John Connolly - The Creeps - A Samuel Johnson Tale

“A heart,” said Samuel, finishing his sentence for him.

For the first time, Hilary Mould looked surprised, and a bit disappointed. This was to have been his big revelation, and now a boy had deprived him of it. The dwarfs had been bad enough, but this was just too much. He decided that, once the Shadows had entered the universe, he was going to have a long lie-down and not talk to any dwarfs or children for eternity.

“Yes, a heart,” he said, making the best of the situation. “A heart of purest evil; a heart capable of pumping its poison into my engine, providing it with the fuel that it required to break down the walls, to shatter the barriers between universes; the heart of a demon with a hatred for the Earth to match the Shadows’ own.”

He added another “Bwa-ha-ha” for effect, but it came out sounding funny because of the absence of his nose.

“And what did you and the Shadows say that you would give to Mrs. Abernathy in return?” asked Samuel.

“We promised,” he said, “to give to her all those on Earth who had conspired against her. Most of all, we promised to give to her . . . Samuel Johnson!”

“Then let her take me,” said Samuel, “but spare my friends, and spare the Earth and the Multiverse from the Shadows.”

Maria took Samuel’s right hand and held it tightly.

“If he goes, then I go.”

“Look,” said Hilary Mould, “you’re all going. Don’t you understand? You’re doomed, every one of you. She doesn’t want to bargain with you. She doesn’t have to bargain. She gets what she wants, the Shadows get what they want, and I get what I want. I should say, though, that she has a special fate lined up for you, Samuel. Oh, a very special fate.”

“And what would that be?” asked Samuel. He was glad that his voice didn’t tremble, although he was sorely afraid.

“She’s going to cut out your heart and replace it with her own,” said Hilary Mould. “You’re going to become her new body, the carrier for her evil. And you’ll know it, and feel it, because she’ll keep your consciousness trapped in there with her like a prisoner locked away in a prison cell. She’ll allow you to watch as she destroys your friends, but she’ll leave your dog until last: your dog, and your demon friend Nurd. She’s going to spend a very long time hurting them. Suns will die, and galaxies will end, but their pain will go on and on, and you’ll be a witness to every moment of it.”

Boswell barked at Hilary Mould. He’d heard his name mentioned, and sensed that this dry, foul-smelling man meant him and Samuel no good. Boswell was on the verge of attacking him and depriving him of some more limbs, but Samuel held him back.

Nurd stepped forward.

“You’re a fool,” said Nurd.

“And why is that?” said Hilary Mould.

“Because you trust the Shadows, and you trust Mrs. Abernathy. When the Shadows come through, they’ll smother you along with everything else in this universe, and Mrs. Abernathy won’t protect you. She won’t even be able to protect herself. The Shadows are the only entities in the Multiverse that the Great Malevolence could not bend to its will. They are its enemies as much as ours. If the Great Malevolence could not make them do its bidding, why do you think one of its lieutenants—a lieutenant, by the way, who has twice been defeated by a boy and his dog—would be able to succeed where it has failed?”

“She is strong,” insisted Hilary Mould.

“She is weak,” said Nurd. “The Great Malevolence had turned its back on her even before Samuel and the rest of us tore her apart. She had failed the Great Malevolence, and it had no more use for her.”

An expression of unease flickered on Hilary Mould’s rotted features. Nurd picked up on it immediately.

“Ah, she didn’t mention that, did she? She didn’t tell you that she’d been cast aside by her master. We are stronger than she is, and we always have been. You’ve been tricked, Mr. Mould. When the Shadows come, your alliance with her won’t save you. If you do get eternal life out of this, you’ll spend it in nothingness with the Shadows pressing down on you, and if I were you, I’d rather have no life at all.”

Hilary Mould’s confidence was crumbling, just as his body was. He wanted to convince himself that Nurd was telling lies, but he could not. Nurd’s words had the weight of truth to them.

“She was only ever using you,” said Nurd. “That’s what she does. She’s clever and ruthless. When she’s finished using you—and that should be pretty soon, I think—she’ll cast you to the Shadows, and you’ll wish you had just toddled off and died properly years ago instead of hanging about in old shops in the hope of ruling the world someday.”

By now, Hilary Mould had no doubts left. Nurd was right.

“The engine,” said Hilary Mould as the dreadfulness of his fate became clear to him. “The engine must be turned off.”

“How?” said Nurd.

But before Hilary Mould could reply, his lower jaw dropped to the floor. He knelt to retrieve it, but his left leg shattered below the knee and he toppled sideways. Samuel ran to him. He was thinking of Crudford. If Crudford could find Mrs. Abernathy’s heart and steal it away, the force powering the engine would be gone, and the Shadows would not be able to escape from their world into this one.

“Where is the heart, Mr. Mould?” said Samuel. “Tell us, please!”

Hilary Mould had only one finger left. He slowly unbent it from his fist, but before he could point it the grotto behind him began to fall apart. Samuel barely had time to get out of the way before the heavy stones fell on Hilary Mould, turning him to dust.

Samuel’s ears rang from the sound of the clashing stones. His eyes and mouth were filled with dry matter, some of it almost certainly bits of Hilary Mould. He spat them out.

There was a thumping noise in his head: the beating of a heart that was not his own. It was almost as though Mrs. Abernathy had already entered him, just as Hilary Mould had threatened. He tried to find the source of the sound. It was coming from the group of humans and nonhumans nearby.

It was coming from inside one of them.

The others seemed to realize it at the same time as Samuel. Slowly they moved away from one another—watching, listening—before grouping together again as they narrowed down the source, until at last a single figure was left standing alone, and the identity of Mrs. Abernathy’s host was revealed.

XXXVI

In Which Mrs. Abernathy’s Identity Is Revealed

THE ISOLATED MEMBER OF their little band said nothing. It was left to Professor Hilbert to break the silence.

“Dorothy!” he cried. “Er, and/or Reginald, of course. Can this be true?”

“Turncoat!” said the Polite Monster. “Eight letters,” it added, “ ‘one who abandons one party or group to join another.’ ”

“No,” said Samuel. “I don’t think Dorothy ever really existed at all.”

Professor Hilbert turned to Professor Stefan.

“I thought that you hired her,” he said.

“I thought that you did.”

“We need a more careful hiring policy,” said Professor Hilbert.

Dorothy/Reginald removed her false beard. What was revealed was a chin that had begun to blacken and decay. She tugged at her hair, and it came away from her skull in clumps until only a bald, spotted scalp remained. Her body started to swell, bursting through her clothing. Her arms and legs lengthened, and they could hear the grinding of bone against bone, and the snapping of sinews. She rose above them all as tentacles exploded from her back, their beaklike endings gulping at the air, as her black heart flooded the host body with its poison and transformed it. Her head expanded, horns sprouting from the bone, and her mouth grew larger and larger. Her human teeth were forced from her gums and replaced with row upon row of sharp incisors. She reminded Samuel of a huge black mantis, but there was a hint of Ba’al to her appearance, and more than a little of Mrs. Abernathy. Her skin was slightly translucent, and the bones and muscles were visible beneath it, as was the dark heart that beat at the core of her being, protected by a thick, hard shield of keratinized cells.