John Connolly - The Creeps - A Samuel Johnson Tale

“Excuse me,” said Jolly.

Hilary Mould tried to ignore him. He’d been walled up in the basement of Wreckit & Sons for a long time, even if his spirit had been able to wander in the form of a possessed statue infused with some of his blood, but that wasn’t the same thing as being out and about. He had a big speech prepared. He wasn’t about to let himself be interrupted by a dwarf.

“Now, my great—”

“Mister, excuse me,” said Jolly again. “Still here.”

Jolly waved his hand helpfully, but Hilary Mould was absolutely determined not to be distracted.

“NOW,” he shouted, “my GREAT MACHINE has revealed itself to—”

“Really need to talk to you,” Jolly persisted.

“Mister, mister,” said Dozy, waving his left arm to attract attention, “my friend has something to say.”

Hilary Mould gave up. Honestly, it was most frustrating. He’d created an enormous occult engine, and had sealed himself up at the heart of it, undead and not a little bored, waiting for the moment when dark forces might resurrect him, and just at his time of triumph he found himself dealing with chatty dwarfs.

“Yes, yes, what is it?” said Hilary Mould as he tried to think of ways that the Shadows could make the dwarfs’ sufferings last even longer as a personal favor to himself.

“Mister,” said Jolly, “your hand has dropped off.”

Hilary Mould stared at his left hand. It was still there, minus most of its fingers, but after spending more than a century walled up in a tomb you had to expect a certain amount of minor damage. Unfortunately, when he switched his attention to his right hand he discovered only a stump. The hand itself—his favorite one, as it still had three fingers and a thumb attached—was now lying by his feet.

“Oh, for crying out loud,” he said.

He bent down and picked up the hand.

“You could try sticking it back on,” suggested Angry helpfully. “I don’t think glue will do it, but maybe if you wrapped it up with sticky tape . . .”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Hilary Mould through gritted teeth, or through whatever teeth he had left to grit, which wasn’t many.

“You could try a hook,” offered Jolly.

“If you wore the right kind of hat, people might think you were a pirate,” said Angry.

“Stop!” screamed Hilary Mould. “I told you: it’s fine. I have another hand. Just let it drop.”

Jolly detected the opportunity for a joke, but Hilary Mould saw it coming and cut him off before he could get a word out. He stuck the severed hand in his pocket, and pointed one of his remaining fingers at the dwarf.

“I’m warning you,” he said.

Jolly raised two hands in surrender—well, one hand. He’d hidden the other one up his sleeve.

Hilary Mould grimaced in frustration. This wasn’t going at all according to plan.

“Mister,” said Dozy again.

“Look,” said Hilary Mould, “please let me finish. I have a lot to get through.”

He fumbled in another pocket and extracted a tattered, folded sheet of paper. He started trying to unfold it, but he immediately ran into trouble due to a lack of fingers.

“Need a hand?” said a dwarf voice.

Hilary Mould didn’t rise to the bait. He kept his temper, managed to get the paper open, and checked his notes.

“Um,” he muttered to himself. “Yes, ‘waiting a long time for this day’—done. Laugh sinisterly. Move on to description of occult engine, tell them about ruling the world, laugh again in an evil way, hand over to . . . Okay, fine. Right.”

He cleared his throat.

“Aha-ha-ha-ha!” He laughed.

“Mister,” said Dozy.

“WHAT? What do you want this time?”

“Do you wear glasses?”

Hilary Mould looked confused.

“Sometimes,” he said.

“Well,” said Dozy, “I hate to break it to you, but you might have trouble with that in future.”

“Why?”

“Your right ear just fell off.”

Hilary Mould reached up to check. The dwarf was right. His right ear was no more. He saw it resting by his right shoe.

“Oh, blast!” he said.

He didn’t want to leave it lying around. Someone might step on it. His hand, though, was barely managing to hang on to his notes.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “but would somebody mind picking that up for me?”

Jolly obliged.

“I’ll get the other one while I’m down here,” he said, for Hilary Mould’s left ear, clearly pining for its friend, had detached itself from his head and headed south.

“Do you want me to put them with your hand?” asked Jolly.

“If you wouldn’t mind,” said Hilary Mould.

“Not at all.”

Jolly squeezed the ears into Hilary Mould’s pocket. Unfortunately, the pocket was already taken up with the hand, so Jolly had to use a little force to get the ears in there as well. He distinctly felt something snap and crumble as he did so: more than one something, as it happened.

“Do be careful with them,” said Hilary Mould. “I’m sure there’s a way of fitting them on again.”

“Don’t you worry,” said Jolly, discreetly using the end of Hilary Mould’s jacket to wipe bits of crushed ear from his fingers, “you’ll look a whole new man when they stick those back on.”

Jolly rejoined the others.

“He’ll never wear glasses again,” he whispered to Angry. “And I don’t know how he’s going to wind his watch.”

Hilary Mould was worried. He had just discovered one of the dangers of walling oneself up in a basement for a very long time: rot tends to set in. Even with a hint of Shadow essence coursing through his remains, he was in very real danger of falling apart entirely before the real business of the evening was concluded.

“I suppose you’re wondering why I created my engine,” he said.

“We were, a bit,” said Samuel.

“I knew,” said Hilary Mould, “that there was a great force of Darkness somewhere out there in the vast reaches of space.”

He gestured grandly at the stars surrounding them. A finger flew off into the blackness.

“Just pretend that never happened,” said Hilary Mould. He continued: “I felt this Darkness calling to me. I heard the lost voices. And I knew what I had to build: an engine, a great supernatural machine in the form of a pentagram, and then the Shadows would come.”

“What did they promise you in return?” asked Nurd.

“Eternal life!” said Hilary Mould, and added a “Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!” for effect.

“And how is that working out for you, now that you’re falling apart?”

“It’ll be fine,” said Hilary Mould.

His nose twitched.

“This decay is only temporary, I’m sure.”

There was definitely a sneeze coming. He could feel it.

“Blast this dust.”

Hilary Mould sneezed. His nose shot past Angry, who made a vain attempt to catch it but succeeded only in breaking it with his fingertips.

“If it’s any help,” said Wormwood, “I know just how you feel.”

“I am not worried,” said the now-noseless Hilary Mould. “The Shadows will restore me to my original form, and they will give me the Earth to rule as my reward.”

Samuel looked doubtfully at the Shadows looming above their heads, still waiting for their way into this universe to be revealed. He didn’t think that they were likely to keep their side of the bargain with Hilary Mould. If they got through, there wouldn’t be an Earth left for him to rule.

“But the engine didn’t work, did it?” said Maria. She stood beside Samuel, seemingly fearless. She made Samuel feel braver, too. “Not like you thought it would.”

“There were, apparently, some problems,” Hilary Mould admitted. “The Shadows still couldn’t enter our world. There wasn’t enough chthonic power, not in an engine designed only by a human. That was why I hid myself away in the basement, waiting for circumstances to change. The Shadows told me to be patient. They said that, in time, humanity’s own inventions would weaken the barriers between dimensions. And they were right: that was precisely what happened, but still, still it was not sufficient. One final ingredient was required: a force greater than the Shadows, greater even than the most advanced machines of men. It was—”