The Devil's Detective

by Simon Kurt Unsworth

  Summer was gone.

  It wasn’t that she had vanished, but that the things that had made her Summer had seemingly disappeared; her body was there, she moved around, but when she spoke, her voice was flat and uninflected and she neither questioned nor made suggestions when Fool told her about the Man’s information and that he might have given them a way to identify one of the dead Genevieves. Her eyes, rimmed with scarlet puffiness, looked downward most of the time, coming up only once, when Fool mentioned Gordie. She made no reference to the previous night. It was as though the losing of his face and finding it again had made his death more real for her, and that in dying Gordie had taken with him the part of Summer that she had let him have, the part that made her something other than mere animated flesh. Perhaps he did, thought Fool. He had never given even the smallest part of himself to someone else and had no idea what it might feel like, what it might be like if they went away and took that gifted part with them. He had no idea what to say to her, so he said nothing. After he read the report, he handed it to her. She read it and handed it back silently.

  The train was nearly empty. It was early in the afternoon, and most people either slept or were at their Bureaucracy-appointed tasks. In the distance, the smokestacks belched their greasy breath into the sky; the noise of the factories reached them through the open window of the train like the rumble of approaching thunder.

  They moved slowly through the Houska. It seemed smaller during the day, its walls and streets more claustrophobic without the glamour of darkness and the lights that breathed from each doorway when the heats of sex and drink and violence rose each night. Some of the bars were open but they appeared quiet. There were few demons visible.

  The train rolled on, its rhythm lolling Fool into an uneasy doze. How long since he had slept well? A month? A year? Never? He felt as though he was always lagging behind, always one or two or three steps behind where he ought to be, missing things, too tired to see straight or clearly. Rests were always taken between other things, squeezed in like this, wedged in between this meeting or that body, and even when he made it to his bed, the time available to him was too little. He thought again of the two dead men, of flesh torn beyond recognition, of another soul set loose, of Gordie aflame, and of Summer, and he thought that there were different types of death and that they were all as terrible as each other.

  Gordie had once told Fool that Hell had been a place of rigid hierarchies somewhere back in its history, that each area corresponded to the punishments meted out for a particular sort of sin, and that explained why it still had distinct geographies. The Houska, where the rakes and addicts had been punished, was now for nightlife, for the bars and prostitution. Crow Heights’ walled solidity had always been for the residences of the ancient and powerful, the humans living cramped together in Eve’s Harbor (which was nowhere near water and which the demons called Cattletown and which had once been the place of rack and confinement), the demons in the sprawling expanses of North and South Hope (actually one huge, curving area surrounding most of the Houska and abutting Eve’s Harbor, and which the humans called simply Pipe). Intertwined with these inhabited areas were Hell’s other spaces: the Bureaucracy, which described both the area itself and the function attended to in the offices and halls that it consisted of; the industrial estates that sat permanently under vast clouds of spewing gray and black smoke; the Flame Garden where the dead went; and the farmlands. Each area had its functions and its inhabitants, and there was little mixing between them except in the Houska and in places that were sometimes called the Sisters. The boardinghouses were in one of the Sisters, a blurred edge between the Houska and North Hope filled with numerous squat buildings constructed of old, black wood.

  Fool had never been to the boardinghouses before, had never needed to. He hadn’t even known where they were until that day, when he had had to look them up in a thin book called The Places of Hell: An Information. Until a day ago, he would simply have asked Gordie, who seemed to know things like that, to have it all in his head or on his walls.

  As they climbed down from the train, the boardinghouses all looked the same; long rows of one- or two-story buildings with no windows, made of heavy wooden planks with doorways carved roughly into the front walls, but as they approached, Fool saw that there were differences. One or two had porches, long walkways in the front of the building with railings and chairs scattered about them, and others had extra doorways or small huts leaning against their front or side walls. Unlike the Houska, there were signs of life here; humans walked down the streets and demons watched them proprietorially from doorways as they walked. Some of the boardinghouses had names scratched into the wood above their entrances; most simply had numbers.

  “What are they?” Summer asked, the first words she had spoken since they had left their rooms, and the first without prompting since that morning.

  “The demons keep their Genevieves here, the ones that they put to work in the Houska,” replied Fool. “Protecting their investment. They offer them a degree of safety, they get to live among their own kind, and they travel in and out of the Houska together in packs at the beginning and end of their shifts. They have food, a place to sleep, the illusion of freedom, but they’re prisoners.”

  “You sound angry,” said Summer.

  “No,” said Fool, and then realized he was lying. He was angry, not because the place existed exactly, but because it had failed; the Genevieves were supposed to be safe here, to be able to find some kind of peace between their times offering themselves to demons, and yet two of their number had been taken and killed.

  “What did the Man mean, the boardinghouse with demons on the roof?” asked Summer. Her voice was still flat, but at least she was asking something, was engaging. Coming back? No, maybe not that, not yet, but it was something.

  “I don’t know,” said Fool. He looked at the roofs around them. Most were sloped, covered in shingling that was cracked and warping. Although he couldn’t see any at that moment, there was evidence that Hell’s birds, the chalkis, used the edges of the roofs for perches; smears of green and gray shit ran down the walls and pooled in thick, sludgy piles on the roofs’ faces. Some of it was fresh and Fool smelled its tang as they walked; some was older, dried and disintegrating into powdery wisps as the breeze teased at it. As he and Summer walked, the humans avoided looking at them. Demons, on the other hand, peered at them with undisguised interest.

  One of them, a short thing with skin the color of burned copper and with wings hanging from its back that were broken and torn, emerged from a doorway and leaned over the porch rail, calling, “Little man! Little girl!”

  Fool stopped, looking at the demon, deferential but trying not to show fear. The demon took something from a pouch hanging at its belt, a rolled tube of paper, and put it in its mouth. With its other clawed hand, it lit a match and ignited the end of the tube, drawing a breath in through the burning paper. Smoking was a rarity in Hell, partly because the leaf was hard to find but mostly because demons often didn’t have lips flexible enough to hold the tube without chewing or damaging it. It was a habit brought from the worlds outside, Fool had been told, although who had told him, he didn’t know. Gordie, maybe, or Elderflower in one of his more expansive moments. The demon sucked again at the tube, and as he did so its eyes glowed as red as the embers of burning paper. It let the smoke out from its mouth in a stream, sending a darting tongue into the thick clouds as though to get a last taste before it dissipated in Hell’s heavy air.

  “You’re in the wrong place, little man, little girl,” said the demon conversationally. There was no aggression in its voice, not yet.

  “No,” said Fool. “We’re where we need to be. We’re looking for somewhere.”

  The demon looked around itself, its gestures exaggerated. “Everywhere is somewhere,” it said, “but this is not the somewhere you need to be. Turn about, little man, and take the little girl with you and go.”

  “No,” said Fool, surprising
himself with the steadiness of his voice. “I am one of Hell’s Information Men and I am here to gather information.” He looked about, oddly hoping that he might see plants, that the Man might be watching and be amused, but there was nothing but dust and the boardinghouses.

  Everything stopped. A group of men, boys really, crossing the dusty street behind Fool and Summer turned to look at them. From the corner of his eye, Fool saw more men stop and peer at him, faces appearing in doorways and from around buildings. Noticed for one thing, noticed for all things, he thought, and then the demon was flexing itself, swelling, the burning leaf and paper falling to the decking by its feet, forgotten. It exhaled, smoke that was not from the cigarette pouring from its mouth, darkening and wreathing around its head, its eyes glowing red, its claws digging into the wooden rail and tearing splinters from it.

  It felt like they were paused, hovering, for a moment, everything motionless around them. The demon glared at Fool and Summer, the men stared at them, the houses glowered through doorways in which the shadows were thick and heavy. Fool’s instinct was to retreat, to tip his head in apology and hope that it would be enough, but he didn’t. That anger still burned in him, its flames as sullen as the glow in the demon’s eyes. “Tell me, demon: where is the house with demons on its roof?” he said, keeping his voice even, thinking, Little Fool going a step too far, little overreaching Fool.

  “He’ll kill you,” said a voice from behind the demon. It started, jumping slightly and looking around and then whirling back to stare at Fool. The glow in its eyes had faded and it was trembling, and the smoke pouring from its mouth was uneven for a moment.

  “Is it him?” the demon said, and it moaned, low and uneven.

  He’s scared! Fool realized, and the realization astonished him. He’s scared of me!

  “Better tell him,” said the voice again, and a man stepped out of the house behind the demon. The man was older, fat and scarred and hard looking.

  “He might shoot you otherwise,” the man continued, “and then where would we be, without our owner?” The demon looked at the man, and the glow came back into its eyes, furious and hot. The fat man, perhaps realizing he had gone too far, stepped back, mumbling something that might have been an apology or a more general susurrus of fealty and obedience.

  “I won’t shoot you,” said Fool. “Why would I?”

  “You shoot demons,” said the demon, surly, turning back to Fool. “You’ve shot hundreds. Why should I be any different?”

  “I haven’t shot hundreds,” said Fool. Hundreds? Where had that come from?

  “You kill demons when they don’t tell you what you want. You’ve been seen,” said the demon. “You’re a human but you kill demons. It shouldn’t be allowed.”

  Allowed? thought Fool. I’m not allowed, I don’t do it!

  Only, that wasn’t true, was it? He hadn’t done it hundreds of times, true, but he had done it. Experimentally, he let his hand fall to the butt of his gun; the demon flinched. It pulled itself another tube of rolled paper from its pouch and lit it. Its hand shook slightly as it held the flame.

  “You kill demons?” said someone on the street behind Fool. When he turned, he found that a large number of young men had gathered to his rear. There were no women; they lived in another Sister, he remembered, and the places they were sent to and the demons they serviced were different from the men’s.

  “No,” he replied.

  “Yes he does,” said Summer, her voice still flat but loud, rolling across the street. “He slaughters them when they don’t obey him.”

  “What do you want from me?” the demon asked, and its voice was wheedling, unhappy. It had shrunk again, appeared thinner, its skin a dirty bronze, the glow in its eyes guttering. It was only a minor one, Fool realized, puffing itself up to be bigger than it was, and now it was punctured, back to small again. It probably didn’t even have a name, only a species, like the chalkis, things without individual identities. Unimportant to Hell, important only to the things and people they could control and brutalize.

  “Tell me about the house with the demons on its roof. Where is it?”

  For a second the demon was quiet, and then it spat on the ground at Fool’s feet. Its spittle bubbled and steamed, a cheap trick intended to frighten. “At Sister’s end,” he said, pointing to the end of the long street. “The biggest house.”

  As Fool started walking, Summer by his side, he was aware that they were being followed, not by demons but by humans, by men who came out of the boardinghouses and joined a swelling crowd trailing behind them. They didn’t talk, these men, and their feet were a soft shuffle in the dirt. When Fool glanced back, he saw that most were barefoot or had cloth wrapped around their feet; their clothes, however, were gaudy, glittered with brightly colored rags and polished stones or pieces of rubbed metal or glass, things to make them attractive, to catch the eye of potential clients. They looked clean, some still with wet hair or skin, but they kept their eyes down and walked hunched over, shrinking into themselves.

  “Why are they following us?” he asked.

  “Because you kill demons,” said Summer. “Maybe they’re hoping to see you do it.”

  “I don’t,” said Fool, helplessly.

  “You do,” said Summer. “You killed two the other day. You killed orphans. Not enough orphans. Not enough.” Fool didn’t reply; what could he say? Behind them, the crowd followed.

  The largest house in the Sister was three stories tall, although it was no grander than the others. Like them, it had roughly constructed walls of thick planking with holes hewn out for the doorways and windows on the higher floors. Fool saw the thick tangles of bush growing around the boardinghouse and thought of the Man. He smiled, having to stop himself from nodding or gesturing at the plants.

  The roof of the building was sloped, coming downward from the rear, and at its front edge were several smaller demons.

  They were short, crouching and staring at him and Summer and the crowd behind them. Their eyes glittered, segmented and dark. They were the color of dead and rotting leaves, mottled in shades of brown and black and gray, and their outlines were hard to make out against the layered planks of the roof until they moved.

  “This is the house of the Bar-Igura,” one called down. “What is it you want? You do not belong here.”

  “I want information,” replied Fool, “about one of the Genevieves who lived here.”

  “We have no information,” said one of the things, although whether it was the same one Fool couldn’t tell. “Best to leave, Information Man.”

  “We came for information,” repeated Fool.

  “Perhaps you mishear, little Information Man,” said the demon and then its head exploded.

  It was Summer. Her gun was out, the barrel dribbling smoke as the demon’s corpse rolled off the edge of the roof and fell to the ground with a damp thud. The noise of the shot rumbled away, echoing down the street in a flat plosive and then, for a moment, there was silence. Fool stared at Summer, but she was looking at the roof and ignored him. She jerked her hand as the next bullet formed in her gun and then she swung the weapon to point at the next demon along.

  “He is not a little man and I am not a little girl,” she said loudly. “We are not little, none of us.” The demons on the roof began to screech, and then there was bedlam.

  The crowd behind them began to cheer, muted but clear, as people and demons poured out of the buildings around them. One of the things on the roof dropped, landing with a heavy crash on the porch in front of the house, raising clouds of dust around it. Even as it landed it was skittering forward, low and quick, leaping down from the porch toward them. More of the things were dropping from the roof, loosing howls and screams as they came. The crowd behind them screamed as well, shouts mingling with the cheers as it surged forward, flowing around Summer and Fool, buffeting them. The demons and humans met, two waves crashing against each other, snarling and slashing and kicking.

  The demons were stro
nger, more violent, but the humans had the weight of numbers and soon there were tumbling, writhing clusters around, masses pinioning the demons, hauling them back, attacking them. What’s happening here, thought Fool, what? Over his shoulder, he saw demons emerging from the other boardinghouses, wings and claws and teeth and limbs unfurling, moving toward the struggling mess of humans and demons. They’ll slaughter them, Fool thought. They’ll slaughter us!

  The first of the new demons reached them as Fool pulled his gun free from its holster and fired upward. The blast was loud, louder than the noises around him, another plosive shock of noise that crashed over everything around him, dragging silence in its wake. Humans and demons stopped, startled into stillness by the noise.

  “Stop!” Fool shouted into the silence, moving as swiftly as he could to the porch. The reassuring weight of a new bullet was in the gun as he reached it, turning so that he faced the crowd. “We just want information. Give it to us and we’ll go.”

  Summer stepped out of the crowd; she had a fresh bruise forming across her cheek and her hair was disheveled, but the hand holding her gun was steady, pointing at the demons that remained on the roof. Fool’s own gun had pointed itself, apparently unbidden, at the nearest demon and the humans holding it down. “Let it up,” he said.

  He wasn’t sure at first whether the humans would do as he said, but they eventually did. Already whatever rage had driven them was evaporating, he saw, and the realization of what they had done was coming upon them. Their eyes wouldn’t rise from the ground and they were backing away, hunching their shoulders back and trying to bury their faces into the crowd’s anonymity. The demons, hissing and spitting, started to move after the men, but Fool raised his gun and fired again, another burst of flame and smoke and metal tearing into the sky, and said, “No.”