a) the difficulty of a targeted acquisition between dimensions

b) an ice-cream salesman

c) a police car

d) a van filled with unknown little people.

She had also exhausted herself bringing them all here, and had fallen into unconsciousness for a time. When she woke, she found that she was unable to locate any of them, at least until the insufferable A. Bodkin had tried to send a message to his superiors, a message that she had intercepted. She now knew roughly the area in which at least some of those whom she had accidentally targeted might be, and by extension where she might find Samuel Johnson, but since this was Hell, which, as we have established, tended to play a little fast and loose with concepts such as direction and geography, it was like being told that a needle is almost certainly in a haystack, and then being shown a very large field filled with very large haystacks. Oh, and the field goes up and down as well as across for very long distances. And it’s a bit diagonal as well.

Therefore Mrs. Abernathy required help if she was to search for the boy, which was why she had decided against immediately torturing those who had earlier turned their backs on her. Instead she listened to their pleas and their excuses before dispatching them to seek out Samuel Johnson. For the most part they had nothing of interest to tell her anyway, but there were certain exceptions. One of those exceptions was standing before her now. Actually, standing might be too strong a word for what it was doing, since it had technically oozed beneath her gaze and had now simply ceased oozing, although assorted substances still dripped from its pores in way that suggested further oozing could only be a matter of time. It resembled a transparent slug with aspirations to be something more interesting, hampered by the fact that it was, and always would be, made of gelatinous material and about three feet tall, and therefore only of interest to other things made of jelly and slightly smaller than itself. Two unblinking eyeballs were set into what was, for now, its front part, beneath which was a toothless mouth. It wore a black top hat, which it raised in greeting using a tentacle that slowly extruded from its body expressly for that purpose, and then was promptly reabsorbed.

“Afternoon, ma’am,” it said. “Happy to see you on the up again, as it were.”

“And you are?” said Mrs. Abernathy.

“Crudford, Esq., ma’am. I work in the Pits of Hopelessness. Don’t really fit in, though. Not the hopeless type. I’ve always been a hopeful sort of gelatinous mass, me. The glass is always half full, that’s what I say. When you’re made of jelly, and only have a hat to your name, it can only get better, can’t it?”

“Someone could take your hat,” said Mrs. Abernathy.