“No, not just that, none of it’s right. What we saw in the cave wasn’t a normal demon, was it? You know these things, Gordie, was it like anything you’ve heard or read about?”
Gordie thought for a minute. “No,” he said eventually. “But if it’s not demons, if it’s not Hell, what is it?”
“Marianne said something had been found at one of the slaughters in Hell—a pincer? And we found a claw and a scale in the Sleepers’ Cave?”
“Yes,” said Summer, “but demons have pincers and claws and scales as well.”
“But they don’t dance, they don’t move that way,” said Fool and he was thinking as he spoke, his thoughts running faster than his words. He held the feather as he let the ideas stream out of him, tasting them on his tongue, spitting some away and letting others free.
“It’s something that moves oddly,” he said. “It looks like it’s dancing, like lots of pieces working together. They’re connected, working with each other as though they’re part of one mind. The thing in the Sleepers’ Cave, it came apart but never completely, it was linked and worked together. It filled the space with itself.”
“You know what it is?” asked Summer.
“I do,” said Fool. “I think it’s the things that live in the places outside of everywhere. Catarinch told me they’re always searching for a way in. What if they’ve found it? What if they’ve found a way to tear through at last? What if this isn’t Hell or Heaven but the things from outside?”
There was silence in the room for a second, and then Gordie asked, “What are they?”
“I don’t know,” said Fool.
“More importantly, how do we prove it? How do we stop them?” asked Summer.
“I don’t know,” said Fool again. How often had he said that? How often had he been asked a question and not known the answer? Too often. In Hell he’d come to expect it, that his world would be hunched with questions that had no answers, that was the point of Hell, after all, but here in Heaven? He’d expected more, had expected things to be smooth with answers.
“FOOL, YOU MOTHERFUCKER, WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?” howled a voice, and at the same time Fool screamed as the skin of his belly tore open. Summer shrieked and leaped back from Fool as he collapsed to the bed, and so violent was Mr. Tap’s arrival that his skin was already slick with blood by the time he managed to tear open his jacket and shirt. Gordie made to come to his aid but Fool managed to gesture him back. They haven’t seen this, have they, they’ve not met Mr. Tap, he thought abstractly. Oh my, they’re in for a treat.
Fool dragged himself back along the bed so that he could prop himself against the wall and stare down at his rent stomach. Mr. Tap’s face was open there, and the demon was breathing hard. Panting. Had the tattoo ever breathed before? Fool didn’t think so.
“Fool,” it said again, and its voice was barely controlled fury. “What the fuck have you done?”
“I investigated as instructed,” said Fool. “But events overtook me.” His whole body was twitching now, the pain from Mr. Tap radiating along his limbs. It was as though the demon was poisoning him, its rage sending a sickness into him.
“ ‘Events overtook’ you? For shit’s sake, Fool, we sent you there to calm Heaven down. You were supposed to solve their little problem so that we could use your success to gain an advantage over them in the trade and border discussions. What fucking use are you if you can’t even do that?” Mr. Tap opened its mouth wide, revealing that long, long throat with its lining of teeth, descending an impossible depth, deeper than the thickness of Fool’s body, and bit down on the skin below its lip. The tattooed face thrashed, the image blurring as it harried at Fool’s flesh, and Fool screamed, screamed as a piece of him tore away and was swallowed.
“Did you like that, you pathetic human scum?” said Mr. Tap. Fool groaned, waving a hand at Summer, who had risen and was moving swiftly toward him. In her hand she held the knife Fool had used to cut his food, although what she expected to do with it he wasn’t sure; cut Mr. Tap out of him, maybe. He waved at her, shaking his head. Uncertainly, she sat again. Gordie put his arm around her, holding her. Fool tried to smile at them but the expression felt warped on his face and he suspected it looked like a grimace, let it fall away to nothing.
“ANSWER ME!” said Mr. Tap and tore at another section of Fool’s skin, swallowing again, the teeth clicking against each other as the pink scrap disappeared into the gullet.
“No, I didn’t,” said Fool, and his voice sounded weak, papery.
“Tell me why I shouldn’t keep on,” said Mr. Tap.
“I did my best,” said Fool, and now there was an unpleasant wheedling tone added to his voice, a pitiful begging that he didn’t like, “but the angels wouldn’t see the dead as murders and then something attacked us and took one of the named angels.”
“Something?”
“Heaven thinks it was a demon. They found a tunnel they say leads to Hell. They think you’ve been attacking them.”
“I know!” said Mr. Tap, and it sounded calmer now, more thoughtful. “We’ve been sent a formal communication pinned to Catarinch’s fucking head! A declaration of war! We’re at war, Fool, Heaven and Hell joining in the final battle, but we didn’t do it and we’re not fucking ready.”
“No,” said Fool and then because he couldn’t help himself, “it’s not nice, being accused of things you didn’t do, is it?”
“Fuck you, Fool,” said Mr. Tap. “This is your fault, you little grub, you little shit. If you’d done what we sent you to do we wouldn’t be in this position. We haven’t attacked Heaven, Fool, but they’ve attacked us! Dancing things have been seen, Fool, by murders and fires. We have things burning, and have you solved that? No, you useless turd, you haven’t, you’ve solved nothing.
“We have demons missing, Fool, demons and people both.”
“Perhaps the Evidence took them,” said Fool and then screamed as Mr. Tap tore another part of him loose, chewing it furiously and then swallowing it with a noisy, tearing slurp.
“The next time you speak to me like that I’ll chew you apart,” said the tattoo. “Understand?”
“Yes.”
“Good. We didn’t do any of this, Fool. We can only think Heaven has been coordinating the attacks in Hell to force this outcome. Fucking God and his plans, eh?”
“I don’t think it’s Heaven.”
“No?” and now Mr. Tap’s voice sounded something other than angry; it sounded eager. Even you’re afraid of Heaven, thought Fool, even you don’t want this war, because you’ve no idea if Hell will win or if you’ll survive. You want an exit, a way out of this.
“I think it’s the things from places outside.”
“The things outside of everywhere? Really, Fool, you believe that those swirling bastards are doing this?”
“Yes. We have some evidence.”
“Enough to convince that sanctimonious bastard Mayall? Enough to get them to call off the fucking Estedea?”
Fool thought about the claw and the scale and the dancing and the thing he had chased and said, “No.”
“Then I ask again, what fucking use are you? I may as well feed on you and then go and get ready for the war.”
“No, wait,” said Fool, aching and sick and weary. “I can find proof. Give me some time.” He saw Summer, the expression on her face quizzical, Gordie looking horrified, and tried to nod reassuringly at them. I can, he thought. I can, I just need time.
Time and a fucking break.
“We haven’t got time, Fool, this is happening now! When their army is ready, they’ll descend and we’ll be at war.” There was a pause and then Mr. Tap continued, its voice calmer.
“Fuck it, you mongrel bastard, you can have until then,” said the tattoo, said Fool’s flesh, teeth clicking constantly. “But know this: if the war isn’t to be averted, then I will take the greatest of pleasure in, just before the first battle, visiting you and speaking the name of every demon I know while tearing you piec
e from worthless piece and then saying my own name and watching as each piece of you is further split.”
“Fine,” said Fool and collapsed back on the bed as Mr. Tap’s face broke apart and his skin knitted itself back together. Where Mr. Tap had chewed on him his skin healed unevenly, leaving a set of ugly raised scars across his stomach. Fool, exhausted, tried to sit but the muscles of his stomach refused to contract and he flopped back, helpless. Summer and Gordie came to help him and gently lifted him into a sitting position.
“Has that been happening ever since you arrived?” asked Summer.
“Yes. Sort of, it’s not normally that bad,” replied Fool. Summer took him in her arms and hugged him.
“You poor, poor man,” she said. “No one deserves this.”
“You don’t know that,” said Gordie quietly.
“Gordie!” said Summer, her voice shocked against Fool’s neck as she held him.
“No, he’s right,” said Fool. “You don’t know. You don’t know what I did to be in Hell. Maybe this is just punishment.”
“This isn’t just,” said Summer, pulling back from Fool, a horrified look on her face. “This is…” She stopped, unable to find the words to describe it.
“It is what it is,” said Fool. “And it’s not over yet, I’m afraid.”
“No more, please,” said Summer, her voice hard. “Please.”
“It won’t be as bad,” said Fool and then held up his arm and rolled back his sleeve. The blood that had soaked the front of his clothes was cold against him, smelled of old metal and earth left, sunless and wet, under abandoned buildings.
“Marianne,” he said. “Marianne, can you hear me?”
As he waited for her to reply, Fool looked at the face described by the tattoo. It had become even sharper since he had last looked, more detail added on each viewing, and now it was an accurate representation of how Marianne looked. In the inked image, her mouth was smiling, her brow slightly crinkled as though thinking, her eyes open and inquisitive. Her short hair was swept up, twisting above her head in little curls and tangles, and he wondered how soft it was, whether it smelled like Summer’s did, and then the tattoo twitched and he managed to prepare himself before the skin of its mouth split and Marianne said, “Hello, sir.”
“Thomas,” said Fool without thinking. “Hello, Marianne. How are things?”
“I’m still breathing, I’m still here,” she said, and her voice was little more than a whisper. “The Evidence are everywhere. We’ve been moved out of the offices now, they’ve taken your room and all the rooms except the mess and some of the toilets. That’s where I am now, the mess. Something’s happening, sir, something big. I can feel the tension, but it’s more than that, I can feel their uncertainty.”
Something. The war between Heaven and Hell. Something. “You’re right,” said Fool, “and it’s serious. Marianne, have you still got the picture of me?”
“Yes. Hold on,” she said, and then there was a pause. “I’ve got it and unfolded it.”
Fool closed his eyes, seeing again the strange, flattened version of Hell that the picture allowed him to view. Marianne was holding the picture in front of her, and her face was set with lines, worry etching across her forehead and in her eyes. “I’m scared,” she said.
“I know,” Fool replied, knowing there was nothing he could say that would help. Fear was good, fear was the right thing to feel, Marianne was surrounded by danger and threat and to suggest otherwise would be pointless. “Marianne, can you get outside? I need to speak to the Man again.”
“I’ll try,” she said. There was a longer pause, during which Fool had to open his eyes; the control-less roll of Hell in his paper view was sickening, made his belly flop, nausea inside the still-throbbing pains of Mr. Tap’s visit.
“We’re here,” she said after a few minutes. Fool closed his eyes and saw, once again, the rear walled garden of the Information Office. The gate in the far wall was hanging open now, swinging drunkenly down, held in place only by its bottom hinge. The upper hinge, still attached to a lump of concrete, hung from the upper part of its frame, and he could hear it clanking through his paper ears as it swayed back and forth. The statues that had stood around the garden were now in pieces across its uneven paved floor, and some of the bushes and trees that had sprouted in the gaps between the flags had been uprooted and cast aside, their roots gnarled clumps of frond and earth, drying and crumbling to death.
“What happened?” asked Fool, already thinking he knew the answer.
“The Evidence,” said Marianne. “I heard them the night after we were here last. They’re out of control, they do anything they like now. Some of the Information Men have vanished, sir. I don’t think anyone’s safe.”
“No,” said Fool, thinking about judgment without justice, about Mr. Tap’s near-feral children, the bauta, running amok along Hell’s streets yet having the veneer of officialdom. I did this, he thought. Even if the war isn’t my fault, this is. I created the space into which Mr. Tap and the Evidence fit. I made them.
“They’re taking demons now,” said Marianne, and her voice was flat, toneless. “I heard people talk about it. I’m still trying to do my job, but it’s almost impossible. All I can do is listen and try to avoid being seen.”
“Listening is important, Marianne,” said Fool, trying not to let the pain show in his speech. “You’re doing well but I’m not sure what you heard is right. I don’t think the Evidence are taking demons, I think it’s something else. It’s why I need to talk to the Man.”
“How do I call him?” asked Marianne, Fool’s skin splitting and moving to form the words.
“You don’t need to,” said the Man, and the plants in front of them twisted, the stems and leaves forced into a new shape. It was humanoid again, the large body with its indications of arms and a belly topped by a knot of branch and twig that could easily have been a head, leaves placed for eyes and tangled into rolls to create the lips. Even now, he’s re-creating the body he had, thought Fool, fat and gross and imposing.
“Hello, Fool,” said the Man. “What news?
“I hear rumors, Fool, that the angels have led us to war. Is it true? Have I had angels trespassing through me and not noticed? Which ones, I wonder? Those of Gabriel or Malachi, or ones whose provenance is less sure, created for a single terrible purpose?”
“I don’t think it was angels,” said Fool. “Trespasses have happened in Heaven, too. I think it’s something with access to both, setting one against the other. I think it’s…” He paused, unable to remember if he’d mentioned the things outside of everywhere in his discussions with the Man or if they’d been something he kept back.
“Yes? Tell all, Fool!”
“I know what made the tunnels.”
The Man waited a moment before answering, and his tone, when he did, was one of surprise. “How did you know? Have you spies other than me, Fool?” The Man, the plants that formed the Man, rose up, stretching away from the ground and puffing up. Fool heard the snapping of dead stems as he moved, heard Marianne’s gasp as the plant figure became larger, looming at them.
“No, I worked it out,” Fool said loudly. He remembered a word that Gordie had used once, and added, “I deduced it.”
“Did you indeed? Then share your deductions, Fool, share them now,” said the Man, sinking back to the earth in a rustle and crackle of relaxing growth.
“It’s the things that live in the places outside of everywhere,” said Fool. How many times would he need to say it? It didn’t matter, he supposed, whether his lies and omissions were discovered now. There was simply the coming war and his attempts to stop it; everything else he’d deal with afterward.
“You mean there are new things in Hell, things for me to know about? Tell me all about them, Fool! Tell me how I can find them, now!”
“No.”
“Fool,” said the Man, starting to stretch again, voice dangerously low and pleasant, “I insist.”
“No. A t
rade. I’ll tell you everything I know after, when I’ve stopped the war.”
“And how do you propose to do that?”
“By proving it to the Bureaucracies of Heaven and Hell. I’ll show them, and they’ll have to believe me. Especially if you tell them what you know, tell them about the trails through the forests you found and the earth that’s been tunneled through and closed up again.”
“Reveal myself? Never, Fool, have you gone mad?”
“Help me, and I’ll tell you everything. I’ll tell you about Heaven and I’ll tell you about Mayall and I’ll tell you about the Malakim and the tunnels between worlds. I’ll give you the feather.”
The Man did not reply for a long, long time. The plants dropped in on themselves, and Fool began to think he had left them until they suddenly raised themselves and looked straight at Fool’s face on the paper, straight into Fool’s eyes.
“I agree. I’ll tell them everything, but it will have to be here in Hell. I cannot get to Heaven and they won’t believe you if you simply tell them what I’ve said.”
“Where?”
“Assemblies House. Get them to the House, I can come to them there. Bring them all, Fool, and I’ll tell them what I know.”
“Okay. I’ll do what I can.”
“Do more, Fool. I hear the Estedea are coming, and they’re merciless in their sorrow. If the war starts and they arrive, nothing in Hell is safe, not human or demon or even me. Move fast, Fool. Move fast.”
“Yes.”
The Man collapsed, the essence of him leaving the plants in front of them and dissipating through the garden and away. “Marianne,” said Fool.
“Yes?”
“Stay safe, keep hidden, I’ll need your help. I’m coming back, I’ll be there as soon as I can. I’ll keep you safe, I promise.”
“Please,” said Marianne and then, consciously or unconsciously echoing the Man, continued, “Move fast.”
The link was broken. Fool sighed in relief as the splits along the tattoo’s black lines sealed, the now-familiar itch of healing skin scratching at him like a returning friend. He opened his eyes to see Summer and Gordie staring at him, Summer at his arm and Gordie at his face.
The Devil's Evidence Page 29