The Infernals aka Hell's Bells

by John Connolly

  “Proper food,” he whispered. “Fresh meat.”

  The words were taken up by the elderly man beside him, and the wizened old lady whose toothless jaws could only suck the meat from bones, and the children dressed like princes and princesses, passed on and on down the table until they, like the distant, starving guests at the feast, were lost in the mist.

  “Fresh meat, fresh meat, fresh meat…”

  Samuel picked up Boswell and backed away from the table. The man in the tuxedo put his hands on the arms of the chair, preparing to rise, but found that he could not stand. He tried to shift his chair, as if hoping to shuffle it toward Samuel, but it would not budge. His hands stretched for Samuel, but Samuel was beyond his reach. The tall bald man with the sharp knife howled in fury, slashing at the air with the blade as though his limbs might somehow extend far enough to cut Samuel’s flesh.

  The bewigged woman tried to be more cunning. “Come here, little boy,” she whispered, offering him a gray piece of chocolate. “I’ll protect you from them. I had a little boy of my own once. I wouldn’t hurt a child.”

  But Samuel was no fool. He stayed out of her reach, clutching Boswell tightly.

  “At least leave us your dog,” said the man in the tuxedo. “I hear dog is very tasty.”

  All along the table voices were raised, shouting threats, promises, bribes, anything that might convince Samuel to approach, or to hand Boswell over, but Samuel just backed away, never taking his eyes from them, fearful that if he did so they might find a way to free themselves from the prison of their chairs. Then, one by one, their appetites got the better of them until the guests resumed their great, tasteless meal, all but the woman with the wig, who stared after Samuel, repeating over and over to herself, “I had a little boy of my own, long ago…”, and only when Samuel was again at the crest of the hill did she turn back to her caviar and lose herself once more in the feast.

  • • •

  Samuel and Boswell moved on. They saw a great wooden horse burning; around it sat Greek warriors, lost in melancholy. Warily, Samuel approached them, but the warriors did not stir, and when he tried to speak to them they did not answer.

  “What do you want, child?” said a voice, and Samuel turned to see a woman emerge from the sand: first the head, then the body, until she stood before him, grains tumbling from her hair, her hands, her gown. As Samuel looked more closely at her he saw that she had not merely risen from the sand: she was sand, different textures and hues combining to give the impression of clothing, and color, and life. Only her eyes were not formed from sand: they blazed a deep, fiery red, and Samuel knew that he was staring at a demon.

  “This is… the Trojan horse, isn’t it?” said Samuel.

  “It is.”

  “And these are the men who used it to gain access to the city.”

  “They are. The one who sits apart from the others, the man alone, that is Odysseus.” She spoke his name softly. “The horse was his idea.”

  “But why are they here?”

  “Because it was an act of deception. It was not honest, not truthful.”

  “But it was clever.”

  “A lie may be clever, but it is still a lie.”

  “But don’t they say that all is fair in love and war? I heard that somewhere.”

  “‘They’?” Who are ‘they’?”

  “I don’t know. Just people.”

  “That’s what the victorious claim, not the defeated; the powerful, not the powerless. ‘All is fair.’ ‘The end justifies the means.’ Is that what you believe?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is there someone that you love? A girl, perhaps?”

  “There’s a girl that I like.”

  “Would you lie to gain her affection?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t think so?”

  “No, I wouldn’t.”

  “And if someone lied to her about you in order to turn her against you, would you feel that was fair?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Have you heard it said that sport is war by other means?”

  “I haven’t, but I suppose it could be true.”

  “Do you cheat when you play games?”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s not right. It’s not…”

  “Fair?”

  “No, it’s not fair.”

  “So all is not fair in love, and all is not fair in war.”

  “I suppose not.” Samuel was troubled. He looked at the warriors, but none of them seemed to have paid any attention to his conversation with the demon. “It still seems like a harsh punishment,” he said.

  “It is,” said the demon, with something like regret in her voice.

  “Who decided?” asked Samuel. “Who decided that they should be here?”

  “They decided,” said the demon. “They chose. Now go, child. Their melancholy is infectious.”

  The grains of sand at her eyes formed a tear that shed itself upon her cheek. The demon sank back into the ground, and Samuel and Boswell turned away from the burning horse and continued their journey.

  XX

  In Which We Meet the Blacksmith

  THE BARREN LANDSCAPE BEGAN to change, although not for the better. It was now dotted with objects that seemed to come from another world, Samuel’s world: a suit of armor, empty and rusted; a German biplane from World War I; a submarine standing perfectly upright, balanced on its propellers; and a rifle, the largest, longest gun that Samuel had ever seen, so long that it would have taken him an hour or more just to walk around it, made up of millions and millions of smaller guns, all fused together to create a kind of giant sculpture. As Samuel examined it he saw that pieces of the rifle appeared to be alive, wriggling like metal snakes, and he realized that the rifle was still forming, weapons popping into existence in the air around it and slowly being absorbed into the whole.

  A huge man appeared from behind the discarded turret of a tank. He wore dirty black overalls and a welder’s mask upon his face. In his right hand he held a blowtorch that burned with a white-hot flame. He killed the flame and pushed the mask up so that his face was revealed. He was bearded, and his eyes shone with the same white fire as his torch, as though he had spent too long looking at metal dissolve.

  “Who are you?” he asked. His voice was hoarse, but there was no hostility to his tone.

  “My name is Samuel Johnson, and this is Boswell.”

  Those white eyes looked down upon the little dachshund.

  “A dog,” said the man. “It’s a long time since I’ve seen a dog.”

  He reached out a gloved hand. Boswell shied away, but the hand was too quick. It fastened on Boswell’s head, then rubbed at it with a surprising gentleness.

  “Good dog,” said the man. “Good little dog.”

  He released his grip on Boswell, somewhat to the relief of the good little dog in question.

  “I kept dogs,” he said. “A man should have a dog.”

  “Do you have a name?” asked Samuel.

  “I had a name once as well, but I’ve forgotten it. I have no use for it, for nobody has come here for so very long. Now I am the Blacksmith. I work with metal. It is my punishment.”

  “What is this place?” asked Samuel.

  “This is the Junkyard. It is the place of broken things that should never have been made. Come and see.”

  And Samuel and Boswell followed the Blacksmith beneath the ever-changing gun, and past row upon row of fighter planes and armored cars, and there was revealed to them an enormous crater, and in it were swords and knives; machine guns and pistols; tanks and battleships and aircraft carriers; every conceivable weapon that might be used to inflict harm upon another person. Like the great gun, the contents of the crater were constantly being added to, so that the whole mass of metal creaked and groaned and clattered and clanked.

  “Why are they here?” asked Samuel.

  “Because t
hey took lives, and this is where they belong.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “Because I designed such weapons, and I put them in the hands of those who would use them against innocents, and I did not care. Now I break them down.”

  “What about the great gun, the one that keeps growing in size?”

  “A reminder to me,” said the Blacksmith. “No matter how hard I work, or how many weapons I break down, still that rifle increases in size. I contributed to the creation of firearms in life, and I am not permitted to forget it.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Samuel. “You don’t seem like a bad person.”

  “I didn’t think that I was,” said the Blacksmith. “Or perhaps I just didn’t think. And you: why are you here?”

  Samuel was still wary of telling the truth about his situation, particularly after his encounter with Old Ram, but something about the Blacksmith made Samuel trust him.

  “I was dragged here. A woman-a demon-called Mrs. Abernathy wants to punish me.”

  The Blacksmith grinned. “So you are the boy. Even I, in this dreadful place, have heard tell of you.” He fumbled beneath his apron, and brought out a piece of newspaper, which he handed to Samuel. It was a cutting from an old edition of The Infernal Times, and it showed a picture of Samuel beneath two words:

  THE ENEMY!

  The article that followed, written by the editor, Mr. P. Bodkin, detailed the attempt to escape from Hell through the portal, and the failure of the invasion because of the intervention of Samuel and an unknown other who had driven a car the wrong way through the portal. Samuel thought that the article was a little unfair, and only told one side of the story, but then he supposed that the editor of The Infernal Times might have found himself in a spot of trouble had he suggested that sending hordes of demons to invade the Earth wasn’t a very nice thing to do in the first place.

  “I expect she’ll be looking for you,” said the Blacksmith.

  “I expect so,” said Samuel.

  “Well, if she comes this way, I won’t tell her anything. You can rely on me.”

  “Thank you,” said Samuel. “But I want to get home, and I don’t know how.”

  The last words caught in his throat. His eyes grew warm, but he fought away the tears. The Blacksmith discreetly looked away for a moment and then, once he was sure that Samuel was in control of his emotions, turned his attention back to the boy.

  “It seems to me that if Mrs. Abernathy brought you here, then she may have the means of returning you as well.”

  “But she won’t do that,” said Samuel. “She wants to kill me.”

  “Nevertheless, whatever power she used to drag you here can surely be used to get you back.”

  “So I have to face her?”

  “You have to find her, or be found by her. After that, you’ll have to use your own cleverness to help you.”

  “But I’m just a kid. And she’s a demon.”

  “A demon that you’ve defeated once before, and can defeat again.”

  “But I had help that time,” said Samuel. “I had help from-”

  He almost said Nurd’s name, but he bit his tongue at the last minute. It was one thing to trust the Blacksmith with his secrets, but another thing entirely to trust him with Nurd’s.

  “You had help from Nurd,” said the Blacksmith, and Samuel could not conceal his shock.

  “How did you know that?”

  “Because I’ve helped him too. I’ve seen his vehicle. It broke down, and I helped him and his servant, Wormwood, to repair it. Then they insisted upon disguising the car, so I aided them with that as well. Mind you, they seemed intent upon disguising it as a rock, for reasons I still don’t fully understand, but he’s a strange one, that Nurd. I rather liked him.”

  “He’s my friend,” said Samuel. “If he knew I was here, he’d help me.”

  “Oh, he knows you’re here,” said the Blacksmith.

  “How?”

  “He can feel you.” The Blacksmith patted his chest, just where his heart once beat when he lived and perhaps still did, in some strange way. “Can’t you feel him too?”

  Samuel closed his eyes, and thought hard. He pictured Nurd in his head, and remembered what they had spoken of in Samuel’s bedroom when Nurd had first appeared to him. He recalled Nurd’s joy at the taste of a jelly bean, and his own surprise that Nurd had never before had anyone whom he could call a friend. He opened his heart to Nurd, and suddenly he had an image of him, an odd, ferretlike creature beside him that could only have been Wormwood, Nurd’s hands gripping the wheel of the Aston Martin that had, until recently, been the proudest possession of Samuel’s dad.

  Then the image changed, and he saw Nurd and Wormwood standing beside-

  Hang on, was that an ice-cream van?

  Samuel called out to Nurd. He called out with his voice, and his heart. He called out with all the hope that he had left, and all his faith in the automobile-loving demon who was his friend.

  He called out, and Nurd answered.

  XXI

  In Which Nurd Considers Changing His Name to “Nurd, Unlucky in Numerous Dimensions”

  NURD, THE FORMER SCOURGE of Five Deities, now reformed, wondered how much bad luck a demon could have. First of all, he’d been banished to the Wasteland with Wormwood, where they had spent a very, very long time getting to know each other and wishing that they hadn’t. It had been aeons of utter monotony, broken only by the capacity of Wormwood’s body to produce the most extraordinary odors, and Nurd amusing himself by hitting Wormwood hard on the head with a scepter in return. Then, in the manner of a great many buses arriving together after you’ve been standing in the rain for hours waiting for just one, Nurd had found himself sent back and forth through a hole in space and time on no fewer than four occasions, causing his body to be stretched and then compressed in a most uncomfortable manner, as well as being crushed by a vacuum cleaner, hit by a truck, dropped down a sewer, and then forced to face the wrath of the armies of Hell by undoing the Great Malevolence’s plan to invade Earth. What was more, he had managed to annoy two policemen, the very same policemen who were now staring at him balefully while surrounded by four hostile-looking dwarfs and a shortsighted ice-cream salesman.

  It’s just not fair, thought Nurd. All I wanted was a quiet life, and maybe some candy and an ice cream.

  Constable Peel removed his notebook in an officious manner, licked the tip of his pencil, and prepared to write.

  “Ready, Sarge,” he said.

  “List of charges,” began Sergeant Rowan. “Evading arrest. Leaving the scene of a crime, namely an attack on a house of worship by assorted dead people. Soiling a police vehicle.”

  “I never did,” said Nurd.

  “You made it smell,” said Sergeant Rowan.

  “I fell down a sewer.”

  “Nevertheless, our car has never smelled right since. Causes Constable Peel here to feel nauseous on a regular basis.”

  “And it makes my uniform pong,” said Constable Peel. “It undermines my authority, having a smelly uniform.”

  Nurd was tempted to suggest that the main factor undermining Constable Peel’s authority was Constable Peel himself, but decided against it. He was in enough trouble already.

  “What else do we have, Constable?” asked Sergeant Rowan.

  “Immigration offenses?” suggested Constable Peel.

  “Right you are. Improper entry. Entering Britain without a proper visa. Entering Britain without a passport. Illegal alien, you are.”

  “I’m not an alien,” Nurd corrected. “I’m a demon.”

  “Don’t nitpick. You were an illegal immigrant.”

  “I didn’t immigrate,” said Nurd. “I was sent against my will.”

  “You can explain it to the judge,” said Sergeant Rowan. “Now we get on to the really interesting stuff. Damage to private property. Theft of a privately owned vehicle. Driving without a proper license. Driving without insurance. Speeding. Theft of a polic
e vehicle. They’re going to throw away the key for you, Sonny Jim. They’ll put you away for so long that by the time you get out we’ll all be living on other planets.”

  Nurd folded his arms. He whistled, scratched his pointy chin, then tapped his fingers against it, all of which served to communicate the following message: Hmm, I’m thinking here, and I seem to have spotted a fatal flaw in all that you’ve just told me.

  “Forgive me for pointing this out, officers, but I wasn’t aware that you had jurisdiction in Hell. Biddlecombe: yes. Hell: I think not.”

  “Got you there, Sergeant,” said Jolly, sticking his oar in and splashing it about merrily. “Old Moonface is a bit of a jailhouse lawyer.”

  “You keep quiet,” said Constable Peel. “You lot are in enough trouble of your own.”

  “Oooh,” said Dozy. “Make sure you add ‘stealing ice cream’ to our list of charges. We’ll get life for that.”

  “Listen, you,” said Sergeant Rowan, wagging his finger at Nurd and doing his best to ignore the Greek chorus 31 of dwarfs, “you have a lot to answer for. You need to come down to the station and explain yourself.”

  “You know, I’d actually be happy to do that,” said Nurd. “Unfortunately, I, like you, am stuck here in Hell, and there are more pressing problems to consider.”

  “Such as?”

  “You’re not the only humans in Hell.”

  “What do you mean? Who else is here?”

  “Samuel Johnson and his dog.”

  Sergeant Rowan frowned. Nurd could almost hear the cogs turning in his brain. Sergeant Rowan had been one of the first on the scene after the portal closed, but he’d never managed to find out the full story. He only knew that Samuel had effectively saved the Earth, aided by an unknown person in a stolen Aston Martin who-