Hell's Bells

Chapter 1:
In Which We Find Ourselves in Hell, But Only Temporarily, So It's Not All Bad News

She place generally referred to as Hell but also known variously as Hades, the Kingdom of Fire, Old Nick's Place 1 , and assorted other names designed to indicate that this is not somewhere in which you might want to spend eternity, let alone a short vacation, was in a state of turmoil. Its ruler, its dark king, was unwell, and by 'unwell' I mean mad as a parade of March hares.

? This source of all Evil, the ancient thing that hid itself in the darkest part of Hell, also had many names, but his followers called him the Great Malevolence. He wished for many things: he wished for every star in every universe to be snuffed out like candle flames between his fingers; he wished for all beauty to cease to be; he wished for cold, and blackness, and a great silence that would last for ever. Most of all, he wished for the end of mankind. He had grown weary of trying to corrupt every human being, one by one, because it was time-consuming, and frustrating, and a lot of human beings continued to defy him by being decent and kind. While he hadn't exactly decided to give up on his efforts entirely, it just seemed easier to destroy the Earth and have done with it, and so he had come up with a plan. At the time, it had seemed like a very good plan, and as far as the Great Malevolence and his followers had been concerned, there was absolutely no way that it could go wrong. None whatsoever. Not a chance. This plan positively and without a shadow of a doubt could not fail.

Naturally, it failed spectacularly.

? Now for those of you who may not be entirely familiar with our story so far, here is a chance for you to catch up.2 When last we met, the Great Malevolence, aided by the demon known as Ba'al, was trying to harness the power of the Large Hadron Collider in order to open the gates of Hell and force his way into our world. The LHC was a massive particle accelerator in Switzerland designed to recreate the moments after the Big Bang that brought the Universe into being. In other words, the LHC was dealing with very primal forces indeed, and buried somewhere in those primal forces was the seed of Evil. Thus it was that the collider created a fissure between worlds, and the Great Malevolence saw his chance.

? Ba'al, his most trusted servant, passed through a portal connecting Hell to Earth, and disguised itself as a woman named Mrs Abernathy in Biddlecombe, England, having first killed the original Mrs Abernathy and taken on her appearance. At the last minute, just as the Great Malevolence and his armies were about to take over the Earth, Mrs Abernathy's plans were foiled by a small boy named Samuel Johnson, his dachshund Boswell, and an inept, although well meaning, demon named Nurd, the Scourge of Five Deities. The Great Malevolence blamed Mrs Abernathy for this, and as a result was now refusing to meet with her, causing her much humiliation and not a little concern for her future.

All clear? Good.