Now, it turns out that such a thing does exist, right here on the mortal coil. Hyperbolic geometry is a type of non-eucidian geometry wherein space has more actual space "stuffed in" if you will, such that if you were to draw two parallel lines on the ground and then extend them indefinitely in straight lines, they would diverge.
Also, fractals: because they don't exist in an even number of dimensions, their area is finite while their outline is infinite. If this sounds way abstract and impossible except in mathematics - it actually isn't: you encounter fractal geometries in living things all the time. For example, the surface of gnarled tree bark is two point seven dimensional - meaning, if you measure a length around a tree trunk with your hand; then the way along your fingers from the tip of your thumb to the tip of your index finger is a defined length (about twenty centimeters), while going exactly along the surface of the bark down to the smallest possible level, the way is infinite and undefined. If you want to give yourself a headache: something similar is true for the surface of your brain...
- Since in real life you encounter this in living things (not artificial), this could be a way of emphasising that the place where the bus goes to appears more alive than anything else the narrator has seen up to this point.
- Near the end of the part where he explains his economic scheme, Ikey says that "They" will come out when the night fully falls, and that part of why the ghosts make their fake houses is for the illusion of safety. So presumably Satan and his demons are still being held at bay even in the Gray Town by the last vestiges of Divine Grace... and when the last soul makes the last choice, that vestige will be withdrawn, the twilight will turn to full night, and the demons will move in.
- All you have for that is Ikey's word, though (who might well be an Unreliable Narrator here as well as for other things that are proven to be different from Ikey's idea of them later in the book) — what MacDonald explains later about the workings of hell is quite a different story (namely, that the damned shut themselves up in the Self-Inflicted Hell of their own minds) — meaning that while the fear of demons is real, the existence of demons themselves might well be a lie, rumor, or mistaken assumption. No one in hell who knows otherwise, least of all Hell itself, would correct this mistake if it were one — the denizens all are Jerks, and Hell is a Yandere master psychological abuser — so if people want to torture themselves with the fear of "them" even though "they" don't exist... Plus, it nicely keeps them from realising their hell is entirely self-inflicted and their evil is 100% their own fault (with no devils making or tempting them) if people can blame demons for either. If they realised those two things, they could get out; so the fear of demons keeps them inside even if there are no demons and no Satan at all.