‘I’m sorry, master.’

  ‘Tonight we’ll kill again, just as I promised you. Would you like that, Jacob?’

  ‘Yes, master.’

  ‘Don’t lie.’

  ‘No, master.’

  ‘You hate me don’t you?’ said Sheila.

  Jacob hesitated. Then he spoke the truth. ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you’re plotting ways to destroy me.’