The Infernals aka Hell's Bells

XX

THE BARREN LANDSCAPE BEGAN to change, although not for the better. It was now dotted with objects that seemed to come from another world, Samuel’s world: a suit of armor, empty and rusted; a German biplane from World War I; a submarine standing perfectly upright, balanced on its propellers; and a rifle, the largest, longest gun that Samuel had ever seen, so long that it would have taken him an hour or more just to walk around it, made up of millions and millions of smaller guns, all fused together to create a kind of giant sculpture. As Samuel examined it he saw that pieces of the rifle appeared to be alive, wriggling like metal snakes, and he realized that the rifle was still forming, weapons popping into existence in the air around it and slowly being absorbed into the whole.

A huge man appeared from behind the discarded turret of a tank. He wore dirty black overalls and a welder’s mask upon his face. In his right hand he held a blowtorch that burned with a white-hot flame. He killed the flame and pushed the mask up so that his face was revealed. He was bearded, and his eyes shone with the same white fire as his torch, as though he had spent too long looking at metal dissolve.

“Who are you?” he asked. His voice was hoarse, but there was no hostility to his tone.

“My name is Samuel Johnson, and this is Boswell.”

Those white eyes looked down upon the little dachshund.

“A dog,” said the man. “It’s a long time since I’ve seen a dog.”

He reached out a gloved hand. Boswell shied away, but the hand was too quick. It fastened on Boswell’s head, then rubbed at it with a surprising gentleness.

“Good dog,” said the man. “Good little dog.”

He released his grip on Boswell, somewhat to the relief of the good little dog in question.

“I kept dogs,” he said. “A man should have a dog.”

“Do you have a name?” asked Samuel.

“I had a name once as well, but I’ve forgotten it. I have no use for it, for nobody has come here for so very long. Now I am the Blacksmith. I work with metal. It is my punishment.”

“What is this place?” asked Samuel.

“This is the Junkyard. It is the place of broken things that should never have been made. Come and see.”

And Samuel and Boswell followed the Blacksmith beneath the ever-changing gun, and past row upon row of fighter planes and armored cars, and there was revealed to them an enormous crater, and in it were swords and knives; machine guns and pistols; tanks and battleships and aircraft carriers; every conceivable weapon that might be used to inflict harm upon another person. Like the great gun, the contents of the crater were constantly being added to, so that the whole mass of metal creaked and groaned and clattered and clanked.

“Why are they here?” asked Samuel.

“Because they took lives, and this is where they belong.”

“Then why are you here?”

“Because I designed such weapons, and I put them in the hands of those who would use them against innocents, and I did not care. Now I break them down.”

“What about the great gun, the one that keeps growing in size?”

“A reminder to me,” said the Blacksmith. “No matter how hard I work, or how many weapons I break down, still that rifle increases in size. I contributed to the creation of firearms in life, and I am not permitted to forget it.”

“I’m sorry,” said Samuel. “You don’t seem like a bad person.”

“I didn’t think that I was,” said the Blacksmith. “Or perhaps I just didn’t think. And you: why are you here?”

Samuel was still wary of telling the truth about his situation, particularly after his encounter with Old Ram, but something about the Blacksmith made Samuel trust him.

“I was dragged here. A woman-a demon-called Mrs. Abernathy wants to punish me.”

The Blacksmith grinned. “So you are the boy. Even I, in this dreadful place, have heard tell of you.” He fumbled beneath his apron, and brought out a piece of newspaper, which he handed to Samuel. It was a cutting from an old edition of The Infernal Times, and it showed a picture of Samuel beneath two words:

THE ENEMY!

The article that followed, written by the editor, Mr. P. Bodkin, detailed the attempt to escape from Hell through the portal, and the failure of the invasion because of the intervention of Samuel and an unknown other who had driven a car the wrong way through the portal. Samuel thought that the article was a little unfair, and only told one side of the story, but then he supposed that the editor of The Infernal Times might have found himself in a spot of trouble had he suggested that sending hordes of demons to invade the Earth wasn’t a very nice thing to do in the first place.

“I expect she’ll be looking for you,” said the Blacksmith.

“I expect so,” said Samuel.

“Well, if she comes this way, I won’t tell her anything. You can rely on me.”

“Thank you,” said Samuel. “But I want to get home, and I don’t know how.”

The last words caught in his throat. His eyes grew warm, but he fought away the tears. The Blacksmith discreetly looked away for a moment and then, once he was sure that Samuel was in control of his emotions, turned his attention back to the boy.

“It seems to me that if Mrs. Abernathy brought you here, then she may have the means of returning you as well.”

“But she won’t do that,” said Samuel. “She wants to kill me.”

“Nevertheless, whatever power she used to drag you here can surely be used to get you back.”

“So I have to face her?”

“You have to find her, or be found by her. After that, you’ll have to use your own cleverness to help you.”

“But I’m just a kid. And she’s a demon.”

“A demon that you’ve defeated once before, and can defeat again.”

“But I had help that time,” said Samuel. “I had help from-”

He almost said Nurd’s name, but he bit his tongue at the last minute. It was one thing to trust the Blacksmith with his secrets, but another thing entirely to trust him with Nurd’s.

“You had help from Nurd,” said the Blacksmith, and Samuel could not conceal his shock.

“How did you know that?”

“Because I’ve helped him too. I’ve seen his vehicle. It broke down, and I helped him and his servant, Wormwood, to repair it. Then they insisted upon disguising the car, so I aided them with that as well. Mind you, they seemed intent upon disguising it as a rock, for reasons I still don’t fully understand, but he’s a strange one, that Nurd. I rather liked him.”

“He’s my friend,” said Samuel. “If he knew I was here, he’d help me.”

“Oh, he knows you’re here,” said the Blacksmith.

“How?”

“He can feel you.” The Blacksmith patted his chest, just where his heart once beat when he lived and perhaps still did, in some strange way. “Can’t you feel him too?”

Samuel closed his eyes, and thought hard. He pictured Nurd in his head, and remembered what they had spoken of in Samuel’s bedroom when Nurd had first appeared to him. He recalled Nurd’s joy at the taste of a jelly bean, and his own surprise that Nurd had never before had anyone whom he could call a friend. He opened his heart to Nurd, and suddenly he had an image of him, an odd, ferretlike creature beside him that could only have been Wormwood, Nurd’s hands gripping the wheel of the Aston Martin that had, until recently, been the proudest possession of Samuel’s dad.

Then the image changed, and he saw Nurd and Wormwood standing beside-

Hang on, was that an ice-cream van?

Samuel called out to Nurd. He called out with his voice, and his heart. He called out with all the hope that he had left, and all his faith in the automobile-loving demon who was his friend.

He called out, and Nurd answered.