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Back The Infernals Save as PDF
Chapters (59)
  1. Contents
  2. In Which We Find Ourselves in Hell, but Only Temporarily, So It’s Not All Bad News
  3. In Which We Learn a Little About How Hard It Is to Be in Love
  4. In Which We Delve Deeper into the Bowels of Hell, Which Is One of Those Chapter Headings That Make Parents Worry About the Kind of Books Their Children Are Reading
  5. In Which We Reacquaint Ourselves with Nurd, formerly “Nurd, The Scourge of Five Deities,” Which Was All Something of a Misunderstanding, Really
  6. In Which We Encounter Mr. Merryweather’s Dwarfs—or Elves—and Rather Wish We Hadn’t
  7. In Which Samuel Is Reunited with Boswell, and We Learn Why One Should Not Trust a Mirror
  8. In Which We Pay a Visit to Mrs. Abernathy’s House. Which Is Nice. Not.
  9. VIII
  10. In Which We Wonder Just How Smart Really Smart People Sometimes Are
  11. In Which Mr. Merryweather’s Elves Embark on a New Adventure
  12. In Which Mr. Merryweather’s Dwarfs Make an Unpleasant Discovery
  13. In Which Samuel Arrives, and Nurd Departs
  14. In Which Dozy Is the Bearer of Bad News
  15. XIII
  16. In Which We Meet a Ram, and Some Old Friends Are Reunited
  17. In Which the Forces of Law and Order Assert Themselves
  18. In Which Something of the Nature of this World Is Revealed Through Old Ram
  19. In Which Hell Gets Stranger, and the Scientists Grow More Curious
  20. XVII
  21. In Which the True Faces of the Conspirators Are Revealed, and an Ugly Bunch They Are Too
  22. XVIII
  23. In Which Those Who Will Be of Help to Samuel Begin to Come Together
  24. In Which We Encounter Some of the Other Unfortunate Residents of Hell
  25. In Which We Meet the Blacksmith
  26. In Which Nurd Considers Changing His Name to “Nurd, Unlucky in Numerous Dimensions”
  27. XXII
  28. In Which We Learn That There Is Always Hope, as Long as One Chooses Not to Abandon It
  29. XXIII
  30. In Which Mrs. Abernathy Loses Her Temper, and We Meet Up Again with an Unpleasant Personage from Earlier in Our Tale
  31. XXIV
  32. In Which We Speculate on What, If Anything, Might Be Worse Than Evil
  33. In Which a Familiar Odor Sends the Dwarfs’ Spirits Soaring
  34. XXVI
  35. In Which We Learn of the Difficulties in Re-creating the Taste of Something Truly Horrible
  36. XXVII
  37. In Which We Hear a Surprising Confession
  38. XXVIII
  39. In Which Everything Goes Horribly Wrong
  40. XXIX
  41. In Which Various August Personages Put Their Plans in Motion
  42. In Which the Watcher Is Torn
  43. XXXI
  44. In Which We Learn a Little of the Responsibilities of Command, and the Perils of Being Commanded
  45. XXXII
  46. In Which Samuel and Mrs. Abernathy Meet Again, Which Only Delights 50 Percent of Those Involved
  47. XXXIII
  48. In Which a Third Force Intervenes in the Conflict
  49. XXXIV
  50. In Which We Encounter Some Cunning Disguises
  51. XXXV
  52. In Which Battle Commences, and a Rescue Mission Is Mounted
  53. XXXVI
  54. In Which a Certain Someone Wakes Up with a Sore Head
  55. XXXVII
  56. In Which We Get to the “Happy Ever After” Part
  57. XXXVIII
  58. In Which We Discover the Limitations of the Term Happily Ever After
  59. Acknowledgments

And why is that? Because you can’t go back to a time before there was a time machine. You just can’t. You’re linking two different points in time, and the earliest of those points has to be the moment at which the time machine came into existence. Sorry, those are the rules. I don’t make them, I just enforce them in books. So the reason why there are no visitors from the future is that nobody has yet managed to build a time machine in our own time. Either that, or someone has invented one and is keeping very quiet about it so that people don’t keep knocking on his door asking him if they can have a go on his time machine, which would be very annoying.5

If Mrs. Abernathy had been able to go back in time, there are a number of things she might have done differently in the course of the attempted invasion of Earth, but principal among them would have been not to underestimate the boy named Samuel Johnson, or his little dog, Boswell. Then again, how could she have imagined that a small boy and his dachshund would prove her undoing? She might have been a demon, but she was also an adult, and most adults have a hard time imagining that small boys, or dachshunds, could possibly be superior to them in any way.

It might have been of some consolation to Mrs. Abernathy to learn that the person responsible for most of her problems was experiencing some rejection and humiliation of his own, for Samuel Johnson had just tried to ask Lucy Highmore on a date.

Samuel had been in love with Lucy from the moment he set eyes on her, which was his first day at Montague Rhodes James Secondary School in Biddlecombe. In Samuel’s eyes, little bluebirds flew ceaselessly around Lucy’s head, serenading her with odes to her beauty and depositing petals in her hair, while angels made her schoolbag a little lighter by helping her with the burden of it, and whispered the answers to math questions into her ear when she was stuck. Come to think of it, that wasn’t angels: it was every other boy in the class, for Lucy Highmore was the kind of girl who made boys dream of marriage and baby carriages, and made other girls dream of Lucy Highmore falling down a steep flight of stairs and landing on a pile of porcupine quills and rusty farm equipment.