The Devil's Evidence

by Simon Kurt Unsworth

  Gordie, blood spraying from his wound, stumbled as Fool fired again, this time more accurately, the shot hitting Mr. Tap in the back. The momentum sent the demon staggering forward and it fell, dropping first to its knees and then over onto its side.

  The fires across the path guttered, flared back up, and then guttered again, gaps appearing, greasy black smoke spewing up from the hot stone where the flames had been a moment earlier. Mr. Tap twitched, tried to rise, and then fell back, too damaged to move. The branches and stems around Mr. Tap’s upper torso detached themselves from the demon, flopping away from its body in a slithering pile. Mr. Tap twitched violently again, its abandoned body leaking from masses of punctures, its head smacking onto the ground as it fitted, dying.

  The Man, exposed and isolated now, hunched himself up onto thin limbs created from twisted vines and tried to scramble away. Gordie, seeing it, threw himself forward as Fool, crying from exertion and pain, clambered up and began to run.

  Gordie landed on the Man and then thrashed over, jerking back so hard that he hit and then rose from the ground before pitching back down in a violent spasm. Tendrils of the Man punched into Gordie, clamping on to him, tightening around him as they burrowed under Gordie’s skin. Gordie tried to tear the Man’s questing fingers away, ripping at his skin and clawing at himself, screaming, his voice cracking and hoarse.

  The Man tightened again, pulling himself close to Gordie so that Fool didn’t dare risk firing in case he hit his friend. The Man tried to make him stand, but Gordie was still fighting him, and his control was loose. Instead, the Man forced Gordie to his knees but he twitched and leaned back, overbalancing and falling. He twitched again as the Man tried to puppet him up a second time, and then he was forced to his feet and took two wavering steps, outlined against the flames, shambling and burned, before falling, collapsing outstretched.

  Fool watched as if in slow motion as Gordie’s head plunged into one of the patches of flame that still burned on the path.

  His hair caught fire, sizzling and shriveling back even as Fool reached him and pulled him away, beating at the fires that now flowed over his scalp and face like liquid. He was still jerking, the Man trying to make him move, arms ratcheting out, legs wheeling as he tried to find some control, more of the stems and growths punching in through Gordie’s chest and neck as the Man sought extra purchase.

  Ignoring the Man, Fool tore off his jacket and wrapped it around Gordie’s head, suffocating the flames. He could feel the heat through the material, watched as the cuffs charred, beat at the fires as they emerged from the edge of the covering. As he pulled the jacket back strings of Gordie’s flesh came with it, long wet strips that smoked and stretched and snapped. Fool gagged at the smell of him, at the roast of his meat, and then Gordie punched him in the stomach.

  The Man had achieved enough control to make Gordie lash out and then stand, stiff-limbed, face dripping and raw, eyes molten and bursting. Fool fell to the path with a grunt, then Gordie stepped forward and kicked at Fool. The kick missed, whistling in front of his face, and he raised his gun but couldn’t fire at his friend. The Man pulled Gordie’s foot up, swayed, and then kicked out again, faster than Fool would have believed possible. The kick took him on the side of his head, clicking his teeth together with a snap, and sent him sprawling, his vision blurring. For a dizzying moment there were two Gordies, each indistinct, each turning and shambling toward the flames, each trying to escape to the outside.

  “No,” Fool said and stood, staggered after the Man. He hit Gordie in the back and then, before the Man could react, plunged his hands into the tight branches and pulled. Gordie grunted as some of the Man’s fingers came away from him with a wet snapping sound. Other pieces snapped and left their tips buried in Gordie’s flesh. He smelled of blisters and smoke and meat, and Fool cried out miserably and pulled again.

  Gordie sat as more of the Man came loose, spitting blood and bone fragments as he did so. The plants flailed, trying to twist out of Fool’s grasp and reattach, but Fool held the mass away, ignoring the pain that the Man’s whipping stems caused across his wrists. One more pull and the Man came completely away, more blood spraying out of the holes in Gordie’s flesh. He turned his ruined face to Fool, exposed muscles sweating pus, ruined eyes weeping blood and bubbling gel, and mouthed, “Thank you.”

  Gordie fell, folding over, and did not move again.

  Fool turned back and began to walk into the Garden. The Man thrashed in Fool’s arms, parts of him whipping at Fool’s chest and face. Something slashed across his eyes, and his vision blurred again, his right eye searing in pain. Something else tried to push into his skin but it was weak and he managed to hold it out, far enough away that it couldn’t reach him. Something punctured his wrist, finding its way through the bandages and into the edge of the stitched hole beneath, and for a stretching, awful moment the Man was inside him, was nuzzling his way into him, and he had a sudden flash that yes the Man was his friend and he should walk out, walk to the field and then Fool yanked him away, wordless, and threw the Man to the ground.

  They had reached the point where Fool had written Mayall’s name. The Man hit the ground by the words and flipped himself over, strands of him contracting and stretching. He started to scuttle away, slow, small now, just a mass of branches and grass and stems holding the Man at its heart.

  Fool saw the feather on the ground and picked it up. He stepped over to the Man, a trail of green slime now oozing behind the mass of plants as it moved, and thrust the feather barb-first into the center of the mass, impaling it.

  The Man shrieked, tried to keep moving, dripping more of the liquid that was sap or blood or something between the two from around the feather’s white shaft. Fool tried to hold the Man down, keep him still, but even now he refused to stop fighting, was able to pull away, still crawling, parts of him reaching out and dragging himself forward against Fool’s efforts, lurching and pulling Fool over, still trying to get back to where the soil could replenish him. The Man shot a single stem back toward Fool, fast, and it punctured him above his collarbone, turned inside him, and then hooked back out in a spray of blood. Fool let go of the Man and tried to reach his gun, but the Man lashed again and sent the weapon spinning away. It came to rest in one of the patches of fire by Gordie. Fool rolled and the Man sent another spike out, this time into Fool’s leg.

  Fool looked at the Archdeacons, still standing together, and willed them to come and help, because even now the Man was pulling himself on, had removed the barb from Fool and was crawling, crawling, but the Archdeacons ignored his look and remained where they were. Fool groaned, tried to stand and couldn’t, leg muscles finally too tired and damaged to function, managed to get to his hands and knees and crawled after the Man and reached him as he was crossing the now-extinguished line of fire.

  Fool reached out, taking hold of the feather that was sticking out of the Man’s back, his other hand burning against the baking stone ground, and twisted. The Man jolted, tried to pull away, but Fool wouldn’t let go. Another barb punched into him and pulled out, then another, weak, only barely breaking his skin. He gripped the feather tighter and said, “No. No,” although whether he said it out loud or only in his mind he couldn’t tell, and then Mayall was rising out of the fires of the Flame Garden, huge and spinning, wreathed in smoke and grinning.

  He landed in front of Fool as the Archdeacons scattered, running from the angel. Mayall ignored them, crouching to look at Fool.

  “You came,” Fool said, still not letting go of the Man even as he continued scrabbling to escape, trying to drag Fool with him. His voice sounded like it was coming from some great distance, sounded echoing and dry, sounded old and lost.

  “You called,” replied Mayall, casually knocking away another of the Man’s shoots as it quested around his feet. “You have something to tell me?”

  “This war is wrong,” said Fool. He felt sick, his face burning, his eyes stinging, and his side throbbing, the new hole at the bott
om of his neck feeling wet and hot. Grotesque waves of pain were coursing through him, making him dizzy and bilious.

  “This war is just,” said Mayall.

  “No,” replied Fool and then vomited, splashing the angel’s feet with bile. Speaking was an effort, breathing was an effort, everything was folding in on itself. He pushed on, forcing the words out.

  “Hell never attacked Heaven. I thought it was the things outside of everywhere, but it wasn’t. It was the Man.” He gestured at the still-crawling mass of vegetation. “It’s him.” He lost his grip on the feather and lowed, desperate, as the Man began to move away from him. A high keening sound rose from the Man, the whistle of air through reeds and grasses.

  Mayall smiled at Fool and then stood. “And so we are brought around in our circles,” he said, “to the end that is as the beginning was, brought here by a fool.”

  Mayall walked to the Man and lifted him, gripping him by the feather and by a string of stems that thrashed wildly. “Be still,” he said quietly, and there was no humor in him now, only a gentle compassion. Fool watched as he leaned in close to the Man, whispered something to him, and then kissed the top of the mass gently.

  The Man sighed and burst into a ball of fatty yellow flame in Mayall’s hands. A moment later, there was nothing left of him but ash, white and dry, that fell to the ground along with the unmarked feather. Fool vomited again, the action tearing through him. He could still smell Gordie’s burned flesh, felt that he would always smell it, always remember the strings of him peeling away with his jacket, knowing that always wasn’t going to be long and being grateful for it.

  “I thank you, Thomas Fool,” Mayall said. “Because you said it, it has become true. It just took someone to see, to be prepared to fight for it. All of Heaven and Hell now knows that this war is not just, and it is over.”

  Fool tried to nod, tried to be glad but couldn’t; his head wouldn’t lift up but carried on falling, tilting down so that his chin hit his chest and his forehead struck the wall and the pain rose up through his body, all over him, swallowing his head, and then the blackness was crashing in from his sides and his final thought was Marianne, Gordie, Summer, I’ll be there soon, I’m coming.

  I’m coming.

  EPILOGUE

  They were in an office in Assemblies House, anonymous and bland.

  Fool was sitting naked in a chair facing the new head of the Archdeacons, his body covered in scratches and stitched wounds and blisters and striations and burns and bruises, bloomed with the colors of healing and pain. He stared at the demon on the other side of the long table and waited. Rhakshasas’s place had now been taken by the thing dressed in red and green, who had not introduced itself but whom he’d heard called Quailknife as he was being escorted there. Mayall was sitting at the end of the table, not behind it and pointedly not alongside the demon, but still facing Fool.

  “How are you feeling?” asked the angel.

  “I hurt. I thought I was dead.” I wanted to be dead, I wanted this to be over.

  “No,” said Mayall. “That reward was not granted to you.”

  Fool waited but no one spoke. He looked down at himself. Under the sullen hues of his injuries, the tattoos burned into him by Rhakshasas remained but were still now, long lines and patches of blackness that ran through the bruises from his ankles to the edges of his wrists. Marianne’s face still looked back at him from his forearm, her expression unreadable.

  He was still alive, still hurting, Gordie and Summer and Marianne were still dead, escaped before him. He ached, inside and out.

  “Is the Man dead?”

  “The Man of Plants and Flowers is no longer your concern, nor a concern for Heaven or Hell.”

  “That’s not answering my question.”

  “No.”

  Another pause, another silence. He felt as though he was behind a sheet of glass, just he and his pain, separated, everything muffled and flat. Outside, he could hear the sounds of construction, of the face of Hell being smoothed over so that the evidence of the war, the damage and destruction, was gone. No one had mentioned the conflict so far, and he didn’t think they were about to. It was done and gone, and forgotten.

  “Why am I here?”

  “For judgment,” said Quailknife, the first time it had spoken since the three of them had gathered in the room.

  “Fine.” He didn’t care.

  “And for reward,” said Mayall.

  This brought Fool up short, snapped through the muffling silence around his head. He looked at Mayall, in his brown coat and off-color collarless shirt and stained trousers, and said, “Reward?”

  “You brought the truth into the light,” said Mayall and stood. His feet were beginning to twitch, his fingers beginning to snap. “That deserves reward, does it not?”

  The angel did a little shuffle, oblivious of the looks that Quailknife was giving him. He’d start to juggle soon, thought Fool, and then something would get broken.

  “Judgment,” repeated Quailknife.

  “And reward,” said Mayall firmly, spinning a full circle, arms swinging, legs kicking high. One of the angel’s feet caught the edge of the table and it bounced up, but before it could crash down Mayall caught it and began to tilt it this way and that, letting it fall from one hand to the other.

  He’s juggling a table, thought Fool and couldn’t help but smile. Mayall, seeing the smile, said, “That’s the ticket! Life’s always nicer when we smile, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know.” That phrase again. Fuck it.

  “Oh, trust me, Thomas Fool, it is. Take it from me, I know. Now, your reward. What would you like?”

  Fool remained silent. What could he ask for? His friends to be returned? To be allowed to die? To be Elevated, to become one of the Joyful?

  Mayall let the table fall back and skipped to Fool, crouching in front of him so that their faces were level. The angel’s breath smelled of mint and something else, something sweet and old. As he crouched he calmed, the manic light in his eyes fading, and he became serious again. “Would you like to know what you did, perhaps?”

  “What I did?” In the war? In Heaven, or in Hell?

  “What you did before, the things you did to bring you here,” said Mayall, cupping his hands around Fool’s face and making them into a tunnel, pushing his own face into the other side of it so that the whole world was Mayall, the whole world was Mayall’s calm, deep eyes.

  “I can tell you,” said Mayall quietly. “It might help you make sense of your time here. It might help you understand why this punishment, if you understood the kind of monster you were.”

  Quailknife spluttered, somewhere outside the tunnel. “No,” it said, “that is not to be offered.”

  “Nonetheless,” said Mayall, still quiet, still Fool’s whole world, still the kindest eyes peering at him from across the gulf of that short space, “it is available if it is wanted.”

  “No,” from Quailknife again.

  “It is not for discussion,” said Mayall and finally broke the tunnel, let the rest of the world back in. “Well, Fool, what do you think?”

  Fool looked down at himself again, at his battered body, and thought. To know what he had done, to know if he had been a monster, to know what kind of monster? Would that help? He looked at Marianne’s tattooed face, at her eyes and her smile, at the lines on his stomach that were still almost Mr. Tap if he looked at them right, and raised his head to look at Mayall.

  “Thank you, but no,” he said. “Whoever that person was, it’s not who I am now.”

  “A wise choice,” said Mayall. “So, then, what will it be?”

  “Can I have my skin back?”

  Mayall grinned, mouth open and teeth huge, eyes gleaming. He flicked his head, sent a string of hair back from his forehead, and said, “Of course.”

  The angel leaned forward and pinched the skin of Fool’s ankle, trapping one of the tattoo lines between his thumb and forefinger.

  “Not this one,
” said Fool suddenly, placing his hand over Marianne’s face. “Leave her. I can’t lose her again.”

  “Of course,” said Mayall again and pulled. The tattoo unspooled from Fool’s skin in a long string, its end still pinched between Mayall’s fingers, slithering away from him and spilling on the floor around his feet. It took perhaps three seconds, the lines emerging from his skin painlessly, the only sensation a flowing warmth as though someone was rubbing a gentle, moist tongue over him.

  And then it was done.

  Fool lifted his hand, finding Marianne’s face still looking at him. He smiled at her. Mayall gathered the lines of tattoos into a bundle and thrust them into his pocket.

  “I’ll have fun with them later,” he said, grinning broadly.

  “And now,” said Quailknife, “judgment. You brought things into Hell that had no existence, things that should not be.” For a moment, Fool couldn’t work out what the demon meant, and then realized: Summer and Gordie.

  “True,” he said.

  “You shot more than one of Hell’s Evidence Men, you brought Rhakshasas to his death, you lied in your reports.”

  “All true,” said Fool, still looking at Marianne, still looking at what might have been.

  “You have colluded with angels,” said Quailknife, “and this may be the worst sin of all.”

  “This is Hell, he is supposed to sin,” said Mayall.

  “You killed Wambwark with no mercy,” said Quailknife.

  “Is there mercy in Hell?” asked Mayall.

  “Angel, you are not helping,” snapped Quailknife. “Your function here is complete, you have no further part to play.”

  “Be careful, little demon,” said Mayall.

  “I’d listen, he kills demons,” said Fool helpfully.

  “We are embargoed from killing you,” said Quailknife, looking at Mayall, hatred in its eyes. “So Elderflower has decreed that your punishment is this: You will remain here in Hell, Thomas Fool, and continue as head of the Information Office, but nothing will talk to you and no one will count you as friend. You will do your job in Hell’s silences. That is Hell’s judgment. The mark of Hell is on you, now and forever.”