Costume Not Included

by Matthew Hughes

  "So?" said the Devil, wariness coming into his tone.

  "So why does the prime mover in all of this need a new rule before he can cooperate?" The Devil said nothing, his face busy with thoughts. Chesney pressed on. "Who says that you always have to let your pride work against your best interests? Is that a rule? Or is it up to you?"

  "He's got a point," said Joshua. "We'd be making more progress if you didn't want to be in charge."

  "It was my idea!" said Lucifer.

  "Then you'll get top billing," said Chesney. "The thing is, if you bend this rule, now, for Hardacre, you'll be stepping out of the box, won't you?"

  Again, the Devil's expression reflected the work going on behind the darkness of the eyes. And again Chesney pushed the stone a little farther up the hill. "And who put you in that box in the first place?"

  And now the young man saw the dots becoming connected, as Lucifer's eyes narrowed in thought then opened. "Ah," said the Devil, and after a moment, "agreed." A slim finger stirred the air and Billy Lee Hardacre's ravaged body appeared before them on the grass beneath the great tree.

  Simultaneously, from not far away, Chesney heard a cry of shock and despair. "If you don't mind," he said to the Devil. Satan shrugged and stirred the air again, and a moment later, Letitia and Captain Denby appeared. The policeman's eyes fluttered; he was regaining consciousness.

  Lucifer looked down at the blood-stained preacher, then made a shooing motion with one hand. Immediately, Hardacre's wounds closed, the pallor of his face was replaced by pink-cheeked health, and he opened his eyes. He sat up, looked into the faces gazing down at him and said, "Somebody want to tell me what's going on?"

  Chesney did, succinctly and with a certain new-found authority. When he'd finished, the preacher said, "You want me to ghost-write the new gospel–"

  Chesney amended the statement: "This time it will be the real one."

  Hardacre accepted the redaction. He looked at his two co-authors. "Basically," he said, "we're talking a Manichean setup?"

  "Basically, yes," said Joshua, "light and dark, balance of forces."

  "Constantly at war?"

  "Is night at war with day?" said the prophet.

  Hardacre focused on Lucifer. "That the way you see it?"

  There was a silence. Chesney sensed a struggle going on within the Adversary. Then, "Yes, balance. Yin and yang."

  Hardacre looked around. "And I stay here, working with you until we get it written so that everybody's happy?"

  "With your wife," said Joshua.

  The preacher looked around. "I've had worse gigs," he said. "But suppose I don't want the job?"

  "Then," said Lucifer, "you go back to the world, though without the assistance you've been getting from my resources."

  Hardacre smiled wryly. "So it wasn't just my natural charisma?"

  "No. I think you can count on being identified as a threat to the security of your country," said the Devil. "The proceedings would no doubt be informal and extrajudicial in nature. You'd be confined for the rest of your life to a small room that contained both your bed and your toilet."

  "And," said Chesney, "the rest of your life would be a very, very, long time."

  Hardacre smiled again. "It could be worse," he said. "Imagine if they kept trying to execute me." He shrugged. "And after the writing's done?"

  Chesney said, "As the world works its way forward, under the new setup, differences between the partners" – he indicated the prophet and the Devil – "are bound to arise. They will probably need a good arbitrator – that used to be your line of work."

  "Agreed," said Joshua. After a moment, Satan concurred.

  "All right," said Billy Lee, "providing my wife agrees."

  Letitia expressed general agreement, but suggested they work out the details, over in the vicinity of the Tree of Life.

  "Then I suppose we're done," said Chesney. He felt a strong desire to be back in the world, before his mother and her husband got underneath the Tree of Life and under its influence. Sound traveled extraordinarily well in Eden.

  But Melda said, "Wait."

  "What?" said several voices.

  To Hardacre she said, "You've got a mansion and a lot of money, sitting there all on its own. Don't you think you'll need a reliable caretaker couple?"

  The preacher smiled. "I told you you should have been a lawyer." He turned to Chesney. "Power of attorney suit you?"

  Chesney looked at his betrothed. "If it's joint, between Melda and me."

  The Devil motioned toward the blank pages on the table. One of them filled with printing then wafted over to Billy Lee's hands. He scanned the document. "Nice wording," he said. "Airtight. And back-dated."

  Lucifer accepted the compliment. "Just to be sure," he said, "deeds and bank accounts have already been transferred into their names."

  Hardacre looked at Chesney. "So now you're Bruce Wayne. And your buddy's going to be chief of police." He indicated the young woman. "Is she going to be your Robin?"

  "Not a bad idea," said the Actionary.

  "Here's something to think about," said the preacher. "What if all of that is part of somebody else's plan?" He cocked a head toward the dark entity at the table.

  "I guess," said Chesney, "I'll just have to think it through and figure out what's best. Which may be part of somebody else's plan, too."

  Letitia took Billy Lee's arm and began to draw him away. Then she paused and looked back at her son. "Come and visit us from time to time," she said. Now she turned to Melda. There was a brief struggle in the old woman's face, then it resolved and she said, "You, too, my dear."

  Captain Denby was still gagged, but he was making noises around the ball of cloth. Chesney bent and loosened the ties and removed the obstruction. The policeman said, "What the Hell–"

  "We'll explain it all back at the bat cave," Melda said. "With apologies."

  "Xaphan," Chesney said, "we're out of here."

  "'Bout time, too," said the demon, his oversized weasel eyes reflecting the earthly paradise around them, "this place gives me the heebie-jeebies."

  About the Author

  Matt was born sixty years ago in Liverpool, England, but his family moved to Canada when he was five. He has made a living as a writer all of his adult life, first as a journalist, then as a staff speechwriter to the Canadian Ministers of Justice and Environment, and – from 1979 until a few years back – as a freelance corporate and political speechwriter in British Columbia. He is a former director of the Federation of British Columbia Writers and used to belong to Mensa Canada, but these days he's conserving his energies to write fiction.

  He's been married to a very patient woman since the late 1960s, and he has three grown sons.

  Of late, Matt has taken up the secondary occupation of housesitter, so that he can afford to keep on writing fiction yet still eat every day. He's always interested to hear from people who've read his work.

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  An Angry Robot paperback original 2012

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  Copyright © Matthew Hughes 2012

  Matthew Hughes asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN: 9780857661388

  EBook ISBN: 9780857661401

  Cover art: Tom Gauld

  Set in Meridien by THL Design

  Printed in the UK by CPI Mackays, Chatham, ME5 8TD.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

  This book is sold subje
ct to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.