Short Story: Old Nick's Apprentice

Short Story: Old Nick's Apprentice

Oh, Rafe,’ cried his Mum, ‘what have you done now?’

‘He’s only blown us to Kingdom come,’ replied his Dad.

‘It was the switchgear, Dad,’ started Rafe, ‘I was adjusting it and then there was this noise…’

‘Look down Rafe.’

Rafe looked and saw the flames and shooting stars as the house and garage continued to explode beneath them.

‘Here’s an angel,’ said Mum, ‘I wonder if we’re dead?’

‘Just hold tight,’ said Dad, ‘he’s probably come to take us to heaven.’

They were holding onto each other like skydivers floating on a thermal, spinning round and round in a circle.

‘Dad, I didn’t join the two red points, I really did join the red and green…’

‘Hold on,’ said Mum, just as the angel reached them.

‘… and then it just went whoosh,’ finished Rafe and since he’d let go of his parents to demonstrate the whooshing motion with his hands, he found himself plummeting to earth and couldn’t stop.

The last thing he heard before he came to land in the burnt debris, that was his house, was the angel calling to him, ‘wait there, Rafe, I’ll come back for you.’

Rafe wondered how his life would be, now that he was dead. Shame he wouldn’t have time to find out – the angel would return any minute.

‘Still believe in Santa as well, kid?’ said a voice, ringing in the place where his ear would have been.

‘Who’s there?’ he demanded

‘Old Nick sent me,’ replied the voice, ‘I’m Numptie.’

‘I can’t see you,’ said Rafe.

‘And what would you be expecting to see?’

‘Don’t know,’ said Rafe, as there appeared before him a dirty old man. He had on a grease stained black jacket teamed with baggy, brown trousers, held up at the waist with string. It was the boots that caught Rafe’s eye; hob nailed, as though they had walked straight out of the l9th century.

‘What’s so funny?’ asked Numptie.

‘You’re having me on, right?’ laughed Rafe, ‘You look like something out of a bad movie.’

‘Pot, kettle and black mean anything to you?’ replied Numptie, pushing Rafe up against a piece of broken mirror.

Rafe peered at himself in the mirror and saw that his reflection now completely matched that of Numptie’s, down to the hob nailed boots, albeit a younger, smaller, and somewhat dirtier version.

‘I’m not like you,’ said Rafe, ‘and anyway, Old Nick doesn’t want me, I’m waiting for an angel.’

‘Yeah, right.’

With that there was a great clang which rang out, penetrating to the depths of Rafe’s being. He put his hands to his head and scrunched his eyes shut, willing it to stop. When he opened his eyes Rafe found himself in a dark hot cavern. The clanging had been the sound of a metal door closing behind him. He almost fainted with the heat, and, as he slipped down onto the cobbled floor, fire sparked and exploded around him.

‘Good to see you getting the hang of it so quickly,’ said a loud booming voice.

Rafe pulled himself to his feet and turned to look around the cavern. There at the far end of the gloomy hall sat an enormous creature, with horns and a tail carrying what looked like a pitchfork.

‘Who’re you?’ demanded Rafe.

‘That’ll be a joke?’

‘There’s been some mistake,’ said Rafe politely, ‘I shouldn’t be here, I’m waiting for an angel.’

‘Aren’t we all, darlin’?’ said the Devil, picking his nose with a dirty claw.

‘No, really,’ protested Rafe, ‘I’ve met him; he’s coming to get me.’

‘Your name Rafe Mitchell?’

Rafe nodded.

‘You just blew up your house? You that Rafe Mitchell?’

Rafe nodded again.

‘And you shouldn’t be here?’

‘No,’ replied Rafe, ‘it was an accident, and…’

‘They’re dead, you’re dead, they’re there, and you’re here. Enough said.’

‘But…’

‘I do the butting around here,’ replied the Devil.

Numptie stepped forward.

‘Come on Rafe, I’ve to show you the ropes…get you started.’

‘I’m leaving!’ Rafe shouted towards the place where Old Nick had been, and suddenly the whole cavern was red with flames. Orange and purple tongues of fire came slaking along the floor and roasted his feet – the hob nails heating up like burning pins.

Rafe started dancing frantically, hopping away from the pain.

‘Shame we don’t have a fiddler,’ boomed Old Nick, from somewhere in the toxic mist, ‘we could throw a party!’

Numptie led Rafe into a sulphurous little hole of a room, filled with numptie clones; wrinkled, ugly, pock-marked little toads, with nasty claws and very big boots.

‘Welcome to your future, Rafe,’ said Numptie and pulled out a coal from the fire. He handed it to Rafe, who tossed it from hand to hand and finally dropped it on the floor.

‘You’ll toughen up with practice,’ said Numptie, and just as Rafe opened his mouth, he continued, ‘yeah, I know, you have an angel coming.’

Rafe picked up the coal which he had just dropped, realising there was something written on it. ‘There’s an address on the coal – it says, ‘gas explosion’.’

‘Yeh we thought we’d start you off easy, since you’ve already done a house fire – quite spectacular, by the way, for an amateur.’

‘I’m not blowing up a house.’ Rafe said, almost laughing at the absurdity of the idea.

However, almost as soon as the laughter left his mouth, Rafe felt his whole body being pulled a hundred feet in the air, a whooshing sound accompanying him as he once again changed location. This sudden change of venue nonsense was beginning to annoy him.

He found himself outside a building and stepped warily up to the entrance. He could see a family moving about inside and could hear the TV blaring. He wasn’t going to blow them up. He stamped his foot in sheer rage and found himself whooshing off again, this time to outside a derelict building. He heard a voice and spun around but there was no one there.

‘I’m telling you Numptie, I’m blowing nothing up.’ He just knew the sneaky toad was checking up on him.

‘It’s not Numptie,’ said a voice, ‘It’s me.’

‘Me who?’ demanded Rafe.

‘The angel.’

‘The angel? The one who dropped me into hell? That angel?’ demanded Rafe.

‘Sorry about that, I’m quite new to this job,’ mumbled the angel.

‘New?’ asked Rafe, ‘I thought you lot were eternal?’

There was a snorting sound. Rafe and the angel looked at each other. ‘Numptie,’ they said in unison.

‘Come out Numptie,’ demanded Rafe, ‘show yourself.’

‘He won’t,’ said the angel, ‘not while I’m here.’

Rafe looked at the angel, then at the spot where he knew Numptie was and said, ‘Why don’t the two of you just get lost?’

There was a scuffling sound with a sharp Numptie-like cry, and then the angel said, ‘He’s gone, could you please blow up this place?’

‘I’m blowing up nothing!’

‘Just do it this once. Trust me.’

‘Trust you? Great help you were at 20,000 feet – if you’d done your job, I wouldn’t be in this mess!’

‘Mind your manners, just stall for a while ‘till we get it sorted,’ said the angel.

‘What’s the problem? Can’t angels get into hell?’ asked Rafe.

‘It’s not about space, it’s about energy, and you’re always surrounded by the Devil’s web. But we’re working on an interface with that, and we’ll get you out soon.’

‘An inter-bloody-face?’

‘Mind your language.’

Rafe sighed again. He felt like he was going crazy; Numptie was crazy, the angel was crazy and Old Nick was definitely bat brained.

‘It should take no more than 5 minutes to work on an interface,’ he snapped, ‘why am I still here?’

‘Well, if we’re honest, we’re not sure how it all works ...’

‘All you do is...’ Rafe began rattling on for about ten minutes, explaining to the angel about downloads, USBs, and hard drives while the angel’s eyes glazed gently over.

‘You should be taking notes,’ shouted Rafe, trying to wake him up.

‘The recording angel will have it all,’ the angel said, ‘I’ll be back soon.’

‘Heard that before...’ started Rafe, before clamping his mouth shut, remembering that the recording angel was obviously in the vicinity,

Rafe sighed and reluctantly went back to his task of blowing up the house. He set the two coils as he’d been instructed, but couldn’t bring himself to complete the circuit. Suddenly he sneezed causing him to double over and inadvertently complete the circuit he held in his hands. What a show of flames – the building went up, the front yard went up, and Rafe went up. He’d have to ask Numptie about some kind of weighting, he thought to himself, as he was flung hundreds of feet into the air. It didn’t half give him a headache. As he came down to earth, he saw the firemen arrive (time seemed to work a bit quicker when you were dead), and saw their relief that it was just an empty building and there were no casualties.

Then there was that clang again and he was back in Old Nick’s Hall. This time the Devil was dressed in a designer tracksuit.

Rafe gave him a look, ‘What? No horns?’

‘Strictly for the tourists.’

Nick could have passed for an ordinary bloke, a bit pasty faced though, probably didn’t get out much.

‘You look almost human,’ said Rafe, ‘great comb-over.’

The Devil scowled and said, ‘You messed up.’

‘I told you I wasn’t killing anybody, I sneezed.’

‘For someone with no nose that was quite a feat,’ sighed the Devil, ‘you had a task, dead easy, no problems, and you blew it, if you’ll pardon the expression.’

‘You shouldn’t be killing people anyway – look at me, I had lots of plans and here I am, dead!’

‘Nothin’ to do with me.’

‘You won’t let me go.’

‘Look, there’s a system here. Let me explain… before anyone gets born, the Fates all get together and have a bit of a meeting in which they allocate a piece of string to the soon to be born human being. When your time’s up they cut the string, and you go home again. Dead simple.’

Rafe didn’t look impressed.

‘Honest,’ said the Devil, without so much as a blush, ‘all I do is hack into their computer, see who’s next for getting their thread cut, and arrange a little party to welcome them home.’

‘But the angel said ...’

‘You and that blasted angel,’ cried Old Nick, ‘some people have to go to the other place, I admit that, but you’re definitely one of mine.’

‘You mean heaven?’

There was a great howl, and flames leapt out of the Devil’s mouth. Loud cries and wailing resounded from all around. Rafe liked that.

‘Heaven, heaven, heaven,’ Rafe shouted repeatedly.

The noise subsided.

‘Very funny – you do that again and you’ll end up an ice cube, in Antarctica, for six months,’ the Devil bellowed.

Rafe never understood why people thought he was deaf; they just kept shouting at him. As in life, so in death, sighed Rafe.

Numptie led Rafe away.

‘You shouldn’t upset him, he’s under pressure.’ He looked around, then whispered, ‘I hate to even think it, but sometimes I wonder if he’s got a target to meet – but who would he have to answer to?’

‘God?’

Numptie screamed and covered his ears. Once he had recovered himself he said, ‘we’ll skip the hot coals bit, just get yourself over to Switzerland – they’re waiting for a nice little avalanche.’

‘That’s not bad,’ said Rafe, ‘a lot of snow coming down a mountain, what harm in that?’

‘Right onto the nicest little village you ever did see,’ laughed Numptie.

Another whoosh - another venue. Rafe stood on the top of the mountain and surveyed the scene. There was no way he was sending an avalanche down there. He looked down on a beautiful little village, all shiny yellow paintwork and red geraniums and lots of people going up and down the mountain. He stamped his foot again and found himself transported to a very different scene. No ski lift, no skiers; just a shabby little village in the middle of nowhere. Rafe looked around and saw the answer – if he could just shift that nice ...

‘You look like a man with a plan,’ said the angel, appearing by his side.

‘I want to put an avalanche on the other side of that poor excuse for a village.’

‘Because?’

‘Because,’ said Rafe, leaning right into the angel’s face, ‘then they can have their own mountain, their own ski resort and then they...’

‘I get the picture.’

‘So? How does the hand of Rafe move a mountain?’

‘You’re getting a bit up yourself, lad,’ said the angel, ‘and, anyway, this is beyond my pay scale, to be honest.’

‘A bit like interfaces?’

The angel gave him a look and said ‘Take a deep breath...’

Rafe breathed in.

‘... and blow out really hard.’

By the time Rafe had finished the out breath, he saw the mountain move, then heard the clang and there he was, back in the Devil’s front room.

The Devil said nothing, he just shivered.

‘Someone walk over your grave?’ giggled Rafe.

‘There’s something good in here,’ screamed the Devil.

‘Calm down, boss,’ said Numptie.

‘I’m telling you there’s something GOOD in here.’

‘That’s impossible,’ said Numptie, ‘nothing good can get this far down, the hungry ghosts get them on level five, and on four there’s that endless video loop of eternal damnation.’

‘Well some daft bat has left a hatch open – I’m telling you there’s good in here – and…’ the Devil clutched his throat, ‘there’s light – I can see daylight.’

Numptie cowered next to his boss’s chair. ‘You’re right boss,’ he whispered, ‘that’s not firelight, that’s something else.’

‘It’s my angel!’ shouted Rafe, ‘they’ve organised the interface.’

The Devil shouted, ‘If that blasted angel is ...’

Numptie asked, ‘what’s an interface?’

But before the Devil could answer the thin chink of light coming through the rock became stronger and turned into a beam. As the Devil and all the numpties shielded their eyes, Rafe could see figures swirling in the light. There before him was definitely his angel but was that also his Mum?

‘Come on Rafe, move yourself,’ shouted the angel.

Rafe jumped onto the white circle of light on the floor, and Whoosh!

‘Not again!’ he cried, ‘I thought I was getting out of here.’

‘You are,’ replied the angel ‘but we’re using Old Nick’s Whoosh since it works so well in this transportation lark.’

The next thing Rafe saw was a door opening.

‘Good,’ said his Mum ‘you’re home at last.’

‘They had a team on you from day one,’ said Dad, sitting comfortably in his usual chair, ‘but when they said Old Nick had picked you as an apprentice, I have to say we were a bit worried.’

He looked at his favourite burger and chips but then he remembered.

‘I don’t eat,’ said Rafe.

‘Of course you don’t,’ said his Mum, ‘none of it’s real, but we thought you’d want to ease yourself into all this “no body, no food, no problems, lots of angels, heaven” thing.’

‘Just one question’ said Rafe, looking at the angel, ‘Old Nick said I should have been there because…well, because it was my fate, and their computer said....’

‘They’ve put an angel wall in now, Rafe. Old Nick’ll need to update quite a bit if he wants to hack back in, and you were always one of ours,’ the angel finished, ‘and he wasn’t having you.’

‘What about what I did for him?’

‘You turned all his evil into good and in the case of the village – they’re all happy as can be now with their new mountain; lots of skiing, tourism booming. They’re raking it in.’

‘Well – that’s it then,’ said Rafe.

‘You sound disappointed,’ said Mum.

‘Well, it’s all very nice really,’ replied Rafe, ‘but isn’t a bit…,’ he looked around at the newly painted blue sky and white cotton wool clouds, with all the sweet little cherubs chirruping merrily, and finished ‘ ...dull?’

The angel and Dad spoke together. ‘Why do you think we went to so much trouble to get you back, Rafe?’

Rafe laughed ‘It’ll be just like home. Can I try on your wings? Where does God keep his computer?’

The angel just laughed and disappeared.