John Connolly - The Creeps - A Samuel Johnson Tale

Wormwood tried to keep from scratching at his cotton-wool beard, and from adjusting the Father Christmas hat that Mrs. Johnson had bought to be worn on Christmas Day, and which was making his head sweat. He had also borrowed Mrs. Johnson’s red bathrobe. Nurd, meanwhile, was looking radiant in the green shower curtain from the bathroom, belted at the waist.

The elves stared at them. Anybody would have, really.

“We’re going to die,” whispered Wormwood.

“We can’t die,” said Nurd. “We’re demons.”

“Then we’re going to nearly die, and we’re going to continue nearly dying for a very long time.”

“Keep smiling,” said Nurd, while keeping smiling, so that it came out as “Keek smigink.”

“Keek what?” said Wormwood.

“Keek smigink .”

“Oh. Right.”

Wormwood still had no idea what Nurd was saying, so he decided just to keep smiling and hope for the best. Together, he and Nurd walked down the garden path, their gaze fixed on a point somewhere over the heads of the elves, their smiles never wavering. As they passed, the elves fell to their knees in awe.

“It’s working!” said Wormwood.

“Keek quige!”

But it was working, and it would have kept on working had Nurd’s tail not poked out from beneath the folds of the shower curtain. The tail had been growing shorter of late, and Nurd was certain that eventually it would disappear altogether, but it still liked to make an appearance when Nurd was in stressful situations. One of the elves spotted it as it threw itself to the ground.

“Weeee?” it said.

It nudged the elf beside it, and pointed at the tail.

“Weeee!”

The word was passed among the elves. By now, Nurd and Wormwood were at the garden gate. Another step or two and they’d be on the street, and Nurd had Mrs. Johnson’s car keys in his pocket. He had promised her never, ever to drive again without permission, or unless he was being paid to crash the car in question, but Nurd looked at promises as things you said just to make other people feel better. You never knew what might happen in the future, and you didn’t want to go pinning yourself down.

Nurd reached for the keys. The car was in sight. He took one more step toward it and stopped: not because he wanted to, but because his feet wouldn’t carry him forward. He looked over his shoulder to find a dozen elves hanging on grimly to his tail. One of them was even gnawing at it. Nurd wished him luck. His tail was tougher than leather, and tasted like it, too.

Nurd sighed. There was a discarded match on the ground beside him. He picked it up and flicked at it with a curved fingernail, causing it to ignite.

“Wormwood?” he said. “Will you do the honors?”

He held the match out by his side. Wormwood leaned in close, took a deep breath, and blew hard.

The match disappeared in a torrent of flame that continued in the direction of the elves. If they thought the petrol was bad, the effect of Wormwood’s lit breath on them was a thousand times worse. Nurd wasn’t sure what Wormwood’s digestive system was like, but he decided that whatever was happening inside Wormwood must be very horrible, and certainly explained where a lot of those smells were coming from. The elves didn’t even burn. They just went straight from wood to black ash without any steps in between.

“Thank you, Wormwood,” said Nurd. “Well done. Indeed, they’re probably very well done now, come to think of it.”

Wormwood stopped blowing. Nurd dislodged the remaining pieces of charred elf from his tail, and lifted the tip to examine it. It, too, was on fire. He gave a little puff of breath, and the fire went out.

“What now?” said Wormwood.

“We go to Wreckit & Sons,” said Nurd.

“Why there?”

Nurd picked up an elf foot that had survived the blaze and pointed to the sole of its little painted boot. On it were written the words PROPERTY OF WRECKIT & SONS.

40. You should not play with fire. You are about to discover why.

XXV

In Which Battle Commences

DOZY AND MUMBLES COLLIDED with Angry, Jolly, and Dan, who had just been reunited. They came together next to a pile of old yellow boxes marked, peculiarly enough, ODD SHOES, although nothing could have been odder than what they’d already encountered in that basement.

“You won’t believe what happened to us!” said Jolly, then remembered that, not too long before, they’d all been trapped in Hell together. “Hang on, you probably will believe it.”

“You won’t believe what’s still happening to us,” Dozy managed to gasp as the first of the running eyeballs rounded the corner and pulled up short. It had been expecting to encounter two dwarfs, but was now facing four, and a human. If it had been gifted with hands, it would have rubbed itself just to be sure that it wasn’t seeing things.

“Is that an eyeball on legs?” said Angry.

“One of many,” said Dozy. “The rest are on their way. Oh, look, here they are.”

More eyeballs appeared, and paused to consider Dan and the dwarfs.

“They’ve got teeth,” said Jolly. “That can’t be right. Why are they chasing you?”

“Because I stood on one of them,” said Dozy. “I stamped on it hard, to be honest, but it was an accident.”

“Messy,” said Jolly.

“I think I still have some of it stuck to my heel,” said Dozy.

“Nasty,” said Angry. “Just so we’re clear, you stood on one, and then the others got angry, so you ran away from them?”

“That’s right.”

“Why didn’t you just stamp on the rest of them?”

“Well, they have teeth.”

“Not much they can do with them though, really, is there?” said Angry. “Bite your feet, maybe, but then you are wearing big boots, which is where the trouble started to begin with, if I’m not mistaken.”

Dozy looked at his boots, and back at the eyeballs.

“Are you suggesting—?”

“I am.”

“They squish,” said Dozy. “It made my tummy feel funny.”

“You’ll get over it.”

“I suppose you’re right. I think I’m almost over it already.”

“There you are, then,” said Angry.

Slowly, deliberately, meaningfully, the dwarfs and Dan advanced on the eyeballs. The eyeballs eyeballed each other. They may not have had ears, but they could see perfectly well, and what they saw was trouble advancing on them in big boots. As one, the eyeballs turned tail and headed back in the direction from which they’d come. Dan and the dwarfs watched them as they scarpered into the shadows.

“See?” said Angry. “How hard was that?”

“Not very,” said Dozy.

“Bet you feel a bit silly now, don’t you?”

“A bit,” Dozy admitted.

“Where did all those eyeballs come from anyway?” asked Jolly.

“Well,” said Dozy, “there were all these pictures of a bloke with big ears and teeth—a bit vampirish he was—and I said that the eyes seemed to follow you around the room, and the next minute the eyes were following us around the room. Very unsettling it was, so—”

“Uh,” said Mumbles. He tapped Dozy on the arm.

“Not now,” said Dozy. “I’m explaining. Anyway—”

Mumbles tapped him on the arm again.

“Really,” said Dozy, turning to give Mumbles a piece of his mind, “you have to learn some . . .”

What Mumbles had to learn was destined to remain undiscovered. Organ music was coming from somewhere nearby, and a shape was emerging from the murk. It was hunched, and wore a long, dark coat. The parts of it that were not covered by the coat were very pale. They included its hands, which had long fingers ending in even longer nails. Its head was entirely bald, and its ears were big and pointed like those of a bat. Its two front teeth, to reference the famous song, 41were not the kind that anyone would want for Christmas. They extended over its lower lip and resembled the fangs of a snake. As for its eyes, when last Dan and the dwarfs had seen them they’d been running along on two little feet and brandishing teeth of their own. They looked more at home in that awful face, and considerably more threatening.