The Devil's Detective

by Simon Kurt Unsworth

  “Fool,” said Elderflower, the smile weeping from his face. “Their wishes were clear. They have specifically asked for you, and we will comply because we are all servants of those who sit above us. Your colleagues can keep your investigation’s fires burning as you carry out these other duties. You may not like them, but be aware: you will carry them out to the best of your ability, you will be courteous and answer the delegation’s questions as best you can, and you will take them anywhere they wish to go and show them whatever they wish to see. Is that clear?”

  “Yes,” said Fool, not trusting himself to say anything else.

  “Good. Now, there is a body awaiting your attentions, I believe.” Elderflower turned and began to walk away, his feet making delicate taps on the surface of the roadway. Where he was going, Fool wasn’t sure; the Orphanage was in the hinterland between the area most of the humans lived in and the farmlands beyond, and they had traveled here on the train and by walking the last mile. Somehow, he couldn’t imagine Elderflower on a train, even one that would be, out here at least, nearly empty. He grew angrier as he watched the small figure move away; he moved like a man with no cares, almost bouncing as he walked, a man who has done his job and can leave safe in the knowledge that what happens next is for someone else to deal with.

  “Elderflower,” Fool called, knowing he shouldn’t speak but letting the burn inside him power the words. “You send us the tube, and it tells us that there’s a body here, that there’s been another blue flash. Were there witnesses?”

  Elderflower turned but didn’t come back toward them. “No,” he said, another unquantifiable look on his face.

  “Then how did you know? About the murder, and the flash?”

  “Because this is Hell, Thomas. This is Hell, and this is a place where things are known without understanding the knowing.”

  “Then you know who did this, what we’ll find inside?”

  “No, but Hell itself knows, Thomas.”

  “Then why should we investigate? If Hell already knows?”

  “Because this is Hell, Thomas—have you understood nothing? We all do what it requires of us, no matter how pointless or trivial those things appear to be. We are, all of us, at the whim of forces and desires and urgencies far greater, far wider, than we can ever hope to recognize or understand. Hell knows what you will find in there, but it will not pass on that knowledge, because you need to find it for yourselves. That, too, is important, although I cannot tell why because I am told as little as you. I simply know that it is important, critical, that it be found. Rhakshasas and the other archdeacons instruct me, and I instruct you. Does that answer your questions? I can see by your face that it does not. Then let me try again, Thomas, and I will keep it simple to aid in your understanding.

  “This is Hell, and there is only the illusion of choice here. If you are told to go, then you go and you hope that you arrive at your destination without injury. You are valued, Thomas, important in your own way, although it may not feel that way to you; you have a destiny, Thomas, as we all do. We are placed in positions designated us by architects that we may never know, in structures we only see the barest fragments of. These are the mechanics of Hell, Thomas. Be happy with this and do your job.”

  “Yes,” said Fool, thinking, No. He turned his back on Elderflower and in the shrieks echoing out of the Orphanage he heard the savage reflections of his own anger and impotence.

  “No,” said Summer.

  “It’s an order, Summer. Both of you, stay here. I don’t know what’s inside, and neither do you. There’s no point in risking us all.”

  “No,” said Summer again.

  “Besides, we do,” said Gordie. “They are only children.”

  “There are no children in Hell,” said Fool, “and you shouldn’t believe the rumors that there are. The things in there aren’t children, they’re the young of the succubae and the incubi.” That wasn’t quite true, he knew. There were three or four of these Orphanages scattered across Hell, places where human women came to give birth after being impregnated by incubi. The incubi took the sperm gathered from men by succubae and used it to make the women pregnant, and the resultant children were part demon and part human, and wholly monstrous. The human part of them, Elderflower had once told Fool, weakened them and made them unable to control the burning inside that came from their demonic parentage, and their flesh warped and burned almost from the moment they were born. Most died in the Orphanages; those who lived long enough to emerge tended to become predators out by the wall, where the light was lowest and the living most brutal. In Hell’s past, they might have been given jobs as torturers or harriers, those things that stalked around the lakes of fire or that operated the vast, black wheels of torture; now they became part of the fabric of Hell’s nightmares.

  “We’re coming,” said Summer. “This is for all of us to do. We’re all Information Men.”

  “We know what’s in there,” said Gordie again. “You know I do, better than you probably.”

  Summer’s tone was firm, Gordie’s merely conversational, and Fool didn’t argue. Whatever protection he may have offered them once was gone now, he suddenly understood, shredded by the interest being shown in him. They were his colleagues, the closest things to friends he had in Hell except, perhaps, he realized with a sad little jolt, Elderflower or the Man, things he wasn’t even sure were human.

  They came to the doorway and the shrieks and cries were almost unbearable, not just loud but agonized and piercing. Fool, who had heard screams of most timbres during his years in Hell, had heard nothing like them before; the Orphanages were not a place he had ever had call to visit previously. The cries were continuous, tremulous, and they tugged at him even as they made his flesh crawl. Gordie felt it as well, it was obvious; he was frowning, his forehead low above his eyes, as though he were in pain, but it was Summer whom Fool was most worried about. She was already sweating, and the look on her face was as alien as anything Fool had seen on Elderflower’s features. There was longing there, as though she were attracted to this tumultuous noise, wanting to open her arms to it, as well as a determination not to let it catch her. It has barbs, this sound, Fool thought, ones that are already sinking deep into Summer.

  The house, or something in it, shrieked again and Summer moaned slightly, closing her eyes. Gordie put a hand on her shoulder but she shook it off sharply. As though Gordie’s tiny gesture of sympathy had galvanized her, she opened her eyes and said, “Are we going?”

  As they walked swiftly to the door Gordie said, “I’ve thought of something else, about the Man. Something I heard once.”

  “Later,” said Fool. The Man was a problem for later, and whatever Gordie had remembered could wait.

  “It’s a strange thing, about how he grows. About what he eats,” said Gordie.

  “Tell me after we’ve done this,” said Fool. They were at the doorway now, surrounded by wafts of heat and the smell of burning hair. The three stopped, and then, looking at each other briefly, they all stepped forward.

  In the house’s darkness, something glowed momentarily, the light showing them a long hallway studded with doorways on either side, and then it dimmed again. Fool moved inside, looking around as Gordie and Summer followed. As his eyes adjusted to the lower light, he saw that the nearest opening was only a step away. Through it he saw a grimy room with tangled piles of sheets and old mattresses scattered across the floor. Most of the mattresses were stained, dark blooms covering their surfaces as though shadows had become liquid and then dried. The smell of burning hair and meat and sweat crept around them, and still the shrieks came from all about them and from somewhere ahead of them, deep in the Orphanage’s terrible womb.

  Apart from the mattresses and sheets, the first room was empty. The room opposite it contained more mattresses and sheets along with piles of discarded towels, brittle with age and dried fluids. Sickly moss, ashy in the half-light, had furred the floor around the piles, and Fool thought that he saw the mo
ss pulse slightly as though drawing in breath when he came close to it. Gordie started to shift the mattresses, lifting and then letting them drop, and for a moment Fool wondered why before realizing he was looking for clues. The Guide stressed things like “finding the information contained at the scene of the crime” and “the reading of the environment,” and Gordie had taken it all to heart. Fool had tried to tell him that the book was old, ancient, making reference to rules and ideas of policing that Fool had never even heard of, but Gordie had simply replied, “But it must matter, or they wouldn’t have given us them, surely?” How could you argue with that? And even if you could, why would you? Was this desperate optimism any worse than the helpless rage Fool himself had felt standing in the street over the headless corpse? He supposed not. Poor fool, he thought, not sure whether he meant Gordie or himself, and then something shrieked and scuttled in though the doorway.

  It was aflame, low to the floor and casting off thick smoke and flickering light in oily wreaths as it went. It darted past them, crashing into the mattress that Gordie was holding, knocking it from his grip and disappearing under it as it fell. Gordie staggered, unbalanced by the collision, and Summer cried out his name. The air filled with the stench of burning meat and material as flames licked out from the underside of the mattress, more black smoke pouring out with the smell, making the air acrid and sharp. Whatever was under the mattress, it thrashed against the weight, shrieking again, the sound shuddering the hanging smoke and echoing around the room. There was an answering shriek from somewhere else in the house and the mattress shifted, bucked up, and released a drift of jittering sparks before falling back to cover the thing.

  “It’s a child,” Summer cried, crouching. More flames capered across the mattress’s surface, stopping and sizzling at the edges of the old stains. Summer tried to lift it, but the flames caught at her fingers and she dropped it. “Gordie, please,” she called as the thing screeched again. Fool heard pain and longing in the cry, and anger and something more, unknowable and fragile. Gordie went to Summer, throwing a helpless look at Fool, and pushed at the mattress with her, throwing it back from the burning creature that was turning in frenzied circles under it.

  “It’s a child,” Summer said again, but it wasn’t.

  It had some human flesh, that was true, but the thing on the floor was mostly demon. As well as the two human legs and arms, there were four more legs sprouting from its sides, insectile and black. Things that might have been wings had erupted from its back, but they looked wretched and stubby. Charred black lumps that might have been the remains of feathers emerged from the wings, and flesh hung from them in tatters. When it turned to them, its eyes were huge and black, taking up half of its face, and its mouth was a torn circle from which spittle and fire fell in equal measure.

  And it burned.

  The flames came from its mouth and from its ears, bled from around its eyes and from its anus, spilling down its legs and to the floor, where they spread in a viscous circle. It saw Summer and opened its mouth even wider, crying out through the fires, raising itself onto its human knees, and holding out its arms. It was tiny, Fool saw, only two feet long at the most, and its belly was rounded and pudgy, bouncing as it moved. It was almost completely covered by the fire now, the whole of it emerging and vanishing behind flickering blue and orange flames and the smoke that they threw off. The insectile legs hadn’t grown naturally but had punched their way out of the flesh of its sides, leaving weeping, crusted scabs at their exit points. Claws were extending at the end of the legs, snapping, and tiny human hands were opening wide.

  Movement behind Fool, catching at the corner of his eye. He turned to find that more of the children had arrived in the doorway, all different but somehow similar, tiny and pink and charred and warping and burning. One clambered up the doorframe, its hooked hands digging into the wood and plaster and leaving scorch marks behind. How many of them were in the hallway? Fool couldn’t tell. He drew his gun, turning back to the one in the room. As he turned it scuttled forward, darting at Summer. Gordie shouted something unintelligible and fired his weapon, and a chunk of floor exploded in front of the child, sending splintered wood leaping into the air and making the thing veer sideways. It circled them so that it was between them and the door, regarding them warily, the flames dripping from its mouth and onto its chest. The ones behind it continued gathering in the doorway, the hall now lit by the unsteady, rippling illumination of their burning.

  “Where’s the fucking body?” asked Fool.

  “Somewhere close to the door,” answered Gordie without looking around. “In one of the front rooms, the tube said.” He shook his gun. “It’s already full, I can fire again,” he said.

  “Good, you might have to,” said Fool. “How did the killer get in here and get out again? How many of these things are there?”

  It was impossible to see the floor of the hallway now, so thick were the shifting, darting bodies. The base of the doorframe had started to smolder, gray smoke rising to join the oily black expulsions from the creatures, old burns sparking back to life in orange, glowing patches. Mouths opened, claws clicked and extended, wings broken and fully flexed. Fool raised his gun and saw Gordie do the same.

  “They’re demons,” said Fool. “They’re newborn but they aren’t stupid. If they understand we can hurt them more than they hurt already, they’ll let us past.”

  “How?” asked Gordie.

  “No,” said Summer, her voice low, understanding. Fool fired.

  Three in one day, he thought as the nearest thing broke apart into a splash of flesh and a bright burst of flame that collapsed in on itself almost as quickly as it had expanded. Very noticeable Fool, and then Gordie fired and Summer screamed.

  It was a worse noise than anything the demons were making, a rising howl that seemed to tear at her throat as it emerged. She pushed past Fool and Gordie but already the things had scattered, leaving the hallway empty apart from the smoke of their passing and the remains of the one Fool had killed. As the three of them emerged, the one that Gordie had shot was trying to crawl away, its broken legs twisted behind it. Even as it bled, more flames burst to life in among the exposed and torn meat of its belly. Fool stepped forward and raised his gun, but Summer pushed past him again and shot it, sobbing as she did so. “They’re children,” she managed to say, and then she fell to her knees in the growing pool of blood and intestines that it had left behind.

  “Summer,” Gordie said, “you have to keep moving. They’ll come back.” She raised her face to him and nodded, tears trickling across her cheeks and dripping from her chin.

  “Just children,” she said again, holding her arms out to Gordie. He helped her up and they hugged, unself-consciously. He whispered something in her ear and she nodded, tilting her face back and kissing him on the mouth.

  “I’m sorry,” Fool heard Gordie say and then the screaming started again, not Summer but the orphans, their voices twisted and brittle and furious. Already, the uneven glow had started to gather beyond the hallway’s farthest doors as they massed.

  The body was in the next room. It was splayed on the mattress in the corner, lying on its back, naked and exposed. It was covered in bites, small and shallow, that made Fool think of the marks left by the tinier inhabitants of Solomon Water; the orphans had been at the corpse, but they had not done much damage. The skin around the bites was reddened and raw, but the worst of the damage was around the face and genitals. Its penis was torn away at the root, the pubic hair now soaked with blood from the wrenched and ripped skin, the flaccid tube lying draped over the left thigh. Larger tears, these more destructive, were scattered around the belly and across its chest, exposing muscle under ruptured skin.

  His face was gone.

  “Find something to wrap it in and let’s go,” said Fool. Strips of skin peeled back from the skull and had been left to hang like hanks of unbrushed hair at the side of the head. One eye was a ruined mess but the other peered at Fool with a wide,
owlish glare. What had done this? What demon tore off the faces of the things it fed upon, bit and ripped at them? And did so in the Orphanage, where the offspring of demons and humans might amass and attack at any second? Was it so desperate to loosen the soul from the flesh to eat it that it would treat the man like this, would tear him to a mangled, shredded mass? Just what were they hunting?

  “Fool, help, please,” said Gordie miserably. He was trying to lift a sheet from a pile on the other side of the room and the gray moss was rippling across its surface, pulsating, slithering toward his hands. He shook the sheet but the moss clung tight, moving like a pool of slow-flowing oil. Fool went to Gordie and gripped the other side of the sheet and they shook it as hard as they could, but still the moss clung.

  “Don’t call Summer,” whispered Gordie as they shook. “This moss, I think it’s feeding on what’s left after they’re born, and I don’t know if …” He trailed off as they whipped the sheet again. Most of the moss dropped off, hitting the floor with a damp sound and immediately starting to ooze down between the floorboards. One last flick removed the remnants from the material, along with a drift of flakes from older stains whose surfaces cracked in spiderweb patterns.

  The two of them rolled the body in the sheet as quickly as they could. Fool was acutely aware of the increasing ferocity of the screams filling the room, and the undercurrent notes of scurrying and chittering. The orphans were coming back, closing in on the room. Already, wisps of black smoke were coiling around the doorway, lit from within by a pulsing heartbeat of flame. He fired another shot out into the hallway, blowing a hole in the plasterboard opposite the doorway and creating a cloud of hanging white dust. Something darted past, shifting the dust, making it swirl.