The Creeps: A Samuel Johnson Tale (21 page)

“You have to close the gate first, I think,” said Dan.

“Hang on,” said Jolly. “Don’t do anything until we’re all inside.”

Dan, Jolly, Angry, and Mumbles joined Dozy in the lift.

“All aboard?” said Dozy. “Right. Up we go!”

He pulled the lever. There came the groaning of ancient machinery. The lift vibrated, and slowly began to rise.

• • •

Samuel, Lucy, and the policemen had just reached the next floor when they heard a rumbling in the basement.

“What’s that?” said Sergeant Rowan.

“Sorry,” said Constable Peel. “That’s me. I haven’t been feeling very well.”

“No, not that,” said Sergeant Rowan, although he took a couple of cautious steps back from Constable Peel.
“That!”

They all heard it now. It was the sound of a lift ascending.

“Over there,” said Samuel.

To their right was a dark, gated shaft, and above it a panel displaying floor numbers had just lit up.

“Something’s coming up from the basement!” said Lucy.

“It has to be something nasty,” said Constable Peel. “There are only nasty things in this shop, present company excepted.”

The number 1 lit up.

“It’ll be here in a couple of seconds,” said Constable Peel.

“Be brave, lad,” said Sergeant Rowan.

He gripped his cricket bat tightly. He’d had the foresight to grab a weapon as they ran from the spiders. Samuel and Lucy hefted their pool cues threateningly, for they had been wise enough to do the same.

Constable Peel took his place beside them.

“What are you holding?” said Sergeant Rowan.

“Ping-Pong bat,” said Constable Peel. “It was all I could find.”

“Constable, we need to have a long talk when this is all over.”

“Yes, Sarge.”

The lift came into view. The light on the second floor was poor, and the lift itself remained dark, but as it stopped, Samuel and the others could pick out five gray shapes.

“Ghouls!” whispered Lucy.

“Wraiths!” said Constable Peel.

The lift’s gate opened. The five figures emerged and stepped into a small pool of moonlight cast through the murky glass of one of the windows. It was Constable Peel who reacted first.

“It’s Dan and the dwarfs,” he said. “Look at them! They’re all gray and spooky and sickly. They’re dead, but somehow they’re still upright. Only the shells of them remain! Oh! Oh!”

He fell to his knees, buried his face in his hands, and began to weep.

Jolly raised a hand and opened his mouth.

“Look,” said Sergeant Rowan. “One of them is trying to speak.”

Constable Peel peered over the tips of his fingers. It was true. He waited to hear the hollow, undead rattle of what had once been Mr. Jolly Smallpants.

Jolly didn’t speak. He sneezed. The sneeze was so massive that it caused most of the ash to lift from him, and Jolly used the opportunity to step to one side and avoid the dust as it came down again.

“It’s all right,” he said. “It’s just bits of dead vampire.”

Constable Peel stared at him for a time, then burst into tears again, crying even harder than before.

“Oh no!” he wailed. “They’re alive. They’re
still
alive . . .”

45
.
Chthonic
(pronounced “thonic” to rhyme with “sonic”) is a great word of Greek origin, and means of, or relating to, the Underworld. Feel free to drop it into conversations at home, where it has many amusing uses. For example: “Mum, this broccoli is positively
chthonic
.” Or: “I’m not sure about that tie, Dad. It looks kind of
chthonic
.” And, of course, the ever-popular “I’d give that bathroom a minute or two. It smells a bit
chthonic
.”

46
. A very clever joke that plays upon the fact that the word
fawn,
meaning to gain favor through flattery, and
fawn,
meaning a young deer, are spelled the same. See? Oh, please yourself. It’s like casting pearls before swine . . .

In Which Dorothy Seems Slightly Confused

M
ARIA AND THE SCIENTISTS,
trapped in the sweet factory with a hostile figure apparently made entirely from darkness, had considered their options and done the sensible thing, which was to leave as quickly as possible. They were now in Professor Hilbert’s car, heading in the direction of Wreckit & Sons by taking the shortcut through August Derleth Park. Professor Hilbert was driving, Professor Stefan was in the passenger seat, and Maria, Brian, and Dorothy were crammed in the back. Brian was beginning to recover from his encounter with the dark woman, although his entire body continued to tremble involuntarily, and he would occasionally emit a startled squeak.

Dorothy, meanwhile, was still wearing her beard. Maria had tried not to notice, but it was difficult as it was quite a big beard.

Dorothy caught Maria looking at it.

“It’s the beard, isn’t it?” she said, in her new deep voice.

Maria nodded.

“I was just wondering why you were still wearing it.”

“I like it. It’s warm.”

“Right,” said Maria. She would have moved over a little to put some space between herself and Dorothy, but there wasn’t room because of the human jelly that was Brian.

“And I don’t want to be called Dorothy anymore.”

Professor Hilbert, who had been listening, gave Dorothy a worried look in the rearview mirror. Professor Stefan turned round in his seat. His face wore the confused expression of a builder who has just been handed a glass hammer.

“What do you mean, you don’t want to be called Dorothy?” he said. “It’s your name, and it’s a perfectly lovely one.”

“I want to be called Reginald,” said Dorothy—er, Reginald. “Inside, I feel like a Reginald.”

Professor Stefan frowned.

“But why Reginald?” he said. “Nobody is called ‘Reginald’ these days. It would be like me announcing that I wanted to be called Elsie, or Boadicea.” 
⁴⁷

“I like the name Reginald,” said Dorothy, or Reginald. “It was my mother’s name.”

Even Brian stopped shaking for long enough to look bewildered, then went back to trembling again.

“Right,” said Professor Hilbert. “I’m glad we cleared that one up.”

Any further discussion of the matter was postponed by the appearance of a Viking on the road. He wore a metal helmet, but was otherwise entirely naked. This might have been more disturbing had he not been little more than leathery skin and yellowed bone. In his right hand he held a rusty sword, and a shield hung from his left arm.

“You know, you really don’t see that very often,” said Professor Hilbert.

Even though he was a physicist, he had a scientist’s general fascination with anything new and unusual in the world, and a naked undead Viking counted as unusual in any world. Issues of personal safety took second place to things that were just plain interesting.

“How splendid!” said Professor Stefan. “Slow down, Hilbert, so we can take a good look at him.”

Professor Hilbert slowed the car to a crawl, and rolled down his window.

“Hello!” he said to the Viking.

“You look a bit lost,” said Professor Stefan.

The Viking glared at them. Darkness seethed and roiled in its eyes.

“Garrrgghhhh,” it said. “Urrurh.”

“Ah, yes, of course,” said Professor Hilbert. “How true, how true.”

He looked at Professor Stefan and shrugged. Professor Stefan rolled his eyes.

“Where. Are. You. From?” said Professor Hilbert. He spoke very slowly and very loudly, which is how English people who don’t speak foreign languages try to communicate with those who do.

“Harruraruh,” said the Viking.

“Where is that?” said Professor Stefan. “Could he show us on a map?”

“Map?” said Professor Hilbert to the Viking.

He drew squiggles in the air, in the faint hope that the Viking might make the connection. Instead the Viking simply waved his sword and said, “Rarh!”

“I don’t think we’re going to get much out of him, I’m afraid,” said Professor Hilbert. “His English leaves a lot to be desired.”

“What a shame,” said Professor Stefan. “You’d think the chap might have brought a phrase book with him so he could communicate a little better. You know, ‘Hello, I come from Norway.’ ‘Where is Buckingham Palace?’ That kind of thing. Hardly seems worth making the trip if you can’t speak the language. Never mind.”

He waved at the Viking.

“Bye, now!” he said. “Thanks for visiting.”

“Warrghhh,” said the Viking.

“Ha ha!” said Professor Stefan. “Absolutely, yes.”

He puffed out his cheeks as Professor Hilbert prepared to drive off.

“No idea what the chap was saying.”

He gave the Viking a final wave, just in time to witness a Saxon with one leg dragging brokenly behind him hit the Viking repeatedly on the top of the head with an ax.

“And they wonder why tourists don’t come here very often,” said Professor Hilbert.

“It’s the battlefield,” said Maria.

“What?”

“We’re close to the site of the Battle of Biddlecombe. Hilary Mould designed and built the visitor center there. It’s one of the points on the pentagram. I’ll bet there’s supernatural activity at the old asylum, too, and the crematorium, and the prison. Which makes me more certain than ever that the center of the activity is here.”

She tapped her finger on the map, right on the location of Wreckit & Sons.

A small troop of Christmas elves crossed their path, forcing Professor Hilbert to brake suddenly.

“You don’t want to try talking to them as well, do you?” said Maria.

“Don’t be silly,” said Professor Stefan. “They’re elves.”

“Of course,” said Maria. “Duh.”

The elves paid them no notice. They were too busy running from something. Seconds later, one of the groundskeepers appeared. He was carrying a heavy rake, but was still making good progress. He caught up with the elves just as they reached the other side of the road, and began beating them to splinters.

“The sign said,” he screamed, “ ‘KEEP OFF THE GRASS.’ What part of keeping off the grass did you—
Bang!—
not—
Smash!—
understand—
Thud!
?”

When the elves were no more, the groundskeeper looked up to see five people watching him. He tipped his hat at them.

“Evening,” he said.

“Evening,” replied Professor Hilbert.

The groundskeeper indicated with a thumb the stack of firewood and splinters that had once been elves.

“Elves,” he said. “They trampled on the grass.”

“So we gathered.”

“And the flower beds,” added the groundskeeper. His tone suggested that, while some might feel reducing elves to kindling for trespassing on the grass was a bit of an overreaction, no sane person could take issue with pummeling them for stepping on the flower beds.

He wiped his sweating brow.

“I quite enjoyed that,” he said. “I think I’ll go and look for some more of them.”

And off he went, whistling what sounded like “Heigh-Ho, Heigh-Ho.”

It struck Professor Hilbert that, if the groundskeeper was anything to go by, the citizens of Biddlecombe were taking the evening’s events in their stride. This view was confirmed when they came across the Biddlecombe Ladies’ Football Team standing by half a dozen large and very bruised Christmas-tree fairies who had been tied to tree trunks with stout rope in order to prevent them from doing any further harm.

Professor Hilbert stopped the car.

“What are you doing?” said Professor Stefan.

“Look!” said Professor Hilbert, pointing to the west.

There was a faint shimmer to the air. Beyond it Maria could see more trees and, some way in the distance, the spire of the
church in the nearest village, Rathford, but it was as though a mist had descended upon the landscape, blurring the image. It struck Maria that they shouldn’t even have been able to see Rathford. It was nighttime, and yet the spire of the Church of St. Roger the Inflammable was plainly visible, although there was a touch of shiny gray to it, like an old photographic negative.

Professor Hilbert stepped from the car and walked toward the location of the shimmering. The others followed, even Brian, although he was not so much curious as frightened to be left alone. As they drew closer, they saw that the ground came to a kind of end at the fence surrounding August Derleth Park. Beyond the boundary it was less actual firm ground than the memory of it, and its level didn’t quite match the grass on their side of the fence. Worse, the other ground was transparent, and beneath it Maria could see a terrible blackness spotted with the odd lonely star. It felt to her as though Biddlecombe had somehow been set adrift in the Multiverse while still bringing with it the memory of the planet of which it had once been a part. The dividing line was the shimmering, like the heat haze that rises from the ground on sunny summer days, except this one brought with it no warmth.

Reginald/Dorothy reached out to touch it, and only Professor Hilbert’s sudden grip on his/her wrist prevented him/her from doing so.
⁴⁸

“I wouldn’t,” he said.

Reginald withdrew her hand. Professor Hilbert’s fingers tingled after touching her. It must be the power of the boundary, he thought.

“How can we see Rathford?” asked Maria. “We shouldn’t be able to. It’s night, and anyway Rathford is quite far from Biddlecombe. We can’t even see the church spire during the day.”

“You can see
a
Rathford,” said Professor Hilbert. “It’s one of an infinite number of Rathfords, or it may be the point at which all of those potential Rathfords are bound together until a decision is made on which one should come into being.”

“We’ve become unmoored from reality,” said Professor Stefan. “I believe that a dimensional shift has occurred, and we’re just fractionally off-kilter with the rest of the Multiverse.”

“But what’s on the other side of that boundary?” said Brian.

“Perhaps a version of Rathford, once you bring it into being by its observation, or nothing at all,” said Professor Hilbert. “Then again, you might thrust your fingers into another dimension, and who knows what could be waiting on the other side? Or your fingers might end up between dimensions, which could be just as bad. It might be like wearing fingerless gloves in space, which would be very unwise.” 
⁴⁹