John Connolly - The Gates

“Oh no you don’t,” he said as he brought the candlestick down hard upon the skeletal hand. It smashed into pieces, scattering dismembered bones. The rest of the arm was quickly withdrawn.

Through the stained glass, Reverend Ussher could see the pyramid of skeletons tottering. He waited for it to draw closer once again, and for the lead skeleton to reach for the glass. When it did so the vicar opened the lower half of the window from inside, whacking the skeleton on the head and overbalancing the pyramid entirely. The three top corpses tumbled hard, and broke various limbs when they hit the ground. Reverend Ussher whooped in triumph, but his delight was short-lived. Dozens of bodies in various stages of decay looked from the vicar to the broken skeletons, then back again. It was hard for skulls without much flesh to look any angrier than they already did, but somehow these managed it.

“Oh dear.”

“Oh dear what?” asked Mr. Berkeley from below.

“I think I’ve annoyed them.”

“And it wasn’t like they weren’t miffed to begin with. Well done, Vicar!”

Hurriedly, Reverend Ussher began to close the window, but it now appeared to be stuck. He tugged, but it just wouldn’t move.

“Oh dear,” he said, again.

“Don’t tell me,” said the verger.

“I really think that I should,” said the vicar.

“Go on, then.”

“The window won’t close.”

Below him, the dead began to form not one but two more pyramids. They were about to attack on twin fronts. At the same time there came a great crashing noise from the storeroom, and a single word was roared from within.

That word was: “Free!”

“Oh dear,” said the vicar and the verger together.

And then, just as the two pyramids of the dead began to approach the wall, a police car shot around the corner and ran straight at them, turning twelve rather innovative dead people into a pile of rotting limbs and broken bones. The car spun and came to rest facing the skeleton host, and Sergeant Rowan’s voice resounded across the churchyard.

“Right, you dead lot,” it said. “This is the police. We’re giving you five seconds to get back to wherever you came from, or there’s going to be trouble.” The dead did not move. To be fair, their hearing wasn’t great. In addition, none of them had ever seen a police car before, or indeed anything with four wheels that wasn’t being pulled by a horse or an ox.

“Your choice,” said Sergeant Rowan. “Don’t say we didn’t warn you.”

Constable Peel gunned the accelerator, and then released the brake. He’d had enough of demons and Hell. He was tired of the car smelling like poo. This was payback.

The car shot toward the ranks of the dead. Now the dead may not have known a lot about mechanized vehicles, but they’d seen what had happened to the last bunch who’d been hit by the big white cart, and were pretty certain they didn’t want the same thing to happen to them. Unfortunately, being dead, they couldn’t move very fast. In fact, it had been all that they could manage to move at all. Thus the vicar was treated to the sight of a police car chasing skeletal figures across the churchyard, none of whom was in a position to avoid being run over. The vicar was rather enjoying the show until Mr. Berkeley reminded him that some of their troubles were only beginning.

“Er, Vicar,” said Mr. Berkeley, just as the door of the storeroom was hit with such force that it split in half, the two pieces shooting across the church floor and coming to rest against the far wall. A shadow appeared, then became a shape as Bishop Bernard the Bad made his entrance.

Bishop Bernard had never been a handsome man. He had, to be honest, been uglier than a wart on a toad’s bottom, and the centuries spent buried beneath the church had done nothing to improve his looks. His skin was a dirty brown color, like old leather. His nose was gone, leaving only a hole, and his eye sockets were empty, although they now glowed with a cold blue light. He had kept a lot of his teeth, which were long and yellow and, Reverend Ussher thought, a bit sharper than they should have been, as though Bishop Bernard had spent some of his time underground working on them with a file. One leathery hand held a long staff: the bishop’s crosier with which he had been buried. He was also wearing the remains of his robes of office. On his head was his bishop’s miter. It was a bit tattered, and the front half lolled forward like a tongue, but it was undeniably there.

As, regrettably, was Bishop Bernard himself, who was now looking at the verger from out of those empty eye sockets, following his progress as Mr. Berkeley tried to hide behind the pews.

“He can see!” said the verger. “How can he see? He’s got no eyes. That’s not right.”

Above him, Reverend Ussher leaned against the wall, hiding himself from the bishop’s view and pressing a finger to his lips, urging Mr. Berkeley to remain quiet.

“Oh wonderful,” said Mr. Berkeley to himself. “Leave me to face him on my own without even a-”

Bishop Bernard raised his hand, which, like the rest of him, looked like old bones wrapped in brown paper, and extended a finger in the verger’s direction.

“Thou!” said Bishop Bernard, in a voice like gravel in a liquidizer. “Thou art the one!”

He began to advance on the verger, who understood immediately that in this case being “the one” wasn’t a good thing. He hadn’t won the lottery or, if he had, he wished that he hadn’t bought the ticket, because the prize wasn’t going to be very pleasant.

“I’m really not,” said the verger.

“Imprisoned in darkness,” continued Bishop Bernard, still advancing. “My name a jest. Thou art to blame!”

Mr. Berkeley had made the odd joke about Bishop Bernard, he had to admit, but it wasn’t as if he thought the bishop was listening. After all, he was supposed to be dead. This just didn’t seem entirely fair.

“I’m very sorry about that, Your Excellency,” said the verger. “I thought you were, um, resting. It won’t happen again.”

“No, it will not,” said Bishop Bernard, drawing closer and closer. “Thou wilt be punished. Thou wilt have hot pokers inserted into thy bottom. Thou wilt-”

The vicar landed squarely on top of the bishop, and felt something crack. He rolled across the floor and scrambled to his feet, the candlestick raised to defend himself.

Bishop Bernard the Bad had broken in half at the waist. To his credit, it had barely taken the wind out of him, as the saying goes, not that there was much wind in Bishop Bernard to begin with. He released his grip on his crosier and began to crawl along the floor, his hands clutching at the ends of the pews as he pulled himself along, his attention still fixed upon the verger. Meanwhile, his bottom half climbed to its feet and began bumping into things.

“Vicar!” cried Mr. Berkeley. “He’s still coming!”

“Bottoms,” shouted Bishop Bernard. “Pokers.”

The vicar approached Bishop Bernard from behind.

“I’m very sorry,” said the vicar, “but this really must stop.”

He brought the candlestick down hard on Bishop Bernard’s head. It made a ringing sound, and Bishop Bernard’s miter fell off. The bishop ceased crawling, then twisted his head to look back at the vicar.

“Bottoms,” he said again. “Thy bottom!”

“Oh, do be quiet,” said the vicar, and hit Bishop Bernard a second time, then a third. He kept hitting him until there wasn’t much left of Bishop Bernard and even his severed legs had stopped moving and had just toppled over like two pillars joined at the top.

The vicar wiped sweat from his brow. He put his hands on his knees and tried to catch his breath.

“I don’t think,” he said, “that a vicar is supposed to beat a bishop to death, or even back to death.”