The little pink demon, still thinking about penguins, gave a disappointed sigh. Mrs. Abernathy flicked a finger, and he exploded in a puff of pink and red.
“He goes to the back of the line,” said Mrs. Abernathy as Samuel wiped a piece of demon from his sleeve. “And as for you, I am strangely glad to see you. It means I can kill you now, and enjoy our triumph with the knowledge that you are not alive to spoil it.”
Mrs. Abernathy grinned. Her body began to bulge. Her skin stretched under the pressure, opening tears in her face and on her arms, but no blood came. Instead, something moved in the spaces revealed.
“Now, Samuel Johnson,” she said, “look upon me. Look upon Ba’al, and weep.”
Nurd’s finger was poised over the ignition key. He saw Mrs. Abernathy step away from the portal, but not far enough.
“Come on, Samuel,” he whispered. The little boy was brave, so very brave. Nurd hoped that Samuel wouldn’t die, but the odds in his favor weren’t good. The odds in Nurd’s favor weren’t much better, but he was determined to try. He would be brave, if not for his own sake, then for Samuel’s.
Mrs. Abernathy took another step toward Samuel. Samuel retreated in turn. Then Mrs. Abernathy started to shudder and swell.
“Oh no,” said Nurd. “Here we go…”
Mrs. Abernathy’s skin fell away in clumps, withering and turning to dry flakes as it hit the ground. A gray-black form was exposed, wrapped up in tentacles that now began to stretch and move as they were freed from the constraints of skin. Only her face and hair remained in place, like a rubber mask, but it was stretched so tightly over what was beneath that it bore no resemblance to the woman who had once worn it. One of the tentacles reached up, separated itself into claws, and wrenched the skin mask away.
And still Ba’al grew: six feet, then eight, then ten, on and on, larger and larger. Two legs appeared, bent backward at the knees, from which sharp spurs of bone erupted. Four arms emerged from the torso, but only two ended in clawed fingers. The second pair ended in blades of bone, yellowed and scarred. A great mass of tentacles sprouted from the demon’s back, all of them twisting and writhing like snakes.
Finally, Ba’al reached its full height, towering thirty feet above Samuel. There was a cracking sound, and what had looked like a bump in its chest was revealed as its head, which now untucked itself. It appeared to have no mouth, merely two dark eyes buried deep in its skull, but then the front of the skull split into four parts, like a segmented orange, and Samuel realized that it was all mouth, the four parts lined with row upon row of teeth, a gaping red hole at its center from which a multiplicity of dark tongues emerged.
Samuel was too frightened to move. He wanted to run, but his feet wouldn’t respond. In any case, his back was against the garden hedge. He could go right or left, but he couldn’t go any farther backward. He felt something brush his leg, and looked down to see Boswell, who had escaped from the house and followed his master. Even now, the little dog wanted to be near Samuel.
“Run, Boswell,” he whispered. “There’s a good boy. Run home.”
But Boswell didn’t run. He wished to, but he wasn’t going to desert his beloved Samuel. He barked at the horrid, unknown thing before him, nipping at its heels. One of its bladed limbs shot out in an effort to impale him, but Boswell skipped out of the way just in time and the long bone buried itself in the pavement, lodging firmly. Ba’al tried to free itself, but the bone was stuck.
Something in its struggles snapped Samuel out of his trance. He looked around for a weapon, and saw a half brick that had been dislodged from the house as the portal expanded. He picked it up and hefted it in his hand. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing.
With a great wrench, Ba’al managed to pull the blade free, even as Boswell continued to bark and snap. A tentacle, larger than the rest, lashed out at him, catching the little dog around the chest and tossing him into the air. The pincers at the tentacle’s end shot out to cut him in two, but they missed him by inches and Boswell fell to the ground, stunned. He tried to get up, but one of his legs was broken and he was unable to raise himself. He yelped in pain, and the sound cut through Samuel, filling him with rage.
“You hurt my dog!” he shouted. By now he didn’t know if he was more angry than scared, or more scared than angry. It didn’t matter. He hated the thing before him: hated it for hurting Boswell; hated it for what it had done to the Abernathys and their friends; hated it for what it wanted to do to the whole world. Behind it, the portal was visible, and Samuel could see the Great Malevolence approaching, his army parting before him so that he could lead the legions of darkness into this new kingdom.
Ba’al bent down before Samuel, surrounding him with tentacles, those four limbs poised to finish him off. Its skull opened up once more, breathing its stink upon him as it hissed, and Samuel saw himself reflected in those dark, pitiless orbs.
He threw the half brick straight into its mouth.
It was a perfect shot. The lump of stone landed in the demon’s throat. It was too far down to be spat out, and too big to be swallowed. Ba’al staggered back, black blood and drool dripping from its jaws as it began to choke. Around it, the assembled creatures watching the unequal battle, waiting for the boy to be destroyed, gave a collective gasp of shock. Ba’al tried to reach into its mouth with its tentacles to free the blockage, but the gap was too narrow for them to gain purchase. It collapsed to its knees as smaller demons ran to its aid, climbing up its body in an effort to reach its mouth. Carefully three of them entered its jaws and began working at the brick, trying to free it. Samuel felt hands grasp his arms. Two of the figures in gold armor were securing him, their red eyes glaring as he was held in place. He struggled against them, but they were too strong.
There was a thud, and something landed before him. It was the half brick. Samuel looked up to see Ba’al rising from its knees, and in its eyes he saw his doom.
At that moment, a vintage Aston Martin, driven by a moon-headed figure in a blanket, sped behind Ba’al and disappeared into the portal, leaving behind it only exhaust fumes and a fading, “Good-byyyyyyyyye…”
For a second, nothing happened. Everyone, and everything, simply stared at the portal, unsure of what they had just seen. Flashes of white light appeared at its edges, and the portal, which had been spinning in a clockwise direction, reversed its flow and began to move counterclockwise. There was a sense of suction, as though a vacuum cleaner had just been switched on, but it seemed to affect only the demons, not Samuel. First the smaller ones, then the larger, were lifted from their feet and pulled inexorably into the portal. Some struggled against its force, holding on to lampposts, garden gates, even cars, but the portal began to spin faster and faster, and one by one they found themselves wrenched from one world and back to the next until the portal was filled with a mass of legs and tentacles and claws and jaws, demons bouncing off one another as they were drawn toward the center. Two of them, oddly, were desperately trying to hold on to glasses of beer.
At last, only one remained. The thing that had once been Mrs. Abernathy was heavier and stronger than anything else that had passed into this world, and it did not want to leave. Every limb, and every tentacle, was stretched to its limit, each clinging to something, however insubstantial, in an effort to fight against the force of the portal, which was now spinning so fast that it was nothing more than a blue blur. Finally, it proved too much even for the great demon, until at last only one tentacle remained clinging to the bottom of the garden gate, the rest of the demon’s body suspended in midair, its legs pointing to the void.
Samuel stepped forward. He stared into Ba’al’s eyes, and raised his right foot.