The Book of Doom

HE RIVER STYX was one of those things that cropped up in all sorts of different religions and legends. It was first mentioned in Greek mythology, where the ferryman Charon would transport the dead to the underworld on his boat, provided they’d remembered to bring the correct change, and weren’t too concerned about the lack of toilet facilities.

Later, the river appeared in Christian tales. According to these stories, sinners would be drowned in its murky waters prior to being sent into Hell itself, like a small starter portion of suffering before the main course of eternal damnation.

And on and on the waters flowed, through other tales of other underworlds from countless other faiths.

Although flowed probably wasn’t the right way to describe the river’s movement. It oozed like treacle through the desolate landscape. The water – for want of a better word – clung to the sides of the boat, making progress slow and steering sluggish. Zac watched the surface closely, but the constant bubbling made it difficult to detect any movement beneath the waves.

“Hey, look, people.”

Zac looked in the direction Angelo was pointing and saw a crowd lining the shore. They stood like zombies, their mouths hanging open, their arms drooping limply by their sides. They gazed at the boat and through it as it crawled along.

“Coo-ee!” yelled Angelo, giving the figures on the shore a wave. They didn’t wave back, just watched with mournful eyes and groaned with mournful mouths until they were swallowed by the gloom.

“Well, they weren’t very friendly, were they?” Angelo said as the boat continued down the river.

Zac grunted. “Can’t imagine why.”

“It’s all right, this, isn’t it?” said Angelo.

There was a moment of stunned disbelief from Zac. “Well, I’ve had better days.”

“Yeah, but right now. It’s all right. Just hanging out on a boat. I’ve never been on a boat before.” Angelo reached for the rudder. “Can I drive?”

“No, you can’t. Sit down,” Zac told him.

Angelo deflated with a sigh, then slumped back on to the bench. “I wish Herya was here,” he said. “I liked her. Did you like her?”

Zac stayed tight-lipped and focused on the river ahead.

“I liked her,” said Angelo again. “I know she wasn’t a proper angel, but she was nicer than a lot of the ones I know.” His face went pale. “I shouldn’t say that, should I? I could get into trouble.”

“We’re already going to Hell,” Zac said. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

They chugged along for a few metres until Zac finally added, “And yes, she was OK.”

“Do you think we’ll see her again?”

“I don’t know if we’ll see anyone again,” Zac said.

Angelo considered this. “That would be a shame. For you, I mean. People would miss you. I don’t know if anyone would miss me. Not even my mum.”

He didn’t say it like he was looking for sympathy – just like it was a matter of fact.

“What about your dad?” asked Zac, trying to be as tactful as possible. “Have you ever met him?”

Angelo shook his head. “He’ll be well dead by now. Humans don’t live very long. Um... no offence.”

“Right, right... humans,” Zac said. “But don’t you know anything about him? Anything at all?”

There was a pause before Angelo replied. “No one’s told me anything about him, but sometimes... Sometimes it’s like I can feel him. Like I can sort of sense him somehow, and it’s like I do know him then, and he’s... nice. And I can imagine him sitting with me, down at the end of my bed, reading comics to me while I fall asleep.”

He coughed softly, then blushed. “Pretty stupid, huh?”

“Well... who knows?” said Zac, noncommittal.

Angelo took a deep breath, then blew it all out in one go. He turned away so he could wipe his eyes on the cardigan sleeves. Zac pretended not to notice.

“Do you think we’ll find the book?” asked Angelo, changing the subject.

“I think we’re supposed to,” Zac said. “I have a feeling finding it isn’t going to be a problem. Argus said Haures wants us to come.”

“Why would he want that?”

“I don’t know, but all I can think is that it sounds like a trap.”

“So... why are you doing it?” Angelo asked.

“Because it might not be. And because I don’t have any choice.”

“I suppose. You can’t save the world without making some sacrifices,” Angelo said. “You know where I learned that?”

“Jesus?” Zac guessed.

“Well, I was going to say Superman II, actually, but Jesus as well, I suppose.”

Zac laughed. This made Angelo smile. “Look, sorry if I’ve been hard on you,” Zac said hesitantly. “I’m not really a people person.”

“I hadn’t noticed,” Angelo said. “So are we friends now?”

“Let’s just do what we’re here to do,” Zac said. “And we’ll see what happens.”

“So that’s like a date to become friends,” Angelo beamed. “That’s like us making a plan to become friends once we’ve saved the world. Best friends, probably.”

“Well, we’ll see. I’m not really worried about the world. I’m worried about my granddad.”

“Gabriel said he’d look after him.”

“Yeah. That’s what I’m worried about.”

“What about your mum and dad?” Angelo asked. “What happened to them?”

Zac gave a disinterested shrug. “They left. Dumped me with my granddad when I was a few months old and went travelling. Never wanted kids, apparently. Left us alone in a dirty little flat with no money and no income. Haven’t heard from them since.”

Angelo shook his head sadly. “Parents, eh? Yours sound even worse than mine.”

Zac paused. “Well, that’s probably open to debate.”

“Did you want to get back at them?” pressed Angelo. “Is that why you started stealing?”

“No. I started stealing so my granddad and I could eat. And so we could get out of that flat before the damp killed us both.”

Angelo nodded. “Right,” he said slowly. “It’s probably still wrong, though.”

“Yeah,” admitted Zac. “Probably.”

They carried on in silence, each lost in their own thoughts. Other figures stood dotted along the shores. Angelo waved to the first few, but when none of them waved back he stopped. Eventually he avoided even looking their way as the boat crept on through the sludgy, slow-moving Styx.

A cold wind whispered across the surface of the water, forcing Angelo to pull his borrowed cardigan tighter around him.

“Bit chilly, isn’t it?” he chittered.

“Ssh.”

“What? Why? What’s the—?”

Zac put his finger to his lips and glared. Angelo silenced himself by clamping his hand over his mouth and the two of them sat quietly, listening for whatever Zac had heard to come again.

Eventually, Angelo moved his hand away. He was about to speak when—

DONK.

They both looked down at their feet. The sound had been faint, but it had been unmistakable. Something had bumped against the underside of the boat.

Zac cut the engine and it coughed to a stop. The boat slowed, but the oozing flow of the Styx carried it onwards. In the near silence that followed, the only sounds were the lapping of the gloopy waves against the boat’s wooden hull, and the distant groaning of the people on the shore.

“What was it?” Angelo whispered as quietly as he could.

Zac shrugged and pressed his finger to his lips again. The sound may have been nothing. The boat could’ve bumped against a rocky outcrop beneath the water, or a particularly lumpy wave might’ve made the knocking sounds. But he wasn’t taking any chances.

“What do we do?” Angelo mouthed.

Zac looked across to the banks of the river. On one side was a throng of ghostly figures, all gawping eyes and gaping mouths. On the other a vast tangle of tall trees all but blocked the way.

“Nothing,” said Zac softly. “Let’s just wait and see what happens.”

Angelo nodded. “OK.”

The boat kept moving along the river, the wood creaking and groaning as the currents pulled it on.

“Can you swim?” Zac asked.

“What? Why are you asking that?” said Angelo, his eyes widening a little in panic.

“Just in case.”

“In case what?”

“In case we have to swim to shore.”

“Swim? In that?” Angelo whimpered. “Are you crazy? We can’t swim in that. Aquaman couldn’t swim in that! Look at the way it’s bubbling. It’s too hot for a start!”

“Quiet,” Zac hissed. “Calm down. It’s not hot, it just looks like it is. I felt it earlier. And no, I don’t want to swim in it, either, and hopefully we won’t have to. I was only asking if you could swim just in case something happened.”

“Like what?” asked Angelo.

There was a thud from below and the boat lurched wildly from side to side. A few metres ahead of them something frothed the surface of the water, then sank quickly out of sight.

“Like that,” Zac whispered.

Angelo’s face was the colour of snow. His hands were gripping the bench he sat on, his fingernails digging grooves into the old wood. “What was it?” he whimpered. “What was that?”

“How should I know? Just stay quiet. Shut up and let me think.”

“Maybe we should pray.”

“I am not going to pray, so get that idea out of your head right now,” Zac growled. “Just... just shut up for a minute.”

There was a low drone from under the water, like the blasting of a foghorn, or the mournful cry of a wounded whale. Something splashed behind the boat. Zac turned, but all that remained was an expanding ring of ripples on the water’s surface.

“I’m going to start the engine again,” he said softly.

“What? Why? If you do that, it’ll know we’re here.”

“It already knows we’re here.”

Zac took hold of the motor’s ripcord and braced his foot against the wooden bench. He yanked hard on the cable. The motor growled once, then fell silent. Zac pulled again. There was another growl, another splutter, then more silence.

A few metres off the boat’s port side, the surface of the Styx began to froth. Cursing below his breath, Zac tore at the cable, yanking it sharply again and again, trying to force the engine into life.

“Come on,” he hissed, pulling the cord again. “Come on!”

Over the sputtering of the misfiring motor he heard Angelo draw in a breath. His eyes went to where the water had been foaming, even as his arm pulled back once more.

The water was no longer frothing. Something that might have been a tentacle and might have been a neck coiled above the surface of the Styx. At its tip, claws or teeth snapped together as it snaked slowly towards the boat.

“Now should we pray?”

“No!” Zac bellowed as the squirming shape drew closer. He tightened his grip on the ripcord handle and pulled. “I am not going to—”

With a roar, the motor came to life. There was another groan from the thing down below as the boat shot forward, spraying gloopy black liquid in its wake.

“Hallelujah!” cried Angelo, clapping his hands with relief.

A spout of water erupted right ahead of them, forcing Zac to lean hard on the rudder. Angelo grabbed the bench and clung on tightly as the boat leaned left.

“I’m going to fall in!” he wailed.

“No, you’re not,” Zac hissed. Another tentacle or neck or whatever the Hell it was stabbed up through the froth, forcing Zac to put more weight behind the rudder.

“I am!”

“You’re not!” insisted Zac. “Trust me, you are not going to fall in.”

Angelo fell in.

A moment later, so did Zac, as a third appendage struck the boat from beneath, flipping it over.

The water wasn’t hot, but it wasn’t too cold, either. It didn’t take Zac’s breath away. It didn’t make his limbs cramp up. It just clung to him like runny tar, thick and gloopy and dragging him down.

The mournful thing beneath them groaned once again. Zac felt the sound more than heard it as the sludgy Styx vibrated all around him. Angelo flapped and flailed his arms, and took deep, unsteady breaths as he fought to keep his head above the surface.

“You didn’t answer me,” Zac said, dragging himself closer to the boy. “Can you swim?”

Angelo shook his head. “Don’t know. Never tried,” he gasped, and then the ink-black liquid flowed over his face and he sank beneath the Styx with a soft, gloopy schlop.





AC FILLED HIS lungs and ducked down under the waves. The liquid stung his eyes, forcing them shut. He reached out, grabbing at empty space as he tried to catch the sinking boy.

Deeper down, the creature gave another low moan. The pressure of the water seemed to increase. It poked at Zac’s eardrums and pressed down on his head. He felt his lungs shrivel up and it was all he could do to reach the surface before his mouth forced itself open.

The waters of the Styx oozed lazily down his face and tangled his hair. His eyelids were stuck closed, and it was only a splashing in the water that warned him something was behind him.

He had no chance to take a breath this time. He tucked himself up and pulled himself down under the water just as something stabbed at him. He heard the impact on the surface, felt something sharp tearing at his leg, but then he was off and swimming in what he hoped was the direction of the shore.

The sound of his crashing heart thundered around inside his head. He thought of Angelo, down there somewhere in the dark. But it was too late to help him now. Only survival mattered, and survival meant getting to shore.

As he broke the surface, a current caught him, whipping him downriver. Scooping away the worst of the watery goo, he managed to open his eyes. The roaring was still there in his ears as he watched four slinking tentacles snake across the water towards him.

“Angelo!” he shouted, although he knew it was pointless. “Angelo, where are you?”

He thrashed against the current, trying to turn and scramble for the shore, which was now just five or six metres away. That was the moment he realised the roaring sound wasn’t in his head at all.

It was coming from downriver.

It was coming, he realised, from the waterfall.

Zac swore loudly. A waterfall. Argus hadn’t mentioned a waterfall, and yet there a waterfall was. Zac could see the black gloop foaming and frothing as it flowed over the edge of what sounded like a very long drop.

Kicking wildly, he struck out for the shore. The sludge and the currents pulled him down like quicksand. The more he thrashed the faster he sank, and so he focused on every movement, concentrated on his technique, ignored the panic that threatened to overwhelm him.

And all the while the things that may have been necks kept coming closer.

Dark grey rocks jutted up from the water around the shore. They broke the flow, making it erratic and difficult to swim through. Still kicking, Zac grabbed for the closest rock. His fingers brushed by it as the current dragged him closer to the waterfall’s edge. The sound was all he could hear now, the dark misty spray almost all he could see.

The creature in the water droned again. It was closer this time, close enough to vibrate his whole skeleton and make his teeth ache. Something brushed against his leg from below and he found the strength to grab for another jagged rock. This time he was able to hold on, and with a final, desperate kick, he dragged himself up on to the shore.

Winded and exhausted, he crawled across a ground of polished black until his arms gave way beneath him. His brain screamed at him to move further from the water. His body said it would take the suggestion on board, but warned the brain not to get its hopes up.

And Zac just lay there, breathing in the ground and listening to the fury of the falling water.

Then, despite his body’s better judgement, Zac stood up. He looked back at the River Styx. Whatever had been trying to come out, had gone back in. Either that, or it had been swept over the falls. Whatever, it didn’t seem to be after him any longer.

The boat bobbed on by, upside down and spinning lazily as the currents caught it and pulled it towards the edge. Zac watched it go past, heard it bump against the rocks, and then it tipped over the waterfall and was gone.

Zac kept staring at the falls, long after the boat had vanished. “Told him he shouldn’t have come,” he whispered, and he put the crack in his voice down to the fact that his body was still shaking with shock.

Cautiously, he approached the boulders over by the waterfall and peered down over the edge. A rainbow of blacks and greys arced out across the thundering torrent as it tumbled several hundred metres down a sheer cliff face to more rocks below.

Argus and Steropes must have known about the falls. They must have. And yet they hadn’t said anything. Zac didn’t think Argus had been sending them to their doom. What would have been the point? If he’d wanted to destroy them, he could’ve done it in person, without sacrificing his boat or the dart gun he’d handed over as they’d said goodbye.

So either they didn’t know about the waterfall, which was unlikely given that Argus was apparently the all-seeing, or – Zac turned away from the falls and gazed across the landscape beside it – they’d travelled too far.

A path of polished onyx led from the shore towards a towering set of wooden doors. A signpost stood just off the path, its metal surface pitted with rust and stained with spots of dried blood.

Words were written on the sign in jagged black print. Zac wiped the last of the gunge from his eyes and read the text:

WELCOME TO HELL

And below that, in smaller writing:

TRESPASSERS WILL BE INCINERATED

Zac stared at the sign. He was staring so intently at it that he almost cried out in shock when something large and lumpy splattered against it at tremendous speed. Despite the force of the impact, the sign remained undamaged and intact, which was a lot more than could be said for the thing that had hit it.

The flabby body burst like a bag full of warm custard, spraying yellowish-green gunge in all directions. Attached to the body were eight or nine long appendages, which may have been tentacles and may have been necks. Whatever they were, they all stopped moving as everything that had been inside the beast exploded out through the nearest available exit.

From the shore behind him, Zac heard the hiss of rapidly evaporating water. An enormous figure with scaly red skin and lethal-looking horns and Hellfire burning where his eyes should have been, emerged from the River Styx.

Zac didn’t know whether to be relieved or terrified. His mind was made up for him when the Angelo-demon began bounding in his direction, black smoke snorting from his nostrils, his face all knotted up with rage.

The demon’s footsteps shook the smooth ground. Badoom. Badoom. Badoom. Zac fumbled inside his jacket and found the gun Argus had given him. He raised it smoothly and squeezed the trigger.

Nothing happened.

Zac stared into the barrel of the pistol. Scum from the Styx clogged up the hole, making firing the gun impossible.

Angelo howled and kicked out with both legs, propelling himself in Zac’s direction. Leaping into a sideways roll, Zac barely avoided the demon’s fists as they came smashing down, cracking the polished rock where he’d stood.

Scrambling backwards, Zac put his mouth over the end of the gun and sucked out the plug of congealed gunge. He lifted the weapon again and fired. There was a thwip as a dart cut through the air, then a faint boing as it embedded deep into the demon’s neck.

Another leap. Another dodge. Another crack as Angelo missed with another punch. Two more darts buried themselves in his scaly hide and he roared with frustration more than pain.

The air around him was a ripple of heat. He lowered his horns and charged like a bull, his feet booming thunder across the obsidian ground. Zac opened fire as he retreated. A fourth dart hit the demon, then a fifth.

Before he could fire a sixth, Zac tripped on a jagged outcrop and hit the ground hard. His chin smashed against the smooth rock. A jolt of pain buzzed through his skull.

The last thing Zac saw before he passed out was the hulking shape of the Angelo-demon crashing headlong towards him.





AC WAS AWOKEN by a finger. It was poking him repeatedly in the face and was, he quickly decided, really rather annoying.

“Cut it out,” he said, snapping open his eyes. Angelo was kneeling beside him, his index finger hovering just millimetres away from completing another prod.

“You’re awake!”

“Well, I am now, yes,” Zac said. He quickly stood up and looked around. The river was still churning over the edge of the falls, the tall wooden doors were still closed and the gun was still in his hand.

The smell, though, was different. It was the stink of fish rotting in an open sewer. It flooded his nostrils and snagged in gulps at the back of his throat. He put his arm across his mouth and nose as his eyes began to water and his saliva turned sour.

“That’s disgusting,” he coughed.

Angelo nodded. He was topless again, but thankfully his trousers continued to stay in one piece. “Yeah, it’s that thing over there,” he said, pointing at the soggy remains of the river monster, which were spread out across twenty or thirty metres. “I think it might be dead.”

“You think so?”

“I’m not sure,” Angelo said, missing the sarcasm. “Should we, I don’t know, check for a pulse or something?”

Zac bit his tongue. “No,” he said, his voice deliberate and controlled. “It’s definitely dead.”

“Right,” Angelo nodded. “So how did that happen, then? In fact, how did I get out? The last thing I remember is sinking, and then I woke up over there.” His face lit up with excitement. “You saved me! Didn’t you? See, I told you we make a great team!”

“How would me saving you make us a great team?” asked Zac. “Anyway, you got yourself out.”

Angelo frowned. “Oh. Did I? I don’t remember that. Are you sure?”

Zac took off the backpack and slipped the gun inside. “Pretty sure.”

“Well... OK,” said Angelo, shrugging his bare shoulders. He stepped past Zac and studied the signpost. Some of the letters were hidden beneath monster remains, so the sign now read:

COME TO HE

“It says Welcome to Hell,” Zac explained. “You know, under the gunge and monster bits.”

He stared hard at the wooden doors, as if trying to see through them to whatever lay beyond. “You sure you want to do this?”

Angelo still didn’t hesitate. Despite everything that had happened to him, he still didn’t hesitate. Even Zac had to admire that. “Yep.”

“It’ll be safer out here.”

The angel-demon glanced back at the Styx and shivered. “I’m not sure it would be.”

“Well, clearly it would,” Zac insisted. “Being outside Hell would be safer than being inside Hell.”

“Yes, but would it?”

“Yes.”

“Ah,” said Angelo. “But would it?”

“Yes, it would! Obviously. I mean, think about it.”

“That’s as may be,” Angelo said, nodding sagely, “but would it really be—?”

“Forget it,” Zac snapped. He adjusted the rucksack on his shoulders as he stomped off towards the door. “You coming then, or what?”

“Yippee!” said Angelo, skipping on bare feet across the polished floor. He caught up with Zac just as he arrived at the doors. They both leaned back and craned their necks and looked up.

The doorway was fifteen, maybe twenty metres high, and wide enough to drive two tanks through side by side. The wood of the door was dark and smooth, with two handles made of grey crystal mounted at about Zac’s head height.

Angelo whistled quietly. “That’s a big door.”

“It is.”

“I wonder why they need such a big door.”

“I’m trying not to wonder that same thing,” Zac said. He reached for the handles, but neither one turned. He tried pushing the doors, then pulling them. Neither one budged.

“What now?” asked Angelo.

“Not sure,” Zac admitted. He gave the door a final dunt, then turned his attention to the walls on either side. “Wait, look at this.”

Angelo was at his back in a heartbeat, leaning over him, trying to see. “What? What is it?”

Zac studied the metal and plastic box attached to the wall. It had a button marked CALL, and what looked like a small speaker directly above it. “I think... I think it’s an intercom.”

“Oh,” Angelo said. He nodded slowly. “What’s an intercom?”

“It’s like a telephone thing. Press the button and you can speak to whoever is on the other side.”

Realisation spread across Angelo’s face. “Right, one of those. Oh, wait! I just thought of something!”

“What?”

“Star Wars! There’s this bit in Star Wars, right? When Luke and Han Solo are trying to rescue Princess Leia from the Death Star, but she’s, like, being guarded and everything.” Angelo bounced up and down with excitement. “So to get in, they dress up as Stormtroopers and put Chewbacca in handcuffs and pretend to have captured him!”

“Right,” Zac said. “And what then?”

“They rescue Princess Leia.”

Zac hesitated. “OK. And how does that help us?”

Angelo smiled uncertainly. “What?”

“Han Solo and Luke Skywalker. They dress as Stormtroopers and put Chewbacca in handcuffs. How does that apply here?”

Angelo shrugged. “Well... it doesn’t.”

“What? Why the Hell did you tell me, then?”

“Just that it’s one of my favourite bits,” Angelo explained. “Han Solo uses an intercom. That’s what reminded me.”

Zac slapped himself on the forehead. “Oh, for f—” he began, before a crackle from the wall-mounted speaker stopped him. A not-unpleasant female voice addressed them.

“Welcome to Hell, dominion of the Dark Prince Satan and all his underlings. Your misery is our satisfaction. How may I be of assistance today?”

Zac’s mind raced. They’d lost the element of surprise, so there was nothing to gain from keeping quiet. But what could he say? How could he explain who they were and why they were there?

“Hello?” said the voice on the intercom. Zac was about to reply when Angelo stepped past him and approached the speaker. He gave Zac an exaggerated wink, then began to talk.

“Bg,” he said. “Pk. Sshk.”

There was a pause from the other side. “Sorry? I didn’t catch that.”

“Brrrk. Tsst. Jb?” Angelo said, then he bit his lip to stop himself laughing.

“Sorry, we seem to be having technical difficulties,” the woman said. There was a note of irritation in her voice. “One moment and I’ll come on out.”

Angelo stepped back, put his hand over his mouth, and mimed laughing. There was a clunk and a creak and the doors began to swing slowly outwards.

A moment later, a woman in a grey business suit came through the widening gap. Two stubby horns poked up through her greying hair, and as she stepped on to the onyx ground her hooves clipped and clopped.

“Sorry about all that,” the woman said. She smiled, but it wasn’t a real smile. It looked as if she’d learned it from a book, and not a very good book at that. “Now, how may I help you, gentlemen?”

A dart from Zac’s gun lodged in her cheek, just below a pointed ear. Her eyes glazed over at once. “Well, isn’t that just marvellous?” she slurred. A second later, she was asleep on the floor.

The smile fell from Angelo’s face and he pointed down at the slumbering demon woman. “You shot her!” he gasped. “You shot her in the face. I can’t believe you shot her in the face!”

“I thought that was the point,” Zac replied. “I thought that was why you lured her out?”

“I wasn’t luring anyone out, I was just having a laugh!” Angelo yelped. “I didn’t know you were planning to shoot her in the face the minute she stepped outside!”

“It’s just a tranquilliser. She’ll be fine.”

“You hear that, missus?” asked Angelo, leaning over the woman and raising his voice. “It’s just a tranquilliser. You’ll be fine.” He watched her motionless body for a few more seconds. “Oh, look, that’s perked her right up, that has.”

Zac turned away and made for the doors. “Come on,” he muttered.

“Shooting a woman in the face,” Angelo tutted, following behind. “You should be ashamed of yourself.”

They stepped through the doors and found themselves in a small reception area. The walls were painted in shades of lilac and lavender. The carpet was lime green with a darker green zigzag pattern running through it. When Zac looked at it, the pattern seemed to move. The effect made him queasy, so he tried not to look any longer.

A tidy desk stood just inside the doors. A pair of knitting needles and some wool sat on top of it, alongside a glossy magazine called Your Hellhound. On the magazine’s cover was a demonic child hugging what looked to be a bear with all its skin torn off. Magma drizzled from the animal’s snout, much to the apparent delight of the child.

On the wall behind the desk was a colourful laminated notice. It read: YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE DAMNED TO WORK HERE – BUT IT HELPS!!!

“Well, I’ll be honest,” said Angelo, “this isn’t what I was expecting.”

“No,” agreed Zac. “Nor me.”

“I expected it to be... hotter. And, you know, more screaming and stuff.”

“Give it time.”

There were three doors leading out of the room. They had just walked through one, so Zac concentrated on the other two. The first was painted in gloss white, with a small black and silver sign attached to it that read ARRIVALS. He went to this door and pressed his ear against the wood.

“Hear anything?” Angelo asked.

“Yes, you. Shut up.”

Angelo kept quiet while Zac listened. After a moment, Zac stepped away from the door and shook his head. “Nothing,” he said. He gripped the handle. “I’m going to take a look.”

He pulled the door open a few centimetres. The reception area was filled with screaming and wailing and the crackling of an endless fire. Zac quickly closed the door and silence returned.

“Let’s try the other one,” he suggested.

Angelo nodded. “Good idea.”

The third door opened without the fanfare of horror. Zac peeped out and saw a long corridor curving away from the door on both sides. There was no wall across from him, only a waist-high barrier of frosted glass, allowing him to see all the way round in both directions.

There was nobody in sight, so he stepped out of the reception area and into the corridor. It formed a complete circle, covering an area about the size of a football pitch. Doors stood along the wall at two-metre intervals, each one blank and unremarkable.

Music was being piped in from somewhere. It was soft and quiet and would’ve been completely inoffensive had it not been so irritatingly catchy and just ever so slightly out of tune. It reminded him of a tune he knew, but it was as if someone was playing all the right notes in the wrong order, and just a little faster than they should have been played. It was music, Zac thought, designed to drive people mad.

Angelo emerged from the room and ran over to the glass barrier. The corridor was a ring with a vast circular space in the middle. Angelo leaned over the barrier and gave a low whistle of wonder.

“It goes down a long way,” he said. Zac joined him in looking over the edge. He counted eight more ringed corridors below them. At least the next four had a similar number of doors to this one. After that, the angle made it impossible to see more than a few centimetres of floor at the edge of each storey.

On the ground floor the space in the middle of the ring was carpeted in the same jarring zigzag pattern. A gargoyle-shaped fountain stood slap bang in the centre, spewing red liquid from its mouth and eyes.

“Nine circles,” Zac said. “It’s the nine circles of Hell.”

“It’s nicer than I thought,” Angelo said. “You know, apart from the fountain.”

“Where’s the tenth?” Zac asked himself. “There’s supposed to be ten.”

From below they heard the sound of someone whistling along with the muzak. Quietly, they leaned out over the edge and looked down at the corridor beneath the one they were on. They couldn’t see much from where they were, but they spotted a leathery green arm and part of a clawed foot striding along on the second circle.

The hand carried what looked like a battery-operated drill. The drill bit whizzed round a few times, then the creature stopped whistling. They heard him clear his throat, a door creaked open, and the muzak was drowned out by a chorus of wretched moans.

“Right then, you ’orrible little buggers,” cried the demon with the drill. “Say hello to my little friend!”

The groans grew in volume, before the door slammed closed and silenced them. Angelo looked sideways at Zac.

“Well, maybe it’s not that nice.”

Zac turned away from the edge and looked along the corridors. “Still, this isn’t what I expected,” he said. “I thought Hell was all labyrinths and dungeons and lakes of fire, not... not... carpets and corridors and—”

“Escalators,” said Angelo.

Zac paused. “What? Where?”

“Over there,” Angelo said, pointing to a spot about a third of the way round the top corridor. Two sets of moving stairs stood side by side, one leading down, the other coming back up.

Zac’s eyes followed the second circle round until he saw another pair of escalators connecting it with the floor below. A few dozen metres along from those, more moving stairs went between the third and fourth circles.

“No,” Zac frowned. “It can’t be that easy. Can it?”

“Why not?”

“Well, because it’s Hell. Hell’s not supposed to be easy.”

“Stop complaining,” Angelo grinned. “You always want things to be harder than they are.” He pointed right down to the bottom floor. “The book’s down there, isn’t it? The Book of Everything?”

“Apparently so.”

“Come on, I’ll race you. Last one to the stairs is a Judas Iscariot.”

“Angelo, wait!”

It was no use. The boy was off and running, his bare feet thudding on the zigzag carpet, his arms pumping furiously as he sped towards the escalator.

And then a door was opening just along the corridor in front of him.

And then a demon was stepping out, a blood-stained cleaver in his misshapen hands.

The demon looked up. Angelo stumbled to a stop. Their eyes locked.

And that was when the screaming started.