The Creeps: A Samuel Johnson Tale

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.

XXXII

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

MARIA 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