Clovenhoof 05 Beelzebelle Read online

  With a towel around her, and a brush in her hand to defend herself, she crept to the door and then flung it open, brush ready to strike.

  “Ha!”

  Ben cowered automatically.

  “I’m sorry,” he whimpered.

  “Jesus, Ben! I thought it was a ghost.”

  “Do ghosts knock? I know they do in séances, but in real life...”

  She lowered the brush.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” he said, “but there’s a problem with Jeremy.”

  “There’s always a problem with Jeremy.”

  “This one we might need to intervene in. I need you to drive.”

  “I am not exactly dressed for going out,” said Nerys.

  Ben said nothing, but just looked at her. The geeky little man did carry off the kicked puppy look quite well.

  Nerys huffed. Most of her tops and trousers were in the washing machine. She reached for the clothes she had thrown over the dining chairs that morning. At least they were dry now.

  “One minute,” she said, and pushed the door to.

  “Hurry,” said Ben through the door.

  “One minute. God, Ben. I’m not going to go out undressed. I have standards.”

  She heard Ben mumble something to himself.

  “What was that?” she snapped, blouse in hand.

  “Nothing,” said Ben.

  “The work you do at ARC is vital,” said Chip, a paternal hand on Michael’s shoulder. “The world God made – the world God built – is being destroyed. You are at the forefront of the rescue operation.”

  “I understand,” said Michael.

  “By collecting the genetic material of all animals, God’s blueprints for life, you are giving us a chance to restore what may be wiped out in next to no time.”

  “A project like this could take years, decades even,” said Michael, “but it has my fullest commitment.”

  Chip smiled sadly.

  “I only hope we have that long.”

  “Oh, I think the planet will struggle on longer than we imagine,” said the former archangel.

  “Really?” Chip looked at his pinboard. He swept a hand over the racy tabloid front pages and the tales of moral decay from online newspapers. He pointed at a steeply angled red line. “Eighty-four percent of the internet is pornography. Did you know that? Eighty-four! If my calculations are correct, within ten months, you won’t be able to find anything else online. It’ll be bazoomas and wang-doodles from wall to wall.”

  “I’m not sure that’s wholly accurate…”

  “And when it goes beyond a hundred percent, what then? It’ll spill out into our everyday lives. God’s wrath will be upon us then. Scripture makes it abundantly clear. When a nation acts contrary to the good book, it will be beset by storms and strife.”

  Michael, who had had a hand in some of the lesser sections of the Old Testament, struggled to recall exactly which bit of the Bible said that lewd acts caused bad weather. He decided to be diplomatic.

  “It’s a sobering thought.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Chip. He flicked a wall switch and the garage door began to open. He reached into the wine rack below the pinboard and pulled out a bottle of champagne. “As long as you understand the seriousness of the situation we are in.”

  “That I do, Chip.”

  “Good on ya, mate,” said Chip. “We have to be vigilant, before vile acts are performed on every street corner.”

  He placed the champagne bottle in Michael’s hands. “A little Krug. Open it to celebrate when we’re back on track, eh? Now, I’ll let you get home and deal with that doggy business in the morning.”

  Nerys parked up hurriedly on Penns Lane, mounting a kerb and nearly striking a lamppost.

  “I said we had to get here quickly,” gasped Ben from the passenger seat, “but maybe not quite that quickly.”

  Nerys shuffled in her seat irritably and got out.

  “I’m just really uncomfortable,” she said. “I need to stop and …” She grunted. “… and itch.”

  As she began to scratch at her sides, a voice cried out from above.

  “Coo-ee!”

  Clovenhoof waved at them from a narrow balcony.

  “Why’s he wearing a Laura Ashley dress?” said Nerys.

  “In a strange way, it sort of suits him,” said Ben.

  “Oh, Jesus!” said Nerys. “Put some pants on, Jeremy! I can see right up ... oh God!”

  “The door’s locked!” shouted Clovenhoof.

  Nerys groaned as she writhed in prickly tenderness.

  “It’s getting worse.”

  She thrust her hand under her blouse and violently scratched herself.

  At an upstairs window, Ben could see Gorky and a toddler, the monkey holding the baby against the glass. Both watched Clovenhoof and looked to be enjoying themselves enormously.

  “Ben? Nerys?”

  Ben turned. Michael stood in the driveway next door, a middle-aged man beside him. Both looked at Clovenhoof with unconcealed disapproval.

  “What the Hell is this?” Nerys pulled a tiny piece of plant material from the folds of her clothes.

  Ben squinted at it and then made a rapid and worrying series of deductions.

  “Aren’t those the clothes Gorky used to mop up the homebrew?” he blurted.

  “What?” said Nerys.

  “It’s full of euphorbia!”

  “What?”

  “It’s poisonous, Nerys! Get them off! Get them off!”

  “What?!”

  “It only made me go blind,” called Clovenhoof. “He’s exaggerating.”

  “WHAT?!”

  Nerys, who had begun tugging at her buttons at the mention of poison, now ripped at her clothing.

  “Oh, God! Help me!”

  Ben, robbed of all thought in his panic, grabbed at her jeans. Nerys slapped at his hands.

  “No, they’ve got to come off!” said Ben. “All of them!”

  The blouse was off. Nerys in her haste to dress had not put anything on underneath but, for once, her general disregard for how much of her flesh was on show was actually of some practical use. Ben couldn’t get a grip on her fiddly trouser buttons, so she pushed him away and, popping seams, slid them straight down over her hips.

  “And you tell me I should put on some pants,” snorted Clovenhoof.

  Naked, Nerys kicked the jeans away as though they were on fire. Ben could see pink blotchy rashes had sprung up across her body.

  “It looks bad,” he groaned. “What? What are you doing?”

  Nerys was pulling at Ben’s shirt.

  “I’m naked!” she squealed. “Give me your fucking clothes!”

  “Not yet,” said Ben. “We’ve got to wash the residue off you.”

  “Urine!” shouted Clovenhoof. “Aren’t you meant to piss on jellyfish stings?”

  “I have not been stung by a jellyfish!” bellowed Nerys.

  “It might work,” said Clovenhoof, hoisted up his dress and let rip. Being entirely unsighted, he had no idea where to aim and sprinkled next door’s driveway with his uncontrolled pee.

  Both Michael and his companion leapt back in horror as piss splashed over their shoes.

  “Euphorbia’s an alkali poison!” exclaimed Ben and pulled away from Nerys.

  Unfortunately, she still had hold of his shirt, and buttons flew off as she all but tore it from his torso. Ben ran to Michael and grabbed the bottle of fizzy wine from his stunned hands. He ripped the foil as he turned back.

  “The alcohol’s acidic!” he yelled at Nerys.

  The naked woman, two hands failing to cover much of her indecency, gave him a wide-eyed stare of bewildered horror. Ben popped the cork with an unlikely show of strength and then, shaking the bottle like a Formula One champion, sprayed it at Nerys.

  Nerys had moved beyond the capacity for words and simply squeaked in misery and fear.

  “Turn!” Ben yelled. “I’ve got to get you covered! Move your arms! Lift your…
your, you know… Yes, like that!”

  Beneath the squeals and the hollers, Ben heard Michael’s stunned companion fume.

  “Vile acts in the street!”

  “I can’t even begin to explain…” Michael said.

  Yes, Ben found himself reflecting as the last of the plonk spurted out. The sight of a bare-chested man dousing a naked woman with champagne while a man in a dress peed from above did indeed defy explanation.

  He realised there was a man in a motorcycle crash helmet next to him. Ben looked at the young man.

  “Which one of you ordered the pizza?” the delivery man asked.

  Chapter 6 – In which Clovenhoof has monkey problems, Nerys breaks in, and Michael tries to earn some brownie points

  Ben opened the door to his flat with a yawn.

  “Come with me,” said Nerys.

  “What?”

  “Something funny’s going on.” She tugged his arm.

  “Can I get dressed first?” Ben asked, indicating his droopy pyjama bottoms and faded t-shirt.

  “Just pop that blanket around yourself, you’ll be fine,” said Nerys, pointing.

  Ben stared at the fluffy comforter neatly folded on the back of a chair, confused.

  “What’s the matter? Come on,” said Nerys.

  “I don’t have a blanket like this,” said Ben. He shook it out and they both saw that it was made of pink fleece, patterned with hearts.

  “No, it’s not really your style,” admitted Nerys, “but it does look quite cosy.”

  Ben draped it across his shoulders with a small scowl, in the manner of someone slightly afraid that pink and fluffy might be contagious, and followed Nerys up to her flat.

  “Look!” she said, as she led the way into her kitchen and made emphatic pointing gestures that gave Ben no real clue as to where he needed to look. He scanned carefully for signs of something amiss. The surfaces were tidy, the cooker looked shiny and clean, a bowl of oranges was the finishing touch on an immaculate kitchen. He wondered if the kettle needed descaling. He walked over to look inside, but Nerys stamped her foot with impatience.

  “It’s not at all how I left it!” she wailed. “There were some dirty plates on the side there, and that bowl there with oranges in it had some leftover prawn crackers from the Happy Gathering.”

  Ben nodded in understanding. “Ah. It’s obvious what’s going on.”

  “It is? What are you thinking? Burglar, demonic possession, obsessive compulsive poltergeist?”

  “You’ve got a monosodium glutamate hangover, I’d say.”

  Nerys fixed him with a hard look.

  “It’s the flavour enhancer that they put in …”

  “I know what it is!”

  “Well, it gives you a sort of hangover. I bet you got up and tidied the kitchen without even realising it, while you were still groggy.”

  “That is the most insane thing I ever heard! Let’s just say for a moment that I was so utterly incapacitated that I turned into a domestic goddess - never happened before, by the way - but did I also go shopping? I didn’t even have any oranges yesterday.”

  “Have you got a better explanation?”

  Nerys had to concede that she didn’t.

  Ben left Nerys staring suspiciously at the mound of shining oranges and went back to his own flat to get dressed. As he walked through the door he hesitated. He had the faint but insistent impression that things here had moved around too. His eyes flicked across the room. The battered but comfy armchair was in the right place. The taxidermy magazine on the table was still open at the interesting article about polishing eyeballs to make them look real. He moved closer to the table, checking his latest work in progress. It was a small spaniel that belonged to a friend of Nerys’s. After the dog’s unfortunate demise, Ben had been asked to treat it with the same care and reverence that he’d shown to Twinkle. Ben was doing exactly that, although he would miss out the parts where the dog was strapped to a tricycle, doused with alcohol, and set on fire. Something looked different though; the dog had moved. Surely that wasn’t possible? Ben knew it was irrational, but he leaned over and tried to locate the dog’s pulse point with his finger and thumb, just to be sure, although the fact that the dog was filled entirely with styrofoam stuffing would surely indicate that a pulse was rather unlikely.

  Michael filed into his pew for the Consecr8 earlybirds service. Attending first thing in the morning meant that he could nourish his spiritual needs before starting work. As a bonus, it also attracted double Piety Points. As the music faded and Chip took his place at the pulpit, Michael let his mind drift, tallying up the points that he’d recently collected. His attendance was now optimised to gain maximum points, and he had connected his credit card with the church’s website, so that making purchases from the supermarket and petrol station would also top up his account.

  There was a new system which encouraged the purchase of Bibles and prayer books as gifts for friends and family. The points to be gained from this were generous, but Michael ran through his circle of friends and wasn’t sure that any of them would appreciate the thought. Previous attempts he’d made to encourage Nerys to read the Bible had been met with much resistance. Michael realised that he hadn’t been paying proper attention to Chip’s sermon and quietly admonished himself.

  “When you’re adrift on a sea of sin, you will want help. You will need help. You will all need help.” Michael nodded in agreement. “We are all beset, every day, by the forces of darkness. Only yesterday, I witnessed heinous acts of violence and indecency here on the streets of this town. Our town. Those sinful influences approach from every side, and we must all be vigilant. We must all follow the path of strict righteousness, for only the most pious, the most devoted believers will be provided for when the day of reckoning arrives. You must prove yourselves worthy in every way possible. This church has worked hard to provide a framework to enable you to do this, and now it’s time to see whether you measure up. You can now see whether you will be saved, or whether you will drown in this sea of sin.”

  Michael frowned, not sure what was coming. Chip pressed a button on the pulpit and there was an electric whirring sound. All heads turned to see curtains being drawn apart, high on the wall. They revealed an electronic board, showing a list of names. Michael gasped as he realised that it was a leader board. Where was he? Surely he must be close to the top? There were at least three hundred names on the board, but only the top hundred-odd were green, all of the others were red. Michael Michaels was at number eight. There were seven people ahead of him!

  He became aware of a rising level of noise in the church. Chip was winding up his sermon, but people were not really listening. They were focussed on the board and their position on it. Michael made sure that his hands weren’t visible above the pew, and discreetly turned on his phone. He accessed the church’s online shop and paused for a moment as he decided how many prayer books and Bibles to add to his basket. He decided that a hundred would do to start with, and clicked through to make the purchase.

  Clovenhoof was awake, and decided it was time for his breakfast in bed. He rolled over and rang the bell on his bedside table, waiting to hear the scampering of Gorky’s feet.

  “I’ll have Lambrini on Coco Pops today, I think,” he called out. He waited a few minutes, staring at the cracks on the ceiling, pleased that he was once more able to do so. He had put most of them there himself with a little bedtime airpistol practice. There was silence in the flat. “Don’t worry too much about the Coco Pops, if you can’t find any.”

  More silence. Clovenhoof sighed and climbed out of bed. Having a helper monkey was much more fun when it did what you wanted.

  He went through to Gorky’s room.

  “Time to earn your keep, minion!” he bellowed, as he tugged the covers off Gorky’s nest. “Oh.”

  There was no sign of him. Clovenhoof frowned and toured the rest of the flat, attempting the noise that Nerys used to make when she called Twinkle. It sounded somet
hing between a leaking radiator valve and a badly tuned radio, but he persisted, until he heard a faint scratching noise coming from the airing cupboard. He flung open the door and found that the side wall had a new hole in it. The hole was too small for him to look properly through, but it seemed as though it led to a narrow cavity between the walls. A faint scampering sound indicated that Gorky was somewhere inside it. The inside of Clovenhoof’s airing cupboard had been transformed by his recent homebrew experiments, and was not a model of tidiness, but even he was surprised at the strange contents and the appalling smell. Towels and blankets that had been pushed aside to make room for brewing equipment had been carefully arranged into a huge, plush nest. In the centre of the nest a pair of eyes stared blankly at him. Clovenhoof knew those eyes. They had belonged to Nerys’s Aunt Molly who had died a few months after his arrival on earth. They had been torn from a photograph and attached to the front of a strange, lifeless form in his airing cupboard. Clovenhoof picked it up. It was the approximate size and shape of a human baby, but this thing was a grotesque anomaly, even to a fan of the grotesque and anomalous. The limbs were taxidermy spares from Ben’s flat, he was fairly certain of that. They had, at some point, belonged to a fox, or maybe a large rabbit. The claws gave it a demonic, grasping appearance. He pulled back the knitted baby hat on the thing’s head to see what it was made from. It appeared to be a Spanish onion, and was clearly the source of the unpleasant smell, as it was seeping putrid fluid. The pieces were held together with some spectacularly bad sewing. In fact, it seemed to Clovenhoof that the creator of this bizarre doll had given up with the coarse black thread and had used cocktail sticks to spear the pieces together.

  “You’re coming with me, onion baby,” he said.

  He carried it across the hall to Ben’s flat, dribbling the stinking onion juice.

  “What is that horrible smell?” Ben said, covering his nose and mouth with a hand as he opened the door. “Don’t you dare bring it in here! It’s even worse than that time when you brought back that sofa that you’d found in the canal.”