The Gates (2009) (24 page)

“Hello,” said Nurd. “I’m Nurd. Nurd, the Scourge of Five Deities. Actually, just plain old Nurd will be fine. I don’t think I want to be the scourge of deities anymore. If I never see a demonic deity again, it will be too soon. Mind if I get up from the floor?”

The people in the kitchen looked dubiously at him, except for Samuel, who said, “Honestly, everyone, we can trust him.”

Eventually, Tom said, “Okay, but do it slowly.”

Nurd did do it slowly because he had hurt his knee while diving into the kitchen. He took a seat at the table and rested his chin in his hands. He seemed very miserable, and entirely unthreatening. While Samuel and the others watched, a single big tear trickled down one of his cheeks.

“I’m really sorry,” said Nurd, wiping it away in embarrassment. “It’s been a funny old evening.”

Everyone looked sympathetic, even if he was a demon. Mrs. Johnson put down her frying pan and pointed to a kettle that was currently simmering on a camping gas stove.

“Perhaps you’d like a cup of tea?” she said. “Everything feels better after a cup of tea.”

Nurd didn’t know what tea was, but it couldn’t taste any worse than the stuff in the sewer.

“That would be very nice,” he said. “Thank you.”

Mrs. Johnson poured him a cup of strong tea, and added a digestive biscuit to the saucer. Nurd sipped carefully, if noisily, and nibbled at the biscuit. He was pleasantly surprised by both.

“It’s nicer if you dunk it,” said Samuel, demonstrating with his fingers.

Nurd dipped the biscuit into the tea.

“That is good, actually,” he said. He dunked the biscuit a second time, but on this occasion he left it in for too long, and half of it fell into his cup. He looked like he was about to cry again.

“Just my luck,” he said.

“Never mind,” said Mrs. Johnson, rescuing the soggy biscuit with a spoon. “Plenty more where that came from.”

“So,” said Samuel. “Perhaps you could tell us what’s happening.”

“Well, it’s Hell on Earth, isn’t it?” said Nurd. “Gates have opened, demons are pouring out. End of the world, and all that.”

“Can we stop it?”

“Dunno. If you’re going to do something, you’d best do it quickly because this lot are just the advance guard. As soon as
the Great Malevolence himself comes through, it’ll be too late. He’ll be too strong for anyone to stop.” Nurd chewed glumly on his second biscuit. “He really isn’t very friendly at all.”

“But you came through the gates with the others, didn’t you?” said Samuel.

“No, that’s just it,” said Nurd. “I came on my own. Like I told you before, I keep popping from one dimension into the next. One minute I was sitting on my throne in the Wasteland, hitting Wormwood on the head and minding my own business, and the next moment I was here. Now I appear to have ended up here permanently. I tried to make the best of it. In fact”— Nurd coughed slightly ashamedly into his hand— “I had hoped to rule the world. Oh, I’d have been very decent about it. None of this terrorizing and demonic nonsense. All I really wanted was a bit of adoration and a nice car. Apart from that, I’d hardly have bothered anybody. Unfortunately I think there’s going to be some competition for the position, so I’ve decided to abandon my hopes and go home.”

“So you just sort of teleported
²⁶
here?” asked Tom, who was a big fan of
Star Trek
and quite fancied the idea of being transferred from one place to another instantly.

Nurd shrugged, not entirely understanding the question, then looked at Maria, who was still sucking her pencil and regarding him with an intense gaze.

“Why’s she looking at me like that?” said Nurd. “What’ve I done?”

“Apart from being a demon, and planning to rule the world, you mean?” said Tom.

“Yep, apart from all that,” said Nurd.

“Maria?” asked Samuel. “What are you thinking?”

“Nurd here said that he flipped back and forth between worlds. I’m just wondering what that might mean for our plan. It may be that we’re wrong about the nature of the portal.”

“Plan?” said Nurd. “What plan?”

Nobody spoke.

“Oh, I see,” said Nurd. “Don’t trust the demon.” He sighed. “Well, can’t say I blame you with that lot outside. And for your information, I didn’t just flip back and forth, happy as a demon with two tails. The first time I got crushed, and found myself back in the Wasteland, and the second time a big truck hit me, and the same thing happened. The third time I was with Samuel, and then I wasn’t with him. That was the only time that something bad didn’t happen.”

He gave Samuel a little embarrassed smile.

Maria looked pleased. “Oh, so the rest of the time you died. Sort of. That’s all right then.”

“Thanks very much,” said Nurd. “It wasn’t all right for me. You should try dying some time. I guarantee that you won’t care much for it.”

But now Maria was really interested. “What’s it like, traveling through a portal?” she asked Nurd.

“It hurts,” said Nurd, with feeling. “It’s like being stretched for miles, and then squeezed into a tiny little ball.”

“That’s because of this,” said Maria, pointing at a drawing she had made of an hourglass shape, her pencil poised where the hourglass was at its narrowest. “That’s the point of compression. You shouldn’t have been able to pass through it at all, because you should have been torn apart, or squashed to almost nothing. It sounds like this portal has some of the qualities of a black hole, and some of a wormhole. Theoretically, again, it shouldn’t exist, but then demons shouldn’t exist either, and yet one is drinking tea with us at this precise moment.”

“Your point being?” asked Tom, now getting somewhat impatient because he couldn’t follow most of what Maria was saying.

“My point being,” said Maria patiently, “that Nurd here may be the solution to our problems.”

“Solution?” said Nurd nervously. “This solution isn’t going to hurt, is it?”

“Might do, a bit,” said Maria. “Scientifically it has lots of holes in it. It may not work at all.”

“Well, it’s better than no plan,” said Samuel. “Assuming Nurd is willing to try.”

“It can’t be any worse than what’s happened to me already,” said Nurd gloomily. “Explain away.”

So they did.

“Right,” said Nurd, when they had finished, “that sounds so foolhardy, dangerous, and completely impossible that it just might work. Now, all we need is a car.”

He looked up from the table, and his expression changed.

“There is just one more problem,” he said.

“What’s that?” asked Samuel.

Nurd pointed a shaking finger at the window, to where a pair of demons, one a toad, the other a spider, now stood at the garden gate.

“Them!”

T
HE CHILDREN CROWDED AT
the window, staring out at the demons.

“Ugh,” said Maria, wrinkling her nose at the sight of the ten-legged spider and the great toad. “They’re horrid.”

“The servants of Ba’al,” said Nurd. “They look awful, and they
are
awful, but Ba’al is like a thousand of them rolled into one, with added nastiness. I’m in trouble now.”

Samuel stared at the two demons. There was something strangely familiar about them. It took him a second to realize that they both still wore the remains of tattered black robes.

“They’re not after you,” he said to Nurd. “I’m not even sure they know you’re here.”

“Then who are they after?” asked Tom.

“Me, I think,” said Samuel. “They’re two of the people from the Abernathys’ basement, or they used to be. Mrs. Abernathy must have sent them.”

“Why?” asked Tom. “You didn’t even manage to stop her. The gates are open. She has what she wanted.”

“I got in her way. I don’t think she likes people crossing her. I’m not sure if anyone has ever crossed her before, not like that. She wants to punish me, and you lot as well if you’re caught with me.”

He turned to Maria and Tom. “I’m sorry. I should never have got you involved in all this.”

Tom patted him on the back. “You’re right, you shouldn’t have.”

“Tom!” said Maria, appalled.

“I was only joking,” said Tom. “I really was,” he added, as Maria continued to glare at him.

“So what do we do now?” asked Maria. “Run away?”

“Running away sounds good,” said Dr. Planck from somewhere beneath the blanket.

“No,” said Samuel. “We have to face them.”

“Look,” said Tom, “hitting little flying skulls was all very well, but I don’t think those two are going to let any of us get close enough to knock them on the head with a bat.”

“We go ahead with the plan,” said Samuel. “We send Nurd through the portal.”

“There is just one thing,” said Nurd. “I’d rather if they didn’t know it was me. Could create difficulties at the other end, assuming I don’t get spread over half the universe if the portal collapses. Perhaps you have a disguise of some kind that I could use?”

Mrs. Johnson whipped the blanket from Dr. Planck, made two holes in it with a pair of scissors, and handed it to Nurd.

“But where do we get a car?” asked Tom.

“Mum,” said Samuel. “Keep an eye on those things. Tom, stay with her. Nurd, Maria, come with me.”

“Where are you going?” asked Tom.

“To steal my dad’s car,” said Samuel, and saw his mum smile.

Samuel, Maria, and Nurd stood in the garage at the back of the house, looking at the car that Samuel’s father had spent years lovingly restoring.

“‘Aston Martin,’” read Nurd. He stroked the car gently. “It’s lovely. Is it like a Porsche?”

“No,” said Samuel. “It’s better than a Porsche, because it’s British.”

“Right,” said Nurd. He wasn’t sure that he agreed. He really had liked the Porsche, but this was still a splendid car.

“Are you sure you can drive one of these?” asked Maria.

“I drove a Porsche,” said Nurd. “I got the hang of that fairly quickly.”

Samuel was having second thoughts about letting Nurd have the car. Samuel’s dad would go crazy when he found out.

“You will look after it?” said Samuel to Nurd. “It’s such a beautiful car.”

“Samuel,” said Maria, “he’s going to drive it through a transdimensional portal and, if things go right, end up back in Hell, or, if things go wrong, in tiny little pieces scattered throughout a wormhole, or even compressed to almost nothing. It’s not entirely fair to ask him if he’s going to look after it.”

Samuel nodded. “Perhaps it’s better not to know.”

Samuel handed Nurd his father’s spare car keys. Nurd climbed into the driver’s seat and put the key in the ignition
as Samuel raised the garage door that opened onto a lane at the rear of the house. Maria stood beside the open passenger-side window, and spoke to Nurd.

“Do you know where you’re going?”

“Toward the big blue light,” said Nurd. “It won’t be hard to find.”

“No, I suppose not. You’ll need to build up quite a head of speed if this is to work.”

“I don’t think that will be a problem,” he said.

“Right. Good luck, then,” said Maria. “And, Nurd?”

“Yes?”

“Please don’t let us down.”

“I won’t,” he said.

“Your dad is going to have a meltdown when he finds out, isn’t he?” said Maria to Samuel as he returned from opening the door.

“If Nurd fails, or if you’re wrong, my dad will have better things to worry about,” said Samuel.

“You’d think so,” said Maria, “but he’ll still find time to kill you.”

“I don’t care,” said Samuel. He was not frightened, but neither was he quite as angry as before. In a terrible way, he was getting his own back on his dad for leaving. If they weren’t quite even, they were getting there.

“Give us a few minutes, then get going,” said Samuel to Nurd. “We’ll distract those things at the gates, just in case they
have
come for you.”

Nurd gripped the steering wheel expectantly.

“I’ll count to one hundred,” he said.

“Great,” said Samuel. “Well, like Maria said, don’t let us down.”

He patted the car once more in farewell.

“Is your dad really going to be annoyed?” asked Nurd.

“He’ll get over it. After all, it’s for a good cause.”

“I hope he understands,” said Nurd. “You just seem … like the sort of person who should be understood.”

“I wish you could stay around,” said Samuel. “I’d like to have gotten to know you a little better.”

“You were the first person who was nice to me, ever,” said Nurd. “That counts for something, whatever happens.”

They shook hands, and then Samuel gave Nurd a hug that, after a moment of surprise, the demon returned. For the first time, Nurd began to understand how it was to feel sorrow at parting with a friend, and even as it hurt him he was grateful to Samuel for giving him the chance to experience something of what it was to be human.

“Come on,” said Maria. “Let’s go and help the others. That will keep your mind off things.”

“I expect so,” said Samuel. “Being eaten by a spider or a toad will do that …”

The demons had not moved. They were simply staring at the house, but it was the huge spider that most concerned Samuel, its mouthparts moving, dripping clear venom that turned the leaves black. Samuel’s brain was filled with shrieking voices telling him to run. He had always been frightened of spiders, ever since he was a very small child. He couldn’t explain why. Now he was being forced to confront a spider so vile that
even in his worst nightmares he couldn’t have come up with anything like it, even if it did have a pair of human legs sticking somewhat incongruously out of its bottom.

Samuel opened the front door and stepped into the garden. From the back of the house, he heard the sound of the Aston Martin starting up.

A flickering figure, like a picture shown on a cinema screen, apppeared on the path before him, surrounded by blue light. It was Mrs. Abernathy, or a projection of herself.

“Hello, Samuel,” she said. “I’m sorry I can’t be there in person to witness your death, but I’m sure my servants will make it as uncomfortable as possible.” Her head turned, as though she were listening to something, then she clicked her fingers and the toad demon, in response to her command, hopped away.