The Creeps: A Samuel Johnson Tale

“It’s lucky they’re not seeing any, isn’t it?”

“Very lucky, Constable.”

“Because, if they were, we’d have to do something, wouldn’t we?”

“Indeed we would, Constable.”

“And what would that be, Sarge?”

“We’d have to be afraid, Constable. We’d have to be very afraid.”

22. It reallye is catchinge.

X

In Which We Pay a Brief Visit to Hell

THE MOUNTAIN OF DESPAIR was the tallest peak in Hell. It dominated the landscape of that terrible place in the way that only something really, really terrible can do, given the general terribleness of the place in which it happened to be. Even though no sun shone in Hell, and the skies above were forever darkened by warring thunderclouds, still the Mountain of Despair somehow managed to cast a shadow over everything, if only in the minds of those who were doomed, or damned, to exist there. It was so big that, no matter how far away you might stand, it never appeared any smaller. A lifetime might be spent trying to walk around it without success. A short lifetime might be spent trying to climb it, for some very disagreeable creatures lived among its cracks and crevasses, and they were always hungry.

Mind you, there were some inhabitants of Hell who had no objection whatsoever to the looming presence of the Mountain of Despair. It provided employment to those who were content to ensure that the business of running an empire based entirely on evil, misery, and general demonic activity proceeded as smoothly as possible. A job, in their view, was a job, and, as with most jobs, you just had to find that perfect balance between doing as little as possible so you didn’t get tired, and just enough so that you didn’t get fired.

Two such beings were currently guarding the great carved entrance to the mountain. Their names were Brompton and Edgefast. Edgefast was, strictly speaking, simply a disembodied head,²³ and Brompton was about as much use at guarding as a toy dog on wheels, but they had somehow managed to continue to be employed as guards despite their general uselessness. This was because Brompton and Edgefast were members of the Union of Demonic Employees and Tormentors (Guards Branch), which fiercely protected the rights of its members to lean on their spears and nap any time their eyes got a bit heavy; to take tea breaks at unsuitable times, including during battles, invasions, and serious fires; and not to actually guard anything if they thought that it might place their personal safety at risk. All of this made Brompton and Edgefast as hard to fire as a pair of chocolate cannons. The Mountain of Despair could have been stolen from under their noses and broken down to make garden gnomes and, thanks to the union, Brompton and Edgefast would still have been guarding the place where it once stood, in between taking essential naps and tea breaks.

“Quiet today,” said Edgefast.

“Too quiet for my liking,” said Brompton.

“Really?”

Edgefast couldn’t help but sound surprised. Brompton was the laziest demon Edgefast had ever met. Brompton could fall over and make hitting the ground look like an effort.

“Nah, only joking,” said Brompton. “Not quiet enough, if you ask me, what with you piping up every few minutes about how quiet it is.”

“Sorry,” said Edgefast.

He’d said that it was quiet only once. It wasn’t like he kept repeating the word quiet over and over until nobody could remember what silence had been like.

Edgefast’s nose was itchy. He’d have scratched it, but he didn’t have any arms. It was one of the problems with not having a body. Still, Brompton was very good about making sure that he had a straw through which to suck his tea, and he usually remembered to pick Edgefast up and take him home when they had finished guarding for the day.

“Would you mind scratching my nose for me?” Edgefast said.

“Oh, it’s all about you, isn’t it?” said Brompton. “Me, me, me, that’s all I ever hear. Who made you king, that’s what I’d like to know. Must have been when I wasn’t looking. All right, Your Majesty, I’ll scratch your nose for you. There! Happy now?”

Edgefast wasn’t, really. He couldn’t be, not with the business end of Brompton’s spear jammed up one nostril.

“?’Es bine,” he said. “Mub bedder, dan gew.”

Brompton withdrew the spear and went back to leaning on it and staring glumly over the blasted landscape of Hell.

“Sorry,” he said. “Trouble at home.”

“Mrs. Brompton?” said Edgefast.

Brompton and Mrs. Brompton had a difficult marriage. There were fatal diseases that had better relationships with their victims than Brompton had with Mrs. Brompton.

“Yeah.”

“She move out again?”

“No, she moved back in.”

“Oh.”

There was silence for a time.

“I thought you were going to leave her,” said Edgefast.

“I did.”

“What happened?”

“She came with me.”

“Oh,” said Edgefast for a second time. There wasn’t much else to say. Brompton always seemed to be unhappy with Mrs. Brompton. The trouble was, he was even unhappier without Mrs. Brompton.

“She’d be lost without you, you know,” said Edgefast.

“Nah, I tried that,” said Brompton. “She found her way back.”

“Oh,” said Edgefast, for the third time, followed by “Oh?” and then “Oh-oh!”

Crudford manifested himself directly in front of the two guards with a sound like a plate of jelly being dropped on a stone floor. He raised his hat with his left hand and said, “Evening, gentlemen.” Under his right arm he carried a jar, and in the jar a mass of blue atoms seethed and roiled, slowly forming something that became, as he drew closer to Edgefast, a single hostile eye surrounded by pale, bruised skin. The eye seemed to glare at Edgefast, who would have taken a step back if it hadn’t been for his shortcomings in the leg department. Edgefast had clear memories of that eye. It had looked at him in a similar way just moments before some very sharp bits of the body to which it was then attached had ripped him apart.

Crudford put his hat back on his head, and patted the jar the way one might pat the comfortable carrying case of a beloved pet.

“Here we are, ma’am,” he said. “It’s nice to be back, isn’t it?”

• • •

The Great Malevolence, the monstrous fount of all evil, sat in its lair of fire and stone at the heart of the Mountain of Despair, the flames reflected in its eyes so that it seemed almost to be burning from within. It had cast aside its armor for now, and set aside its shield of skulls and its burning spear. The great crown of bone that grew from its head glowed red from the heat of the infernos that surrounded it. Its monstrous body, scarred and misshapen, lay slumped on its throne.

The throne was a massive construct of bones that twisted and tangled like pale branches and yellowed vines. There was no comfort to the throne, but that was as the Great Malevolence preferred: it never wanted to grow used to its banishment in Hell, and never wished to find a moment’s peace there. It had come into existence milliseconds after the birth of the Multiverse, a force for destruction born out of the creation of worlds. It could, it