John Connolly - The Gates

“No, I’m not.”

“And these, er, ‘ladies’ who may have attacked our police station, friends of yours, are they?”

“No, they came some other way.”

“How, exactly?”

“I don’t know how,” said Nurd. “Someone must have opened a portal, and now they’re spilling through.”

“This portal, sir? What would it look like?”

Nurd considered the question. “I think it would be sort of bluish,” he said, finally. “It probably started off quite small, but now it’s getting bigger and bigger. And when it gets big enough, then…”

then…”

“Then what?”

“Then he’ll come through. Our master. The Source of All Evil. The Great Malevolence, along with his army. And that’ll be that, really. Hell on Earth.”

“Do you think you could find this portal, sir?”

Nurd nodded. He thought that he could already sense it. He felt the presence of the blue energy; it made the hairs on the back of his neck tingle. He knew that the closer he got to its source, the more he’d be aware of it. He was like a walking Evil Energy Detector. Now his hope was that, if he could get near enough, he might be able to sneak back to the Wasteland unobserved. Better yet, if Hell was empty because all the demons had moved here, he might find a way to leave the Wasteland altogether. He could go and live somewhere else, perhaps in a cozy cave with a nice view of some burning lakes.

“That‘s decided then,” said Sergeant Rowan. “This gentleman will show us where the portal is, and we can set about stopping all this nonsense. Get on the radio, Constable. Make sure everything is fine back at the station, and then tell WPC Hay to alert the army. We’ll need all the help we can get.”

Constable Peel prepared to do as he was told. Before he could make the call, WPC Hay came on the radio herself.

“Base to Tango One, over.”

“This is Tango One,” said Constable Peel. “Is everything all right, Liz? Over.”

“Those flying women have gone, and we’ve got the doors locked, but now we’re getting calls left, right, and center. People’s houses are being attacked; there are monsters crawling and flying all over the place. And there’s some trouble over at the church. Over.”

“What kind of trouble? Over.”

“According to the verger, the dead have started to rise. Over.”

Constable Peel, who already looked unhappy, now looked very, very unhappy. He’d joined the police to stop bank robberies, and solve the odd murder, neither of which he had yet managed to do as Biddlecombe was rather quiet, and so far the combined total of bank robberies and murders in the town was precisely nil. [25]Constable Peel had most certainly not joined the police to fight demons, not unless he was going to be paid overtime, and danger money, and given a great big gun.

He was about to ask another question, and possibly begin shouting at Sergeant Rowan to call out the air force, the U.S. Marines, the Swiss Guard, and perhaps the pope, vampire hunters, and anyone else who might be able to sort out dead people popping up from the ground, when a bolt of blue lightning shot across the radio. Seconds later the radio exploded in a shower of sparks and went dead. He looked up and saw that the telephone lines along the road were also glowing blue and sparking at their connections. He reached for his cell phone, but it too was dead.

Constable Peel banged his forehead against the steering wheel. A very bad situation had just got much worse.

Mrs. Abernathy stood in the garden of 666 Crowley Road, her arms outstretched, blue energy flying from the tips of her fingers and out of her eyes. She was smiling as she brought down all communications within a ten-mile radius of Biddlecombe. She felt the power surge through her as she set about creating a barrier around the town, invisible to the naked eye but completely impenetrable. It would remain in place until the Great Malevolence himself emerged, and then he would unleash himself upon this miserable planet. Behind her the walls and roof of the house expanded, as though the whole structure had taken a deep breath, and then most of it fell to pieces, to be replaced by a great tunnel of blue light twenty feet across from which more and more creatures began to pour: imps and small dragons, hooded serpents and hunched gnomelike figures armed with axes and blades. And those were just the ones that could be described in recognizable terms: there were other things that bore no resemblance to anything ever seen or imagined on earth, monstrous things that had lived so long in total darkness they struggled to accommodate themselves to their new environment, creatures that had never had a form because there hadn’t been any point: it would have been too dark to see them. Now they were trying to construct shapes for themselves, resembling balls of fleshy dough from which arms and claws and tails and legs occasionally emerged before retreating again, accompanied by the odd eyeball to enable them to see what they were becoming.

Mrs. Abernathy turned to face them as they streamed past. She stared into the portal and saw the gates were now almost half gone, a huge hole gaping at the heart of them.

Soon. Soon he would be here, and then she would receive her reward. But first, there was one small matter to attend to. She turned to Mr. Abernathy, now a toad, and the spider demon by his side, the one that had, until recently, been crammed into Mr. Renfield’s skin, and instructed them to find Samuel Johnson.

To find the interfering boy who was frightened of spiders and suck his insides dry.

Tom was keeping watch on the street, and Maria and Samuel the back of the house, when Dr. Planck appeared at the front gate.

“Mrs. Johnson,” called Tom, “there’s a man coming up the garden path.”

“Are you sure he’s a man?” asked Mrs. Johnson.

“Pretty sure,” said Tom.

Dr. Planck hadn’t seen the huge flies, but the flies had seen him. With a loud buzzing they descended upon the scientist, but so intent were they that they didn’t notice the front door opening, and Maria and Tom emerging, each with a can of bug spray. Before the flies could get within chomping distance of Dr. Planck they had fallen to the ground, writhing and spitting, then had ceased moving entirely before they, like the other demons who had run afoul of their intended victims, vanished.

Samuel joined Mrs. Johnson as she approached the front door, clutching a broom handle. Tom waited at the living room door, his cricket bat at the ready.

“Hurry up,” Mrs. Johnson told Dr. Planck. “We don’t know what else is out here.”

As if to confirm her worst suspicions, a batlike shadow flew over the house. Seconds later, a creature the size of an eagle, but with spines instead of feathers and a head that consisted of dozens of wriggling worms with a single eye at the end of each, got tangled up in the telephone lines and fell crashing to the ground. Boswell, who had been watching it suspiciously, barked with delight.

Dr. Planck looked upon its demise with relief until the door slammed shut, cutting off his view and almost cutting off his nose as well. “Thank goodness,” he said. “That thing has been chasing me ever since I locked the skull in a shed.”

“Right,” said Mrs. Johnson, waving the broom handle in a threatening manner. “What’s going on? None of your scientific nonsense, now. Keep it simple.”

Dr. Planck kept it very simple indeed. “I don’t know.”

“Well, fat lot of good you are, then,” said Mrs. Johnson.

“Actually, I was hoping Samuel might be able to help me in that regard,” said Dr. Planck.

Samuel stepped forward. “I’m Samuel.”

At that moment the lights went out as Mrs. Abernathy deprived the town of its power. Samuel and Dr. Planck sat at the kitchen table while Mrs. Johnson lit candles and Samuel told him of almost everything that had happened, from the time that Samuel had gone trick or treating at the Abernathys’ house to the battle with the flying skulls. Dr. Planck said nothing until Samuel was finished, although he did raise his eyebrow when Samuel described Mrs. Abernathy’s tentacles, then sat back and tapped an index finger against his lip.