The Devil's Evidence

by Simon Kurt Unsworth

  “That’s how they’ve made you communicate,” Summer said again. “It’s awful.”

  “It’s not so bad,” Fool said, and knew that Summer knew he was lying even as the untruth escaped his lips.

  “How are you going to do it?” asked Gordie. “How are you going to stop the war?”

  “I don’t know,” said Fool and thought, It’s that fucking phrase again. “I just know I have to try.”

  And I made a promise. I have a promise to keep.

  “We need to look at the tunnel again,” said Summer. “Maybe there’s something there we missed?”

  “I agree,” said Gordie. “The tunnel.”

  “How are we going to get there? We’re locked in,” said Fool, still bleary with the aftereffects of pain, and at that moment the door shook as something crashed into it and a great howl was raised in the corridor beyond the room.

  23

  Summer’s hand jumped immediately to her thigh, to where her gun would have been strapped if she had still had one, and slapped in frustration at its absence, at the plain expanse of linen. Fool, even as he was rising from the bed, pushing himself through the weariness, saw the gesture and grinned humorlessly; she had always been a natural Information Man.

  There was another crash at the door. Gordie rose but the lack of space made movement awkward and he stumbled, falling over the bed in front of him as he tried to push past Summer to get between her and the door. Fool moved slowly, pushing himself along the bed in a half-risen stance, trying to find his balance. Straightening was difficult partly because of the ache in his stomach muscles and the feeling that they had become like wet rope, unable to tauten, but also because his skin felt tight and lacking give. Fucking Mr. Tap, he thought, still moving, my new scars are knotted too tight. I can’t stand properly. Hunched, he found some kind of balance and pushed past Gordie. His gun was on the table and he picked it up as another crash sounded, the door shaking violently in its frame.

  “Who’s there?” he asked, but the only reply was a roar, low and rumbling. The door jerked, hard, and began to shiver as something or someone pushed against it from the outside. The lock held, but the wood, thick though it was, began to bend in at the top of the door. Something flowed through the gap, two sluggish white streams that seemed to undulate as they crawled across the wood, moving across the inner face of the door until they met and merged. The door bowed in farther and the streams thickened, grew faster. Droplets were falling from them now, things that bounced to the floor and then began to move toward each other.

  Maggots.

  “Wambwark,” said Fool, stunned. After everything that was happening, after the trouble they were in, the silly bastard still harbored this grudge? Blamed Fool for the turn of events?

  Yes. The streams were moving swiftly now, the area where they met forming itself into two clasped hands. Bugs fell from the streams, gathering on the ground and massing up, forming the start of legs. From behind him, Fool heard Summer cry out. When he looked around, he saw that a line of bugs was making its way toward Gordie and her, cutting them off from Fool. Summer began to stamp at the line, and the noise of the maggots popping under her feet was terrible, a molasses spray of a noise. Gordie joined in and the air soon stank of the demon’s stench, rich and corrupt and sour. Their shadows moved constantly around them like the arachnid dance of some vast insect.

  “Wambwark, stop!” shouted Fool, hoping to be heard over the roaring, but the only reply was another crash against the door. The screws of the top hinge popped partially loose of their wooden home, their heads jolting out perhaps half an inch. The door’s top section bent farther, more of Wambwark crawling around it, forcing itself in, and there was a sharp crack as the upper panel began to splinter.

  “I’m so sick of this,” said Fool, more to himself than to anyone else, raising his gun to roughly head height. He pressed it against the door, forcing it into the growing mass of maggots, and then more loudly said, “One last chance, Wambwark. Stop this, please, and piss off.”

  Another crash, another roar, and the door was bending back on itself with a sound that groaned and cracked in equal measure. Fool could now see Wambwark’s head and what passed for its face. It was lower than he expected, presumably because so much of it was already in the room, and its eyes glittered, red and insane.

  Behind Fool, Summer shrieked. Without moving, he glanced over his shoulder and saw that she was on the floor with her hands splayed out, the left swarmed by maggots. They moved fast, covering exposed skin in seconds, and she shrieked again, yanking her hand back, shaking it furiously. “It burns,” she cried out as the bugs were flung from her. “They burn.”

  Gordie took hold of the collar of Summer’s shirt and pulled her back, simultaneously pulling a sheet from the bed and using it to beat away the remaining bugs from her hand. Fool glimpsed her skin, red and blistering, and then his own hand was afire.

  The maggots had bulged up around the barrel of his gun, forming a bridge that led them to his fingers. Summer was right, they burned as though they were fat with poison. He jerked back, shaking his hand as Summer had done, knocking the little white bastards off. One had started to burrow into the skin of his knuckle, blood welling around it as it surged its way into his flesh. He grabbed it by its wriggling rear end and pulled and it came free in a bubble of bleeding and pain. Fool was horrified to see that the fucking thing had turned pink from feeding on him and he dropped it with a cry, stamping on it and then moving back to avoid any more of the things reaching him.

  Wambwark’s face, in the gap, split into a wide grin, maggots falling from its lips like fleshy saliva.

  Fool stuck the barrel of the gun into the gap and pulled the trigger, and Wambwark’s head exploded in a spray of maggots and blood and yellow slime. Instead of falling back, the demon leaped forward and crashed into the door as Fool made a compensatory jump back. His knees caught on the edge of a bed and he fell, only just holding on to his gun. His hand was throbbing, sending waves of a sick, dizzying pain up his arm.

  The door buckled, snapping over to reveal Wambwark’s top half. Already maggots were flowing up, re-creating its head. Fool pointed his gun in the direction of the demon and fired again, and this time part of the thing’s shoulder exploded as the bullet tore through it, maggots spinning away in an arc of yellow streaked dark red with blood.

  Wambwark yowled, punched, and kicked at the lower part of the door, shaking it. The lock held, more of the maggots falling into the room as Fool fired a third time, this time aiming as carefully as the situation would allow, placing the shot into the demon’s chest. This had more impact, tore a hole through the creature and punched it back. It slammed into the far wall of the corridor and pushed itself off the wall in one clumsy movement, but before it could come back to the door Fool’s new bullet had formed and he fired again.

  This time, Wambwark was clearly wounded. The bullet opened a path near its shoulder, merging with the hole from the previous bullet so that its chest was mangled. It spun back against the wall and this time did not bounce back but slithered down it, leaving a trail of dark liquid in which maggots wriggled.

  The bugs in the room began to surge back toward the door. “Don’t let them get back to him!” Fool shouted, struggling upright, but Gordie had already started to hit at them, toppling one of the beds so that he could use its flat edge as a weapon, crushing legions of the things at a time.

  In the corridor, Wambwark let loose a long, desperate wail and tried to use the wall to lever itself up to a standing position. It was much smaller now, too much of it separated from its main body, the damage to its chest and shoulder not healing properly.

  Fool kicked aside the bugs, treading on them as he did so, and stepped to the broken door. Looking down at the demon as the sound of Gordie’s exertions behind him became louder, he said, “You brought this on yourself.”

  He fired again.

  This time, Fool aimed for the head and watched, detached, as it exploded apart
again. Maggots moved sluggishly to reform the dome, but as soon as his bullet was there, he fired again, and again, and again.

  Eventually Wambwark stopped trying to rise. The demon moved in disjointed arrhythmic surges, its eyes still glittering like spots of angry blood in a face that was damaged and collapsing.

  Fool leaned on the bottom half of the door and, with difficulty, put his gun back in its holster. Its barrel was hot, hot enough to be felt through the leather and the material of his pants, but not as hot as his hand had become. He held it up in front of him, watching as the skin bulged, as it swelled. His fingers looked like fat sausages and he could bend them only a little. Veins rose, red and angry, across the back of the hand, the redness extending toward his wrist. Clear, foul-smelling liquid dripped from the hole that Wambwark’s maggot had made.

  When he turned to Summer, Fool saw that she was in a far worse condition.

  Her whole arm had started to swell, had become red, glistening with sweat. Where Fool had been bitten or burrowed into by only one bug, Summer had been punctured by several and her fingers and palm and wrist were slick with blood and the same weeping, clear fluid. She was holding her arm at the elbow and crying, her face crunched into a pained wrinkle, tears dripping down her cheeks and off her chin. As Fool watched, the crawling redness popped the veins up farther and farther along her arm, the swelling and pain traveling back toward her body.

  “Help me,” said Gordie, crouching behind Summer and propping her up against him. “Bring me the water.”

  Fool hobbled to the table and picked up the jug of water. He had to pick it up using his wrong hand and he slopped it as he lifted.

  “Be careful, we need it to clean her hand,” snapped Gordie and then, to Summer, he said, “It’ll be okay. We’ll make it better.”

  Don’t promise that, thought Fool, don’t ever promise that. Silently, with waves of sharp pain starting to encircle his wrist and stretch into his forearm, nausea flipping his already abused belly, he carried the water over. Gordie took the jug and Summer stretched her arm, the skin shiny with tension and glowing with the furnace heat of poison. By her elbow the sleeve of her shirt was puffed and taut as the flesh below it swelled.

  “It’ll be okay,” Gordie said again and poured the water over Summer’s hand.

  She screamed.

  Steam and smoke boiled away from her flesh where the water hit it, the vapors roiling up the color of old shrouds. Water splashed off her and spattered to the discolored floor, threaded with strings of blood and yellowing slime. As Gordie poured more water, steam billowed from Summer, filling the room with sour-smelling clouds that hit the walls and condensed into bitter, trickling tears. Summer screamed again, weaker, and then broke into fitful gasps.

  When the steam cleared the swelling in Summer’s hand had gone down and the red veins had receded, their color burning away to their more usual blue. The holes in her skin still bled, but now it was mostly blood, red and thin and spilling across the floor. She flexed her fingers. The movement forced more blood from her wounds and Gordie poured another splash of water across Summer’s damaged hand. This time, no steam rose.

  “Your turn,” said Gordie to Fool, moving Summer gently aside and leaning her against the bed.

  “Use it on her,” Fool said. “My hand’s not too bad.”

  “Bullshit,” said Gordie. “Your hand’s bad. It’s poisoned you.”

  Fool didn’t argue. He was growing dizzy and sat on the floor next to Gordie, holding his arm out. Lifting it hurt, as though it had become three, four, ten times as heavy. It prickled fiercely and heat radiated from it like a sickness.

  “Brace yourself,” said Gordie. Fool took a breath, held it, and Gordie poured.

  A wave of the purest agony Fool had ever experienced crashed along his arm, blooming in a whitelight roar that he welcomed because even as it smashed through him it cleansed, burning away Wambwark’s bitterness and poison. Strings of steam, thinner than those that had billowed away from Summer, rose above Fool and hit the ceiling. Water fell to the floor and slithered away through the rough boards, carrying with it the last of Wambwark’s bilious seed.

  When the pain receded, Fool found that he could move his fingers again. The hole by his knuckle was still bleeding, an open bore into his flesh, but the redness around it was fading now, the color of his hand returning to its more usual tone.

  “Thank you,” Fool said.

  “Pleasure,” said Gordie. “I hoped the water would be pure, holy somehow, that it would neutralize the damage.”

  Fool nodded. For once, the situation had worked in their favor. He wished he could believe it would happen again.

  There was a feeble groan from the corridor, breathy and distorted. Fool rose and walked to the shattered door. Wambwark had struggled into a sitting position as more bugs made their way back to it, but it was in poor shape. Its head had reformed lopsided, the temple bulging on one side and collapsed in on the other, and the chest had stitched back together unevenly, so that it was hunched forward and over. Fool, feeling the pull of his own new scar tissue and the effect it had on his posture, thought, Good. I hope it hurts. The demon looked up at him and hissed, maggots falling from the mouth that opened in its head, eyes gleaming dully. It reached out a short and deformed arm that wept bugs, and tried to claw at Fool. The attempt was pitiful and its arm fell back after only a few seconds of extension, coming to rest across its thighs. It lost definition for a moment, the bugs wriggling and merging with the legs, and then came together again unevenly. Wambwark hissed at Fool again.

  “Don’t you know when you’re beaten?” said Fool. “Even now, you try to attack. We’re stronger than you think, and I’m tired of it. I’m tired of you and Mr. Tap and Rhakshasas and Catarinch and that little shit that looked like a horse challenging me, threatening me. I’m tired of all of you.

  “You could have left us the fuck alone. We were never your enemy, not here in Heaven anyway. You’re just like all those things in the Houska and the farms and the factories in that other fucking place, so sure you can hurt us and nothing will be done and we won’t fight back, and you know what? We aren’t in Hell, and you aren’t my master, and today I will not fucking stand for it.”

  Fool drew his gun and fired, a last time, and Wambwark’s head broke apart in a wet mess of maggots and slime and something that might have been blood but might equally have been dark brains, and it collapsed back against the wall. This time, it did not reform. The mass of it that remained lost its shape and fell apart, the maggots that had made it crawling away, no longer acting in unison, just a set of aimless bugs trying to escape.

  “Thomas Fool,” said Benjamin, “in the name of God, what have you done?”

  The angel was hovering at the end of the corridor, his shadow stretching out before him like a fat snake. He twitched his wings and moved toward Fool, his feet several inches above the ground. “You killed it,” he said.

  “Yes,” replied Fool, “I did. He would have killed us.”

  “It was defenseless and you killed it,” said Benjamin, and Fool was astonished to hear sorrow in the angel’s voice. “You showed it no mercy. Thomas Fool, that was an awful act, a sinful act. But then, what else am I to expect? Perhaps I should remember that you are one of the damned and not one of the saved.”

  “Sinful?” asked Fool, a worm of anger turning in his stomach. “It’s a fucking demon, it’s evil and was trying to murder us. You should thank me for killing it.”

  “No mercy,” said Benjamin, now hovering over the dead thing’s corpse. “You damn yourself again, Thomas Fool, damned a thousand times over.”

  “I don’t care,” said Fool, finally losing what little control remained over his temper. “You act so innocent but you and Israfil and all the other angels, you can be violent when you want to be, just like you can avoid even noticing violence when it suits you. Don’t call me sinful, you hypocritical bastard, you’re just as bad!”

  “Thomas Fool, watch your tong
ue,” said the angel.

  “You watch yours. Have you considered, Benjamin, that this is all Heaven’s fault? You drag me down here and then set me to investigate several murders and then you block me at every step of the way. The kindliest angels take the bodies away before I can give them anything but the most basic examinations. Israfil and you refuse to see anything but what you want to see. Mayall kills the only thing that might have helped me work out what’s going on here and everyone smiles and smiles and says, ‘Oh look, it’s Heaven, isn’t it so fucking lovely?’

  “But it’s not lovely, is it, because people are dying and things are changing and you don’t know why or how any more than I do and you’ve still got the gall to criticize me and call me a sinner? Well, maybe I am, but you angels aren’t much better, are you? You were quick enough to kill Catarinch when the situation allowed you to do so but never so quick to give me the time I need to try to sort things out and find a solution to this mess. Heaven’s blindness and stubbornness triggered this war, and the war made Wambwark scared and small and powerless and it lashed out the only way it knew, by attacking me because it thought I was the cause of all its problems. Don’t lecture me on right and wrong, angel. How many people will die in this war? How many will the Estedea kill? How many angels will be torn to pieces like Israfil, how many little demons scurrying around Hell and hiding from things larger than themselves will be slaughtered without you even noticing? How many Joyful or Sorrowful will be sacrificed for this war, a war that doesn’t need to happen?”

  Fool stopped, panting. He couldn’t remember ever speaking for so long, saying so much, or ever being so angry, the fury raging in him. Letting it all out, attacking Benjamin, hadn’t dissipated his rage at all; if anything, it had made it worse, like stoking a fire. He took a deep breath, letting the anger simmer inside him, letting it coalesce into something hard and sharp, something that overrode his pain and weariness, and then carefully climbed over the broken door into the corridor. His feet squashed more of Wambwark’s bugs as he stood.