by Heide Goody
“Hell is indeed full of surprises,” he said to himself.
He turned away. It was time to go back to Belphegor’s laboratory.
Rutspud made his way along the corridor and tried to remember which of the doors was the right one. This one, surely? He held up Hodshift's pass and the door swung open. Instead of the Infernal Innovation lab, he saw another corridor. However, it did look familiar. Here were the pipes for the liquid fire and marsh gas that they had followed on their little tour.
Rutspud kept his eyes on the pipes as he walked on. He just need to find a place where he would find that original configuration of pipes that Hodshift had shown him.
“Lava, fire, brimstone, steam and gas,” he repeated to himself along the corridor but, within minutes, he has switched to “Eeny, meeny, miney, mo,” and tried opening doors at random.
The last door he opened before a bend in the tunnel revealed a short corridor and a staircase. Rutspud, eager to get home, would have ignored the staircase, but there was something unusual about it. At first glance, it had appeared to be a normal staircase, formed from metal struts and steps but then, for a moment, Rutspud imagined that it was simply a trick, a picture of stairs painted on the corridor wall.
Rutspud blinked and the stairs popped from two dimensions back into three. It was really there but …
He approached it cautiously and took hold of the rail in his hand.
“Weird,” he said, looked up the staircase and found himself staring down into an infinite abyss of concentric spirals.
“Woah!” he yelled and, eyes screwed shut, clung onto the rail to stop himself falling. Nothing happened.
“Trippy bloody staircase,” he muttered and, with eyes still shut, stepped away.
His foot hit the next step down. He didn’t recall climbing any steps. He stepped back and down again. And again.
He opened his eyes. Rutspud was climbing up the stairs, the evidence of his eyes and his senses contradicting one another. He abruptly understood.
“Escher!” he growled.
With a horrible, nauseous inevitability, he climbed more steps than he could be bothered to count, taking great care to pay no close attention to the stairs beneath his feet which – horror above horrors – circled clockwise and anticlockwise at the same time.
After an immeasurable length of time, the quality of light changed about him; instead of the familiar dull red glow, there was a greyish, washed-out look to things here. There was also, he noted, a chill in the air. He slowed as he turned the last bend of the spiral and stepped out into a stone tunnel.
Having stepped away from the staircase, Rutspud gave his feet a tentative glance to be sure that he was back on solid ground. His feet did nothing alarming, so he looked around more closely. He was in a tunnel, but one made from stone blocks, not hewn from bedrock as the ones below. Perhaps he had emerged into a castle or fortress of one of Hell’s many fiefdoms. He might be significantly far from home and soon at the mercy of a Duke of Hell who didn’t take kindly to trespassers.
The cold stone tunnel soon gave way to a corridor of smooth walls, painfully sharp lights and the most garishly bright wall paintings Rutspud had ever had the misfortune to see. Beaked creatures like, but not like, the tengu, roc and Ziz of Hell, stared out at Rutspud from a disturbingly alien landscape.
Rutspud scuttled hurriedly into a side room which, at first, put him in mind of Lord Peter’s office. It was disgustingly neat and tidy, with the foul softness underfoot.
“Satan’s balls!” he moaned.
He was in the Fortress of Nameless Dread. And, by the displays of books around this room, he had obviously stumbled into Lord Peter’s private library.
“Gotta go,” he told himself and was about to do so when his attention was drawn by a large book open on the table next to him. It was written in Latin, the language of the priesthood and, thus, of many of Hell’s residents. Rutspud looked at the open page and gave a small gasp of surprise as he saw what was written there.
The demon, Rutspud, is seen as a soldier all in red with the horns of a young goat. He is a cruel demon, a torturer who delights in the work of his hands.
Manfred entered the locutory to tell Bastian about Bernard but found, to his frustration, that Bastian was conducting one of those internet video call things.
“I can assure you that the island will be perfectly safe for your visit,” said Bastian, addressing a frowning woman via the webcam. “The authorities have given us the all-clear to resume all of our usual activities, and we'll have everything ready to welcome your bird-watching club.”
“But the bodies!” said the woman. “Our members are most unhappy at the prospect of staying in an environment where dead bodies can just ... appear.”
“Recent renovations had apparently disturbed an old burial site. It was flood water that caused the sudden mudslide that you've no doubt seen on YouTube.”
“It’s on YouTube? I only read about it in the Mail.”
“Did you? Oh. Well, I can assure you that Bardsey hardly ever sees anything so dramatic.”
“Oh, I don't know,” said Manfred, “there was the inferno and all those deaths last year.”
“What was that?” said the woman sharply.
“Nothing, nothing at all,” said Bastian with a fierce look at Manfred. “My colleague has a colourful sense of humour, but he's just leaving. Now, maybe you'd like to tell me about your catering needs for next week?”
“Catering can wait,” said the woman. “I heard that there might be plague on the island, and I'm certain that our members will be equally nervous about that.”
Manfred tried to gesture to Bastian that he had an urgent message. Bastian's eyes flickered towards him for a moment, but he gave his focus back to the woman on the screen.
“I gather these rather fanciful rumours have appeared on the internet, and in the press, apparently,” he said, “but they are groundless, utterly groundless. I can assure you that our community of monks are all fine, and the coroner's office is satisfied with the measures that have been taken.”
Manfred shook his head at Bastian and mimed a throat-cutting gesture to illustrate that the monks were not, in fact, all fine.
“What's that man doing?” asked the woman. “Is he saying that someone has died?”
“Yes,” said Manfred. “Brother Bernard has died.”
Bastian glowered at Manfred.
“You mean Brother Bernard, our elderly acquaintance from Douarnenez Abbey in France?” he said, waggling his eyebrows at Manfred.
“Oh. Yes, that's the one,” said Manfred, with a smile at the woman on the webcam. “Nice man. We will miss him. You can be assured, madam, that this monastery will look after the health of your members most carefully. I take a great deal of personal pride in keeping the place extremely clean. I even ran the bones through the dishwasher to be sure that they wouldn't mess the place up.”
Manfred gave her his most charming smile, which had been known to break down many barriers, especially when accompanied by a little twinkling of the eyes.
Manfred thought afterwards that perhaps the quality of the webcam was to blame for not transmitting his smile to full effect. The woman unleashed a torrent of rage about health and safety and insisted that she would not be subjecting her members to the horrors of a kitchen where they might find human remains next to the cutlery. Bastian had his head buried in his hands as Manfred gently closed the door behind him.
Stephen descended to the library to get a bit of personal space. He’d just left a band of monks in the cloisters grimly dissecting the news of Brother Bernard’s death. Bernard, like four fifths of the monks on Bardsey, had been at least seventy years old, but there had not been a natural death on the island in Stephen’s time there, and the news had hit him hard. Brother Henry’s tasteless jokes about Brother Bernard’s final words had been enough to drive Stephen away to seek solitude.
He entered the library and was surprised to find someone there. Someone
or some … thing. It appeared that someone had dumped a man-sized and vaguely man-shaped puppet in his reading chair, a man-sized puppet with shiny red skin, long skinny limbs which …
… was reading one of his books, licking its fingertips as it turned each page.
The creature's huge, glistening eyes lifted to look at Stephen. It had rather arresting eyes, set between ears that stuck out at a jaunty angle. There was the brief rustle of a paper bag and the thing popped a jelly baby into its mouth.
Stephen’s mind simultaneously crashed through several possibilities – TV prank show, a child in fancy-dress, the onset of schizophrenia – but the sight of the thing munching on jelly babies drew an immediate response from him.
“No!” yelled Stephen. “How dare you! Those were for Brother Bernard! You can't just eat them now he's dead.”
The creature didn't move, but the eyes seemed to take on an expression of mild curiosity.
“Who’s dead?”
“Brother Bernard.”
The thing shrugged.
“Show me someone round here who isn’t.”
Stephen goggled.
“Am I dead?”
“Well, you’re in Hell, so …”
Stephen frowned.
“No, I’m not.”
The creature blinked.
“What?”
“We’re in St Cadfan’s. And you're trespassing!” said Stephen.
“This is Earth?” said the red creature. It stood up in surprise, its weight on those stick-thin legs.
“Oh, God,” said Stephen. “You can stand. You’re real.”
“Of course I’m real.”
“And, you – you're a demon! Are you a demon?”
“I'm in your book, madam,” he said, pointing at the page.
“I’m not a madam. I’m a man.”
“But the dress?”
“I’m a monk and you … you …”
Stephen ran for the shelves, searching frantically for a book he knew he had seen there at some point. Rutspud sat and ate jelly babies, watching him.
“Dammit!” shouted Stephen, unable to locate his copy of Rituale Romanum, and dredged from the depths of his memory what words he could remember.
“Right. Here goes, demon. I command you, unclean spirit, by the mysteries of the incarnation, passion, resurrection and ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ, by the descent of the Holy Spirit, by the coming of … something or other. I command you to obey me to the letter. You shall not be emboldened to harm in any way this creature of God or –”
“What creature of God?”
“Bugger! You’re not possessing anyone, are you? You’re just … there.”
Stephen made the sign of the cross for good measure. Rutspud gripped his stomach and frowned.
“I cast you out, unclean spirit,” Stephen shouted, “along with every Satanic power of the enemy, every spectre from Hell and all your fell companions, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Be gone. Go on now, go! Walk out the door! Just turn around now, ’cause you’re not welcome anymore …”
Stephen stopped and saw the demon creature curled up, clutching its belly.
“That really hurts,” said Rutspud.
“Really?”
Rutspud grimaced and then farted loudly. “Beelzebub’s beard!” he groaned. “Did you do that?”
Stephen reeled from the sulphurous stench. “I might have done,” he said, unable to tell what had been achieved through the power of prayer and what had been achieved through the power of jelly babies.
“Well, don’t,” said Rutspud, glaring at Stephen. “You've given me a really bad tummy ache. What did you do that for?”
Stephen looked at Rutspud.
“To be honest, I don't really know. Instinct.” He sat down in a chair opposite Rutspud and stared at him for a few minutes. “So, what are you going to do to me?”
Rutspud shrugged and farted again. “I'm not here to do anything to anybody. I've got enough on my plate.”
“Well, you must have come to me for a reason.”
“Hell! Is everyone on Earth as self-centred as you, or is it just the ones in dresses?” He pointed down the corridor. “If you must know, I found a staircase. I was just having a look. Who knew it came up here?”
Stephen sat up straight and swivelled his head between the demon and the door.
“Wait, there's a staircase in that bit of corridor down there that leads down to Hell? Good grief! We weren't wrong when we said it was unsafe. Talk about health and safety issues.”
“Trust me, I’m equally surprised,” said Rutspud.
“Well, it’s all too much for me today. I've had enough, I can't be doing with this as well. Bodies and plague rumours and poor, dead Bernard. This place is going properly to the dogs.”
“Do you always whine this much?” said Rutspud, getting up, giving one last, gusty fart that seemed to restore his composure, and pacing around. “Your existence is really that bad, is it? What's the worst thing that might happen to you, hmmm?”
“You. Dragging me off to Hell and tormenting me for all eternity?”
“Apart from that.”
Stephen shrugged.
“Mostly it's the boredom and the sense that I have no real purpose in life,” he said. “The feeling that I could completely lose my mind and it just wouldn't matter. Nobody here would notice.”
Rutspud gave a small snort.
“Boo shitting hoo, lady. Do you live with the daily threat of being minced into little pieces?”
“Well, of course not.”
“Oh, well maybe there's an entire hierarchy of malevolent despots who want to find excuses to punish you?”
“I wouldn’t call Manfred or Father Eustace despots – actually, I don’t know what we’d call our new abbot – and we don’t have a hierarchy really. That’s possibly part of the problem.”
“Right,” said Rutspud, “so keep your whining for someone with fewer problems than you. Saving my skin takes every ounce of my considerable cunning and energy, and the better I get at doing it, the more enemies I make.”
Stephen stared at Rutspud and gave a small shake of his head.
“What’s happening here? Am I supposed to be feeling sorry for you?”
“You can if you like.”
“You’re a demon! I didn’t dedicate my life to the service of God to go round feeling sorry for demons.”
Stephen broke off with the sudden thought that he might be sleepwalking. That would explain a lot. He looked at his feet and saw that they weren’t muddy, but what did that really mean? He pinched his arm and it definitely hurt, but he wasn’t sure what that meant either. He was only sure that he needed to bring this conversation to a close.
“No. No, no, no,” he said to Rutspud. “You need to go. You can take your staircase and go straight back to Hell.”
“It’s not my staircase. I think it’s Escher’s,” said Rutspud with a small pout.
“Go!” yelled Stephen.
Rutspud shrugged and sauntered towards the door.
“And don’t even think about taking those jelly babies!” shouted Stephen.
Bastian hesitated before he picked up the phone. He felt bad about undermining Manfred's authority, but someone needed to do something. Every single one of the monastery's upcoming visits had been cancelled now, and they were facing serious cash flow problems if he didn't take this opportunity. He dialled the number, knowing it would be early in Texas, but the email had said any time of the day or night.
“Hello,” he said. “Chuck Katzenberger, please?”
“The very same,” came the leisurely drawled reply. “Now, would this be Brother Sebastian in England?”
“We’re actually in Wales, Mr Katzenberger.”
“And that’s in England, right?”
“Sort of tacked onto the side, really.”
“Now, I hope you’re going to be able to make me a happy man, Brother Sebastian. I've spent my life and a personal fortune trying to
prove I'm descended from Sir Gawain, one of Arthur’s knights. Now, I know it’s true in my heart of hearts. My past-life regression therapist in Austin has shown it to me. But now, having read the compelling internet testimony of your countryman, Mr Ewan Thomas, I realise your skeletons might just give me the chance to run a DNA test to prove what I already know to the rest of the world. Do you believe in past lives, son?”
Bastian coughed.
“It’s not about what I believe, is it, Mr Katzenberger? Er, just to be clear, the sum that you mentioned in your email, you're prepared to offer that much for each complete skeleton?”
“I am,” said Katzenberger. “I told y’all, this is real important to me. If we have a deal, I've already arranged for your boat guy in Aberdaron to pick them up tonight and send them on.”
“Tonight! So soon?”
“I got where I am today by making things happen, and making them happen fast,” said Katzenberger. “Now, do we have a deal?”
“Yes, we have a deal,” said Bastian. “I'll email our bank details so that you can arrange the transfer, and I'll get the skeletons packed up right now.”
“Father Eustace.” Stephen tapped on the wardrobe door. “Father Eustace, can I talk to you please?”
The door cracked open enough for Stephen to see a pair of wild eyes and a whiskery face. It had been generally concluded that shaving in a dark wardrobe was probably going to be messy and unsafe, and Manfred and Brother Gillespie had concluded that the abbot was to be kept away from sharp objects.
“Trey, er, TREVOR!” croaked Father Eustace.
“No, it’s Stephen, Father Abbot,” said Stephen. “I really need someone to talk to about all of the things that have happened today. If I try to talk to Bastian or Manfred, they’ll just think I’ve gone mad, but you …”
“Dead,” said Father Eustace without expression.
“Yes, that’s right,” said Stephen. “We’ve all lost a colleague today. It’s the first time that’s happened since I got here, Father Abbot, and it’s horrible. We need someone to help us with this. We need a leader.”