Constable Peel gunned the accelerator, and then released the brake. He’d had enough of demons and Hell. He was tired of the car smelling like poo. This was payback.

The car shot toward the ranks of the dead. Now the dead may not have known a lot about mechanized vehicles, but they’d seen what had happened to the last bunch who’d been hit by the big white cart, and were pretty certain they didn’t want the same thing to happen to them. Unfortunately, being dead, they couldn’t move very fast. In fact, it had been all that they could manage to move at all. Thus the vicar was treated to the sight of a police car chasing skeletal figures across the churchyard, none of whom was in a position to avoid being run over. The vicar was rather enjoying the show until Mr. Berkeley reminded him that some of their troubles were only beginning.

“Er, Vicar,” said Mr. Berkeley, just as the door of the storeroom was hit with such force that it split in half, the two pieces shooting across the church floor and coming to rest against the far wall. A shadow appeared, then became a shape as Bishop Bernard the Bad made his entrance.

Bishop Bernard had never been a handsome man. He had, to be honest, been uglier than a wart on a toad’s bottom, and the centuries spent buried beneath the church had done nothing to improve his looks. His skin was a dirty brown color, like old leather. His nose was gone, leaving only a hole, and his eye sockets were empty, although they now glowed with a cold blue light. He had kept a lot of his teeth, which were long and yellow and, Reverend Ussher thought, a bit sharper than they should have been, as though Bishop Bernard had spent some of his time underground working on them with a file. One leathery hand held a long staff: the bishop’s crosier with which he had been buried. He was also wearing the remains of his robes of office. On his head was his bishop’s miter. It was a bit tattered, and the front half lolled forward like a tongue, but it was undeniably there.

As, regrettably, was Bishop Bernard himself, who was now looking at the verger from out of those empty eye sockets, following his progress as Mr. Berkeley tried to hide behind the pews.

“He can see!” said the verger. “How can he see? He’s got no eyes. That’s not right.”

Above him, Reverend Ussher leaned against the wall, hiding himself from the bishop’s view and pressing a finger to his lips, urging Mr. Berkeley to remain quiet.

“Oh wonderful,” said Mr. Berkeley to himself. “Leave me to face him on my own without even a-”

Bishop Bernard raised his hand, which, like the rest of him, looked like old bones wrapped in brown paper, and extended a finger in the verger’s direction.

“Thou!” said Bishop Bernard, in a voice like gravel in a liquidizer. “Thou art the one!”

He began to advance on the verger, who understood immediately that in this case being “the one” wasn’t a good thing. He hadn’t won the lottery or, if he had, he wished that he hadn’t bought the ticket, because the prize wasn’t going to be very pleasant.

“I’m really not,” said the verger.

“Imprisoned in darkness,” continued Bishop Bernard, still advancing. “My name a jest. Thou art to blame!”

Mr. Berkeley had made the odd joke about Bishop Bernard, he had to admit, but it wasn’t as if he thought the bishop was listening. After all, he was supposed to be dead. This just didn’t seem entirely fair.

“I’m very sorry about that, Your Excellency,” said the verger. “I thought you were, um, resting. It won’t happen again.”

“No, it will not,” said Bishop Bernard, drawing closer and closer. “Thou wilt be punished. Thou wilt have hot pokers inserted into thy bottom. Thou wilt-”

The vicar landed squarely on top of the bishop, and felt something crack. He rolled across the floor and scrambled to his feet, the candlestick raised to defend himself.

Bishop Bernard the Bad had broken in half at the waist. To his credit, it had barely taken the wind out of him, as the saying goes, not that there was much wind in Bishop Bernard to begin with. He released his grip on his crosier and began to crawl along the floor, his hands clutching at the ends of the pews as he pulled himself along, his attention still fixed upon the verger. Meanwhile, his bottom half climbed to its feet and began bumping into things.

“Vicar!” cried Mr. Berkeley. “He’s still coming!”

“Bottoms,” shouted Bishop Bernard. “Pokers.”

The vicar approached Bishop Bernard from behind.

“I’m very sorry,” said the vicar, “but this really must stop.”

He brought the candlestick down hard on Bishop Bernard’s head. It made a ringing sound, and Bishop Bernard’s miter fell off. The bishop ceased crawling, then twisted his head to look back at the vicar.

“Bottoms,” he said again. “Thy bottom!”

“Oh, do be quiet,” said the vicar, and hit Bishop Bernard a second time, then a third. He kept hitting him until there wasn’t much left of Bishop Bernard and even his severed legs had stopped moving and had just toppled over like two pillars joined at the top.

The vicar wiped sweat from his brow. He put his hands on his knees and tried to catch his breath.

“I don’t think,” he said, “that a vicar is supposed to beat a bishop to death, or even back to death.”

Mr. Berkeley looked down upon the remains of Bishop Bernard.

“If anyone asks, we’ll say he fell over,” he said. “Lots of times.”

There was a knocking at the door.

“All safe inside?” said Sergeant Rowan. “It’s the police.”

The vicar and the verger went to open the door. Sergeant Rowan and Constable Peel stood on the step, looking quizzically at them.

“We are most happy to see you, Sergeant,” said the vicar. “Happy, and relieved.”

“Sergeant-,” began the verger, but he was interrupted.

“Let me finish, Mr. Berkeley,” said the vicar.

“Spoilsports,” said the voice of the stone monk from above their heads.

“Just ignore him,” said the vicar. “Now, perhaps-”

“Sergeant,” said the verger again.

“I said, ‘Let me finish,’” the vicar insisted. “Please! Now, Sergeant Rowan, we’ve had the most extraordinary experience, one that you might have found hard to believe had you not seen it with your own eyes-”

“Sergeant,” said Mr. Berkeley, with such force that even the vicar was forced to concede the floor to him.

“Well, what is it?” asked the vicar. “Out with it!”

“Sergeant,” said Mr. Berkeley, “I think your demon is running away…”

XXVIII In Which Nurd Makes a New Friend and Meets Some Old Acquaintances

NURD HAD BEEN VERY much enjoying his trip in the police car, with its flashing lights and interesting whooping noise. Furthermore, Constable Peel was a much better driver than Nurd, although, in his own defense, Nurd had just been getting the hang of the Porsche when the police stopped him and confiscated it. Still, he had been learning a lot just from watching Constable Peel control the machine, and he was wondering how he might go about making his excuses and leaving the policemen, in order to apply what he had learned to his own driving, when they had turned into the churchyard and Nurd had seen the risen dead.

That wasn’t helpful. It was all very well for demons to start pouring into this world from their own-actually, it wasn’t very well at all, come to think of it, but compared to the dead rising from their graves, it was a picnic in the park. It took a lot of serious demonic energy to raise corpses, and Nurd could tell that this was a particularly nasty bunch of dead people. If he’d been wearing a watch, Nurd would have hidden it in his pocket before passing this lot on the street: thieves and cutthroats, all of them.

But that wasn’t what concerned Nurd. What he was witnessing was not the result of some accidental breach between this world and Hell itself. No, there was intent at work here. Evil corpses just didn’t rise up of their own accord; they had to be willed back into existence. And only one being was inclined to go around summoning brigands and murderers from the grave, which suggested to Nurd that a personal appearance by the Great Malevolence was imminent.