John Connolly - The Infernals aka Hell's Bells

“Is this true?”

The Great Oak creaked and rustled. “Old Ram had hurt us. It was Old Ram who had to be punished. I did not know that the boy was yours. It was my mistake.”

The Great Oak lowered two of its biggest branches, as though they were arms and he was extending them in supplication. Suddenly, they slashed at Mrs. Abernathy, smaller branches as sharp as knives radiating from their ends. Its roots erupted from the ground at her feet, twisting around her legs. The Watcher grabbed Mrs. Abernathy and tried to take flight, but now the surrounding trees were closing in and there was no room for the Watcher’s wings to unfold. Mrs. Abernathy’s basilisk spat venom, instantly rotting branches and roots, but the trees were too many, and lengths of ivy coiled around the basilisk’s mouth, holding it closed; and mud and filth were forced into its eyes, obscuring its lethal gaze. Meanwhile Old Ram cowered in the dirt, his hooves curled over his head, bleating in misery and alarm.

Six thick tentacles erupted from Mrs. Abernathy’s back, topped with sharp beaks that snapped at the branches and nipped at the roots, but the Great Oak was too strong, and too intent upon hurting Mrs. Abernathy now that she was within reach. Slowly, she and the Watcher were being enveloped. Already the Watcher’s arms were pinned to its sides, and Mrs. Abernathy was concealed from the waist down by twisted roots.

“Come to the Great Oak,” said the old tree. “Come, and be part of us.”

Mrs. Abernathy’s eyes began to glow whitely. She opened her mouth and clicked her tongue, and a small blue flame appeared between her teeth. She drew a deep breath into her lungs, then exhaled. Fire burst from her lips, a torrent of light and heat that struck at the heart of the Great Oak, igniting it both inside and out. It roared in pain, and instantly its branches and roots began to retreat, freeing Mrs. Abernathy and the Watcher. The Watcher spread its wings and carried them both upward and out of the forest as the other trees bent away from the flames, crying out in fear as the Great Oak’s struggles sent blue sparks in their direction. The basilisk freed itself and tore a path through the remaining trees, and Old Ram fled with it, running on all fours until he found himself at last beside what was left of his home, where Mrs. Abernathy was waiting for him.

“The boy,” she said. “Which way did he go?”

Old Ram pointed to his right. “He was hiding behind those boulders, and that was the last Old Ram saw of him, but he could not have gone far. He is a child in a strange land, with only a dog for company. Let Old Ram come with you. Old Ram can help you find him. Old Ram is tired of this place.”

He looked back at the forest as blue flame rose from its heart, and he shivered.

“And the Great Oak will recover, and will come again for Old Ram,” he whispered.

Mrs. Abernathy strode to her basilisk and mounted it. As she did so, she saw two pale demons circling high above, drawn by the flames in the forest, and she knew them to be Abigor’s.

“Go where you will,” she said. “But if anyone asks you about the boy, deny all knowledge of him. If you do otherwise, I will hear of it, and I will have you tied and bound, and let the Great Oak have its way with you.”

Old Ram nodded, and thanked her again. Mrs. Abernathy and the Watcher waited until Abigor’s demons had descended to the forest before they took off themselves, traveling fast and true, until the basilisk found the trail of footsteps and paw prints left by Samuel and Boswell.

And they knew that he was near.

IF THERE IS ANYTHING worse than evil, it is nothingness. At least evil has a form, and a voice, and a purpose, however depraved. Perhaps some good can even come out of evil: a terrible deed of violence against someone weaker may lead others to act in order to ensure that such a deed is not perpetrated again, whereas before they might have been unaware of the reasons why an individual might behave in such a way, or they might simply have chosen to ignore them. And evil, as we saw with the Blacksmith, always contains within itself the possibility of its own redemption. It is not evil that is the enemy of hope: it is nothingness.

As Nurd felt Samuel’s life force ebb away, so too did he come to realize just where the boy was. Even in the grim, blasted regions of Hell, there was only one place that could cause such a loss of self, eating away at all the substance of an individual, all that he loved and hated, all that he was and ever would be. It was the Void, the Emptiness, the Eternal Absence that even the Great Malevolence himself feared. So Nurd kept his foot pressed hard upon the accelerator and found himself pulling away from the ice-cream van, loaded down as it was with dwarfs, policemen, and rapidly dwindling supplies of ice cream. But as he drew closer to Samuel, the light in Samuel’s soul was fading. Nurd felt as though he were trying to reach a candle flame before it flickered for the last time, that he might wrap his hands around it and feed it the oxygen it needed to survive. Nurd knew that if Samuel continued to stare into the Void he would eventually be lost entirely, and nobody would ever be able to bring him back. Samuel and Boswell would become like statues of flesh and bone, with an empty place where their spirits once were (for animals have spirits too, and let no one tell you otherwise). Having endured so much, and having been separated by space and time only to be offered the chance of a reunion at last by Mrs. Abernathy’s vengeance, Nurd did not wish to see his friend’s essence sacrificed to the emptiness that underlay the chaos of Hell.

Faster and faster he drove, until Wormwood put a hand on his arm in warning, for now there were sharp and treacherous stones beneath their wheels. Were they to suffer a puncture or, worse, rupture the engine or break an axle, then Samuel and Boswell would not be saved. Reluctantly Nurd slowed down while high above their heads unseen eyes watched their progress, and reported it to others.

• • •

Samuel was almost entirely still. His eyes did not blink, his lips did not open, and he barely seemed to be breathing. Yet had anyone been watching him, they would have seen one small sign of movement. For even as all that had made him what he was-every memory, every thought, every spark of brightness and eccentricity-was being subsumed, his right hand continued to stroke Boswell’s fur, and, in response, his dog’s tail contributed the barest thump on the ground, but a thump nonetheless. Had Boswell not been present, Samuel would already have ceased to exist, leaving nothing more than the shell of a boy seated on the edge of a dark sea; and if Samuel had not been present, Boswell would have been little more than a stuffed animal withering away. But if a child loves an animal, and is loved in turn, there will always be a connection between them: they are spirits intertwined. And if the Void had feelings, which it clearly did not, it might well have experienced a sense of frustration at its inability to break down the defenses of the boy and the dog. Deep inside each of them was a wall protecting the best of themselves, but it was crumbling at last, like a dam finally giving way to the flood, and soon they would be drowned. The movements of Samuel’s hand began to slow, and the thumps of Boswell’s tail became less frequent, and their eyes grew dark as never-ending night fell upon their hearts.

A hand touched Samuel’s shoulder, and gently turned him from the void. And Boswell was carefully gathered up, and words of comfort were whispered into his ear.

“Good dog. Loyal dog. Brave Boswell.”

Samuel heard a name being called, over and over, and he understood that it was his own.