by Heide Goody
“Not rare, Brother Sebastian. It’s been declared extinct for over twenty years.”
“So that fuzzy thing can’t be it then.”
“And yet one of your older monks included it as part of the mural in the visitors’ centre.”
“So,” said Bastian slowly, “Bardsey Island is home to perhaps the only living specimens?”
Carol nodded.
Bastian stroked his chin.
“I’m guessing this would be a big deal in the bird-watching world.”
“A very big deal,” Carol agreed.
“The kind of thing that would even make the national newspapers?”
“Middle pages of the better kind of broadsheet, yes.”
“And people would want to come and see it, wouldn’t they?”
“Lots and lots of people,” said Carol.
“People with money,” said Bastian softly.
“Um. Sorry?”
Bastian cleared his throat.
“Did I say that last bit out loud? Scratch that.” He made a show of looking again at the images Carol had brought. “I suppose what we really need is proof that this thing is alive and well and living here.”
“I’ve brought my camera and binoculars.”
“I’ll grab my coat,” said Bastian.
Rutspud ran like he had never run before. Demons were rarely built for high speed. It was only the damned who ever felt the need to run and, in a domain from which there was no escape, there was little need to chase them at speed. But Rutspud had a sensible number of legs, and they were a matching pair, so he could produce a decent turn of speed when required.
He did not run directly to the furnaces, but took a detour to Infernal Innovations first, to pick up a stoppered flask of water.
“Have you got any yellow paint?” he asked Bosch, who was leaning over a design painting for a new torture centre.
“Septic wound yellow or rabid eyes yellow?” the Dutchman asked.
“Sort of piss yellow,” said Rutspud.
“Language please,” said Lewis as he sanded down the door for his latest wardrobe.
“Fine. Urine yellow, please. And quickly.”
As Lewis went back to his work, humming a ditty to himself, the painter passed Rutspud a pot. Rutspud emptied half of it into the flask and was running out of the room before it had even begun to settle.
A five minute sprint into the maintenance tunnels and then the furnace room had shaken up the water and paint sufficiently to give it a pleasing yellow tinge.
“Shut the door! Shut the door!” cried the shovel-carrying demon. “Precious heat lost! I’m in enough trouble as it is.”
Rutspud saw that it was – Hell be praised! – the same demon as before; the same waxy, melted forehead, the same drooping, sweat-coated nose.
“I thought I’d just drop by and see my good friend,” said Rutspud.
“You got me in trouble,” said the demon.
“Me? No.”
The demon nodded, bits of his face wobbling about as he did.
“You took that fuse, didn’t you?”
“No idea what you’re talking about. Did you tell anyone?”
“Tell them what? That I let you in? I just played dumb and hoped they’d blame it on someone else.”
“Wise policy, friend.”
The furnace demon wiped his sweaty forehead and tried to push some bits of his face back into place.
“They now reckon Hell’s going to get hotter and hotter until it explodes and that will be the end of everything.”
“Explodes?”
“You know. Pop!” Rutspud made an explosive gesture with his hands.
“That does sound awful,” said the demon.
“I dunno. I can see an upside. I fancy a bit of oblivion, me.”
Rutspud gave him his best consoling and friendly smile.
“Listen, friend, let bygones be bygones. I brought you a little something to cheer you up.”
He passed the flask of dyed water to the demon. The thirsty demon took it without a word and drank. He pulled a face.
“It’s not half as nice as the last stuff.”
“Drink up.”
The demon poured most of it down his throat.
“It’s all right, I suppose,” he said. “Where’d you get this stuff from anyway?”
“The Lethe, river of forgetfulness.”
The demon frowned.
“The river of ... who are you?”
“No one,” said Rutspud. “No one at all.”
“OK, so who am I?”
Rutspud took the remains of the flask from the demon’s hand.
“You,” he said, retreating towards the door, “can be whoever you want to be. Welcome to oblivion.”
With the furnace demon’s memory sufficiently wiped, Rutspud legged it over to his own cave of tortures. It was as much of a home as he had anywhere. Tesla’s scream-organ was producing a fine, many-voiced hymn of pain as he entered.
Wilde, Cartland, Bernhardt and Nightingale were playing cards at a small table. Potter, Whitehouse, Mama-Na and Boudicca were playing table tennis doubles at a much larger table.
Bridge and Ping Pong Mondays.
Shipton, who was not a fan of cards or table tennis, usually spent the Monday sessions writing out dire prognostications in her journal. She was slumped in an armchair, lazily fanning herself with a folded piece of paper.
“Greetings, team,” said Rutspud. “I need Lickspear. Where is he?”
Bernhardt lowered her cards and peered at Rutspud.
“Oh, look everyone, it’s thingy. That demon who used to work here.”
“That fair-weather companion and all round ne’er-do-well?” said Shipton.
“I said, where’s Lickspear?”
“Away, Mr Rutspud,” said Whitehouse.
“Where?”
“Elsewhere,” said Wilde. “Which, I hear, is delightful this time of year.”
“Unlike this place,” said Nightingale. She put down her cards, pressed down her short apron as she stood, and approached Rutspud with a small thermometer in her hand. “It’s far too hot,” she said.
“Hot?” frowned Rutspud. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The air temperature in here is a few degrees below boiling.”
“My reading glasses have melted,” said Whitehouse.
“You’re delusional. I think it’s quite chilly in here. Brrr. Might even go fetch myself a scarf to keep warm.”
Bernhardt was shaking her head.
“I can’t believe it,” she said.
“Believe what?” said Rutspud.
“Decades of Wednesday afternoon acting lessons and you are still the worst liar in Hell.”
“Am not!”
Mama-Na slammed the ping pong ball off the table and into Rutspud’s forehead.
“Vnnn urrr!” she growled angrily and wrung the sweat from her deer-hide tunic to make her point plain.
“I do not have to explain myself to you!” said Rutspud hotly. “Now, where is Lickspear? I need his help.”
The scream-organ fell quiet, the last tortured cry fading slowly.
“Isn’t it interesting,” Telsa turned away from his mechanical creation, “that you only seek any of us out if you want something?”
Rutspud opened his mouth.
The words queued up in his brain. He knew what he needed to say. He was the boss. He was a demon of Hell and they were his victims, his playthings. He could have them chained, flogged, eviscerated and ground into mince with a simple word to his imp minions. He was in charge. They were nothing but the MEAT in his TEAM. If he said jump, they should ask which pit of horrors they should jump into.
But words didn’t come. They no longer seemed right.
“Listen,” he said quietly. “I think I’m in trouble. I think we’re all in a lot of trouble. I would like your help …”
His throat constricted, choking on something that couldn’t quite make its way up
to his lips. He screwed his eyes shut.
“Please,” he said.
Rutspud stalked into the monastery library. Stephen was reading, slowly and aloud.
“‘The demon-hunter … Treyvaw … is a general in the armies of Hell. He is tasked with bringing punishment to the punishers. In Hell, none shall go … unscourged. Those devils who fail to deliver the most terrible of tortures to the damned will be taken to –’”
Rutspud prodded Stephen in the back. Stephen turned away from the Librum Magnum Daemonum.
“Oh, hello,” said Stephen. “Wasn’t expecting to see you until later.”
“What have you done to me?”
Stephen gave him a funny look.
“What have I … done?”
“Yes, you. You’ve cast some weird spell on me. There I was, in my cave of horrible tortures, informing the damned that I needed their help because Hell is over-heating and is, in all probability, going to explode or implode or melt or something, and they were giving me –”
“Sorry?” said Stephen. “Hell’s over-heating? Is that why it seems warm in here?”
“Yes, yes. And it’s your fault, by the way. And they were giving me a load of grief because I, apparently, don’t spend enough time –”
“My fault?” interrupted Stephen. “How is it my fault?”
“You’re missing the point,” said Rutspud.
“I mean this sounds kind of serious. How is Hell going to explode or implode or melt or whatever?”
“They weren’t listening to me,” said Rutspud, “just like you’re not doing now and I was going to give them an absolute carpeting and, you know what, I couldn’t. I felt … I felt …”
“What?” said Stephen.
Rutspud growled and stamped his foot, angry with himself. “I felt guilty.”
Stephen’s eyebrows rose and his mouth twitched.
“You think this is funny?” said Rutspud.
“I think it’s good.”
Rutspud scowled.
“And I ended up – urgh! – apologising to them for being grumpy and then I promised them that I – Oh, Satan’s balls! What’s that?”
Rutspud stumbled back, a finger pointing in horror at the black and white creature sniffing around in the corner of the library.
“That’s Jessie,” said Stephen.
“It’s hideous. It’s like a one-headed Cerberus but it’s all … furry.”
“It’s a dog. She’s from the mainland.”
“It’s like a giant kitten. Why’s its nose wet?”
“Dogs have wet noses.”
Rutspud shuddered. Horrible, fluffy looking thing! He bared his teeth and hissed. The dog-thing, Jessie, looked up at him. Its tongue lolled out the side of its mouth. There was a cheerful intelligence in its eyes.
“Can we kill it?” asked Rutspud.
“No, we can’t,” said Stephen. “Jessie is a soft old thing and she does anything you ask her. Jessie, come play with Rutspud.”
The horrible creature bounced over. Rutspud began to flap his hands about to ward it off, but Stephen grabbed him by the shoulder.
“Damn it! There’s someone coming. Under the table!”
Stephen thrust his demon pal beneath the central table and pulled the white table cloth down to properly conceal him. Jessie sniffed at its edges. Stephen straightened up in time to see three people enter the library: Brother Manfred with an iron beer keg, Brother Sebastian with a large clay demijohn, and, inexplicably, the schoolteacher who had visited some months before, carrying a fat plastic container of brown green liquid in her arms.
“Sorry, you’ve got the wrong place. The Messiah’s in the stable next door,” said Stephen.
“What?” said Manfred.
Stephen gestured at their burdens.
“Three gifts. Like the wise men. It was a joke. Um, hello.”
“I see,” said Manfred.
Bastian put his load down.
“Manfred’s looking for a place to store his beer while it ferments. I told him that it’s really quite warm down here.”
“It is, isn’t it?” said Manfred, surprised. “I wonder if Bardsey sits on some geothermal feature?”
“I’m sure it doesn’t,” said Stephen quickly.
“I thought we could store this in the warmest of the cellar rooms,” said Manfred.
“I’d rather you didn’t.”
“You see, I seem to have made more seaweed beer than I have storage for. Admittedly, some of it will be depleted after tonight’s celebration.”
“Celebration?”
The schoolteacher – Carol – stepped forward.
“Brother Sebastian and I have some exciting news,” she said, in the gushing tones of someone announcing an impending birth or nuptials. Neither seemed likely, so Stephen said nothing.
“Bardsey may be home to a bird previously thought to be extinct,” said Bastian.
“Really?” said Stephen.
“Although we have yet to locate it,” said Carol.
“Which is why we’ve come to you, hoping for some better maps of the island to aid us in our search,” said Bastian.
Beneath the table, Jessie growled.
“I see that dog’s here again,” said Manfred.
“I didn’t invite her,” said Stephen. “Hey, Jessie. Go show Manfred somewhere upstairs where he can stick his beer.”
There was a snapping sound from under the table and the sheepdog reappeared with something long and thin in her mouth.
“Is that a stick she’s found?” said Bastian.
Jessie’s bared teeth, gripped around the thing that Stephen realised was definitely not a stick, contorted her face into a mischievous grin. She huffed at Manfred and began to herd him out of the library.
“I’m not being bossed around by a domestic animal,” protested Manfred, despite all evidence to the contrary.
Carol put her beer-filled container down on the table.
“Brother Trevor, isn’t it?”
“Stephen,” he said.
“Really? You look so much like a Trevor. Sorry.”
“I know. So it’s maps you’re after?”
“We need to search all the cliffs and wondered if you had some maps among your collection. This is the bird we’re looking for.”
She withdrew a crumpled plastic wallet from her pocket and flattened it out on the table.
“It’s the yellow-crested Merlin stilt,” she said.
Stephen looked at the picture. He took a sideways step and looked through the door to the mural painted on the corridor wall outside.
“That bird?” he said, pointing.
“Yes. I hoped the artist had perhaps seen it on the island.”
Stephen shook his head.
“Brother Huey, who is sadly no longer with us, painted that to Manfred’s designs. And Manfred got the picture from JJ Audubon’s 1828 edition of Birds of Britain.” He pointed to a fat volume in a glass case.
“Oh,” said Carol, clearly disappointed. “I thought a monk on the island had perhaps seen it.”
“They have,” said Stephen. “I have.”
“I beg your pardon?” said Bastian.
“Blasted thing nearly took my face off when I was searching for eggs.”
“You saw its nest?” asked Carol.
“Right in front of my face. Give me your map.”
Carol unfolded an Ordnance Survey map. With no trouble at all, Stephen planted a fingertip on the cove where his egg-hunting trip had ended in near death.
“It’s there.”
“Are you sure?”
“Doubly sure.”
Bastian grinned. Carol actually, physically, jumped for joy. Bastian took the map from Stephen and the pair of them ran from the room, like school children released for the summer.
“Do you not want to take your beer with you?” said Stephen to no one, and then remembered Rutspud. “Oh, my God! Are you all right under there?”
“What do you think?” grumb
led Rutspud.
“I thought I saw Jessie take your …”
Rutspud emerged from the under table, using his one remaining arm to pull himself upright against the table.
“You thought what, Stephen? Did you think, oh, there goes a bloody dog with Rutspud’s arm? Did you?”
Stephen stared at the demon’s stump.
“Does it hurt?”
“Pain is relative.”
Stephen poked the ragged and bloodless wound. Rutspud looked at him coolly.
“Are you finished gawping?” he said.
“Could we reattach it?” asked Stephen.
“If that sodding monster hasn’t eaten it, yes. Frankly, right now, this is just one more item on a very long list of things that have gone wrong for me. Before you shoved me under the table and into the maw of that beast, I was going to tell you that I sort of made a promise to my gang of damned souls.”
“What sort of promise?”
“A treat to thank them for all their hard work on my behalf. A little jolly.”
Stephen nodded.
“Did you promise to bring them up here, Rutspud?”
“I might have done.”
A whole bunch of reasons to argue with Rutspud sprang to Stephen’s mind but, standing in front of them all, was a single reason not to. Hell was Hell, Earth was better. Provide succour for the suffering was the greatest good a Christian could do. No one since the time of Christ had actually taken the damned out of Hell and offered them respite and even the stories of Jesus’s harrowing of Hell were bloody apocryphal.
“Of course they can come up here,” said Stephen. He put his hand on the beer Bastian had left behind. “We can have a little party here tonight.”
“Brilliant,” said Rutspud. “And if anything gets out of hand and one of your monky mates sticks his nose in, we can give him a dose of this.”
Stephen looked at the large flask of yellow liquid.
“And how exactly will force-feeding them piddle help?”
The afternoon weather had turned grim. Although there was no rain in the air, a chill wintry wind blew across the exposed island. The seas were choppy with foam and the clouds above thick, white and heavy.
“I think it could snow.” Bastian pulled his hood more tightly around his neck with his gloved hands.
“This cove is only a few hundred yards further,” said Carol, consulting her map.