The Infernals aka Hell's Bells

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IT WAS DOZY WHO woke first. He was called Dozy because of his ability to take a nap at any time. He could nap on roller coasters, on a sinking ocean liner, or while his toes were being set on fire-all of which he had actually done. Dozy was the kind of bloke who could take a nap while he was already taking another nap.

He stretched his arms and yawned. He felt as if his body had been stretched on a rack, disassembled, and then reassembled by someone who wasn’t particularly worried about whether or not all of the bits were in the right place. Under similar circumstances, most people might have wondered why this might be, but Dozy had been drinking Spiggit’s Old Peculiar for some time, and was used to waking up feeling that way.

He looked out of the window and saw what appeared to be immense white sand dunes stretching before him. He scratched his head as he tried to remember where it was they were supposed to be going when-well, whenever it was that whatever it was happened. Had they a seaside engagement? Dozy quite liked the sea. He decided to leave everyone else sleeping and stretch his legs.

The sky above his head was filled with dark clouds tinged with red, so he figured that it was either sunrise or sunset, and it looked like there might be rain on the way. He took a deep breath, but he couldn’t smell the sea. He couldn’t hear the sea either. Dozy tried to remember if there was a desert anywhere in the vicinity of Biddlecombe, and decided that there wasn’t. There was a beach nearby, at Dunstead, but it was mainly stones and old shopping carts, and not like this at all. The sand beneath his feet was very white, and very fine. That sky was odd, though. The clouds kept changing shape and color, so that at times the sky appeared to be filled with faces tinged fireplace orange and chimney red. If he hadn’t known better, he’d have said that it was on fire. There was certainly a smell of burning in the air, and not nice burning either. It smelled as though someone had left a great many steaks on an enormous barbecue for far too long, and then allowed them to rot.

He began to climb the nearest dune in the hope of getting his bearings, whistling as he went. There were more dunes. He climbed another, then another. When he reached the top of the third dune, he stopped whistling. He stopped doing anything at all, really, except staring.

Stretched before him, all the way to the flaming horizon, were desks, and at the desks sat small red men with horns on their heads. Each of the desks had a hole on one side, through which other small red men were feeding pieces of something white that emerged from the far side of the desks as fine white sand. A third group of small red men moved back and forth between the desks, loading the sand into buckets and carrying it away, while the little seated men carefully noted the details of the operation in big books.

To his right, at a much larger desk, sat a tall man in a black cloak with scarlet lining. Unlike the little fellows below, his skin was very pale, and his horns were larger and seemed to have been polished to a bright sheen. He had a thin mustache on his upper lip, and a beard that came to a pronounced point at the end of his chin. It was the sort of beard worn by someone who is Up to No Good, and doesn’t care who knows it. It was a beard that conjured up images of Dastardly Schemes, of women being Tied to Train Tracks and orphans being Deprived of Their Inheritances. It was a beard that screamed “I’m a Wrong ’Un, and Make No Mistake About It.”

On the desk, close to where the bearded gentleman’s black, pointed boots were currently crossed, there was a sign that read: “A. Bodkin, Demon-in-Charge.”

Dozy noted that A. Bodkin, Demon-in-Charge, was reading a newspaper called The Infernal Times. 23 The headline read:

GREAT MALEVOLENCE CONSIDERING NEXT MOVE

“Victory Will Be Ours,” says Chancellor Ozymuth. “Anyone who doubts this will be dismembered.”

A smaller substory announced:

ACTION TO BE TAKEN AGAINST MRS. ABERNATHY

“Someone has to take responsibility for failure of invasion,” says Chancellor Ozymuth, “and I’ve decided it should be her.”

This Chancellor Ozymuth seems to be getting around, thought Dozy. He might not have been the brightest of dwarfs, but he was developing the uncomfortable suspicion that all was not quite right here.

“Morning,” he said, then thought about it. “Afternoon. Er, evening?”

A. Bodkin looked to where Dozy was standing. He puffed his cheeks and blew air from his mouth in the bored, world-weary manner of middle managers everywhere whose lot in life is to be disturbed just when they’re about to reach the good bit of something, and therefore never get to experience the good bit of anything, which makes them even more bored and world-weary.

“Yes?” said A. Bodkin. “What is it?”

“Just wondering what all those blokes are doing.”

A. Bodkin lowered his newspaper.

“Blokes? Blokes? They’re not ‘blokes’: they’re highly trained demonic operatives, not just some imps-come-lately with lunch boxes and an attitude. Blokes. Tch!”

A. Bodkin returned to his newspaper, muttering about unions, and toilet breaks, and demons being lucky to have a job.

“Yes, but what are they doing?” repeated Dozy.

A. Bodkin rustled his newspaper in an I’m-very-busy-and-don’t-want-to-be-disturbed way, then, realizing that the short annoying person by his desk was not about to go away, lowered the paper again resignedly and said:

“Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? They’re grinding the bones of the dead.”

“Grinding?” said Dozy.

“Yes.”

“Bones?”

“Yes, yes.”

“Dead?”

“Yes. They’re hardly going to grind the bones of the living, are they? That would just be messy.”

“Right,” said Dozy. He put his hands in his pockets and kicked idly at the sand, then remembered that it was not sand after all and apologized to it. “It’s nice to have a trade, I suppose.”

He sucked at his lower lip and thought for a moment.

“Where is this, exactly?” he asked.

“Oh, you’re not lost, are you?” said A. Bodkin. “Not another one. I mean, how hard can it be to get this right? You’re bad, you die, you come to Hell, you get processed, we find you a job somewhere. You’d think, after all this time, the chaps in Head Office would have this down to a fine art. Tch! I mean, really. Well, you’ll just have to make your own way to Central Processing. I’m far too busy supervising to help you.”

He raised his left arm and examined an hourglass on his wrist to indicate just how busy he was. Sands poured from the upper glass into the lower one, but the level of the sands in the upper glass didn’t get any lower, and the level in the lower glass didn’t get any higher.

“Just one small thing,” said Dozy. “Tell you the truth, two small things. Smallish. Actually, not small. Bit big, to be honest.”

He laughed nervously.

“Go on, then,” said A. Bodkin. “But this had better be the end of it. You’re distracting me from my work. Production has already decreased in the time that we’ve been talking. If I don’t keep an eye on this lot, I’ll have protests, people asking for tea breaks and time off to visit their aunties or go to the dentist. Look at them: they’re already on the verge of revolt!”

Dozy looked at the lot in question. They looked about as likely to revolt as A. Bodkin was to mind a baby without stealing its pram.

“That business about being dead,” said Dozy. “What did you mean by that, exactly?”

“Oops, sorry,” said A. Bodkin, who didn’t look sorry at all. “You mean, you didn’t know. Tragic, just tragic.” He stifled a giggle. “Well, frankly, you’re dead. No longer alive. Faithfully departed. If there’s a bucket nearby, then you’ve kicked it. If you were a parrot, you’d have dropped off your perch. And the second thing?”

“Huh?” said Dozy, who was still trying to come to terms with the first thing, which he hadn’t liked the sound of at all. “Oh, you mentioned something about Hell.”

“Yes?”

“That would be-why?”

“Because that’s where you are: Hell.”

“The Hell?”

“Are you aware of any other?”

“No, but I didn’t think Hell was real.”

“Now you know better. Happy?”

“No, can’t say that I am. I don’t feel dead.”

He pinched himself. It hurt.

A. Bodkin looked at him in a curious manner.

“You know, you don’t appear dead either,” said A. Bodkin. “Most dead people tend to look slightly dead: you know, pale, missing a limb or two, bullet holes, blood, bleh.” A. Bodkin let his forked tongue loll from his mouth and made the whites of his eyes show in a reasonable impression of someone whose best days are behind him and no longer has to worry about brushing his teeth in the mornings. “But you don’t look like that at all.”

Dozy was already backing away. “Nice talking to you,” he said. “Good luck with all of the bone stuff. Be seeing you again. Byee-ee!”

He trotted back down the dune. He looked over his shoulder just once, to see A. Bodkin tugging at his beard in a thoughtful way that boded ill for someone.

Dozy started running.