The Creeps: A Samuel Johnson Tale (25 page)

By that point, everyone who wasn’t a monster had found somewhere to hide. This floor of the shop was devoted entirely to books and some more board games, which had been a relief to everyone until the Polite Monster appeared. There was a limit to how much damage a game of Scrabble could inflict: at worst, it could probably arrange some of its tiles into a rude name.

“Hello?” said the Polite Monster. “Anybody home?”

Samuel poked his head up from behind a pile of boxes of Risk. The boxes were rattling alarmingly, suggesting to Samuel that some games might be more dangerous than others. This was confirmed when he heard a muffled shot from the topmost box, and a tiny cannonball pierced the lid and flew past his ear. A very small voice, muffled by cardboard, shouted, “Reload!”

“Oh, hello,” said Samuel.

“Ah,” said the Polite Monster. “I’m terribly sorry for intruding—nine letters, ‘to force oneself in without invitation’—but I was hoping that you could tell me where I am?”

Samuel was still wary.

“Where do you think you are?”

“I can tell you where I was a moment ago,” said the Polite Monster. “I was doing a crossword puzzle in my cave. Tricky one. Two down, eight letters: ‘Insecure now that the horse has bolted.’ ”

“Unstable,” said Constable Peel, who did a lot of crosswords.

“Unstable!” said the Polite Monster. “Oh that’s very good, very good. Let me just—”

It patted its person looking for something with which to write, and then it blushed, or blushed as much as a large, hairy monster could blush, which wasn’t a lot.

“Oh dear,” it said. “This is most embarrassing—twelve letters, ‘to be ill at ease.’ I appear to be completely naked.”

Another cannonball popped from the Risk box. This time it nicked Samuel’s left ear, and drew a little blood.

“Hey!” said Samuel. “That’s enough!”

He gave the box a thorough shake.

“Earthquake!” shouted the same small voice.

The Polite Monster was now attempting to cover itself with its arms. Samuel wasn’t sure why it was bothering. It really was just one big ball of fur. If it had any bits that it didn’t want seen, the fur was already doing a very good job of hiding them.

“Sorry?” said Samuel.

“Naked,” said the Polite Monster. “Five letters, ‘to be bare, or without clothes.’ ”

The dwarfs appeared, hauling behind them a large, paint-spattered sheet that had been left behind by the decorators.

“Will this do?” said Angry.

“Oh yes,” said the Polite Monster. “Anything would be better than my current situation—nine letters, ‘a state of affairs.’ ”

It arranged the sheet as best it could over its shoulders and around its hips. Jolly found a piece of rope, and the Polite Monster used it to secure the sheet. It now looked like a monster that had been cast in the role of Julius Caesar.

“Thank you, that’s much better,” said the Polite Monster.

Dan and the policemen had now joined Sam, Lucy, and the
dwarfs. It was clear that they were in little danger from the Polite Monster. The Polite Monster looked curiously at the dwarfs.

“I say: little men,” it said. “Did you have an accident to make you that way—eight letters, ‘an unforeseen event or mishap’?”

“We’re dwarfs,” said Jolly. “Six letters—‘to thump someone who suggests that we’re small because something fell on our heads.’ ”

“Oh dear,” said the Polite Monster. “I seem to have offended you—eight letters—‘to cause to feel upset or annoyed.’ I really am most dreadfully sorry.”

“Apology accepted,” said Jolly.

He hadn’t wanted to beat up the Polite Monster anyway. Even if he’d been able to, it wouldn’t have been, well, polite.

“And in answer to your question,” Jolly continued, “you’re on Earth, in Biddlecombe, in Wreckit & Sons’ toy shop. And it’s not a good place to be right now.”

“Oh, isn’t it?” said the Polite Monster. “You all seem very nice, I must say—four letters, ‘pleasant or agreeable’—and it makes a change from the cave, but I really should be getting back. I was baking scones, you see. Mother is coming to visit.”

“We’re all trying to get out of here,” said Samuel, “but there are vampires in the basement, killer dolls on the ground floor, and spiders just below us. We’re being forced higher and higher in the store because I think that whatever is causing this is waiting for us on the topmost floor.”

The Polite Monster adjusted its tarpaulin toga.

“I’m sure there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation,” it said. “We’ll just ask politely to be sent on our way, and that will be
the end of it. I find that politeness—ten letters, ‘tact, or consideration for others’—goes a long way. Shall we?”

It extended a hairy, clawed hand, inviting them to lead on.

“After you,” said Jolly.

“Such manners,” said the Polite Monster as it stepped past Jolly. “Wonderful, just wonderful.”

“Four letters to describe that bloke,” whispered Jolly to Angry, once the Polite Monster was out of earshot. “Here’s a clue: hazel-, wal-, or pea- . . .”

53
. The history of clowning does not record the appearance of female clowns until 1858, which is quite amazing as clowns have been around since at least the time of the Pharaoh Dadkeri-Assi in 2500 B.C. The first female clown was said to have been Amelia Butler, who was part of Nixon’s Great American Circus, but the next female clown, Lulu, was not mentioned until 1939. Now, though, lots of clowns are female, and can be found alongside the various trapeze artists, tightrope walkers, and lion tamers of the circus. Interesting fact: No clown has ever been eaten by a circus animal. This is because clowns taste funny.

54
.
Coulrophobia
is the word for a fear, or phobia, of clowns, which is not uncommon. Some fears are strangely specific, though, and unlikely to be a real problem unless you actively try to scare yourself. For example, Zemmiphobia is a fear of the great mole rat, which is, despite its name, a small, almost hairless, slow-moving rat with protruding teeth that it uses to carve out tunnels for itself. It tends to avoid people and live underground, so it’s not like it’s knocking on doors and shouting “Boo!” Similarly, Arachibutyrophobia, the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth, can probably be dealt with by not eating peanut butter, or just eating it carefully. Unfortunately, there’s not much that can be done about Geniophobia, the fear of chins, since you do rather bring that one with you wherever you go. Phobophobia, meanwhile, is the fear of phobias, or the fear of being afraid. Unfortunately, if you have phobophobia, then you’re already afraid, so the very fact that you’re a phobophobe means that you’re in trouble from the start.

In Which We Learn That If One Can’t Go Through Something, and One Can’t Go over It, or Around It, Then There’s Only One Way Left to Go

M
ARIA WAS FINDING IT
difficult to keep the minds of the scientists on the problem in hand. As if suddenly finding themselves in the company of two demons from another realm—the scientists seemed reluctant to call it “Hell,” preferring instead to use the term
climatically challenged dimension
—wasn’t enough, they now had the bonus of Crudford, who was a gelatinous demon from the same place with a great fondness for hats. But the answers that Crudford was giving to their questions seemed to be causing them even more problems than the ones they had been receiving from Nurd and Wormwood.

“So,” said Professor Stefan, “have you always been a gelatinous mass?”

“Indeed I have,” said Crudford proudly. “I’ve been a billion years before the ooze. It trails behind me, you see.”

“Yes, I do see,” said Professor Stefan, who had slipped in some of Crudford’s ooze and almost landed on his head as a consequence. “And you say you work for a being called the ‘Great Malevolence’?”

“That’s right,” said Crudford, “the most evil being that the Multiverse has ever known. It is the source of all badness, the well from which the darkest thoughts and deeds spring. No single entity has ever contained so much sheer nastiness as the Great Malevolence. On the other hand, I work regular hours, get weekends off, and the cafeteria’s not bad.”

“And what does this Great Malevolence want?” said Professor Hilbert.

“Well, it would really like to see the Earth reduced to a burning plain, with all life on it either wiped out or left screaming in agony. That aside, it would probably settle for Samuel Johnson’s head on a plate.”

“Is that what you want?” asked Maria, who was quite shocked to hear Crudford speak of her friend in that way. Once you got over the fact that he was largely transparent, and clearly demonic,
⁵⁵
Crudford appeared very good-natured.

“I don’t know Samuel Johnson personally,” said Crudford, “and he’s never done anything to hurt me. I wouldn’t like it if my head was lopped off, although I’m pretty sure that it would grow back again. But life is a lot easier when the Great Malevolence is happy, which isn’t very often. If you’re worried about me trying to cut Samuel Johnson’s head off, though, then don’t be. I’m not the head-cutting kind. Also, I’m here to help, because right now you have bigger problems than the Great Malevolence. In case you haven’t noticed, your town has been dimensionally shifted. It’s now stuck in the space between dimensions, and that’s somewhere you don’t want to be.

“In a way, it’s a bit like the Multiverse’s equivalent of the back of the sofa: all sorts of stuff gets lost down there, some of it sticky and unpleasant. But it’s also a place where things hide, things that aren’t supposed to be hanging around between dimensions but should be locked up nice and safe in dimensions of their own. The problem is that there are weak points in the
Multiverse, and your experiments with Colliders and dark matter and dark energy have turned those weaknesses into actual holes. That was how the Great Malevolence nearly got through the first time, and it’s how the Shadows are trying to get in this time.”

“Shadows?” said Professor Hilbert.

Crudford pointed a stubby finger at the sky.

They looked up. More and more stars were vanishing, and darkness swirled in their place. To Maria, it felt like they were trapped inside one of those glass domes that are usually filled with water and imitation snow and a village scene, and beyond the glass the world was filled with smoke. As they watched, the darkness assumed a face. It was a face unlike any that they could have imagined, a face constructed by a presence that had only heard stories of faces, but never actually seen one. The mouth was askew, and the chin too long, and one pointed ear set lower than the other. Only the eyes were missing.

“The Shadows,” said Crudford. “A little of their essence has already managed to get through, otherwise none of this would be happening, but it’s the difference between smelling the monster’s breath and feeling its teeth ripping into your flesh. They won’t be kept out for long, and once they get in here the whole Multiverse will be at risk. Biddlecombe has been turned into a gateway, a bridge between the Kingdom of Shadows and your universe. But all universes are connected, if only by threads, and once the Shadows infect one universe then the Multiverse is doomed. They’ll turn it black, and everything in it will suffocate and die, or be turned to Shadow.”

“And the Great Malevolence doesn’t want this to happen,” said Maria, “because it doesn’t want the Shadows to have the Earth, or the Multiverse. If anyone is going to destroy all life, it’s going to be your master, right?”

“Absolutely,” said Crudford. “It’s the whole point of its existence. Without it, it’d just be bored.”

“But why is this happening now?” said Maria.

“Someone built the engine that allowed Biddlecombe to be shifted,” said Crudford. “But it had to be powered up, and that power came from elsewhere, from outside. It came from Hell and, if I’m not mistaken, it took the form of a beating heart. Furthermore, the Shadows are blind. They had to be led to Biddlecombe, and the only way that could happen was with sound. They followed the heartbeats. Can’t you hear them? The heart is close, very close.”

But try as they might, they could hear nothing.

“That shop is the core of the engine,” said Crudford. “We have to get in there and switch it off before it’s too late, and move that beating heart out of this universe.”

“But whose heart is it?” asked Maria. “Whose heart could be capable of powering an occult engine, and leading a legion of Shadows to Biddlecombe?”

“Mrs. Abernathy’s,” said Crudford, and he sounded almost apologetic. “The heart of Ba’al.”

• • •

In the Mountain of Despair, the Great Malevolence brooded.

Before he had traveled to Biddlecombe, Crudford had popped back to Hell for long enough to let his master know what appeared
to be happening on Earth. The Great Malevolence had not been happy to hear about it. In its anger it threw a couple of demons at walls, and tossed a passing imp on the fire. The imp didn’t mind too much about the flames as it had fireproof skin, but it had been on its way to do something very important and had now completely forgotten what the important thing was.
⁵⁶
With nothing else to do, it found a nice patch of hot ash and settled down for a nap.

“She has betrayed us,” said the Great Malevolence to the Watcher. “She has betrayed
me
.”

The Watcher, as was its way, said nothing, but there was something like sorrow in its eight black eyes. It had once served Mrs. Abernathy, and had even admired her, but its loyalty ultimately lay with the Great Malevolence. Being loyal to the Great Malevolence was better for your health, and ensured that all of your limbs remained attached to your body.

The Great Malevolence felt powerless to act. Had there been a way, it might have sent an army of demons to fight the Shadows, but what good would that have done? They might as well have hacked at smoke with their swords, or tried to run mist through with spears. In the end, the Shadows would simply have swallowed the Great Malevolence’s forces, and those whom the Shadows did not destroy would be condemned to an eternity of
utter blackness. But the option of battle was not even available to the Great Malevolence: there was no way to move its troops from Hell to Earth, not since the first portal had been closed by the boy named Samuel Johnson and his friends. Only the little demon named Crudford was able to move from realm to realm without difficulty, and now the future of the Multiverse lay in his small, slimy hands.