Clovenhoof 04 Hellzapoppin' Read online

  Hellzapoppin’

  Heide Goody & Iain Grant

  Pigeon Park Press

  ‘Hellzapoppin’’ Copyright © Heide Goody and Iain Grant 2015

  The moral right of the authors has been asserted. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, except for personal use, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

  Paperback ISBN: 978-0-9933149-8-8

  Ebook ISBN: 978-0-9933149-9-5

  Cover artwork and design copyright © Mike Watts 2015 (www.bigbeano.co.uk)

  Published by Pigeon Park Press

  www.pigeonparkpress.com

  [email protected]

  Chapter 1 – The day Father Eustace arrived

  “Well, mates, this is a bit of a stumper,” said Rutspud, looking up.

  “Did I not tell you so?” said Frogspear, hissing through his fangs, black spittle flying from the corners of his mouth.

  “Take it slow, brother,” shrugged Bootlick, his fat, boneless shoulders rolling like beetles under a blanket. “It’s just one soul.”

  Frogspear shook his laughing stick frantically, the tiny bones rattling from within.

  “Devils must concern themselves with details, as we all know.”

  “I bet they don’t have these kinds of problems in the seventh circle,” said Rutspud.

  It was part of Rutspud’s general philosophy that the sixth circle of Hell got all the oddballs, troublemakers and awkward cases. It was all that bastard Dante’s fault for creating the idea of stupid circles in the first place. Before the management read Inferno, Hell was just, well, Hell, but once someone in charge had got hold of a copy, then it was circle this and circle that. He didn’t complain about it. Firstly, because here, the lava fields and obsidian spires were as magnificent as any in all Perdition. Secondly, because, even though demons were not allowed friendships, he couldn’t hope for a better pair of deadly enemies than Frogspear and Bootlick anywhere else. And thirdly, if he did complain, it would only earn him a thorough scourging and a decade working in the cesspit of idle flatterers.

  “But what is one to do?” said Frogspear.

  “Grab some righteous lunch,” suggested Bootlick.

  Rutspud ignored him and addressed the man bound to the flaming wheel above them.

  “Mr Ixion?”

  “What?” the man shouted back.

  “On a scale of one to ‘mercy, for the love of God, mercy’, how much agony are you in?”

  “Pah!” spat Ixion. “Zero.”

  “Zero?”

  “Zero!”

  Rutspud looked at Frogspear.

  “You’ve turned the temperature up?”

  “Most assuredly.”

  “And down?”

  “T’was a freezing wheel for much of topside’s seventeenth century.”

  “You’ve spun it.”

  “Every other mortal week.”

  “How fast?”

  “Until such time as his lungs exploded from the top of his head.”

  “Hooks? Rats? Acid?”

  “Do you take me for a fool, Rutspud? I have attempted every course. He has endured this now for over seven thousand years. He cares not.”

  “We need to truck on down to the team huddle,” said Bootlick. “We’re late.”

  “Technically, since time doesn’t exist here, we can’t be late. Besides, when have you ever cared about being late?” said Rutspud.

  “I heard there could be biscuits. Dig what I’m puttin’ down?”

  “Will you help me or nay?” squealed Frogspear. He gave a nervous shake of his laughing stick. “My infernal appraisal approaches and my torment targets amount to a piteous baggage.”

  “I just want a biscuit, one time,” said Bootlick. “You dig?”

  “I fear the villainous performance improvement process,” said Frogspear. “Assertiveness coaching. Progress checks. Oh nonny, nonny.”

  “Sounds swell!” said Bootlick.

  Rutspud rolled his eyes. He was good at rolling his eyes. He had sly but very expressive eyes.

  “Oh, yes, the benefits of performance improvement. It’s like giving a new hat to a man about to have his head chopped off.” He shrugged. “I don’t know, Frogspear. I guess you’ll have to let him down.”

  “What?” said Ixion.

  “I said we’ll have to let you down,” called Rutspud. “Take you off your wheel.”

  “You can’t do that!”

  “No point keeping you up there, is there?”

  At a flick of Rutspud’s hand, a band of Frogspear’s imps swarmed over Ixion to remove his chains.

  “But I’m Ixion!” the ancient king cried frantically. “I’m the man on the wheel of fire!”

  “You don’t want us to take you down?”

  “It’s my wheel!”

  Rutspud grinned at Frogspear.

  “Problem solved. Do it, boys.”

  Chains that were more rust and centuries of dried blood than they were iron fell stiffly away and Ixion tumbled to the ground.

  “No! No!” he shouted, leaping vainly for the wheel that was already being hoisted out of reach.

  Ixion’s screams of desperation and grief brought some instant relief to Frogspear.

  “Thanks, boon companions. Now, let us get to that meeting.”

  “Biscuits, man,” said Bootlick.

  Bootlick, Frogspear and Rutspud walked over to the conference room in the Kafka-designed Sixth Circle Management Centre. Actually, only Rutspud really walked, striding like a man with a song in his heart. It was a nasty little song, with lots of hand gestures, but a song nonetheless. Bootlick didn’t so much walk as continually avoid falling, his lazy webbed feet flopping in front of him, always just in time to stop his considerable bulk slamming into the floor. Frogspear skittered along on his hoof-claws with the sound and energy of a caffeine-fuelled typist.

  The three demons pushed their way past the damned bureaucrats, doomed to wander for eternity with deliveries for offices that definitely existed but could never be reached, and entered the conference room to find all but three of the dentist’s seats round the saw-edged table taken.

  “Alas!” said Frogspear. “We are late.”

  “Word got out about them biscuits,” whispered Bootlick.

  Rutspud slipped into a seat and tried to look as if he had been there for positively hours, whatever they were.

  At the head of the table, their overseer, the spindly and nail-bearded Scabass, finished gouging some last minute notes into the back of a damned soul who served as his jotter block and jabbed his quill in the creature’s rump.

  The thirteen demons around the table fell silent, so that the only sound to be heard was the lava bubbling beneath the iron grille flooring. The lava kept the floor delightfully red hot and provided the room with its only light.

  “We are quorate at last,” said Scabass, relishing the hard ‘t’s. “So, we can begin.”

  Bootlick coughed and raised his hand.

  “Hey, man, heard a rumour we might see some biscuit action.”

  “Correct. There was a rumour. I started it. We have four items on the agenda before we come to our regular team-building exercise. First, I have it on good authority that Lord Peter is to begin a new round of departmental inspections and that we could come under scrutiny. He is going to want to see evidence of our key deliverables and of competencies at both an individual and organisational level.”

  “Say what?” said Bootlick.

  “He is desirous to ascertain what we do and whether we have proven satisfactory,” said Frogspear.

  Lord Peter was the ruler of all Hell. Not lo
ng ago, Satan had been the Boss, but then there had been the ‘unpleasantness’, and Satan had departed for unknown parts and Lord Peter had stepped in. Some said Peter was the most wicked of the damned mortals. Others said Peter was a fallen saint, cast out of Heaven for trying to seize the throne of the Almighty. Some said that he was actually Satan and had just had some work done. The truth would probably never be known, especially by the grunts like Rutspud who worked directly with Hell’s ‘clients’. Whoever the new Boss was (or whether he was just the old one in disguise), Hell had become, under his rule, a minefield of corporate initiatives and painfully personal accountability.

  “I, for one, welcome Lord Peter’s visit,” said Scabass, though it was obvious he was lying.

  “Even if we’re performing below target?” asked Codmince, who was the meeting’s minutes-taker.

  “What’s important,” said Scabass, “is that the management” – he gestured at himself with chisel-tipped fingers – “are seen to be dealing with failings appropriately.” He consulted his jotter block. “Such as we are seeing in your team, Bootlick.”

  “Say what?” said Bootlick, sitting bolt upright, or as much as he could with a body that was almost entirely boneless.

  “You’ve had three consecutive appraisals that rate you as ‘inadequate’,” said Scabass.

  “Two, man. Just two.”

  “But you haven’t returned your Improvement Action Plan paperwork by the mutually agreed deadline,” said Scabass, “so it’s an automatic fail on your next observation.”

  “No way with that deadline, man. Never agreed to it. And those forms blew my wig. There were over ten thousand pages of them.”

  “Don’t whine or bleat. It’s unprofessional.”

  “Cut me a break. I bust my conk in a tricky area.”

  “And an important one,” said Scabass. “The banquet hall is a flagship for what Hell does. All those people with extremely long chopsticks or knives and forks and whatever, all unable to get the food to reach their mouths. Meanwhile, up in Heaven, an identical room where the blessed use the outsized instruments to feed each other. It speaks to people philosophically. It truly means something.”

  “Ain’t that the truth,” said Bootlick. “But it’s sure hard to get them to stick to the script. They dig right on in with their fingers when I’m not looking.”

  “Then you find a solution.”

  “I’ve been all over that. Moved to soup and spoons, but they just hold them spoons further down. Solid blow my top trying to punish these cats for greed, but they just too damned smart to fall for it. They tell me they on hunger strike now. Man, they good for nothin’ ...”

  Bootlick’s words wilted away as Scabass held up a hand for silence.

  “Don’t decorate your failure with trimmings, Bootlick. You don’t deliver. How can the sixth circle allow you to continue in this fashion when others are doing such sterling work? It wouldn’t be fair to them.”

  His long fingers reached for a panel of toggle switches set into the table before him.

  “Take it slow, man!”

  Scabass fixed Bootlick with an expression that was probably meant to be kind and patrician, but simply looked hungry.

  “You can’t have your cake and eat it, Bootlick, so you will have to step up to the plate and face the music.”

  Bootlick frowned.

  “Say what?”

  “The music,” said Scabass and flicked a switch.

  Like a pouncing spider, a metal contrivance of steel arms dropped onto Bootlick. Pincers grabbed, blades buzzed and, Rutspud saw, there was even a corkscrew and a tin-opener in there which screwed and opened respectively.

  The device was one of the creations from Belphegor’s demonic workshops, the Research and Development unit for all Hell, and it worked with the startlingly efficiency of all Belphegor’s designs. It was so efficient, Bootlick didn’t even have time to scream as the machine chopped and ripped him apart which, Rutspud reflected silently, had a certain mercy. Rutspud watched the bloody dismemberment with a carefully maintained neutral expression. Any demonstration of feelings of sadness or loss would be, at best, mocked or, more likely, seen as a request to follow Bootlick into the mincer.

  Rutspud wiped something wet from his cheek. It wasn’t a tear.

  The machine quickly retracted, leaving a conical pile of body parts and miscellaneous innards on the chair.

  Scabass made a note on his jotter block. The jotter block whimpered.

  “Codmince, you will pick up Bootlick’s duties.”

  “In addition to my own?” asked the demon, alarmed.

  “Of course. Your team are delivering top-graded torture so, clearly, you have capacity to take on more.”

  “But, sir …”

  Codmince fell silent as Scabass’s fingers drifted close to the panel of switches.

  “Good,” said Scabass.

  Scabass ran through the targets, quotas and performances of the other demons around the table. The general theme was the same as always. If you were performing poorly then you would need to be punished. If you were performing well then you were obviously underworked and needed to take on more. Every demon was on a horrific treadmill of being increasingly burdened to the point of destruction. The demons referred to it as the ‘Peter Principle’ in honour of their supreme ruler who had instigated it.

  None of them were safe, not even Rutspud, and he felt his guts tighten as Scabass came to him.

  “Rutspud,” he grinned, showing teeth like tin tacks. “Our star player. I see from the data that you continue to impress. Unprecedented levels of wailing and gnashing of teeth from your team. Your clients report agony levels that we might have thought unsustainable. Even the tough cases that have defeated lesser demons have caved in under your management. Who was that one we sent you last time? Indomitable spirit, kept going on about cleanliness and pie charts.”

  “Nightingale, sir.”

  “That’s right. I hear she’s almost insane with the horror of her plight these days. Almost,” said Scabass, wagging his finger at the demons assembled. “Very important that. Taken to the brink of madness but never tipped over into a place we cannot reach them. Keep it up.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said Rutspud.

  “And Frogspear …” said Scabass.

  “Yes, sire?”

  “Significant improvements since the last meeting. Few client interfaces measured as inadequate. You have, surprisingly, taken on board what we’ve said and turned things around.”

  “I am most grateful for the observation, sire,” said Frogspear. His laughing stick quivered lightly in his hand.

  “Thing is …” said Scabass.

  “Yes, sire?”

  Scabass nodded grimly to himself as though emotionally torn.

  “Thing is, I just don’t like you.”

  He flicked a switch, and the demon-blender dropped and plunged its tools of dissection into Frogspear. Rutspud, sitting next to him, was treated to a close-up of the whole visceral spectacle. When the machine lifted away, Rutspud saw that, in his last moments, Frogspear had reached out and grabbed him. Frogspear’s severed hand and forearm clung now to Rutspud’s wrist. Rutspud prised the hand away and gently deposited it on the pile of parts.

  “This organisation does not tolerate failure,” said Scabass. “Or annoying sycophantic twats. Now, the census. Lord Peter wants a full headcount of the damned and the demons in Hell.”

  “Why, sir?” asked Pigcrack.

  “Hell now functions on an ethos of total accountability at all levels. The fear is that some individuals are being missed out.”

  “Hiding, you mean?”

  “Perhaps,” said Scabass. “Which reminds me. We’re still looking for a new motto for Hell that encapsulates our core values. The new favourite is Every Damned Soul Matters. I think it says something about the personal touch and our commitment to all. Opinions?”

  There were plenty of enthusiastic noises of agreement.

  “
I preferred the old one,” said Rimpurge.

  Scabass nodded.

  “If No One Saw You Do It, It Didn’t Happen? Yes, the thinking is that, while that motto reflected our need for rigorous data-recording and evidencing, others rather unprofessionally interpreted it as What Your Boss Doesn’t Know Won’t Hurt You.”

  Which, Rutspud thought, pretty much summed up every demon’s view of life in Hell. The only freedom one had was in the gaps in The Management’s omniscience.

  “No additional comments?” asked Scabass. “No? Very well. Make a note of that, Codmince. Then, all that remains is the – oh, I almost forgot.” Scabass pushed a grey chit of card along the table to Rutspud. “You’ve a new client to collect.”

  Rutspud looked at the rough-printed writing on the card.

  “The more the merrier,” he said, groaning inwardly.

  “Indeed. And now the team-building exercise. Grab a handful, lads.”

  All the demons except Rutspud gleefully leapt at the pile of remains on Bootlick’s and Frogspear’s chairs.

  “I’ve got Frogspear’s teeth,” said Pigcrack. “These were very good teeth. I’ll trade them for mine.”

  “I’ll trade them for my teeth and my gills,” said Codmince.

  “Who in Hell needs gills?”

  Ah, yes, thought Rutspud, bidding his best enemies a silent farewell. Team-building: building a new team out of the remains of the old. Rimpurge grabbed the last remaining ... remains.

  “Does anyone mind if I take Bootlick’s tail?”

  “That’s not his tail,” said Rutspud.

  Brother Manfred, performing his Lan Que Wai exercises on the grassy slopes above St Cadfan’s, held the firm belief that he could always form a pretty good idea about the upcoming day before morning prayers. Visitors to St Cadfan’s often expressed the view that life on a small Welsh island must be predictable and dull, but Manfred, whose curriculum vitae might have listed past jobs as diverse as Unicycling Grand Master of Bavaria and fencing coach to a crown prince, knew better. Each day since he’d been hastily appointed acting abbot of the monastery had held more challenges than he really required, but this day promised to be exceptional.