The Devil's Evidence

by Simon Kurt Unsworth

  “That hurt,” he said when he emerged. “I’m not that big, so I think we can assume that whatever killed this man was trying to pull him from the alcove but was struggling to get him out.”

  “I agree,” said Summer. She rose and looked around. “Why this man? Why him and not the others?”

  Fool looked around. The dead man’s bed space was at chest height, which made sense; anyone trying to remove a Joyful from his bed would presumably do so by leaning into one at the easiest height, this level or the one below if it was an average-sized man like him or Gordie. So, he thought, so…

  The wrong things were obvious when he looked for them, an empty bed several spaces along at the same height, and then more empty ones past that, both at the same level as the dead man’s bunk but also higher and lower in the wall. Fool walked to the nearest niche, watched by Israfil and Benjamin, and leaned into it. The sheet within it was twisted and spotted with blood. The one below was entirely empty apart from the mattress, held neither sheet nor person.

  Empty? No. Almost hidden under the thin sheet was a black shape, small and long and thin. Fool reached out and took hold of it gingerly, half expecting it to slash up at him. It didn’t react to his touch and he pulled it free. It was a claw, curved and sharp, the root of it bloodied and with a tiny tendril of dark flesh still hanging from it. A claw here, a pincer in Hell.

  A claw and a pincer.

  “Something or someone has stolen the Joyful,” he said, turning to the angels, holding up the claw.

  “Stolen?”

  “I don’t know what else to call it. You’ve said they can’t wake up?”

  “That’s right,” said Israfil, apparently forgetting the sleeper at the beach that Fool had woken, however briefly.

  “These Joyful are beyond sleep, at least as you might understand it,” said Benjamin. “Even if the Joyful outside might be able to be roused for a moment or two, these are different. These people are in their last days, they are simply joy and memory and flesh without intellect or will, they cannot wake.”

  “If they can’t wake, they didn’t leave of their own accord. Assuming that they weren’t taken by angels, and given that I don’t think angels have claws like this, then someone else took them. Someone, or something. They were taken. Stolen.”

  “Perhaps the spaces were empty to begin with, Fool, have you considered that? That you may be wrong in this, as you are with the other things?” asked Israfil.

  “I’m not wrong,” said Fool.

  “You are akin to God, then? Infallible?” Israfil’s light blossomed, the rage in her growing again. Fool ignored the angel and walked back to the dead man. There had been the body at the pool, a damaged thing beyond the reach of life, a similar one here. What did it mean?

  That the dead were of no use to whoever was taking them?

  That they needed living Joyful?

  Fool heard the dripping again. Thinking it was the man’s blood spilling down, he moved the sheet under the dead flesh to catch the liquid, but even after doing so, he heard the slow, steady tap tap tap of droplets hitting stone. He sniffed. That smell, that rich smell. He had not expected to smell it in Heaven, thought it reserved for Hell, but he had been mistaken in that thought. It filled the space, the rich and dense aroma of blood coming not from one place, not from the dead body in front of him, but from many.

  “Can I have some light?” he asked, walking back toward the center of the space, suspicion growing in him, but keeping his voice calm. “To fill the whole room, brighter than it is now, I mean?”

  “Why?” asked Israfil, but Fool again ignored her. She was becoming a chore, and he had no time for her. Let her be blind, let her be angry, he had work to do. There was information here, and he and Summer and Gordie needed to find it.

  “Of course,” said Benjamin, ever the calming diplomat. He raised a hand and the globes around the room began to brighten, exposing more of the space around them. It revealed a huge space, domed at its upper reaches, the walls curving gently around and filled with spaces to hold the sleeping, dying Joyful.

  There was blood everywhere.

  It seemed like hundreds of the niches had blood spilling from them, some decorated with huge red slashes that had sprayed out or up, had spattered across the faces of the walls and into the surrounding spaces, some with smaller trickles that rolled from the lips of the carved spaces. Not all the spaces were empty and many of the Joyful were still visible in their beds, some still sleeping peacefully, others twisted, tangled in ripped and stained bedding, but a significant minority of the Joyful were gone. Fool saw one or two hanging down from the gaps like the dead man, their robes and flesh torn and mangled. On the ground, crumpled at the base of the walls, were Joyful who had fallen, necks wrenched around, limbs splayed out or bent into angles that were not natural.

  “Look around, fast,” said Fool to Summer and Gordie. “Ignore the dead, look for things that shouldn’t be here. More claws, marks, anything.”

  “Ignore the dead?” said Israfil, and her voice was hollow, whistled like faraway breezes.

  “You see them now?” asked Fool angrily. “They’re clear to you? Good, Israfil, good. Look at them, remember them, and then ignore them. They can’t tell us anything that other poor murdered bastards haven’t already told us. What we need to see now are the things that aren’t right, the things that are here but shouldn’t be, or aren’t here that should be.”

  “ ‘Aren’t right,’ ” repeated Israfil, voice still disconnected somehow. Her angelic shoulders were slumped and the flame of her had burned low, revealing a skin that was, for the first time, the pale cream of warm alabaster. “Is anything here right?”

  “Here,” called Gordie, holding something up. “I’ve found something.”

  It was a scale, about two inches across and shaped like an irregular diamond, one corner, like the claw, still connected to small pieces of flesh that even as they watched curled up and dried, smoking slightly.

  “What’s it from?” asked Fool, immediately deferring to Gordie, who had always known things, had facts at the fingertips of his brain.

  “I don’t know,” said Gordie. “It’s not something I’ve seen before. I mean, demons sometimes have scales but this doesn’t look like a demonic scale. It feels…odd.”

  Marianne said that the pincer was odd. Everything’s fucking odd, thought Fool. Out loud, he asked, “Odd how?”

  “I don’t know. Let me think about it, leave it with me and I’ll see if I can work it out.”

  “Hurry, Gordie. We haven’t much time.” That was true, he could feel it, things were closing in, the end was approaching, but what end? Where was this trail heading?

  “Fool, what happened here?” asked Benjamin. Israfil had walked away, was making her way to the far side of the chamber, walking slowly, weaving as though drunk or stunned. A caretaker was flying slowly along the walls, stopping and hovering occasionally, appearing not to notice the blood or gaps. From the entrance behind them black angels started to emerge, their wings fluttering rapidly, making their way to the closest of the remaining dead.

  “It was a slaughter,” said Fool. “But the slaughter was an accident, I think, because this was worse, it was a mass stealing, I think. The ones left are just the Joyful they broke while they were trying to get them out or the ones they didn’t get around to taking.”

  “Taking? Who took them?”

  Fool looked at the claw in his hand, at the scale in Gordie’s, thought about the pincer in Hell, and said, “I’m not sure. There’s something happening here but it’s not clear.” Outside, he thought, and then, outside everything, outside what we understand.

  Why outside?

  One of the lights went out.

  There was no sound accompanying the light going, there was simply a gap that appeared in the illumination, a dark patch at the upper reaches of the far wall. The gap moved like oil, shifting around to cover the niches, swallowing them whole. Was that something moving at the edg
e of the patch, darting back up the wall to the shade’s far edge, disappearing into one of the Joyful’s bed recesses?

  There was a chittering sound.

  Another light went out.

  This one was lower, the circle of darkness spreading across the wall and creeping across the edge of the floor, touching the other patch of gloom at its highest edge. Another shape seemed to ripple in the shadows gathered above a slumbering person, several rows below earlier movement he thought he’d seen.

  More chittering, like chitinous plates being rubbed together.

  Another light gone, farther away, and this time Fool saw something at the globe just as the light vanished, a thing that might have been a tentacle or an arm reaching out to take the light in its grip and twisting, pulling it free and extinguishing it. The globe hit the floor with a sharp cracking sound.

  Fool moved fast, going toward Israfil, his hand falling to the butt of his gun. As he approached her the angel turned to him and spoke, voice low and conversational.

  “This is your fault, monkey. You brought this here.”

  “Oh, do fuck off, Israfil,” said Fool, thinking briefly, I wonder if Catarinch would applaud me for that?

  “Pardon?” said the angel, clearly startled.

  “I told you to fuck off,” said Fool, still looking at the far wall. “You’re boring me and you’re not helping things. Hold your peace or hold your tongue, but either way stop fucking bothering me.” Was that another movement, a snake or cable or long, writhing limb connecting one bed to one above it?

  A fourth light went out, the shadows spreading and pooling together in a thick black swathe that covered the far wall now. More chittering, louder, like the rubbing of a rough paper, like the clicking of beaks and the snapping of claws.

  One of the caretaker angels drifted placidly to the place where the darkness now swelled. Flapping its wings, it rose in an elegant, lazy wave into the air.

  Fool walked closer, still peering into the depths of the shadows, trying to see if anything was actually there. The pale shape of the angel rose into the gloom, visible as a slowly shifting blur of ivory, and then it was suddenly gone, extinguished as quickly as the lamps themselves.

  “What?” said Fool aloud, breaking into a jog, lifting his gun, and then Israfil dropped in front of him, flames glaring, and grasped his wrist. The heat of her was terrible and Fool smelled burning hair, his hair, as a bracelet of pain wrapped his arm and he dropped his gun. It skittered across the floor, coming to rest a few feet away.

  “You speak to me like that?” said Israfil.

  “Israfil!” snapped Benjamin.

  “Yes,” said Fool. “You’re getting in my way, Israfil, you’re an obstacle, not a help to me. Now either help me or fuck off ! There’s something happening over on the other side of the cave.”

  She let go of his wrist and he pulled it back, already feeling the blisters rise and pop, wetness running down onto his hand. “What terrible thing can be happening in this place that has not already happened?”

  Fool didn’t answer. The other angel hadn’t reappeared yet.

  A fifth lamp went out. A sixth.

  A seventh.

  Gordie came to stand by Fool, head tilted. “Listen,” he said, almost whispering.

  Fool held his breath and listened, too. There was a faraway sound under the chittering, the rustle of something moving stealthily, feet crunching against grit, the leather slip of skin against wall.

  An eighth light went out and now almost all of the far wall was black, the edge of the darkness creeping closer to them. The caretaker still had not reappeared.

  “They’re still here,” said Fool.

  “Israfil,” said Benjamin again, “I think that perhaps Thomas Fool is correct. Perhaps we ought to assist him?”

  “Never,” said the burning angel, and then the shadows behind her moved and something reached out and took her in its arms and yanked her back and away.

  19

  Fool couldn’t see the thing clearly, but he could tell that its arms were broad and muscular and seemed to have too many joints, that they ended in hands with curved, taloned fingers, and that the face beyond the arms was wrenched and warping and its eyes burned a bloody red. It clamped itself around Israfil, arms pinioning the angel’s limbs and wings, and then swept back into the shadows, taking the startled angel with it.

  For a stretching, fragmented second no one moved and then several things happened at once. Israfil, now being dragged rapidly toward the far side of the cave, burst into a vast sphere of flame, a beautiful angelic fireball that threw light around them in a bright, dizzying wave and drove the darkness back before fading as Benjamin rose into the air, wings emerging and flapping in one sweeping movement. Fool grabbed his gun from the floor, wincing as new pain fired in the exposed flesh of his wrist, and started to run. Another flare of light sprayed out from Israfil, and Fool had to clench his eyes against it, turning his head away and stumbling. Even through his closed eyelids the air glowed, blinding him. He took another couple of tentative steps, feeling with his feet to avoid obstacles, arm outstretched and gun wavering, and then Israfil screamed and the sound knocked him back, unbalanced him, and he fell.

  There were no recognizable words in the sound, no expression except anger. Fool risked opening his eyes, found that Israfil was burning at a level that he could just about manage to look into, as though a sun had birthed and was now fading on the far side of the cave. What was happening? He could see little, merely a chiaroscuro of light and dark crashing together, sparks and flows battling each other in his sight.

  He blinked, felt Summer take his hand and help him up, Gordie at his other side. “Keep back,” he managed to say, “that’s a fucking order. First chance you get, run, do you understand? Keep each other safe.” His vision was returning in fractured, splintering waves, gradually resolving itself. His eyes were flowing with tears of pain, his cheeks wet as he continued blinking.

  “What is it?” said Gordie.

  Somewhere by the base of the wall there was a mass, black and writhing, a dark heart in the center of the angel’s light, surrounding it. Consuming the light.

  Israfil screamed again and her glare pulsed more violently and she rose, glowing, and tried to fly free before the blackness swelled up, reaching out and dragging her back down. A curling string of fire leaped up and circled the cave, stretching and stretching, crawling over the walls and sending snatches of smoke upward, where it scorched the flesh or bedding of the sleeping Joyful or hit the patches of still-wet blood. When it reached the roof of the cave, a curved dome lost above them, it clung to the rough rock, crackling like lightning, crawling between the ridges and juts, and then dropped away, dwindling as it fell.

  More lamps were going out all around them, the shadows crowding down on Fool and his companions, swarming the struggle below.

  The chittering grew, becoming as loud as Israfil’s screams. Benjamin, now a blurred shape in the growing darkness, swept toward his companion, but in the confusion he came too close to the wall and something leaped from one of the niches and crashed into him, sending him spiraling away. He hit the ground heavily, rolled, and did not move. There was a great roar and then what looked like a great web emerged from dozens of niches all at once, black knots slithering out of the spaces, visible only as edges of light that caught on pincers and claws and tentacles and eyes and teeth.

  Each shape was connected to the others by constantly moving strands that bisected and joined, twists of angular line that bent in sharp angles but did not curve.

  “What?” Fool heard Summer say and he pushed her back, away from the thing.

  “Go!” he shouted. “Both of you go, now!”

  Was it one creature? It moved in all directions at once, some up, some down, some along, as though it was a hundred things, but there were the threads and the joins connecting every part of it and they never broke, never split, a living shadow flowing out of the wall and filling the far side of the
cave. As it emerged, it dragged the Joyful with it, pale shapes emerging and then lost again. Parts of it were insectile, moved in ragged twitches and twists, irregular and tilted, a movement that Fool remembered from the thing he had chased and that had slashed his face.

  The web of things moved down toward Israfil and the lower parts of itself, clustering together, thickening the gloom, giving it density and mass and shape, a bulging shifting thing. Israfil screamed again and her light blossomed, but less of it escaped now, the web coating her, covering her.

  Swallowing her.

  Fool raised his gun, but before he could fire, before he could decide what to fire at, there was a wet crack, loud and sullen, and another scream, torn and wretched. Benjamin snapped through the air, wings huge and swept back and gleaming like blades of ivory, and then he was sweeping down, arrowing toward the center of Israfil’s now-guttering glare. A thick string of fire leaped from Benjamin’s hand and crashed toward the failing gleam of his companion, hit the darkness, and burned with a sound of sizzling, scorching dampness.

  Israfil was being dragged along the base of the wall of the cave, the creatures swarming her and pulling at her. No, not creatures, Fool reminded himself, still unsure where to fire; one creature, a thing of parts and segments connected by the threads and tangles, and all the pieces working as one to drag the angel away.

  Fool followed, moving faster now but cautious, still unable to see properly because of the streaks that remained in his eyes, head down so that any sudden flare of light didn’t dazzle what little vision he possessed away to nothing. His face ached along the lines of torn and healing skin and his heart was thundering in his chest, but he went because this was it, wasn’t it? This was the job, this was a crime, this was the act of crime that led to the birth of information.

  This, ultimately, was Fool’s given purpose, as the Commander of the Information Office of Hell at work, and it didn’t matter that he was in Heaven, that the criminal was a being he’d never encountered before, that the victim was an angel. This was his job.