The Creeps: A Samuel Johnson Tale

XXXV

In Which We End on a Cliffhanger

SAMUEL AND MARIA HAD seen photographs of Hilary Mould, but had obviously never imagined meeting him in the flesh, not that they had lost a lot of sleep over it. Even in life Hilary Mould had not been a very handsome man. He had fish eyes, a misshapen nose, and a chin so weak that a small child could have taken it in a fight. What little hair he had stuck up at odd angles from his head like clumps of bristles on an old, worn paintbrush, and his ears stood out at right angles from his head like car doors that had been jammed open. He was also so pale and sickly that he resembled a corpse that had recently been dug up and then forgotten about.

In a way, this should have meant that actual death was unlikely to make him any less appealing than he already was, but anyone hoping that might be the case would have been sorely disappointed. Hilary Mould now looked worse than ever, and his name seemed to suit him even more than it had in life since he was literally moldy: something unpleasant and green was growing on what was left of his face, and he appeared to be at least 30 percent down in the finger department. His skin had retreated from his fingernails, making them appear disturbingly long, and it was possible to see the tendons working through the holes in his cheeks as his jaws moved. His big eyes had turned entirely black, and wisps of darkness hung like smoke around his lips as he spoke. The fact that he was dressed as Father Christmas did not help matters.

“Mr. Grimly, I presume?” said Sergeant Rowan. “Or do you prefer Mould?”

“You may call me Mister Mould,” said Hilary Mould. “I’ve been waiting a long time for this day. Now—”

“Excuse me,” said Jolly.

Hilary Mould tried to ignore him. He’d been walled up in the basement of Wreckit & Sons for a long time, even if his spirit had been able to wander in the form of a possessed statue infused with some of his blood, but that wasn’t the same thing as being out and about. He had a big speech prepared. He wasn’t about to let himself be interrupted by a dwarf.

“Now, my great—”

“Mister, excuse me,” said Jolly again. “Still here.”

Jolly waved his hand helpfully, but Hilary Mould was absolutely determined not to be distracted.

“NOW,” he shouted, “my GREAT MACHINE has revealed itself to—”

“Really need to talk to you,” Jolly persisted.

“Mister, mister,” said Dozy, waving his left arm to attract attention, “my friend has something to say.”

Hilary Mould gave up. Honestly, it was most frustrating. He’d created an enormous occult engine, and had sealed himself up at the heart of it, undead and not a little bored, waiting for the moment when dark forces might resurrect him, and just at his time of triumph he found himself dealing with chatty dwarfs.

“Yes, yes, what is it?” said Hilary Mould as he tried to think of ways that the Shadows could make the dwarfs’ sufferings last even longer as a personal favor to himself.

“Mister,” said Jolly, “your hand has dropped off.”

Hilary Mould stared at his left hand. It was still there, minus most of its fingers, but after spending more than a century walled up in a tomb you had to expect a certain amount of minor damage. Unfortunately, when he switched his attention to his right hand he discovered only a stump. The hand itself—his favorite one, as it still had three fingers and a thumb attached—was now lying by his feet.

“Oh, for crying out loud,” he said.

He bent down and picked up the hand.

“You could try sticking it back on,” suggested Angry helpfully. “I don’t think glue will do it, but maybe if you wrapped it up with sticky tape . . .”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Hilary Mould through gritted teeth, or through whatever teeth he had left to grit, which wasn’t many.

“You could try a hook,” offered Jolly.

“If you wore the right kind of hat, people might think you were a pirate,” said Angry.

“Stop!” screamed Hilary Mould. “I told you: it’s fine. I have another hand. Just let it drop.”

Jolly detected the opportunity for a joke, but Hilary Mould saw it coming and cut him off before he could get a word out. He stuck the severed hand in his pocket, and pointed one of his remaining fingers at the dwarf.

“I’m warning you,” he said.

Jolly raised two hands in surrender—well, one hand. He’d hidden the other one up his sleeve.

Hilary Mould grimaced in frustration. This wasn’t going at all according to plan.

“Mister,” said Dozy again.

“Look,” said Hilary Mould, “please let me finish. I have a lot to get through.”

He fumbled in another pocket and extracted a tattered, folded sheet of paper. He started trying to unfold it, but he immediately ran into trouble due to a lack of fingers.

“Need a hand?” said a dwarf voice.

Hilary Mould didn’t rise to the bait. He kept his temper, managed to get the paper open, and checked his notes.

“Um,” he muttered to himself. “Yes, ‘waiting a long time for this day’—done. Laugh sinisterly. Move on to description of occult engine, tell them about ruling the world, laugh again in an evil way, hand over to . . . Okay, fine. Right.”

He cleared his throat.

“Aha-ha-ha-ha!” He laughed.

“Mister,” said Dozy.

“WHAT? What do you want this time?”

“Do you wear glasses?”

Hilary Mould looked confused.

“Sometimes,” he said.

“Well,” said Dozy, “I hate to break it to you, but you might have trouble with that in future.”

“Why?”

“Your right ear just fell off.”

Hilary Mould reached up to check. The dwarf was right. His right ear was no more. He saw it resting by his right shoe.

“Oh, blast!” he said.

He didn’t want to leave it lying around. Someone might step on it. His hand, though, was barely managing to hang on to his notes.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “but would somebody mind picking that up for me?”

Jolly obliged.

“I’ll get the other one while I’m down here,” he said, for Hilary Mould’s left ear, clearly pining for its friend, had detached itself from his head and headed south.

“Do you want me to put them with your hand?” asked Jolly.

“If you wouldn’t mind,” said Hilary Mould.

“Not at all.”

Jolly squeezed the ears into Hilary Mould’s pocket. Unfortunately, the pocket was already taken up with the hand, so Jolly had to use a little force to get the ears in there as well. He distinctly felt something snap and crumble as he did so: more than one something, as it happened.

“Do be careful with them,” said Hilary Mould. “I’m sure there’s a way of fitting them on again.”

“Don’t you worry,” said Jolly, discreetly using the end of Hilary Mould’s jacket to wipe bits of crushed ear from his fingers, “you’ll look a whole new man when they stick those back on.”

Jolly rejoined the others.

“He’ll never wear glasses again,” he whispered to Angry. “And I don’t know how he’s going to wind his watch.”

Hilary Mould was worried. He had just discovered one of the dangers of walling oneself up in a basement for a very long time: rot tends to set in. Even with a hint of Shadow essence coursing through his remains, he was in very real danger of falling apart entirely before the real business of the evening was concluded.

“I suppose you’re wondering why I created my engine,” he said.

“We were, a bit,” said Samuel.

“I knew,” said Hilary Mould, “that there was a great force of Darkness somewhere out there in the vast reaches of space.”

He gestured grandly at the stars surrounding them. A finger flew off into the blackness.

“Just pretend that never happened,” said Hilary Mould. He continued: “I felt this Darkness calling to me. I heard the lost voices. And I knew what I had to build: an engine, a great supernatural machine in the form of a pentagram, and then the Shadows would come.”

“What did they promise you in return?” asked Nurd.

“Eternal life!” said Hilary Mould, and added a “Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!” for effect.

“And how is that working out for you, now that you’re falling apart?”

“It’ll be fine,” said Hilary Mould.

His nose twitched.

“This decay is only temporary, I’m sure.”

There was definitely a sneeze coming. He could feel it.

“Blast this dust.”

Hilary Mould sneezed. His nose shot past Angry, who made a vain attempt to catch it but succeeded only in breaking it with his fingertips.

“If it’s any help,” said Wormwood, “I know just how you feel.”

“I am not worried,” said the now-noseless Hilary Mould. “The Shadows will restore me to my original form, and they will give me the Earth to rule as my reward.”

Samuel looked doubtfully at the Shadows looming above their heads, still waiting for their way into this universe to be revealed. He didn’t think that they were likely to keep their side of the bargain with Hilary Mould. If they got through, there wouldn’t be an Earth left for him to rule.

“But the engine didn’t work, did it?” said Maria. She stood beside Samuel, seemingly fearless. She made Samuel feel braver, too. “Not like you thought it would.”

“There were, apparently, some problems,” Hilary Mould admitted. “The Shadows still couldn’t enter our world. There wasn’t enough chthonic power, not in an engine designed only by a human. That was why I hid myself away in the basement, waiting for circumstances to change. The Shadows told me to be patient. They said that, in time, humanity’s own inventions would weaken the barriers between dimensions. And they were right: that was precisely what happened, but still, still it was not sufficient. One final ingredient was required: a force greater than the Shadows, greater even than the most advanced machines of men. It was—”

“A heart,” said Samuel, finishing his sentence for him.

For the first time, Hilary Mould looked surprised, and a bit disappointed. This was to have been his big revelation, and now a boy had deprived him of it. The dwarfs had been bad enough, but this was just too much. He decided that, once the Shadows had entered the universe, he was going to have a long lie-down and not talk to any dwarfs or children for eternity.

“Yes, a heart,” he said, making the best of the situation. “A heart of purest evil; a heart capable of pumping its poison into my engine, providing it with the fuel that it required to break down the walls, to shatter the barriers between universes; the heart of a demon with a hatred for the Earth to match the Shadows’ own.”

He added another “Bwa-ha-ha” for effect, but it came out sounding funny because of the absence of his nose.

“And what did you and the Shadows say that you would give to Mrs. Abernathy in return?” asked Samuel.

“We promised,” he said, “to give to her all those on Earth who had conspired against her. Most of all, we promised to give to her . . . Samuel Johnson!”

“Then let her take me,” said Samuel, “but spare my friends, and spare the Earth and the Multiverse from the Shadows.”

Maria took Samuel’s right hand and held it tightly.

“If he goes, then I go.”

“Look,” said Hilary Mould, “you’re all going. Don’t you understand? You’re doomed, every one of you. She doesn’t want to bargain with you. She doesn’t have to bargain. She gets what she wants, the Shadows get what they want, and I get what I want. I should say, though, that she has a special fate lined up for you, Samuel. Oh, a very special fate.”

“And what would that be?” asked Samuel. He was glad that his voice didn’t tremble, although he was sorely afraid.

“She’s going to cut out your heart and replace it with her own,” said Hilary Mould. “You’re going to become her new body, the carrier for her evil. And you’ll know it, and feel it, because she’ll keep your consciousness trapped in there with her like a prisoner locked away in a prison cell. She’ll allow you to watch as she destroys your friends, but she’ll leave your dog until last: your dog, and your demon friend Nurd. She’s going to spend a very long time hurting them. Suns will die, and galaxies will end, but their pain will go on and on, and you’ll be a witness to every moment of it.”

Boswell barked at Hilary Mould. He’d heard his name mentioned, and sensed that this dry, foul-smelling man meant him and Samuel no good. Boswell was on the verge of attacking him and depriving him of some more limbs, but Samuel held him back.

Nurd stepped forward.

“You’re a fool,” said Nurd.

“And why is that?” said Hilary Mould.

“Because you trust the Shadows, and you trust Mrs. Abernathy. When the Shadows come through, they’ll smother you along with everything else in this universe, and Mrs. Abernathy won’t protect you. She won’t even be able to protect herself. The Shadows are the only entities in the Multiverse that the Great Malevolence could not bend to its will. They are its enemies as much as ours. If the Great Malevolence could not make them do its bidding, why do you think one of its lieutenants—a lieutenant, by the way, who has twice been defeated by a boy and his dog—would be able to succeed where it has failed?”

“She is strong,” insisted Hilary Mould.

“She is weak,” said Nurd. “The Great Malevolence had turned its back on her even before Samuel and the rest of us tore her apart. She had failed the Great Malevolence, and it had no more use for her.”

An expression of unease flickered on Hilary Mould’s rotted features. Nurd picked up on it immediately.

“Ah, she didn’t mention that, did she? She didn’t tell you that she’d been cast aside by her master. We are stronger than she is, and we always have been. You’ve been tricked, Mr. Mould. When the Shadows come, your alliance with her won’t save you. If you do get eternal life out of this, you’ll spend it in nothingness with the Shadows pressing down on you, and if I were you, I’d rather have no life at all.”

Hilary Mould’s confidence was crumbling, just as his body was. He wanted to convince himself that Nurd was telling lies, but he could not. Nurd’s words had the weight of truth to them.

“She was only ever using you,” said Nurd. “That’s what she does. She’s clever and ruthless. When she’s finished using you—and that should be pretty soon, I think—she’ll cast you to the Shadows, and you’ll wish you had just toddled off and died properly years ago instead of hanging about in old shops in the hope of ruling the world someday.”

By now, Hilary Mould had no doubts left. Nurd was right.

“The engine,” said Hilary Mould as the dreadfulness of his fate became clear to him. “The engine must be turned off.”

“How?” said Nurd.

But before Hilary Mould could reply, his lower jaw dropped to the floor. He knelt to retrieve it, but his left leg shattered below the knee and he toppled sideways. Samuel ran to him. He was thinking of Crudford. If Crudford could find Mrs. Abernathy’s heart and steal it away, the force powering the engine would be gone, and the Shadows would not be able to escape from their world into this one.

“Where is the heart, Mr. Mould?” said Samuel. “Tell us, please!”

Hilary Mould had only one finger left. He slowly unbent it from his fist, but before he could point it the grotto behind him began to fall apart. Samuel barely had time to get out of the way before the heavy stones fell on Hilary Mould, turning him to dust.

Samuel’s ears rang from the sound of the clashing stones. His eyes and mouth were filled with dry matter, some of it almost certainly bits of Hilary Mould. He spat them out.

There was a thumping noise in his head: the beating of a heart that was not his own. It was almost as though Mrs. Abernathy had already entered him, just as Hilary Mould had threatened. He tried to find the source of the sound. It was coming from the group of humans and nonhumans nearby.

It was coming from inside one of them.

The others seemed to realize it at the same time as Samuel. Slowly they moved away from one another—watching, listening—before grouping together again as they narrowed down the source, until at last a single figure was left standing alone, and the identity of Mrs. Abernathy’s host was revealed.