The Book of Doom

AC HAD BEEN expecting doormen at the entrance to the club, but he needn’t have worried. The music had gradually become louder as they’d got nearer the building, and then become almost ear-shatteringly so when a set of double doors slid open at their approach.

“Welcome to Eyedol,” chimed a mechanical voice. It had to be coming from somewhere around the door, but it sounded to Zac as if it were right inside his head. “You’ll never want to leave.”

He and Herya stopped inside the doorway, which swished closed unnoticed a few seconds later. Angelo hid behind them, mumbling a prayer beneath his breath. As far as he was concerned, they’d just entered his own personal Hell.

He found the noise overwhelming. Every beat shook his bones, making his entire skeleton tremble a hundred and fifty times per minute. Red spotlights swept across the high ceiling and walls. Purple lasers painted pictures in clouds of blue smoke. Enormous flat-panel TV screens showing nothing but flames hung on every wall. The fires were only illusions, but Angelo could swear the heat from them was real.

A mass of heaving, sweaty bodies filled the dance floor, gyrating and twisting as if in the grip of madness. The dancers themselves took many forms, but the way they moved and thronged together gave them the appearance of a single living thing with too many limbs and heads to count.

The whole ceiling was designed to look like a bulging bloodshot eye, ogling endlessly down at the masses moving below. It was the single creepiest thing Angelo had seen in his life.

“I don’t like this,” he said.

“What?” asked Zac.

“I said I don’t like this,” repeated Angelo, raising his voice.

Zac pointed to his ear. “Can’t hear you. What?”

Angelo’s wide eyes darted around the cavernous room. The noise, the lights, the movement, they were all doing something to him, making his heart race and his head feel light.

Deep down inside the boy, something stirred.

“I said,” he began, his voice cracking. The next few words came out as a deafening roar: “I don’t like this!”

Zac ducked away, a hand clamped over his ear, a bubble of pain bursting on his lips. Down on the dance floor, a dozen heads glanced in their direction, before going back to thrashing and writhing around.

Angelo was trembling when Zac turned to look at him. His skin was slick with sweat, and in the dark centre of his eyes there was a dim red glow.

“It’s OK. Relax,” Zac said. He put his hands on the boy’s shoulders, then recoiled from the heat. “Angelo, listen to me,” he said more urgently. “Calm down, there’s nothing to worry about.”

“Don’t like it. Don’t like it.”

“I know, but you have to calm down.”

“D-don’t like it.” The words came as a strangled wheeze from Angelo’s cracked lips. “Make... it... stop.”

Herya elbowed Zac out of the way. She smiled down at Angelo and pointed to the door. “Maybe you should wait outside.”

Angelo turned to Zac. The boy’s eyes were a shimmering haze of heat that flickered in time with the thumping beat of the music. “B-but...”

“It’s fine, we’ll call if we need you,” Herya said. She looked to Zac. “Right?”

“Um, yes. Of course. We’ll call if we need you,” Zac said.

“O-OK,” agreed Angelo, and there was a stench like sulphur on his breath. “I’ll w-wait outside.”

With a stuttered nod and a final glance around the inside of the club, Angelo backed towards the door. It slid open at his approach, making him jump. He waved gingerly at Zac and Herya, and then he was gone, leaving behind footprint-shaped scorch marks on the floor.

“That was close,” Zac said, staring down at the footprints. He looked up at the door as it closed shut. “You think he’ll be OK out there?”

“Better than he’d be in here,” Herya shrugged. “This way’s safer for all of us. He’ll be fine.”

“Yeah, I mean it’s just the Greek underworld,” Zac said. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

“He could have his skin and flesh flayed from his bones by the—”

Zac raised his hands, cutting her off. “Yeah. I was joking.”

Herya considered this. “Oh, right. I wasn’t.”

“I guessed that. So, how do we find Argus?”

The Valkyrie’s gaze was sweeping like a spotlight across the room. There were a number of doors dotted along the walls. “He’ll be on one of the higher floors.”

“OK. So how do we get there?”

“Through one of those doors, I think.”

“You think? I thought you knew this guy?”

“I do,” Herya insisted. “But it’s not like I track his every movement. One of these doors will lead us to him.”

“That one,” said Zac, pointing to a door set in the furthest corner of the club. He shoved past her and took to the steps leading down to the dance floor.

Herya was at his back almost immediately. “You’re a mortal. How can you possibly know which door it is?”

“Because it says Staff Only on it. And because it’s the only one being guarded,” replied Zac, not looking back. He pushed through the crowds, avoiding arms and legs, and heads and tails, and other appendages he’d never seen the likes of before – and which he sincerely hoped he’d never see again.

Some of the dancers looked like demons. Not Angelo-grade demons, but demons all the same. The majority of them thrashed around and clawed at the air, as if re-enacting their favourite scenes from The Exorcist. Some of the others played air guitar, their faces contorted in concentration, their clawed fingers flying across an imaginary fretboard, joyfully oblivious to the fact that the pounding dance beat contained no whiff of guitar whatsoever.

There were other shapes in the crowd too. Something ogre-like with a dog’s head. Something that looked to be part lion, part bird. In the middle of the dance floor a woman with a brown paper bag over her head gyrated along to the music’s beat. Snakes wriggled up through holes in the top of the bag, and Zac realised she must be a Gorgon. He and Herya pushed on through the crowd until they reached the door and the man standing before it.

And he was a man, or close at least. He had exactly the right number of arms and legs and heads. Granted, he had one more mouth than was strictly necessary, but after everything he’d seen of late, Zac wasn’t about to quibble over that.

The man wore a black bomber jacket and jeans that looked far too tight. His head was shaved and his arms were folded across his chest. He wasn’t particularly big, but everything about him gave the impression that he was precisely big enough.

His two mouths sat one above the other. Both appeared perfectly normal, and if Zac just squinted a little, he was reassuringly human-looking.

“What do you want?” demanded the man’s top mouth. His bottom one was chewing gum, like it was up against the clock.

“We... we want to see Argus,” Herya said. The music was quieter away from the speakers, and she was able to talk at something like her normal volume.

The bouncer looked her up and down. His bottom mouth continued its frantic chewing. “Do you now?”

“Yes. So I’d advise you to let us through,” the Valkyrie continued. She thought for a moment, then gave her knuckles a menacing crack.

“Would you now?” asked the bottom mouth, in a voice slightly higher than the first.

Herya hesitated. “Yes.”

“Right,” the man said, the top mouth taking control again. He stepped to the side. “Well, you’d best go through, then.”

Another hesitation. “What?” Herya glanced at Zac, then rallied a little. “I mean, yes. Right.” She reached for the door, but the bouncer was back in front of her, both mouths grinning.

“Nah, only joking.” His expression turned serious. “No one sees Mr Argus.”

“It’s important,” Zac said.

“Oh. Right. Is it?” asked the bottom mouth. The bouncer stepped aside once again. “Well, in that case maybe you had better go through, then.”

“Yes, well... I should think so too,” Herya said. She was midway through grabbing for the handle when the man blocked her again.

“Joking again,” said the top mouth. “No one sees Mr Argus. I thought I’d made that clear?”

“You did,” confirmed the bottom mouth.

“Thanks,” replied the top.

“Look,” said Herya firmly. “Get out of the way or I’ll... I’ll... kick your ass.”

The bouncer laughed. “You know why I got these two mouths? It’s so I can eat twice as quick.” All four sets of teeth snapped the air just a few centimetres from Herya’s nose. “Now fly away, little birdie, and take your mortal with you.”

Zac caught the Valkyrie by the arm and pulled her away. She resisted, but only for a moment.

“What did you do that for?” Herya demanded. “I’ve fought bigger than him. I could’ve taken him.”

“Well, maybe you could, but you don’t have to,” Zac told her. “There’s another way through.”

Herya reluctantly tore her gaze from the bouncer. “How?” she asked.

“The lock on the door. It’s a five-pin deadbolt.”

“And? What does that even mean?”

Zac reached into a pocket and pulled out a slim leather case. He unzipped it and showed Herya the tools wrapped within. “It means I can open it. I just need to get that guy out of the way.”

“I could slice out his lungs,” the Valkyrie said, “and, er, make him wear them as a hat.”

Zac blinked. “Well, there’s that, but I was thinking something a bit more subtle,” he said. “Just cause a distraction. Get him to walk away. Thirty seconds, that’s all I’ll need. Do you think you can do that?”

Herya snorted. “Well, yeah. I cause distractions all the time.”

“Do you?” frowned Zac. “Why?”

“What?”

“Why do you cause distractions all the time?”

Herya chewed her lip. “Practice,” she said at last. “Now let me do my thing so you can do yours.”

Zac nodded. “Fair enough.” He took one of the tools from his bag. It looked like a thin screwdriver with a slightly hooked point.

Herya turned and slipped off through the crowds, cursing herself below her breath. I cause distractions all the time, she thought. What in Thor’s name did I say that for?

Contrary to everything she’d said to Zac, she had never actually been in Hades before. The creatures dancing and gyrating around her were like images from her childhood nightmares, all twisted and misshapen and wrong.

As she sidled through the throngs, Herya felt her mouth go dry. Zac would be watching her, she knew, waiting on her making her move. But what move? She had no idea how she was going to lure the bouncer away. She had no idea about anything.

Maybe there was a fire alarm somewhere that she could activate. That might work. She changed course and set off in the direction of the nearest wall. With any luck, it would have a fire alarm button on it somewhere.

A flailing foot caught her on the back of the knee. She cried out in shock as she stumbled forward, before thudding into the back of someone standing by the edge of the dance floor.

There was a crash as the person she had collided with dropped their drink and the glass shattered into slivers on the dirty floor.

“Not again,” Herya groaned. She looked up, past a washboard stomach and a bodybuilder’s chest, and up to the bull-like head of a Minotaur. A hot swirl of steam snorted out from the creature’s nostrils as his mouth pulled into a snarl.

“You spilled my pint,” the Minotaur growled.

“Um, yeah,” said Herya, her voice coming out as a squeak. She glanced over to the bouncer and took a shaky breath. “What you going to do about it?”

Even over the sound of the music, Zac heard the roaring of the Minotaur. There was a sudden commotion and a frantic scuffle as the creature swung its arms in a wide arc. Herya ducked out of the way. The Gorgon wasn’t so lucky. The Minotaur’s fists sent her sprawling to the floor, the brown paper bag slipping off as she fell.

There was a scream as several dancers who had been looking the Gorgon’s way turned to stone.

“Sorry, everyone, sorry!” stammered the snake-headed Gorgon, but panic had already gripped the crowd. It surged away from the Gorgon, only to be battered back by the raging Minotaur.

Demons and monsters alike began to clash, and in seconds the club had become the scene of a full-scale riot.

Zac watched and found himself admiring the Valkyrie’s work. The dancers who weren’t yet fighting were now rushing to get involved. Revellers knocked one another over, then trampled across the fallen in their hurry to get stuck into someone. The club had been chaotic before Herya had done anything, but now it was a very specific type of chaos. One that was taking place well away from the guarded door.

“Oi! What’s going on?” the bouncer’s upper mouth demanded, as the bottom one bit down on another stick of gum. He pushed into the crowd, ducking something short and hairy and vaguely troll-like as it flailed by above his head. “Cut it out, the lot of you!”

Zac sidled along the wall to the now unprotected door. He didn’t hear the faint sloppy schlurp the eyeball on the ceiling made, or see it slowly swivel to look at him as he knelt down beside the door handle.

After a quick glance over his shoulder to make sure the bouncer wasn’t coming, Zac slid the pick into the waiting lock. Before he could find the first pin, the door opened with a faint click.

Zac gave it a cautious push. It swung inward, revealing a long dark corridor. A stale breeze breathed at him from deep within the darkness.

“Come, Zac Corgan,” it said. “I have been expecting you.”





NGELO STOOD OUTSIDE Eyedol with his back pushed firmly against it. The flickering neon glow of the sign washed the surrounding area in shades of red, but he’d discovered that if he pressed right up against the wall he could tuck himself up in a pocket of shadow, out of sight of the rest of the underworld.

His breathing was steady now and he was no longer sweating. He thought he could probably do with going to the toilet again, but it wasn’t a pressing emergency quite yet.

He felt stupid. That was the worst part. He’d been scared by the sights and the sounds in the nightclub and he’d made a fool of himself in front of Zac and Herya. In front of his friends.

He thought about praying, but he didn’t know if anyone would hear him from way down there in the underworld. Then again, with God gone, he’d never been really sure if anyone was even listening any more.

He prayed anyway.

“Hello, it’s me, Angelo,” he said into his pressed-together palms. “I’m in Hades, so this might be a bad line, but if you can hear me, please look after my friends. They’re the only ones I’ve got. So, um, yeah. Love to everyone. Amen.”

There was a sound of breaking glass from over by the front entrance. Someone big and heavy came crashing through the doors before they had a chance to swish all the way open. The monstrous figure landed heavily on its misshapen torso, dragged itself back up on to all four feet, then plunged once more into the club.

Angelo squashed himself further into the shadows as the sounds of battle rang out through the broken doors of Eyedol. He tried to think about Batman, lurking in the dark just like he was. Batman wouldn’t be scared. Batman wasn’t scared of anything.

But he wasn’t Batman. And he was terrified.

“An. Gel. Lo.”

His name came as a whisper, broken into three syllables by a voice that sounded parchment dry. Angelo froze exactly like Batman wouldn’t.

“An. Gel. Lo.”

The voice seemed to come from nowhere in particular. It was just there, loitering around his ears, up to no good.

“An. Gel. Lo.”

“Um, h-hello?” he whimpered. “Who... who’s there?”

“An. Gel. Lo. An. Gel. Lo.”

“Stop it. I’m w-warning you. I know karate.”

There was a soft giggle from the darkness. “No, An. Gel. Lo,” said the whispers. “You don’t.”

And with a rustle, the night snapped shut around him.

Zac stepped into the corridor and the door blew closed, cutting off what little light there had been. He heard the lock slide into place, and knew that there was no going back.

He took a moment to replace his lock-picking tools, before he went for another pocket and pulled out a short plastic tube about the size of a marker pen. It gave a krik as he bent it, and a weak green glow spread along the tube’s length.

The walls on both sides of him blinked in the emerald light. Literally blinked. Hundreds of eyes, each the size of a marble, were embedded into the plaster. They stared at Zac, and Zac stared back. He brought the glow-stick closer to one wall and watched the pupils dilate in response.

“I can see you, Zac Corgan,” said the voice from along the corridor. “Can you see me?”

The voice sounded like it was close to laughter. There was an accent to it too. Greek, probably, considering which underworld they’d ended up in.

Zac stepped away from the wall and peered along the corridor. The green light only extended a metre or two along it, leaving the rest behind a curtain of impenetrable black.

Watched from both sides by countless tiny eyes, Zac pushed on into the darkness until he came to a smooth metal door set into the back wall of the corridor. It opened with a ding, revealing a windowless metal box. There was a light mounted in the ceiling and a rectangular LCD display built into one of the walls.

“Going up,” said the voice.

Zac took a look back along the corridor and found it still in darkness. He could hear the faint clicking sound of ten thousand blinking eyelids, and the distant din of fighting from beyond the door.

“Hurry, Zac Corgan. I do not have all day.”

“All right, all right. Keep your hair on,” Zac muttered, then he stepped into the elevator, turned round, and watched the doors slide closed. The number 666 flashed up in red on the display and the lift began to climb, slowly at first, but quickly picking up speed until Zac felt the G-force pressing down on him.

Just a minute or so later, he experienced a tiny moment of near-weightlessness as the lift came to an abrupt stop. He waited for the doors to open and, after what felt like a very long time, they did.

He stepped out of the lift and gazed around at the room he had arrived in.

It took up roughly the same amount of space as the dance floor downstairs had done, but it couldn’t have looked more different. A luxurious red carpet covered the floor. Vast chandeliers hung from the high, domed ceiling, casting a twinkling glow across the antique furniture. Something classical and dreary was being played on a vintage gramophone over in the corner, and the thudding of the dance music downstairs felt like a dim and distant memory.

“Greetings, Zac Corgan. Welcome to the home of Argus.”

“Where are you?” Zac asked. He looked over the room. “Show yourself.”

“I am here, Zac Corgan,” the voice said. Greek. It was definitely Greek. “I am behind you.”

Zac spun round and saw the lift doors close. There were pillars on either side of the lift, each several times wider than he was. Something about them drew his eye, and it took him just a moment to realise that they weren’t pillars at all. They were legs.

Slowly – ever so slowly – Zac looked up.

Angelo’s heart was playing the bongos in his chest. His arms were pinned by his sides and he could now say with absolute certainty that he definitely needed the toilet.

He was wrapped in a tight cocoon, unable to move, barely able to breathe. He felt as if he were dangling from a great height, being buffeted back and forth on the breeze, and occasionally bumped against something solid and flat. He was absolutely correct in every one of these assumptions.

It was warm in the cocoon, and as panic tightened round Angelo like a noose, it began to get considerably warmer.

Zac didn’t believe in giants. Or rather, he hadn’t believed in giants, until now.

The giant sitting in front of him had changed his mind. He was perched on an enormous throne, into the base of which the elevator doors had been built. He sat forward in the chair, his metre-long fingers gripping the armrests, his shed-sized head lolling down almost to his chest.

The clothes he wore were musty and thick with dust, giving him the look of a long-neglected museum exhibit. His skin was blotchy and held together with stitches. They criss-crossed his face like a city-centre road map, and Zac would’ve sworn that the thing in the chair was long dead, had it not been for the eyes.

The eyes were open. And they were staring down at him.

“Hi,” Zac said. “Almost didn’t see you there.”

“Hello, Zac Corgan,” said that voice again. The giant on the throne made no movement. “Will you bow before the all-seeing Argus?”

Zac gave the question all the consideration it deserved. “Doubt it,” he said.

The voice suddenly brightened. “Good. I cannot stand a kiss-ass!” it cried, and Zac realised it was coming from elsewhere in the room.

He turned to find a man grinning at him from behind dark-tinted glasses. The man was a little shorter than Zac, but considerably wider. He was bare from the waist up, his bulging belly sagging down over a baggy pair of white shorts that were tied with red bows round his knees.

His head was bald, but partially covered by a small red fez that he wore at a jaunty angle. The centre of the man’s chest was matted with thick black hair, and his top lip was weighed down by an equally thick, equally black moustache.

All these things registered just barely at the back of Zac’s mind. The front of his mind, meanwhile, was fully occupied with just one thought: nipples.

Where the man’s nipples should have been, there were eyes. Zac stared at them. He couldn’t help himself. How could he not stare? After a moment, one of the nipples gave him a cheeky wink.

“Yiassas!” cried the man. He caught Zac by the upper arms, then leaned in and kissed him on both cheeks before he could pull away. The man smelled of death and olives. “I am Argus Panoptes. You have been looking for me, yes?”

Zac stepped back. “You’re Argus?” He jabbed a thumb in the direction of the seated giant. “Then who’s that?”

Argus laughed, making his bare belly jiggle like half-set jelly. “This? This is just a statue.”

“It doesn’t look like a statue.”

“It is woven from the skin of my enemies’ children,” Argus said. He smiled again, and in that moment Zac was reminded that he was dealing with a demon. There were too many teeth in that mouth, all crammed in together, jostling for space. “Feel it, yes? Touch it.”

“No, thanks.”

“Please. Please, I insist,” Argus said. “Touch my giant leg. It bring you luck.”

“Right, well, if it’ll make you happy,” Zac sighed. He touched the nearest leg. The skin was disturbingly smooth.

Argus beamed. “Is nice, yes?”

“Not really my cup of tea,” Zac said. “What about the eyes? I’m guessing they didn’t come from your enemies’ children. Unless, you know, your enemies’ children are huge.”

“Ah, no, no. The eyes, they belong to me.”

With a quick flick of his wrist, Argus removed his sunglasses, revealing two dark holes. Zac gazed into the empty sockets, then up at the beach-ball-sized eyeballs in the statue’s face.

“Those must’ve been a tight fit,” he said.

Argus laughed again. “Haha! Yes. They are not my actual eyes, of course. Would you care to sit?”

“No, I’m fine.”

“Please, I insist. Please.”

“I’d prefer to stand,” said Zac.

Argus’s shoulders slumped, then a wry grin crept across his face. He placed his hands on his stomach and folded two rolls of flab together, giving the impression of a mouth.

“Pwease, Zac,” Argus said, moving the rolls so it looked as if they were talking. “Pwease sit down on our lovely couch.”

To their credit, even Argus’s nipples got in on the act. They looked imploringly at Zac.

“Yeah... OK,” Zac said. He pointed at Argus’s belly. “If you promise to stop that.”

Argus laughed again, then he jigged over to a cream leather sofa that stood off to one side of the room. Zac noticed his shoes for the first time. They were bright red with gold trim, curled up at the toes like a genie in a pantomime.

The shoes danced on to a leopard-skin rug that was spread on the floor between the couch and a roaring coal fire. The demon jabbed at the coals with a poker while he waited for Zac to sit.

“I know why you have come to see me, Zac,” he said once Zac had positioned himself on the couch. “I have been following you closely for some time.”

Zac raised an eyebrow. “You have, have you?”

“Please, please, do not take it personally,” said Argus, giving the coals a final stab. “I follow everyone closely.”

He set the poker back on its hook, then turned to face his guest. Zac wished the demon would put the glasses back on, but they were nowhere to be seen, and so he forced himself to stare into the hollow sockets and did his best not to flinch.

Argus slapped his belly several times. It jiggled hypnotically. “You are seeking the Book of Everything and you have come to ask for my help, yes?”

Zac didn’t reply.

“You believe I can provide you with – how you say? – information as to its exact whereabouts.”

“They’ve built a tenth circle on to Hell. I’ve been told you might know what’s down there.”

“I bet you have,” Argus exclaimed. He gave a twirl, and Zac saw there was another eye poking out from the demon’s hairy back. “I am the all-seeing Argus, after all.”

Zac leaned forward slowly, making the leather couch creak. “So what is down there?”

Argus tapped the side of his nose. “Aha! All in good time, yes? Right now, I see we are about to have company.”

With a wink of his nipples, Argus turned and gestured towards the elevator doors, just as they opened with a ping.