“Just ignore him,” said the vicar. “Now, perhaps-”
“Sergeant,” said the verger again.
“I said, ‘Let me finish,’” the vicar insisted. “Please! Now, Sergeant Rowan, we’ve had the most extraordinary experience, one that you might have found hard to believe had you not seen it with your own eyes-”
“Sergeant,” said Mr. Berkeley, with such force that even the vicar was forced to concede the floor to him.
“Well, what is it?” asked the vicar. “Out with it!”
“Sergeant,” said Mr. Berkeley, “I think your demon is running away…”
XXVIII In Which Nurd Makes a New Friend and Meets Some Old Acquaintances
NURD HAD BEEN VERY much enjoying his trip in the police car, with its flashing lights and interesting whooping noise. Furthermore, Constable Peel was a much better driver than Nurd, although, in his own defense, Nurd had just been getting the hang of the Porsche when the police stopped him and confiscated it. Still, he had been learning a lot just from watching Constable Peel control the machine, and he was wondering how he might go about making his excuses and leaving the policemen, in order to apply what he had learned to his own driving, when they had turned into the churchyard and Nurd had seen the risen dead.
That wasn’t helpful. It was all very well for demons to start pouring into this world from their own-actually, it wasn’t very well at all, come to think of it, but compared to the dead rising from their graves, it was a picnic in the park. It took a lot of serious demonic energy to raise corpses, and Nurd could tell that this was a particularly nasty bunch of dead people. If he’d been wearing a watch, Nurd would have hidden it in his pocket before passing this lot on the street: thieves and cutthroats, all of them.
But that wasn’t what concerned Nurd. What he was witnessing was not the result of some accidental breach between this world and Hell itself. No, there was intent at work here. Evil corpses just didn’t rise up of their own accord; they had to be willed back into existence. And only one being was inclined to go around summoning brigands and murderers from the grave, which suggested to Nurd that a personal appearance by the Great Malevolence was imminent.
It has already been established that Nurd was not in the Great Malevolence’s good books. In fact, Nurd wasn’t sure that the Great Malevolence had any good books, since he was the font of all Evil. It would be a bit like someone who hated flowers secretly filling his house with pansies. Nevertheless, he had a list of demons who had disappointed him and he wasn’t the forgiving type. He also didn’t care much for demonic entities that disobeyed his commands. When you were banished by the Great Malevolence, you stayed banished. If you decided that you’d had enough of banishment, and were tempted to sneak back into Hell’s inner circles in the hope of finding a comfortable dark spot in which to mind your own business, then the Great Malevolence would inevitably find out, because that was the kind of bloke he was. Demons couldn’t die, but they could be made to suffer, and one of the problems with being immortal was that you could suffer for a very, very long time.
Nurd didn’t like suffering. He was quite sensitive, for a demon. He realized that the Great Malevolence must have been planning this attack on the Earth for quite some time, and Nurd hadn’t known about it. After all, it wasn’t as if he’d received a note saying:
No, Nurd had received no such communication, which meant that he was very much not part of the Great Malevolence’s plans. If he were still here when the big guy arrived, Nurd would be given an opportunity to discover just how sensitive he really was, as the Great Malevolence would do his best to inflict as much pain on him as possible for disobeying orders, even if Nurd hadn’t done so intentionally.
It was, Nurd had decided, time to go home and pretend that nothing had happened. His plan, if you could call it that, was to find the portal and sneak back through it to Hell, where he would return to his nice Wasteland until everything calmed down a bit. Nurd wasn’t quite sure how he was going to sneak back, given that he would be moving in the opposite direction to every other demon and foul creature. Perhaps he could tell them that he’d forgotten his keys, or had neglected to pack clean underwear. Anyway, he’d work it out when he got there.
So, once the policemen had finished mowing down corpses, and had gone to see what was happening inside the church, Nurd had simply slipped out of the car and, not to put too fine a point on it, done a runner.
Constable Peel briefly gave chase, but gave up very quickly. Nurd suspected that Constable Peel was quite happy to see the back of Nurd, especially given how badly he smelled. By now, Nurd was getting tired of smelling himself, so the first thing he did was to take a dip in a local pond to clean himself off, scaring one of the nearby ducks half to death.
He was just finishing washing off his underarms when a large eyeball on the end of an arm popped out of the murk and blinked at him. A second arm quickly followed, this one sporting a mouth.
“I say,” said a cultured voice, “do you mind? This is my home, not a public washroom.”
“Very sorry,” said Nurd. “Didn’t know this pond was occupied.”
“Suppose I should put up a sign, really. Not to worry, old boy. Just trying to keep a low profile for the moment, don’tcha know. Lot of pillaging and terrifying going on up there. No place for a gentledemon. Still, can’t have every Tom, Dick, and Harry demon washing his socks in my water, as it were. No offense meant, of course.”
“None taken,” said Nurd. “I’ll be on my way, then.”
“Righty-ho. If anyone asks, you can tell them that this pond has been claimed.” A third arm appeared, this one holding a homemade flag depicting an eyeball on a red background. It waved the flag in the air.
“Made it m’self,” said the demon proudly. “All m’own design.”
“Very nice,” said Nurd. “Very imaginative. Maybe you should put it where people can see it, though.”
“What a jolly good thought,” said the demon. “You’re a clever one, sir, make no mistake.”
A fourth arm grabbed a passing duck and tied the flag to its neck using a piece of pond weed before depositing the startled duck back in the water. The duck made an attempt to fly away, but the demon held it in place until, eventually, the duck gave up and paddled off with the flag hanging limply from its neck.
Nurd stepped onto the bank, smelling faintly of pond, which was better than what he had reeked of before.
“Good luck with everything,” said Nurd.
“Much appreciated,” said the demon. “You’re always welcome to visit.”
The arms plopped back beneath the surface, leaving the pond still and quiet.
“What a nice chap,” said Nurd to himself. “If only all demons were like him.”
Unfortunately, not all demons were like the thing in the pond. As Nurd sneaked through the town, trying to make his way to the portal, it became clear that the Great Malevolence’s advance guard consisted mainly of some spectacularly vile entities. There was clear evidence of demonic nastiness to be seen: three elderly male members of the Biddlecombe Shooting Club, who had been taking potshots at clay pigeons when the invasion began, had made the mistake of turning their shotguns on a gorgon, its hair a mass of hissing serpents and its eyes so black that they were less organs of sight than dark vacuums, or jellied orbs of nothingness. The shotgun pellets had bounced off the gorgon’s body, and the three old gents had immediately been turned to stone when they caught sight of the creature’s face, so that they now formed an unusual piece of public statuary outside the post office.
There was a lot more blood in the butcher’s shop than there should have been, as the smell of raw meat had attracted a troop of unpleasant carnivores, hunched beings with white flesh that hung from their frames like wax from a melting candle, their heads smooth but eyeless, their nostrils stretched back against their skulls as though unseen fingers had inserted themselves into the holes and pulled hard. The butcher, Mr. Morrissey, had only a few seconds to register the awfulness of the creatures that were invading his premises before their mouths opened, and their fine, sharp teeth were revealed, and they descended upon the hanging carcasses and, in their frenzy, upon Mr. Morrissey himself. When they were done, only bare bones, animal and human, remained, along with Mr. Morrissey’s tattered straw hat.