Nurd had been less of a scourge to these worthies and more of a minor irritation, like a fly buzzing against a window in summer or, well, like a stale biscuit that one had been quite looking forward to having with a nice cup of tea, but, thanks to the demon Graham, turns out to taste soggy and a bit dusty. Eventually, because he wouldn’t go away, and kept trying to muscle in on their operations, the five deities appealed to an aide to the Great Malevolence himself, which was how Nurd came to be occupying a not-very-interesting piece of nowhere-in-particular with not-very-much-to-do, but had decided to make the best of it by calling it his kingdom. To keep him company, his faithful servant Wormwood had been expelled along with him, an expulsion that Wormwood considered more than a bit unfair because he hadn’t done anything wrong at all, except to be careless in his choice of employer. The Great Malevolence was not entirely without mercy (or, indeed, a sense of humor), for he had seen fit to give Nurd a slightly used throne upon which to sit, and a cushion for Wormwood, as well as a box in which Nurd could keep various bits and pieces that had proved of no use whatsoever during his banishment. Thus it was that Nurd and Wormwood had been sitting in the middle of nowhere, if not for eternity, then since a few minutes past. They had never had very much to talk about. Now they had even less.
Wormwood rubbed his head, where a new bump had been added to the already impressive collection that adorned his misshapen skull, and, not for the first time, thought that Nurd, the Scourge of Five Deities, really was a bit of a sod.
Nurd, heedless of Wormwood’s resentment, yawned once more, and promptly disappeared.
There wasn’t a name for the bundle of blue energy that had managed to escape from the Large Hadron Collider. It was part of that 96 percent of matter and energy unknown to science, and it wasn’t an intended result of the collider experiment at all. Rather, the great explosions in the collider had, very briefly, opened a portal, and on the other side of the portal the Great Malevolence had been waiting for precisely that moment. The little bundle of energy was the equivalent of a piece of wood that has been wedged beneath a door to keep it open. Now the challenge was to start putting pressure on the door in order to open it wider, because the Great Malevolence was immense. What Mrs. Abernathy had glimpsed, before she met her unfortunate end, were the gates of Hell, which had been put in place to keep the Great Malevolence within the boundaries of that awful place. The little piece of blue energy had created a small hole in those gates, large enough for some of the Great Malevolence’s agents to pass through. They were scouts, and guardians of the portal. They also represented the first step in the Great Malevolence’s plan to leave his own place of banishment, which wasn’t much better than that of Nurd, the Scourge of Five Deities, but did at least have a view, and a few more chairs.
Unfortunately, as soon as anyone or anything starts sending random bursts of energy whizzing through portals between dimensions without being sure of the consequences, there’s a good chance that some of that energy may end up in places that it shouldn’t, like the sparks from a welder’s torch as he works on a piece of metal. In an act of grave misfortune, one of those sparks had created a small fissure between our world and the space occupied by Nurd’s throne or, more particularly, Nurd himself.
The Great Malevolence had managed to wedge open a door, just as he had hoped.
He had also, unintentionally, managed to open a window.
Nurd, the Scourge of Five Deities, was free.
Nurd was feeling dizzy, and somewhat sick, as though he had just climbed off a merry-go-round. [11] He wasn’t sure what had happened, except that it had been most painful, but he knew that he was no longer occupying a throne in a dull, gray world accompanied only by a small demon who looked like a weasel with mange, which meant that this could only be a good thing. He felt air on his skin. (Nurd was vaguely human in appearance, although his ears were too long and pointed, and his head, shaped like a quarter moon, was too large for his body and bore a distinctly greenish tinge.) Although he was in darkness, his eyes were already beginning to make out the shapes of unfamiliar things.
“I’m… somewhere else,” said Nurd. Although he had never been anywhere other than the Wasteland and, briefly, until he’d irritated the Great Malevolence, certain far-flung regions of Hell itself, he understood instinctively where he was. He was in the Place of People, of Humans. He was a demon of great power let loose among those who, next to him, were powerless and insignificant. He began to channel all his rage and hurt and loneliness, creating from them an energy that he could use to rule this new world. His skin cracked and glowed red, like streams of lava glimpsed beneath the shifting rock of a volcanic eruption. The glow moved to his eyes, giving them a ferocity they had not had for a long, long time. Steam erupted from his ears, and he opened wide his jaws as he prepared to announce his presence on Earth to all those who would soon know his wrath.
“I am Nurd!” he cried. “You will bow down before me!”
Light appeared. It was disturbingly regular, forming a huge rectangle, the outline of a door larger than Nurd had ever seen, even in the depths of Hell itself. Then the door opened, flooding Nurd’s new world with illumination. A giant being towered above him, a colossus in a pink skirt and white blouse. It had something in its hands, a squat, eyeless creature with a long nose and square jaws.
“Oh, for cry-,” began Nurd, all he got to say before Mrs. Johnson’s vacuum cleaner dropped on him, and everything went dark again.
Back in the Wasteland, Wormwood was still trying to work out what, precisely, had happened to his unloved master. He poked the space on the throne that Nurd usually occupied, wondering if Nurd had been hiding the art of invisibility for all this time, and had only now decided to use it in order to break the monotony, but there was nothing there.
Nurd, it appeared, was gone.
And if Nurd was gone, then he, Wormwood, was now ruler of all he surveyed.
Wormwood picked up the Scepter of Terrible and Awesome Might from the foot of the throne. With his other hand, he grasped the Crown of Misdeeds, which had fallen from Nurd’s head as he slipped out of existence. He stared at them both, then faced the Wasteland and raised the scepter and the crown above his head.
“I am Wormwood!” he cried. “I am-”
There was a sound behind him, as though a Nurd-shaped object were being forced through a decidedly small hole, and wasn’t feeling terribly happy about the process.
“-very happy to see you again, Master,” concluded Wormwood, as he turned and saw Nurd, seated, once again, on his throne, and looking like an enormous Thing of Some Kind had fallen on him. He seemed bewildered, and somewhat broken in places.
“Wormwood,” said Nurd. “I feel ill.”
And he sneezed a single, dusty sneeze.
VI In Which We Encounter Stephanie, Who Is Not a Demon but Is Still Not Terribly Nice
THE FRONT DOOR OPENED while Samuel was fumbling for his key. He had only recently been entrusted with his own house key, and he was so terrified of losing it that he kept it around his neck on a piece of string. Unfortunately it was proving rather difficult to find it while dressed as a ghost and holding on to a small, worried dog, so he was still searching beneath various layers of sheet, sweater, and shirt when Stephanie the babysitter appeared in his line of sight.
“Where have you been?” she said. “You should have been back half an hour ago.” The expression on her face changed. “And why are you dressed like a ghost?”