The Naming of the Beasts

The raincoat, piebald Doc Martens and grubby workmen’s trousers with pockets on the knees gave the overall impression that the body was that of a man; otherwise it would have been hard to say. He’d been dead a long time, which meant that rats and flies and the elements and the chemicals inside his own body had had their way with him. What flesh was left looked dry and mummified: one side of his face was staved in almost flat; from the other side, where most of the flesh had fallen or been picked away, the empty orb of his eye socket stared up at us with an expression of innocent surprise. He’d left no ghost to warn our death-sense that he was there, and mercifully he hadn’t risen in the flesh. There was nothing left of him except this sad ruin, and the smell.

‘Homeless guy,’ Trudie surmised, probably on the evidence of the boots. ‘How do you think he died?’

‘I think we can rule out natural causes,’ I said grimly.

I pointed to the tunnel wall above the man’s head. A dark stain on the tiles there had dried black, but with dark red highlights still visible here and there. It was shaped like an exploding firework, rising up on a slender column to blossom out in all directions. But the column had come last, of course. That was where the tramp had slithered down the wall after Asmodeus had slammed his head into it hard enough to shatter his skull.

It was Asmodeus; there was no reason to doubt that any more. The dead man might have left no echo of himself in this place, but the demon’s sickly essence hung around us now like a pall, and I knew it beyond all possibility of mistake. He hadn’t just passed through here; he’d lingered, and made himself at home. Trudie’s face showed that she felt it too. We’d struck the mother lode.

Without a word, we ducked and clambered through the narrow opening into a much larger space beyond. This was where the corridor ended, in a concrete wall about twenty feet ahead of us, but it came out beyond the road tunnel here, so it resumed its full height for this last stretch. What we were in was like a room whose only doorway was the one we’d just entered through.

It was even furnished, after a fashion. There was a grubby mattress on the floor, a sleeping bag on top of it, both of which must once have belonged to the poor bastard outside. In the near corner a dozen or so overstuffed carrier bags clustered like chubby little children cowering from an ogre: the dead man’s worldly goods.

But these melancholy, mundane details were pushed to the edges of my attention by the sight of the far wall, at which Trudie was staring open-mouthed. The chemical stench was stronger here. It was coming from a sprawl of pots and cans at the base of the wall, and from the wall itself, where Asmodeus had made himself busy.

From floor to ceiling, the space was covered with symbols, with words and with wards. The words were in Aramaic, so I couldn’t make them out, but the design was instantly familiar. A downward-pointing pentagram, with aleph sigils at the point of each arm and radiating lines fanning out across the negative spaces between the arms. Even if Nicky hadn’t listed those features for me, I would have known it. Whoever had drawn these designs had also left the unidentified wards in Pen’s drive, under Juliet’s hedge and on the roof of the Gaumont.

‘Tsukelit,’ Trudie spelled out. ‘Ket. Ilalliel. Jetaniul. Tlallik. Aketsulitur. Castor, do you know any of these names?’

For a moment I didn’t; they were just sounds. But then the thing that all the sounds had in common drove itself into my brain like a railroad spike. I’d been way, way off, and so had Nicky. The common denominator had never been me. ‘I know all of those names,’ I said, my mouth suddenly dry. ‘Or at least I know who they belong to. Jesus Christ, this is—’

The lights went out before I could finish the sentence, plunging us into absolute blackness. A whole second later, snaking down the corridor like a whiplash, came the chunking sound of the switch being thrown.

‘Fuck!’ Trudie gasped.

We were in the dark, half a mile away from the light switch, and we both knew who was out there, standing between us and the light, even before we heard the chilling boom of his laughter.

‘Run,’ I said tightly.

‘Run where?’ Trudie snarled. ‘We can’t see to run. Get out your whistle, Castor. Let’s give the bastard a fight at least.’

I found her arm in the dark, gripped it tightly and hauled her back towards the opening. ‘Not here,’ I said. ‘Not on his terms. He can see in the dark, Pax. If we stay here, we’re dead. Come on.’

She pulled back against me for a second, then gave in. We crawled on hands and knees back over the demon’s threshold into the corridor beyond. Trudie gave a sobbing cry of protest, which I took to mean that her hand had made contact with the corpse. I dragged her to her feet, though we still had to crouch, and set off at a stumbling jogtrot back up the tunnel.