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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

Abigor faded back into the shadows, and then disappeared. Ozymuth released a long, ragged breath. He was playing a dangerous game, and he knew it, but if he distrusted Duke Abigor, then he hated Mrs. Abernathy more. He gripped his staff and headed deeper into the Mountain of Despair, wincing as the howls of his master grew louder. At the entrance to the inner chamber, he paused. In the gloom, his keen eyes espied the massive shape of the Great Malevolence, curled in upon himself in grief.

“It is I, my master,” he said, poison dripping from every word. “I bear you sad tidings: your faithless lieutenant, Mrs. Abernathy, continues to speak ill of you …”

In Which We Reacquaint Ourselves with Nurd, formerly “Nurd, The Scourge of Five Deities,” Which Was All Something of a Misunderstanding, Really

FROM A PERFECTLY MODEST cave in the base of a Not Terribly Interesting mountain in a Nothing to See Here, Move Along Now part of Hell, there came the sound of tinkering. Tinkering, as you may be aware, is essentially a male pursuit. Women, by and large, do not tinker, which is why it was a man who originally invented the garden shed and the garage, both of which are basically places to which men can retreat in order to perform tasks that serve no particularly useful purpose other than to give them something to do with their hands that does not involve eating, drinking, or fiddling with the remote control for the television. Very occasionally, a useful invention may result from tinkering, but for the most part tinkering involves trying to improve pieces of machinery that work perfectly well already, with the result that they stop doing what they were supposed to do and instead do nothing at all, hence requiring more tinkering to fix them, and even then they never work quite as well as they did before, so they have to be tinkered with some more, and so on and so on, until eventually the man in question dies, often after being severely beaten by his wife with a malfunctioning kettle, or a piece of a fridge.

Inside the cave was a car. At one point, the car had been a pristine Aston Martin, perfectly maintained by Samuel Johnson’s father, who had kept it in the garage behind their house and only drove it on sunny days. Unfortunately the car had been one of the casualties of the demonic assault on Biddlecombe. Without it, though, there might not have been a Biddlecombe at all, or not one that wasn’t overrun by Hellish entities. Samuel’s dad hadn’t seen things that way, though, once he found out that his car was missing.