The Gates (Samuel Johnson vs. the Devil #1)(7)

“Sit down, Samuel,” said Mr. Hume, who had a way of making a hiss sound like a shout, a sign of barely controlled rage that even Samuel was able to recognize. He went back to his chair and carefully impaled his desk with the pin, so that the angels, if they were actually there, wouldn’t fall off.

“Anyone else got anything they’d like to share with us?” asked Mr. Hume. “An imaginary bunny, perhaps? An invisible duck named Percy?”

Everyone laughed. Bobby Goddard kicked the back of Samuel’s seat.

Samuel sighed.

So that was why Mr. Hume had called Samuel’s mother, and afterward she had given Samuel a talking-to about taking school seriously, and not teasing Mr. Hume, who appeared to be, she said, “a little sensitive.”

Samuel glanced at his watch. His mother would be gone by now, which meant that Stephanie the babysitter would be waiting for him when he returned. Stephanie had been fine when she had first started looking after Samuel a couple of years before, but recently she had become horrible in the way that only certain teenage girls can. She had a boyfriend named Garth who would sometimes come over to “keep her company,” which meant that Samuel would be rushed off to bed well before his bedtime. Even when Garth wasn’t around, Stephanie would spend hours talking on the phone while watching reality TV shows in which people competed to become models, singers, dancers, actors, train drivers, or anything other than what they really were, and she preferred to do so without the benefit of Samuel’s company.

It was now dark. Samuel should have been home fifteen minutes ago, but the house wasn’t the same anymore. He missed his dad, but he was also angry with him and his mum.

“We should be getting back,” he told Boswell. Boswell wagged his tail. It was getting chilly, and Boswell didn’t like the cold.

At which point there was a bright blue flash from somewhere behind them, accompanied by a smell like a fire in a rotten-egg factory. Boswell nearly fell off the wall in shock, saved only by Samuel’s arms.

“Right,” said Samuel, sensing an opportunity to delay returning home, “let’s go and see what that was . . .”

? ? ?

In the basement of 666 Crowley Road, a number of cloaked figures were covering their faces with their sleeves and spluttering.

“Oh, that’s disgusting,” said Mrs. Renfield. “How horrid!”

The smell really was terrible, particularly in such an enclosed space, even though Mr. Abernathy had earlier opened the basement window a crack to let some air in. Now he rushed to open it wider, and, slowly, the stench began to weaken, or perhaps it was just that there was now something else to distract the attention of the four people in the basement from it.

Hanging in the air at the very center of the room was a small, rotating circle of pale blue light. It twinkled, then grew in strength and size. Slowly, it became a perfect disk, about two feet in diameter, from which wisps of smoke were emerging.

It was Mrs. Abernathy who took the first step forward.

“Careful, dear,” said her husband.

“Oh, do be quiet,” said Mrs. Abernathy.

She kept advancing until she was mere inches from the circle. “I think I can see something,” she said. “Wait a minute.” She drew closer. “There’s . . . land there. It’s like a window. I can see mud, and stones, and the bars of some huge gates.

“And now there’s something moving—”

? ? ?

Outside, Samuel crouched by the small window, looking down on the basement. Boswell, who was a very intelligent dog, was hiding by the hedge. In fact Boswell was under the hedge, and had he been a larger dog, one capable of restraining an eleven-year-old boy, for example, Samuel would have been right there beside him; that, or both of them would have been well on their way home, where there were no nasty smells, no flashing blue lights, and no hints that something bad had just happened, and was likely to get considerably worse, Boswell also being a melancholic, even pessimistic, dog by nature.

The window was only a foot long, and opened barely two inches on its metal hinge, but the gap was wide enough for Samuel to be able to view and hear all that was going on inside. He was a little surprised to see the Abernathys and two other people wearing what looked like black bathrobes in a cold basement, but he had long ago learned not to be too shocked by anything adults did. He heard Mrs. Abernathy describe what she was seeing, but all that was visible to Samuel was the glowing circle itself. It seemed to be filled with a white fog, as if someone had blown a big, dense smoke ring in the Abernathys’ basement.

Samuel was very anxious to discover what else Mrs. Abernathy might have been able to glimpse. Unfortunately, those details were destined to remain unknown, apart from the fact that something on the other side had gray, scaly skin and three large, clawed fingers, for that was what reached out from the circle, grabbed Mrs. Abernathy’s head, and dragged her through. She didn’t even have time to scream.

Mrs. Renfield screamed instead. Mr. Abernathy ran toward the glowing circle, then seemed to think better of whatever he was planning to do and settled for calling out, plaintively, his wife’s name.

“Evelyn?” he said. “Are you all right?”

There was no response from the hole, but he could hear an unpleasant sound from within, like someone squishing ripe fruit. His wife had been correct, though: something was visible through the hole. It did indeed look like a pair of enormous gates, ones that had developed a small hole and were now bubbling with molten metal. Through it, Mr. Abernathy could see a dreadful landscape, all ruined trees and black mud. Shapes moved across it, shadowy figures that had no place except in horror stories and nightmares. Of his wife, there was no sign.