The Infernals Read Free Page B

before him may well be something of a nutter, and could turn dangerous at any time.
    “It doesn’t eat pies,” said the postman slowly. “Only letters.”
    “Right,” said Samuel. “I knew that.”
    “Good,” said the postman, still speaking very slowly.
    “Why are you speaking so slowly?” said Samuel, who found that he had now started speaking slowly as well.
    “Because you’re mad,” said the postman, even more slowly.
    “Oh,” said Samuel.
    “And the letter box can’t come with you to the pie shop. It has to stay where it is. Because it’s a letter box.”
    He patted the letter box gently, and smiled at Samuel as if to say, “See, it’s not a person, it’s a box, so go away, mad bloke.”
    “I’ll look after him,” said Tom. He began to guide Samuel back to the school. “Let’s get you inside the gates, shall we? You can have a nice lie-down.”
    The students near the gates were watching Samuel. Some were sniggering.
    See, it’s that Johnson kid. I told you he was strange.
    At least Lucy wasn’t among them, thought Samuel. She had apparently moved off to spread her fragrant loveliness elsewhere.
    “If it’s not a rude question, why were you offering to buy a pie for a letter box?” said Tom as they made their way into the depths of the playground.
    “I thought it was Lucy Highmore,” said Samuel.
    “Lucy Highmore doesn’t look like a letter box, and I don’t think she’d be very happy if she heard that you thought she did.”
    “It was the red coat. I got confused.”
    “She’s a bit out of your league, isn’t she?” said Tom.
    Samuel sighed sadly. “She’s so far out of my league that we’re not even playing the same sport. But she’s lovely.”
    “You’re an idiot,” said Tom.
    “Who’s an idiot?”
    Maria Mayer, Samuel’s other closest friend at school, joined them.
    “Samuel is,” said Tom. “He just asked out a letter box, thinking it was Lucy Highmore.”
    “Really?” said Maria. “Lucy Highmore. That’s … nice.”
    Her tone was not so much icy as arctic. The word
nice
took on the aspect of an iceberg toward which the good shipLucy Highmore was unwittingly steaming, but Tom, too caught up in his mirth, and Samuel, smarting with embarrassment, failed to notice the way she spoke, or how unhappy she looked.
    Just then, Samuel discovered that Lucy Highmore was not elsewhere. She appeared from behind a crowd of her friends, all still whispering, and Samuel blushed furiously as he realized that she had witnessed what had occurred. He walked on, feeling about the size of a bug, and as he passed Lucy’s group he heard her friends begin to giggle, and then he heard Lucy begin to giggle too.
    I want to go back in time, he thought, back to a time before I ever asked Lucy Highmore for a date. I want to change the past, all of it. I don’t want to be that strange Johnson kid anymore.
    It’s odd, but people are capable of forgetting quite extraordinary occurrences very quickly if it makes them happier to do so, even events as incredible as the gates of Hell opening and spewing out demons of the most unpleasant kind, which is what had happened in the little town of Biddlecombe just over fifteen months earlier. You’d think that after such an experience, people would have woken up every morning, yawned, and scratched their heads before opening their eyes wide in terror and shrieking, “The gates! Demons! They were here! They’ll be back!”
    But people are not like that. It’s probably a good thing, as otherwise life would be very hard to live. It’s not true that time heals all wounds, but it does dull the memory of pain, or peoplewould only go to the dentist once and then never return, or not without some significant guarantees regarding their personal comfort and safety. 6
    So, as the weeks and months had passed, the memory of what had happened in Biddlecombe began to fade until, after a while, people began to wonder if it had really happened at all, or if it