John Connolly - The Infernals aka Hell's Bells

“There isn’t really enough room,” said Sergeant Rowan, who didn’t like being cramped.

“Then why don’t we swap places for a while, and you can sit back here?”

“With that lot singing? I don’t think so. It’s bad enough up here.”

Jolly made himself another ice-cream cone. He’d already had twelve, but the sometimes bumpy nature of the terrain meant that he had only managed successfully to eat nine, while the remaining three were smeared all over his face and clothes.

“Lovely ice cream, this,” he said, for the thirteenth time.

“Oi, I hope you’re paying for all of those,” said Dan.

“I’m putting them on my tab.”

“You don’t have a tab.”

“Oh, now you tell me. You should have said that before I started eating them all. Bit late now, isn’t it?”

“He was right about the chocolate too,” said Dozy, who had taken to eating the sprinkles by the fistful. “Very high quality.”

Angry and Mumbles began singing about doggies again, at least Angry did. Mumbles could have been singing about dinosaurs and nobody would have been any the wiser. Constable Peel, his patience now at an end, was stretching out his hands to strangle one or both of them when Dan stopped the van, for there was now something to distract them all from the music.

“That’s interesting,” said Dozy. He and the other three dwarfs, each munching happily on Dan’s livelihood, hopped from the van, closely followed by the two policemen and Dan himself.

Stretched before them were thousands and thousands of little workbenches, each occupied by an imp. Between the desks walked other imps carrying buckets of bone dust. They poured the bone dust into a hole at one end of each desk, the seated imps turned a lever, there was the sound of grinding, and then from the other end of the desks emerged clean, intact bones, which the demons with buckets took from them before walking back the way they had come.

“Well, that explains a lot,” said Jolly. “Sort of.”

There was a larger desk some distance to their right. The dwarfs left the policemen and Dan, and made their way over to it. A demon who bore a remarkable resemblance to the recently vaporized A. Bodkin sat at the desk, snoozing. His nameplate read “Mr. D. Bodkin, Demon-in-Charge.”

“’Scuse me,” said Jolly, tapping D. Bodkin’s boot.

D. Bodkin woke slowly, and stared at Jolly.

“Yes, what is it?”

“Do you know where all of this dust comes from?”

“What dust?”

“The dust that makes the bones.”

D. Bodkin looked at Jolly as though Jolly had just asked him why the sky was gray and black with bursts of purple and red flame currently flashing through it. That was just the way things were.

“Is there something wrong with you?” asked D. Bodkin. “Look around: there’s only dust. Hardly going to run out, are we?”

The dwarfs started giggling. D. Bodkin, suspecting that he was the butt of a joke he didn’t understand, and who didn’t care much for humor at the best of times, glowered at them.

“See over that way,” said Angry, “where all those little demons with buckets are coming from?”

“Yes,” said D. Bodkin.

“You should take a walk over there. There’s a bloke who’d love to meet you. Looks a bit like you. Long-lost relative, you might say.”

“Really?”

“Cross my heart. You and him would have a lot to talk about. You’re both in the same business, in a way.”

“Well, I will, then,” said D. Bodkin. “I feel like giving the old legs a stretch. Haven’t left my desk in, ooooh-”

He glanced at the hourglass on his wrist, which, like Mr. A. Bodkin’s similar model, was designed to funnel sand very efficiently from one glass to another without ever depleting the store in the upper glass, or increasing the store in the lower glass. This watch, though, appeared to have stopped, possibly due to a blockage. D. Bodkin looked perturbed. He tapped the glass with a clawed forefinger.

“Funny, my watch doesn’t seem to be working.” He gave his wrist a little shake, and said, “Ah, that’s better.”

Angry leaned forward and noticed that the sand from the lower glass was now running upward into the upper glass, although, as before, neither glass got any emptier, or any fuller.

“You really have been at this desk for too long,” said Angry, glancing back at his fellow dwarfs and twisting one finger slowly by his right temple in the universal indication of someone else’s general absence of marbles. “It’ll be good for you to take a break. We’ll keep an eye on this lot until you get back.”

“You won’t steal anything, will you?” asked D. Bodkin. “I’ll get into terrible trouble if anything goes missing. Budgets, you know. I have to account for every paper clip these days.”

Angry was the picture of wounded innocence. “I’m hurt,” he said, blinking away an imaginary tear. He fumbled in his pocket for a handkerchief upon which to blow his nose, discovered one, looked at it, decided that the only thing more diseases ridden than this handkerchief was an actual disease, and put it back where he’d found it. “I’m so hurt that I don’t know what to say.”

“That’s slander, that is,” said Dozy.

“We’re just trying to brighten up your day,” said Jolly, “and you go and say something nasty like that about us.”

“We’ve been the victims of theft ourselves,” said Angry. “On that subject, you wouldn’t have seen a van anywhere-four wheels, picture of a handsome smiling gentleman somewhat like ourselves on the side-would you?”

“No,” said D. Bodkin.

“What about a police car: four wheels, blue lights?”

“No. I’d like to, though. It sounds very interesting.”

“Hmm,” said Angry. “Fat lot of good that does us.”

He and his other dwarfs folded their arms and looked expectantly at D. Bodkin. Jolly tapped his foot impatiently.

“Well,” said Jolly, “we’re waiting.”

Eventually, D. Bodkin took the hint.

“I’m very sorry for what I said just now,” he said. He looked embarrassed. The horns on his head glowed bright red. He put his hands behind his back and traced little patterns of shame in the sand with his left foot. “I shouldn’t have asked if you were going to steal anything. You can’t be too careful, you know. After all, this is Hell. All sorts of rotten types end up here.”

“Apology accepted,” said Angry. “Off you go, then. Tell the other chap we said hello.”

“Righty-ho,” said D. Bodkin, and began following the line of bone-bearing bucket carriers.

The dwarfs waved him off.

“Nice bloke,” said Jolly.

“Lovely,” said Angry as D. Bodkin disappeared over a dune. “This world needs more demons like him.”

“Suckers, you mean?” said Jolly.

“Absolutely,” said Angry. “Complete and utter suckers.”

Back in the van, Jolly counted their loot.

“That’s fifteen pencils, one pencil sharpener, a stapler, an eraser, a mug that says ‘You Don’t Have to Be Diabolical to Work Here, but It Helps,’” and some stamps,” said Jolly.

“You forgot the desk,” said Dozy.

“And the desk,” confirmed Jolly. He stuck his head out of the side of the van and checked on the desk, which they’d tied to the roof of the van with a length of rope they’d found in Dan’s emergency kit.

“You’re sure he said that you could take them?” said Constable Peel. He was more than a little suspicious, but at least the dwarfs had stopped singing for a while.

“Absolutely. Told us he was quitting. No future in the job. Said we’d be doing him a favor.”

“Well, if you’re sure, although I don’t know why you think you need a desk anyway.”