“There’s haa, haa, no more room in Hell, haa, haa. It’s too crowded.”
“You came here directly from Hell?” I asked.
“I’m asking the questions, Duke,” said Prattle, and turning to the demon head asked. “Well, did you?”
“Haa, directly. Yes. Haa, haaaaa.”
“Why are we asking him that, by the way?” asked Prattle.
“Because,” said I, feeling a little nauseous about the demon’s answer, “Hell is meant to be below us.”
Then the demon, which had been only sighing up to that point, started to laugh properly.
“HA, HA, haa, haaa, AHAHAHAAAaaaaa, haaa.”
The poisonous tears appeared in its eyes once again as its face crunched into painful looking mirth.
“Haa, haaa imbeciles aaaaah, HAHAHAaaaaaaHAHAHA.”
All the trauma to the creature’s neck region, brought on by the pumping and the laughing dislodged Cleaver’s thumb from the demon’s oesophagus. It landed, burned but recognisable on the table below it. Puff Wiggery fainted, ending his stint on the bellows. They clattered to the ground beside him and the demon was silent.
“Your turn, Rickett,” I said. “Go on, hurry up.”
No more enthusiastic than his farming partner had been, Blini Rickett pushed Wiggery’s limp body out of the way, picked up the bellows and inserted the dirty tip into the demon’s neck. When he pumped, the demon’s tongue shot straight out of its mouth and vibrated. I shook my head in disbelief.
“That’s its food pipe, pheasant brain. Stick it in the other one.”
When he’d got the apparatus correctly set up, Blini started pumping again and the demon continued to chortle to itself. Prattle was indignant. You could hear it in his high-pitched wheezy whine.
“Nyev, nyev. This isn’t correct. Why is it laughing?”
“Leopold,” said I, “I’m not certain we want to know the answer to that.”
“We jamming well do. What is so jizzing funny, you corrupted son of the devil?”
I’d never heard Prattle swear before. The demon had him riled.
“HAHAHA, Haa, haa, Hell is everywhere, haa, haaa. Hell is haa, haa, all around HAHAHA.”
“What? What did he say? Hell is all around? What is that meant to mean? Are you trying to scare us, Demon, is that what it is? Well, I can assure you you’ll have to do a lot better than that.”
A look of understanding passed across the faces of all the villagers present. Things that had never made sense before, suddenly added up in their minds. The hotter and hotter summers, the frostless winters. It all became clear to them. Even Rickett was shocked enough to stop pumping. The looks of recognition were followed by expressions of panic. Prattle seemed to be the only one who wasn’t able to accept what the demon head was saying to us.
“Call yourself a demon? Is that the best you can come up with, ‘hell is everywhere’? Pathetic.”
Prattle look like he was fairly close to taking Cleaver’s knife and sticking into the demon’s eyes. I stepped over to him before he had the chance and took hold of his shoulders.
“We all need a break from this. And you and I need to talk. Very seriously.”
I wondered if I was going to have to slap him. His eyes were boring into the demon’s head; his face was pale with rage. He understood well enough what the demon was saying. Then he turned to me.
“Yes. We need to talk.”
Religion and Law
Without the usual show of ceremony, Prattle banished the villagers from his house and grounds and he and I walked back towards the square. He seemed to hold some great force within him like a heated cauldron with its lid clamped shut. His bony shoulders were drawn up, his head hung forward as though weighted and his fists were clenched, the knuckles pale and strained. His mouth showed no trace of lips; there was only a slit, mashed closed. Behind us, the confused knot of villagers stared after us and then, in straggled clumps, followed. I tried to keep the distance between them and us greater than earshot.
“It’s telling the truth, you know.”
Prattle flashed his eyes my way but stomped onward, saying nothing.
“It’s a reasonable explanation for everything that’s happened over the last few seasons.”
A hiss escaped the cauldron’s lid:
“Thirty years.”
“Excuse me?”
“Thirty jizjamming years of devotion and unstinting faith. Thirty years of study, sweat, humility, service, selflessness–
Could he really be talking about himself?
—sacrifice, chastity and abstinence. Thirty years of poverty—
Oh, please.
—and preaching to congregation after congregation of ignorant, uneducated sinners. And what do I get?”
Knowing it was a rhetorical question I interrupted by answering,
“Some kind of promotion, I would have thought…”
The flash of eyes again. He still had Cleaver’s knife. I shut my mouth.
“Nothing, that’s what. Not even the assurance after all this faith that there’s even a Great Father still out there.”
“Oh, I’m sure the Gr—”
“What would you know about the Great Father?” Prattle’s eyes bulged. He stopped walking, turned me and screamed into my face. “Eh? You with your books and your laws and your smug self-satisfaction? You think you’re so intelligent, so above the rest of us, don’t you? And you don’t have the first idea what it is we’ve all lost today, do you?”
The villagers who’d been following us were now hearing everything we said.
“An inedible barbecue?”
Prattle laughed. It was a strange sound; not one of happiness but the strangled guffaw of the anguished in whom the emotions are too intense to be distinguished.
“Fine. Make your jokes, Delly. You might as well while your body is still alive. But when you die your soul will go to Hell. All our souls will go to Hell.” He held up his thin white arms and shouted, “The Great Father is DEAD. WE’RE ALL GOING TO HELL.”
I pulled his arms down, regretting it the moment the sour smell of his sweat hit me.
“Don’t tell them that! There’ll be a riot. You’ll be the first one they lynch. You have to help me keep everyone calm until we work all this out.”
“There’s nothing left to work out. Everyone is doomed.”
“How can you say that? We have to think about this before we give up and go like lambs under Cleaver’s blade. Maybe you’re wrong. Maybe the Great Father isn’t dead at all.”
“He would never allow this to happen. His death is the only explanation.”
“All right. Maybe it is. But what if he—I mean He—wasn’t dead? What might that mean?”
“That He has abandoned us.”
Ah. Not positive.
“Right,” said I. “ Er, Good. And so He’s a forgiving sort of…being, isn’t he?”
“The Great Father is the most forgiving of all.”
“There you go then. There’s already a way back.”
“But how can you prove He isn’t dead?”
“How can you prove He is?”
“The demon said—”
“Crusty cow flops, Leopold, you’re not going to take the word of a demon are you?”
With some of the steam gone from his pot, Prattle deflated a little. We walked on and he spoke in more even tones.
“Well, no…of course not…but—”
“But nothing. That demon’s a devious mischief-maker. He may only be telling us half the truth. He may be lying through his pointy yellow teeth. Either way, we can’t trust him. Meanwhile, we have to find out what’s really going on.”
We arrived in the open square where a circle of onlookers now goggled at the body of the demon. It was standing unmoving, as we’d left it. The villagers didn’t seem confident to go any nearer than about fifteen strides and I couldn’t blame them. It had a long reach and moved fast when it wanted to. Even the inability of its body to function without
a head might have been nothing more than a ploy. The crowd parted to let us through and we stood in front of the demon scratching our chins and jumping every time the headless giant so much as twitched. Prattle looked pale and tired now as he regarded our adversary.
“What the Hell are we going to do with it?” He asked.
I shrugged, unable to answer.
“Just look at the size of its…club.”
“I know, I know. It isn’t natural. No matter what happens, the ladies in the village will be dreaming about that appendage for the rest of their lives. And to have three onions that big! Imagine the mess.”
“Thank you, Delly Duke, I’d rather not.”
We were thoughtful for a moment. Me, contemplating the results of the demon servicing our womenfolk and Prattle, no doubt, imagining he was the demon. I thought it best to curtail his fantasies before they became dangerous.
“Isn’t there any information on demons in your holy scroll? A ritual for exorcism perhaps?”
“The problem doesn’t seem to have been anticipated.”
“That’s interesting.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well why would the Great Father create Hell and demons and then not mention it in His scroll?”
“There’s a section on dragons,” said Prattle as if that would make up for it. It explained his keenness on the idea of the feast of the dragon.
“Never mind. I think there are a few more pages on demons in the Ledger. I’ll give it a more thorough read through and meet you at sunrise to discuss it.”
“I’m not having that creature’s head in my lodge until morning. It’s an abomination.”
“The people will expect you to be the custodian of the head until we fathom this out.”
“Yes, but why can’t we finish it tonight?”
“Because we’re all tired and we’re not prepared. Tomorrow we’ll all be fresh and ready to act. Right now we need a rest.” I gestured to the folk in the crowd. “Look at them, Leopold. They weren’t exactly fit before this started. Now they’re exhausted and so am I.”
As we walked back towards the lodge, Prattle asked me a question:
“Where did you get this Ledger? How can it contain so much information?”
“It’s been in the Duke family for generations. Tells you everything you need to know.”
“Let me see it.”
“I don’t think that’s appropriate, Leopold. You are a man of the cloth, after all. It wouldn’t become you to pollute your mind with the fatherless literature that the Ledger contains. I promise I’ll glean every last fact from it before tomorrow morning. Then, together, we shall rid Long Lofting of the demon.”
I clapped him on the shoulder and snatched my hand away before it became too soiled. We reached the lodge and it was deserted. I assumed Velvet had gone home ahead of me to prepare the supper. I bid Leopold goodnight and sauntered home amid long shadows of a bright evening. It was still hot enough to make me sweat and I knew that none of us would sleep deeply that night, especially Leopold, who had the topmost portion of an underworld employee right in the middle of his house. I couldn’t help smiling at that. What a stroke of genius it had been to insist he act as the demon’s guardian.
I walked through the front door of my croft into an almost cool atmosphere. The shutters had been closed all day to keep out the sun and allow the breeze to pass through. I sighed with pleasure at the relative comfort it brought, knowing that as soon as I became used to it I would feel hot all over again. The croft was silent.
“Velvet?”
I walked through the entryway into the main room where the kitchen and dining and sleeping areas were. It was quiet. No pots rattling, no hissing of escaping steam. I opened the back door to see if she was in the garden and tripped over a hen that had been pecking at the boards of the porch in a brainless bid for nourishment. When I kicked it, it flapped in shock, gaining enough air for a moment that my booted foot sent it, clucking and yodeling, far into the garden where it crashed into the corn and disappeared.
“Stupid bird. Velvet? You out here?”
Mary the goat, tethered out of reach of the crops, ignored me.
As I walked back into the shade of the house, Velvet bustled in through the front door.
“Everything all right, Velvet?”
“Oh, yes. Right finely, thanks.”
“I thought you’d gone before me.”
“No, I was just having a gossip with some of the ladies.”
“That’s not like you.”
“No, it isn’t. I don’t hang around with them long enough usually, but it was hard to avoid today.”
“Find out any meaty details?”
“Maybe. Why do you want to know?”
“Just curious, I suppose, but you’re welcome to keep it to yourself. I’ve got enough to keep my mind occupied as it is. I don’t suppose you managed to find out the general feelings of the villagers to the demon, did you? I mean, are they frightened? Do you think they’ll panic? We may have to call out the militia whether we want to or not; and not to deal with the demon but to keep the peace. What do you think?”
“They are scared. But they seem to have a lot of faith in you and Leopold to set things right. A lot of them still want to eat it.”
I smirked, only half amused.
“Hardly surprising really. We’ve got enough water to drink in the well, but not enough to ensure that the crops and beasts survive until the harvest. Hunger does strange things to people.”
Velvet smiled.
“I’m well aware of that. Now, what do you want for your supper?”
“Is there a choice?”
“Not exactly.”
I chose the simplest, easiest, most likely to be available option.
“What about a corn cake or two with and egg on top?”
“Fine. Only there’s no eggs.”
“No eggs?”
“They haven’t been laying. I think it’s the heat.”
“Not laying? Useless bloody chickens. I need a drink.”
I descended into the tiny cellar and poured myself an ale. I drank it right down in the near total darkness, filled the cup again and brought it back up the ladder with me. Sitting in the corner, I cracked the shutters to let a shaft of evening sunlight in and opened the Ledger to the section on demons. The section seemed longer and more in depth than it had when I’d first looked demons up, but that didn’t surprise me. The Ledger was an unusual book, adding to itself constantly. All Men of Law are issued with a Ledger at graduation. It’s not the kind of thing you would want to fall into the hands of, say, a local priest.
Supper came and went without conversation—I read the Ledger at the table and then took it back to my reading chair. Velvet was very attentive to my ale cup for which I was thankful. However, by the time I’d read all I needed to know, getting to bed was somewhat of a struggle. I vaguely remember hoping my head would be clear by morning.
The Demon’s Club
I awoke in blackness to the sound of insistent but subdued thumping. At first I thought I was having some order of palpitation, brought on by a nightmare. It was almost a relief to realise that the sound was coming from outside my body. Someone was at the front door. Then followed the realisation that people only ever wake you up in the night for bad news or rutting and, as it wasn’t Velvet making the noise, I had to anticipate the unhappier option.
“Get that would you, my sweet. My head’s as thick as bison dung.”
Velvet didn’t answer.
The banging intensified and I heard a hiss of words, someone trying to shout in a whisper. I rolled over to wake Velvet but she wasn’t in bed. Surely, I thought, if she’s up she’d have answered the door by now. Then I deduced that she was probably scared witless and standing behind the front door with the poker raised over her head ready to defend the homestead. Brave girl. I sighed and struggled to my feet, swaying slightly and groaning when I was upright. A headache blossomed above my eyes.
“All right!” I shouted, not caring to whisper now that I’d been disturbed. “I’m coming!”
I shuffled towards the door and saw no sign of Velvet in the gloom.
“If you’re waiting to attack whoever’s out there, my darling,” I said into the darkness, “Make sure you don’t hit me.”
I pulled the door open and there outside found not one person but a small group of Long Lofting menfolk. Rickett and Wiggery were at the head of it.
“Very sorry to disturb you, sir, but there’s a bit of an emergency,” said Rickett.
“Can’t it wait until the morning?”
“Some of the women have gone missing.”
“What? Where?”
“We don’t know, sir. Is the good lady Velvet with you?”
“Of course she is. She’s right over…just a moment.” I pushed the door to and retreated into the croft. “Velvet? Where are you?” I checked outside but the outhouse door stood open, no one inside. At the front door, even in the dark, my shock must have been obvious. I couldn’t keep the concern out of my voice.
“She’s not here. Does anyone know where they might have gone? Any of you?”
No one spoke, but I saw heads shaking. There was something about the mood amongst the men that unnerved me, not panic exactly but a sense of loss. It spread into me like the fever. I dressed quickly while they waited and brought the Ledger with me. I’m not a violent man but I also took the poker.
Not wanting to cause too much despair but unable to disguise my own fears, I said,
“We’d better check the square first.”
None of the men wanted to show too much concern but within a few moments we were almost running. In the square it was as I’d feared; the demon’s body was gone. Footprints in the dusty earth would be easy to follow, but first we had to check with Prattle.
I thumped hard on the door of the priest’s lodge, the rest of the men panting and sweating behind me. It took him a long time to answer.
“Wake up, Priest Prattle! Quickly now, the villagers are in great danger!”
The sacred moments wasted away while the scrawny hypocrite arose and composed himself. I imagined him reciting some useless prayer before answering the door. It creaked on its hinges and he stood there blinking and bewildered to be facing a group of sweaty men.
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