The Gates (Samuel Johnson vs. the Devil #1)(28)

“You’re making fun of me, aren’t you?” he said. “You don’t believe me.”

“Have you been playing those computer games again, those ones where you have to kill demons? Samuel, put your mum on the phone.” Samuel did, and heard one side of a conversation that seemed to revolve around whether or not he, Samuel, knew the difference between reality and fantasy, and if this was some kind of reaction to the difficulties in their marriage, and if Samuel should see a psychiatrist. The conversation moved on to other matters, and Samuel drifted away.

His mum had a troubled expression on her face when she hung up the phone, as though she realized that she was supposed to remember something important, but couldn’t quite recall what it was.

“Samuel, go to bed early tonight,” said Mrs. Johnson. “Read something that doesn’t involve demons, or ghosts, or monsters, hmmm? For me. And, darling, be careful what you say to people.”

Then she started crying.

“Your dad’s buying a house with that woman, Samuel,” said his mum, through her tears. “He wants a divorce. And he wants to come down and collect that stupid bloody car of his!”

Samuel held his mum, and didn’t speak. After a while, she told him that it was time for bed. He went up to his room and spent a long time staring out of the window, but he didn’t cry. Suddenly, monsters and demons didn’t seem so important anymore. His dad wasn’t coming home again. Meanwhile, he was just a small boy, and nobody—not his mum, not his dad—listened to small boys, not ever. Shortly after nine, he changed into his pajamas, and climbed into bed.

Eventually, he fell asleep.

? ? ?

It was Boswell who first sensed the coming of the Darkness. He woke at the end of Samuel’s bed, where he had now decided to sleep permanently after the nasty slimy thing had briefly taken up residence on the floor beneath. Boswell’s nose twitched, and his hair stood on end.

Although he was a very intelligent animal, Boswell, like most dogs, divided the world into things that were Good to eat and things that were Bad to eat, with a small space in the middle for things that might potentially be either, or just Good or Bad generally, but about which he wasn’t entirely certain as of yet.

Thus Boswell’s first impression, upon waking up, was that something was Bad, but he wasn’t sure exactly what, which confused him greatly. He couldn’t hear or smell anything out of the ordinary. Neither could he see anything out of the ordinary, although his eyesight wasn’t very good at the best of times, so that a whole army of Very Bad Things could have been standing a few feet away and, unless they smelled Bad, or sounded Bad, he would have had no idea that they were there.

He jumped from the bed and sniffed around, then trotted to the window and put his front paws on the sill so that he could peer out. All seemed to be perfectly normal. The road was empty. Nothing was moving.

The streetlight at the nearest corner flickered and went out, creating a pool of darkness that stretched halfway to the next light. Boswell put his head to one side, and whined softly. Then the next streetlight went out and, seconds later, the first light came back on again. Even with his weak eyesight, Boswell caught something slipping from one pool of darkness to the next. The third streetlight, the one directly in front of their house, buzzed and then extinguished itself, and this time it stayed out. Boswell stared at the pool of blackness, and a figure in the shadows seemed to stare back at him.

Boswell growled.

Then the pool of blackness began to change. It extended itself, like oil running down a hill, rivulets of it flowing from the base of the streetlight toward the garden gate of number 501. It slid beneath the gate and oozed along the path until it reached the front door and Boswell could no longer mark its progress.

Boswell dropped down from the window, padded to the half-closed bedroom door and pushed his body through the gap. He stood at the top of the stairs and watched as the Darkness slipped under the door, seemed to pause for a second to find its bearings, and then flowed to the first step and began to climb, the edge of the Darkness forming fingers that pulled the rest of its mass along. Boswell heard a soft pop as the far end of the Darkness slipped beneath the front door, so that now he was staring at a puddle perhaps three feet long making its way inexorably toward him.

Boswell began to bark, but nobody came. Mrs. Johnson’s bedroom door remained firmly closed, and Boswell could hear her snoring softly. The Darkness was now halfway up the stairs and, at the sound of Boswell’s barks, it began to increase its rate of progress. With no other option, Boswell beat a retreat to Samuel’s bedroom door, pushing his way in and then nudging the door closed with his nose. He backed away, still growling. He could see a thin line of illumination between the door and the carpet, and deep in his clever dog mind he sensed that this was not a Good thing.

Slowly the light disappeared, diminishing from left to right until nothing of it remained. For a couple of seconds, all was still. There was only the sound of Samuel’s breathing, and the distant buzz of Mrs. Johnson’s snores, to disturb the silence.

Boswell jumped onto the bed and barked in Samuel’s ear.

“Mwff,” said Samuel. “Argle.”

Boswell tried licking him, while at the same time keeping an eye on the door. Samuel just pushed him away, not even waking up properly to do so.

“’S early,” he mumbled. “No school.”