The Gates

XV In Which Samuel Johnson Begins to Fight Back

SAMUEL DIDN’T SAY MUCH at breakfast the next morning. His mother noticed how subdued her son was.

“Is everything all right, dear?” she asked.

Samuel just nodded, and ate his cornflakes. He wanted to tell his mother what had happened the night before with the pool of Darkness, but he couldn’t. She wouldn’t believe him, and he had no proof. He had no idea where the Darkness had ended up, and was at first a little worried that it might be stuck in one of the household pipes, waiting for a chance to emerge. Once he had thought about it for a while, though, he realized that it was probably lost in a smelly old sewer, which was just fine by Samuel. Still, he had taken the precaution of gluing the toilet seat closed using superstrong adhesive. He was the only one who ever used the little bathroom anyway, and as long as he was careful nobody would discover for a while what he had done.

But Samuel was also very frightened, for his mother and for himself. He remembered Mrs. Abernathy’s threat to kill his mother if he continued to try to convince her of what he knew. The demon under the bed had been bad enough, but at least that could be reasoned with. The Darkness had been something else entirely. He had been lucky last night; Boswell’s bravery had saved him, but Boswell might not be able to save him, or his mum, from whatever came next.

Because Samuel was sure of one thing: Mrs. Abernathy wasn’t going to give up. The Darkness had simply been her latest attempt to silence Samuel. Others would follow, and eventually she would succeed.

Samuel didn’t want to die. He quite liked being alive. But as he tried to come to terms with how scared he was, he began to feel angry. Mrs. Abernathy was evil. She wanted to do something awful, so awful that the world would never be the same after it, if there was even any world left once the gates were opened. She had to be stopped, and Samuel was determined to fight her until his last breath.

It was at that moment that fortune began to turn in Samuel’s favor.

There was a small portable television in the corner of the kitchen. Samuel’s mother sometimes liked to watch it while she was having breakfast. The volume was turned down low, and the news was on. Samuel glanced up and saw a man in a white coat talking. Behind him was what looked like an enormous series of pipelines. Samuel knew what it was: the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland. He had watched a documentary about it earlier in the year and, although he hadn’t understood everything that had been discussed, he thought it all sounded like fascinating stuff. He reached for the remote control and turned up the volume.

The scientist, whose name was Professor Stefan, looked a bit embarrassed. It became clear that he was trying to explain why the collider had been shut down. Samuel knew the collider hadn’t worked properly the first time it was turned on, and the scientists had been forced to tinker with it for a while before it began running to their satisfaction. Now, after all the money that had been spent on it, it still didn’t appear to be working the way that it should.

“Well,” said Professor Stefan, when the reporter pointed this fact out to him, “that’s not entirely true. It was working perfectly, but then there was an, um, unanticipated release of unknown energy.”

“What does that mean, exactly?” asked the reporter.

“Well, to put it in layman’s terms, a bit flew off, and now we’re trying to find out what it was.”

“A bit?” said the reporter.

“A particle of energy,” said Professor Stefan, “but one that has not been encountered before, and appears to show unusual characteristics.”

“What kind of characteristics?” said the reporter.

“Well, the collider is a vacuum, and therefore it’s sealed. It simply should not be possible for anything to find its way out of there.”

“But now you think that something has?”

“We believe so. It may just be a leak, so we’re checking every inch of the collider for possible breaches. As you can imagine, that’s a time-consuming procedure. In the meantime, we’re going back over our systems in an effort to determine precisely what we’re dealing with.”

The reporter thought over what he had just been told.

“Is there any possibility that this ‘energy’ might be dangerous?”

“Oh, none whatsoever,” said Professor Stefan.

Samuel thought that he seemed very sure of this for someone who didn’t know what exactly the energy was.

“And when precisely did you become aware of this energy leak?” asked the reporter.

“At precisely seven thirty P.M. on October twenty-eighth,” said Professor Stefan. “The collider was shut down shortly afterward.”

Samuel paused, a spoonful of cornflakes suspended between the bowl and his mouth. Seven thirty P.M. on October 28. At seven thirty P.M. on October 28 Samuel and Boswell had been sitting on the Abernathys’ wall when they’d heard the bang from the Abernathys’ basement, when they’d seen the blue light and smelled that nasty smell. It might be a coincidence, of course, but for the first time Samuel sensed that there could be someone out there who might be prepared to listen to him.

Samuel sat before his computer and examined the website for CERN. He couldn’t find a telephone number, but there was a section entitled “Ask an Expert.” Samuel didn’t know how long an expert might take to answer his question, or even if what he had to say counted as a question at all. He thought hard, then composed his message to CERN:

Dear CERN,

My name is Samuel Johnson, and I am eleven years old. I have reason to believe that I may have found your missing energy particle, or know where it ended up. I think it is in the basement of number 666, Crowley Road, in the town of Biddlecombe, England. It is owned by a couple named the Abernathys. It is very blue, and smells of rotten eggs. The energy, that is, not Biddlecombe. It materialized there at precisely seven thirty P.M. on October 28. I enclose a drawing of what I saw in the basement, scanned into the computer for your information.

Yours sincerely,

Samuel Johnson

P.S. I believe Mr. and Mrs. Abernathy have become possessed by demons, and may be using the energy to open the gates of Hell.

When he was finished, Samuel checked his spelling and went over the letter once again to make sure that he had included all the important details. He had considered leaving out the bit about Hell, but thought it might add a sense of urgency to his message. After all, he didn’t know how many people wrote to “Ask an Expert” every day, or if there was just one expert answering the questions or a whole team. In any case, he thought it was important to attract CERN’s attention and, if nothing else, the mention of demons and Hell was likely to make his message stand out.

He pressed Send, and his missive shot off into cyberspace. He considered staying at his computer and waiting for a reply, but he suspected that, even if someone read his message promptly, a certain amount of discussion would still be required before it was answered.

Samuel was not about to sit around doing nothing. It was Halloween, and he had heard Mrs. Abernathy say that she and her fellow demons had four days to prepare the way. Samuel didn’t know precisely what “preparing the way” meant, but by any calculation four days from October 28 led to November 1. He had a terrible feeling that, at some time the next day, the gates of Hell would begin to open.

So Samuel went to the telephone and began making some calls.

It would not be true to say that Samuel was unpopular at school. There were some boys and girls in his class who looked at him a little oddly, especially when he began talking about angels and pins, but for the most part he got on pretty well with nearly everyone. He was also very happy to spend time by himself, though, and after sharing the same small schoolroom with a bunch of kids his own age for two months, he had been rather enjoying being alone during midterm. His closest friends were Tom Hobbes and Maria Mayer. Tom’s father delivered milk for the local dairy, where his mum also worked, and Maria’s dad worked for the telephone company. Samuel, Tom, and Maria had planned to go trick or treating that evening, and Tom and Maria had been a little surprised to hear from Samuel so early in the day.

When Samuel said he had something important to tell them, they were both intrigued. They agreed to meet outside the pie shop in the town center, and Samuel, with Boswell in tow, was already waiting for Tom and Maria when they arrived together shortly after one P.M. The pie shop was called Pete’s Pies, even though Pete had died many years before and his son Nigel now made all of the pies, but Nigel’s Pies didn’t sound right and, anyway, everyone would have just kept calling it Pete’s Pies even if Nigel had changed the name. People in small towns are funny that way.

There were always tables and chairs outside Pete’s Pies, even in winter, which made it a popular place for people to meet. Pete, and then Nigel, never objected to people taking a seat there. Even if they didn’t come along with the intention of buying a pie, the smell from the pie shop would cause their mouths to water and, usually in less than a minute, they would be inside buying a pie “for later.” About one minute after that they would be eating the pie and considering having another, maybe the apple-and-raspberry, for dessert.

It was one of these same apple-and-raspberry pies that Samuel was eating when Tom and Maria strolled up to his table. Tom was taller than Samuel by a couple of inches, and never really seemed to have bad days. He was always in good spirits, except when the school cricket team, of which he was one of the star batsmen, lost. Tom didn’t mind losing at most things, but he drew the line at cricket. Tom and Samuel only ever argued on the cricket pitch. Samuel was a good bowler, with a strong right arm, but his eyesight was poor, and he had trouble catching balls when fielding. This meant that he was both an asset and a liability on the cricket pitch, and more than one match had ended with him and Tom shouting at each other at the tops of their voices. Still, they remained friends, and Tom was secretly a little in awe of Samuel, whose mind worked in ways that Tom admired, even if he did not understand.

Maria, meanwhile, was smaller than both of them, and had very long hair that she tied in a ponytail each day with one of a selection of bows. She sometimes seemed shy and quiet to those who didn’t know her well, but Samuel knew she was very clever and very funny. She just didn’t like showing off. Maria wanted to be a scientist when she grew up, and was the only person Samuel and Tom knew who did homework for pleasure.

Boswell wagged his tail in greeting at the two new arrivals, then returned his attention to the pie on the table. He knew that Samuel would share some with him eventually. Samuel shared nearly all of his food with Boswell, except chocolate, because that wasn’t good for Boswell and gave him wind, and Boswell could be a smelly dog if he was fed the wrong things.

“All right, then,” said Tom, once he and Maria had bought pies of their own and settled down on their seats. “What’s the big mystery?”

Boswell finished the piece of pie that Samuel had fed to him, licked up the last of the crumbs, and began drooling over Tom’s shoe instead. Tom decided to give him some pie to distract him before Boswell’s spit started to soak through to his socks.

“Well, it’s like this,” said Samuel. “You’re probably going to have trouble believing me, and I’m not sure how I’m going to prove that what I have to say is true. All I’m asking is that you listen to me, because I really need your help.”

He was so serious that Tom stopped eating for a moment and Tom, like Boswell, didn’t like to stop eating without a good reason.

“Wow, that sounds serious,” he said. “Off you go, then. I’m listening.”

He looked at Maria, who nodded. “We both are.”

So Samuel told them everything, right up to the point at which he’d sent off his message to CERN. When he was finished, nobody spoke for a time, then Tom said:

“You’re barmy.”

“Tom!” Maria scolded him.

“No, really. You’re trying to tell us that this Mrs. Abernathy isn’t really Mrs. Abernathy but a thing with tentacles, and that in her basement is a blue hole that somehow is a tunnel to Hell, and tomorrow some gates are going to open in that tunnel and-what? Demons are going to come out?”

“Something like that,” said Samuel calmly.

“You are barmy,” repeated Tom.

Samuel turned to Maria. “And you?” he asked her. “What do you think?”

“It is a little hard to believe,” said Maria gently.

“I’m not lying,” said Samuel. He looked at them both, his face serious. “On my life, I promise you I’m not lying. And-”

He paused.

“What?” said Maria.

“I’m scared,” said Samuel. “I’m really scared.”

And they both believed him when he said it.

“Well,” said Tom. “There’s only one thing for it.”

“What’s that?” asked Maria, but she already knew the answer.

Tom grinned.

“We’ll just have to take a look at the Abernathys’ house.”

Meanwhile, at CERN, the technician who had been monitoring the “Ask an Expert” section of the website approached Professor Hilbert holding a printed message at the bottom of which was a drawing of a blue spiral.

“Professor,” he said, nervously, “this may be nothing, but…”