The Infernals by John Connolly

said Dozy. “We’re in Hell.”
    “It’s not that bad,” said Angry. “It’s a trifle toasty, I’ll admit, but don’t let’s get carried away here.” He knelt, picked up a handful of fine sand, and watched it slip through his fingers. Mumbles did the same.
    “Look, we must be near the sea,” said Angry. “It’s sand.”
    “No, it’s not,” said Dozy.
    “’Course it is. What else would it be?”
    “Smesand,” said Mumbles, lifting a handful of grains to his nose and sniffing them warily.
    “That’s right,” said Dozy. “It doesn’t smell like sand. That’s because it’s not sand.”
    “What is it, then?” asked Jolly.
    Dozy crooked a finger at them in a follow-me gesture, and they did.
    The four dwarfs lay on the side of one of the dunes, their heads peeping over the top, and watched as the imps fed bones into the sides of their workbenches.
    “They’re bones,” said Angry. “We’re lying on bits of bone. Quite comfortable, actually. Who’d have thought it?”
    “Whose bones are they?” said Jolly.
    “Dunno,” said Dozy. “That bloke over there seems to be in charge, but I don’t think he knows either.”
    They regarded A. Bodkin curiously. He was talking on an old black rotary dial telephone.
    “He’s a nutjob,” said Jolly. “That phone doesn’t have a wire attached to it.”
    “I don’t think that matters,” said Dozy. “I get the feeling that normal rules don’t apply here.”
    They continued to watch A. Bodkin, who was becoming quite animated. Although they couldn’t hear clearly all of what he was saying, it was apparent that he was troubled by Dozy’s unexpected appearance beside his desk, and the fact that Dozy did not appear to be dead.
    “So he’s a demon,” said Angry.
    “Yes,” said Dozy.
    “And all that lot are demons too.”
    “Imps, apparently, but I think it amounts to the same thing.”
    “Then this
is
Hell.”
    “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”
    “How did we end up in Hell? What have we ever done to anyone?”
    There was silence as the other three dwarfs gave Angry’s brain a chance to catch up with his mouth.
    “Ohhhhhh,” said Angry as all the reasons why they might justifiably be in Hell came flooding back like rubbish at hightide. He shrugged his shoulders. “Fair enough, I suppose. I don’t remember dying, though. I thought that was supposed to be part of the deal.”
    “Maybe it’s like Jolly said,” offered Dozy. “We might have hit something and died in the crash.”
    “But I don’t think we did hit anything,” said Jolly. “The van seemed fine. More to the point,
I
feel fine. If I was dead, I’m sure I’d be feeling poorly. And I’d probably smell a bit. Well, a bit more.”
    “So we’re not dead, then,” said Angry. “And if we’re not dead, this can’t be Hell.”
    “I don’t know,” said Dozy. “A. Bodkin over there seemed very sure.”
    “He was probably just pulling your leg,” said Angry. “He looks like the kind of bloke who’d think something like that was funny.”
    Suddenly, a great pillar of pale fire appeared beside A. Bodkin’s desk, stretching from the sands right up to the black clouds above. Its appearance was so unexpected that even the little demons at their desks briefly stopped converting bones to dust in order to watch what was happening.
    A woman’s face appeared in the flames, her eyes twin orbs of the brightest blue.
    “She looks familiar,” said Jolly. “I’ve seen her somewhere before.”
    “She was on the front page of his newspaper,” said Dozy. “Something about being in trouble.”
    “But I didn’t see his newspaper,” said Jolly.
    “Shhh,” said Angry. “I want to hear.”
    As it turned out, hearing what the woman had to say wasn’t going to be a problem. Her voice, when it emerged, sounded like thunder. It was so loud that it hurt the dwarfs’ ears.
    “BODKIN,” said the woman. “WHAT HAVE YOU FOUND?”
    “Here, turn it down, love,” said