Clovenhoof (9 page)

“But what about the Holy Mother?” said St Francis frostily. “Where is she at the moment? Appearwing on a tea towel in Mexico? Making statues weep in Tokyo? She’s never here. Are you going to tell Mary to wun her plans past this committee?”

Michael shook his head.

“Are you?” he said pointedly.

“No,” said St Francis quietly.

“Next order of business?”

“The Thwone.”

“Actually,” said Peter, “I wondered if we could skip over that for now as I am keen to hear how the adversary is getting on in his new home.”

Michael smiled with genuine pleasure.

“Satan – or Jeremy Clovenhoof, his
nom d’exile
– has taken to his new situation very well. He’s been relocated exactly as suggested and looks ready to settle in for the long term.”

“I thought he’d kick up a big fuss,” said Gabriel.

“Your adversary prowls around like a roaring lion,” Paul self-quoted, “seeking someone to devour.”

“Actually,” said Michael, “he was last seen in a supermarket, buying frozen ready meals. Hardly a roaring lion.” He clicked his fingers in recollection and turned to St Francis. “We
must
have a word about your lions-laying-down-with-lambs project, Francis.”

St Francis winced.

“Teething pwoblems. That’s all.”

“Actually, I think the teeth
are
the problem.”

Chapter 3 – in which Clovenhoof discovers Heavy Metal, takes to the stage and becomes a rock god

Clovenhoof tried to ignore the sounds coming from the stairway outside his flat, the dull flat thumps and the sharp juddering snaps. He also successfully ignored the hissed reprimands and the wheedling replies but it was the loud crash followed by a long and inventive curse that piqued his interest.

He opened the door and looked out.

Nerys stood, fists on hips, staring furiously at Ben and the large upright parcel perched on the stairs, a parcel that was threatening to crush Ben and bear his remains down to the ground floor.

Clovenhoof cleared his throat.

“What the hell is this?”

Nerys gave him a bright smile.

“This is my New Year’s resolution.”

“To kill Kitchen?”

“No, it’s –“

“It’s admirable,” said Clovenhoof. “Worthy, even. Best of luck."

He began to close the door.

“I think Ben could do with a hand,” said Nerys.

“I’d love to,” said Clovenhoof, “but I’m not really a problem
solver
.”

“Just do it,” said Nerys.

By the time the parcel was in Nerys’s living room, Clovenhoof had chipped a hoof and Ben had a livid graze on the back of one hand. Twinkle was sniffing around the package’s base.

“What is it?” said Clovenhoof.

“It’s a harp.”

“As in instrument of the angelic hosts?”

“Yes.”

“I should have pushed in the other direction.”

“I thought you were,” said Ben.

Nerys stroked the brown cardboard wrappings tenderly.

“I’ve always wanted to play a musical instrument.”

“A recorder would have been easier,” said Clovenhoof.

“And lighter,” said Ben.

She scoffed.

“No sense of ambition, you two.”

“Oh, I have ambitions!” said Clovenhoof.

“Wearing a permanent butt-groove in your sofa is not an ambition.”

Clovenhoof looked at Ben.

“I don’t think it is,” conceded Ben.

“You need to do something constructive with your time,” she said, jabbing a finger towards Clovenhoof before swinging it on to Ben. “And you... you need to get out more.”

“Me?” said Ben.

“Sitting in your dingy flat playing with your toy soldiers is not healthy.”

“They’re miniature scale models,” protested Ben but Nerys wasn’t listening.

“You mustn’t let life pass you by.”

Nerys looked at them. It was the sad, affectionate, look of a woman who’s about to have a favourite puppy made into a nice pair of gloves.

“I see,” said Clovenhoof.

“Now, who is going to help me unwrap this and set it up?”

“I – “ began Ben but Clovenhoof spoke across.

“Kitchen can’t.”

“Oh?” said Nerys.

“He’s got to go out more. New Year’s resolution.”

“Oh, well, you...”

“I’m taking him out,” said Clovenhoof, already pushing Ben towards the door. “Doing something constructive with my time.”

They were out on the landing before Nerys could reply.

“Where are we going?” said Ben.

“Alcohol.”

“Alcohol’s not a place.”

“It’s a destination.”

Outside the Boldmere Oak, shoppers shuffled through the grey drizzle, weighed down by their spoils from the January sales. Inside, Ben sipped at his cider and black while Clovenhoof played with the stem of his already-finished Lambrini. In a back room, there was the groan of wildly distorted music.

“In hell,” said Clovenhoof, apropos of nothing, “there is a freezing, turgid river of black water and the sullen and miserable lie on the bed of that river, surrounded by icy darkness.”

“Is there?” said Ben.

Clovenhoof nodded.

“I was awake at midnight on New Year’s Eve.”

“Yes?”

“I stood in front of my window and looked out at the world.”

“You mean at the houses across the road? We’re not very high up.”

“Specifically at the houses across the road but more generally at the whole world.”

“Were there fireworks?”

Clovenhoof shook his head.

“It was raining. I looked at the world and thought, ‘I’m stuck here. I’m not going back.’”

“Back where?” asked Ben.

Clovenhoof had, from the off, struck Ben as deeply unhappy in his new home, like an elderly relative thrust into a care home that had recently featured on a consumer watchdog programme. Part of him wondered if he was a political exile but Clovenhoof’s accent was a not-particularly-regional but definitely English accent and Ben couldn’t imagine that there were many people exiled in disgrace from Leicester or Cambridge or Nottingham.

“The river,” said Clovenhoof. “The pit. The Old Place.”

“Ah.”

“So, I thought I’d use my time here to put things in order, set the record straight. I thought I’d write my side of the story. The Other Guy got a bestseller out of it. Why can’t I?”

“So, you’re writing your autobiography?” said Ben.

Clovenhoof dipped into his pockets and scattered a dozen bits of screwed up paper and post-its onto the table with the flair of a crap magician who couldn’t afford doves.

“It’s not as easy as it looks...”

He had sat down at midnight with pen and paper and waited for the words to come. The ideas and concepts, vivid and angry things, boiled at the forefront of his mind, but translating those ideas into mere words proved difficult. The words were there, out of focus and elusive but he was sure they were there. Through the hours of the early morning, he tried to coax them forth, along his arm and out through the pen but the only thing to emerge was a trickle of pureed bollocks.

“You’ve written the words, ‘In the beginning’ a lot and then crossed it out,” said Ben.

“They’re
his
words,” said Clovenhoof.

Ben unscrewed another ball of paper which appeared to be a list of titles.

“‘Be my Enemy.’ ‘Tempted by the Fruit.’ ‘Sympathy for the Devil.’ Aren’t these song titles?”

“Are they?” said Clovenhoof with a lacklustre sigh. “I need another drink. Do you want one?”

“Yes, please.”

“Give me some money then.”

Ben read further whilst rummaging in his pocket for a tenner.

“‘The Fallen One Rises.’ ‘Bloody Scapegoat.’ ‘Cursed by Fools.’ I don’t remember these songs. Cool titles though. ‘Glory to the Beast.’ Was that an Iron Maiden track?”

Lennox, the barman, had to go and change the barrel for the cider. As he opened the door into the back, the muffled background music was released, transformed into a not overly tuneful collision of rapid bass beats and frenetic electric guitar.

Clovenhoof stared into his fresh Lambrini while he waited but even the light bubbles of golden perry failed to raise his spirits much.

It was infuriating. He had assumed that writing would have come to him so easily. He wanted vindication in print form. He wanted everyone to know the indignities and betrayals he had suffered.

‘Feel the hatred of all damned in hell!’

He wanted to force feed every page of his story into Michael’s smug and well-meaning mouth until the words stuck in his craw and he choked on them.

‘Flesh starts to burn, twist and deform!’

Yeah, what did Michael know about eternal torment? He’d never so much as dipped his toe in the Lake of Fire. That self-righteous prig!

‘Learn the sacred words of praise, hail Satan!’

A glass was placed clumsily in front of him.

“Hail Satan,” said Clovenhoof, startled.

“Er,” said Lennox. “That’s four twenty.”

Clovenhoof looked at the cider and black.

“Right,” he said and handed over the tenner.

He straightened up and listened to the horrific – wonderful! – chanting coming from the back room, accompanied by that music that sounded like a thousand squeaky toys being fed into an industrial shredder.

‘Master the forces and powers of Satan! Controlling the creature’s instincts!’

“There you go.”

Lennox passed Clovenhoof his change.

“What is that?” asked Clovenhoof, nodding towards the back room.

“Oh, I’m sorry. It’s my brother-in-law’s band. They’re practising at the moment. They sometimes play at our open mic nights if we don’t have any decent acts. Look, I’ll go tell them to turn it down.”

“No, no,” said Clovenhoof. “It’s really quite beautiful.”

“Is it?”

Clovenhoof pocketed Ben’s change, picked up the glasses and moved round the bar and through to the back of the pub.

Down the end of short corridor was a grey room, perhaps once a snooker room, now home to a dozen kegs of beer, stacked crates of bottled drink, a small mountain of industrial cleaning fluids and a four-piece group of long-haired gentlemen who seemed hell bent on torturing their instruments to death, particularly the drummer. The demented man was thrashing about as though fending off a horde of invisible tarantulas who had taken sincere offence to his bleached shoulder-length hair. Clovenhoof watched from the doorway, mesmerised.

The lead singer and guitarist half-mumbled, half-screamed his way through the last couplet of his song, something about angels searching for salvation, and then raised his hand to bring it to a close.

He brushed several locks away from his sweaty brow and looked at Clovenhoof.

“Can we help you?”

“Well,” said Clovenhoof, grinning. “First of all, thanks. That was really something. What do you call that?”

“It’s an old Slayer number,
Altar of Sacrifice
. You liked?”

“I liked. Do you play other songs like that?”

The singer jiggled his head.

“We do a lot of Slayer covers. A few Judas Priest numbers. A bit of Black Sabbath.”

Judas Priest! Black Sabbath! The names were delicious things. And if the songs produced by them were as tantalising as the one he had just heard...

“You’re not a talent scout, are you?” asked the bassist. “We’re ready to take this to the next level, you know? Reach out to a wider audience.”

Clovenhoof’s head was abuzz with ideas, notions and half-formed plans.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m just an enthusiastic amateur. Always have been.”

“You took your time,” said Ben when Clovenhoof returned with the drinks.

“They were out of cider. The barman had to get some more.”

“Where from? The West Country? Have I got any change?”

“Shut up. Have you heard of a band called Slayer?”

“The heavy metal band? Yeah.”

“What about Judas Priest? And Black Sabbath?”

“Of course,” said Ben. “They’re local bands.”

“What? From round here?”

Ben gestured through the wall in a roughly southerly direction.

“They’re Birmingham boys.”

“You mean we could go see them?”

Ben smiled as he shook his head.

“They’re
from
Birmingham. The best heavy metal bands come from places people are only too keen to get away from. It’s part of the... you know, inspiration... shitty grey nowhere towns.”

“You seem to know a huge amount about these heavy metal bands,” said Clovenhoof.

Ben drained the remains of his first drink and pulled the second towards him.

“Well, I was a bit of a metal-head in my youth.”

Clovenhoof tried to see any resemblance between this bland-looking nerd and the shaggy-haired berserkers he had just met and found none.

“Really, Ben? I just picture you as the kind of man who spent his youth shut away in his bedroom, playing with himself and wondering why he couldn’t get any girls.”

“Classic metal fan,” said Ben blithely, taking a first sip of his new drink. “Anyway, I’ve still got some of the old records back at the flat if you fancy a listen.”

Clovenhoof was suddenly standing up.

“What?” said Ben.

“Drink up.”

Exactly nine minutes later, they were in Ben’s flat, Clovenhoof sat in the open doorway of the broom cupboard, looking through a box of vinyl LPs while Ben loaded one up on a turntable he had reclaimed from behind a dust-covered synthesiser keyboard at the back of the cupboard.

As a loud pounding bass riff rippled through the flat, Clovenhoof flicked from album cover to album cover. Most of them were lurid painted covers, of hideous beast men, of rotting corpses and of people wearing very little clothing. Several of them were clearly meant to be depictions of Hell or something very much like it. Here, a Black Sabbath album in which a blood red orgy was overseen by a distorted skeletal figure. Here, a naked muscle-bound woman with a horned skull for a head plunged a knife into her sacrificial victim on the cover of Danzig’s
Demonsweatlive
. Here, a woman being held down by her undead torturers as slime-covered creatures burst out of...