The Devil's Evidence

by Simon Kurt Unsworth

  May have.

  “So, Fool,” said Mr. Tap, “have you enjoyed our little chat?” The tattooed split in his belly grinned at him, showing teeth in that impossibly deep throat, and the eye widened, revealing the wetness at its center.

  “No,” said Fool. His face was stiffening now, less mobile as the slashes gummed together and dried. His belly hurt, a deep and grimy throb.

  “Perhaps you’ll enjoy tomorrow evening’s conversation more,” said Mr. Tap, its voice muffled as the tattoo sealed shut. “Perhaps that’s the night I’ll speak my name aloud. It’s been so long since I’ve heard it spoken, after all.” The mouth grinned and then closed completely, the skin knitting back together; the eye closed and for a few seconds his flesh burned with the itch of it sealing and then Mr. Tap was gone.

  Fool collapsed back on the bed. “Being in Heaven’s more painful than being in Hell,” he said aloud, feeling the sweat roll across his newly smooth chest, feeling the tautness of his cheek as he spoke. Already the tattoo on his stomach had changed, no longer a mouth and an eye but a random pattern of lines and dots and blocks.

  “Pardon?” Marianne’s voice, roaring in on a second wave of pain, this time from his arm. He jerked, sitting upright.

  “Nothing. Hello, Marianne,” he said. “How are things?”

  “Fine,” she said, and he knew from her voice that they weren’t fine, not at all.

  “Report,” he said, becoming formal, giving her a framework into which she could fit, a structure in which to shore up her fears and uncertainties, giving her the support of information.

  “There’ve been more fires, and another slaughter,” she said.

  “Tell me.”

  “A group of Genevieves this time,” she said. He looked at the tattoo, seeing the brow above her eyes furrow as she tried to put the facts into order and tell him. “We were called to a boardinghouse.”

  “Which one?”

  “It doesn’t have a name, one of the smaller ones, on the outskirts of Eve’s Harbor. It was the same as the Seamstress House, they’d come in through the windows, attacked everyone at once.”

  “They?”

  “They,” she said firmly, the word vibrating its resolution up his arm. Her mouth, the mouth in his skin, pursed, and then she said, “Multiple attack points, and no one inside had a chance to run.”

  “Tell me about the scene.”

  “Lots of footprints in the blood, but nothing recognizable. We took the dead to the Questioning House but Hand didn’t get much from them. The poor bastards were asleep when they got attacked, so the most they saw was some fucking claw or sets of teeth coming at them, waking them up in time to kill them.”

  A claw. He blinked, thinking about claws, about the pincer. There was something there. “Go on. There’s more.” A statement not a question, he could hear it in her voice, feel it in the pent-up energy that trembled along his arm from Marianne’s painted, split mouth.

  “There was a crowd, Marys and Genevieves, all watching as we carried the bodies out. I thought it was odd, the size of it, so I asked a few questions. Everyone was talking about the deaths, everyone had heard a rumor about them, most of them exaggerated and untrue. It was like someone wanted the crowd to gather, wanted them to see us bring the dead out.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not sure. The Evidence arrived, started to arrest people, question them on the street. Before long they said they’d got the murderers, but they’d not, they’d just arrested a couple of Genevieves too stupid to get out of their way. It was like the crowd had been gathered to show them the dead, to present them to the Evidence, to let them see the Evidence being their usual brutal selves. To give the rumors somewhere to grow.”

  Clever, Marianne, he thought. You’re seeing things that aren’t on the surface, you’re finding the threads, you’re listening to the rumors that form inside your own head, the guesses and theories, and you’re working out which are real. You’re an Information Man.

  “Did they do anything to you or the other Information Men?”

  “No. They seem to be giving us a wide berth.”

  “Good. And the fires?”

  “Three since yesterday, scattered all over.” She listed the places that had burned, and there it was again, the hint of something, a pattern that was rising up through the murk, but it wasn’t clear yet, not enough to see, not enough to read.

  “Anything else?”

  “No.” There was.

  “Marianne,” he said. “Whatever it is, you have to tell me.”

  “It’s nothing,” she said after a long pause, during which he rubbed his forearm around the tattoo, hoping to ease the dull ache of their conversation. “But, well, the canisters. The Bureaucracy, they’re almost panicking. They’re demanding we find who’s setting the fires and not even pretending to be confused from them now. Here, let me read one of them to you.” There was a pause, the tattoo motionless, and then it blinked again and the mouth opened.

  “ ‘Find the person making the burning.’ Here’s another: ‘The burnings must be stopped.’ They’ve never been so demanding but so vague before. Do you see?”

  “No.” What was the pattern, what was it? Warehouses, workers’ houses, abandoned shacks, a boardinghouse holding however many Marys who had died, now factories making Hell’s furniture, farm tools, or parts for the trains and other buildings scattered across Hell, but there was a link, there had to be.

  A field behind the first place that had burned. The thick forest covering the hills behind the Seamstress House.

  Wait. Wait a minute, not the places that burned maybe, but the places around them. “Marianne, can you get together all the sites of the fires before we talk tomorrow night?”

  “I have them in front of me now,” she said, and there was a hint of pride in her voice, a recognition that she was getting the work done, getting ahead of her orders and doing the job well.

  “No, it has to be tomorrow, I need time to do something. Wait there a minute.”

  Fool looked at the tattoo across his stomach. Mr. Tap’s face was still no longer visible, lost in lines that shifted, distorting him. Still, nothing ventured nothing gained, he thought, and then spoke.

  “Mr. Tap,” said Fool and prodded the tattoo.

  “Mr. Tap,” again, louder, and another prod, hard into the bruised muscle. After a moment, the tattoo eye tore open and the mouth split into existence.

  “I don’t appreciate being summoned, Fool,” said Mr. Tap.

  “I’m still the Commander of the Information Office of Hell,” said Fool as coldly as his pain and fear would allow. “As Hell’s representative in Heaven, I need something from you, something to assist me in the investigations you tasked me with continuing despite my absence from Hell.”

  “From me?” said Mr. Tap, and the mouth curled back into a vast, humorless grin, stretching the skin farther than it had been before, revealing a red and raw expanse of fat-flecked meat at its edges.

  “Yes,” said Fool, trying to breathe, trying to stay awake, trying not to faint. “I need a map of Hell, as accurate as you’ve got, as detailed as you can get me.”

  “Why should I get you a map?” asked Mr. Tap, and already the mouth was nipping at the edges of him, tearing strings of skin away and spitting them out, sucking on the blood.

  “Because I’m working to make Hell safe,” said Fool.

  “Safe? I think you misunderstand Hell and its purpose,” said Mr. Tap.

  “No, I don’t,” said Fool, “but perhaps you do. Now, get me a map before we talk tomorrow and I may be able to tell you and your masters something about the fires.”

  Mr. Tap paused, then the tattoo nodded without speaking. Fool’s muscles rippled to make the nod, bulging and falling away in a nausea-inducing wave. The eye closed, the mouth resealed, and Mr. Tap was gone.

  “Marianne, are you still there?”

  “Yes?”

  “Can you do me a favor?”

  “I’ll try,” s
he said. “What do you want?”

  “Can you go out into the courtyard? Without being seen?”

  “I can try. Why?”

  “Because,” said Fool, remembering a promise made to a thing of fern and leaf, “I need to talk to the Man of Plants and Flowers.”

  —

  How long had it been since Fool was in the courtyard? He used to come here regularly, enjoying its peace and relative calm, but recently he’d not been able to get out of his rooms as much. There was always some administrative function that needed addressing within the Information Office, some crime to investigate, some internal grievance to rule upon. As Marianne and he went into the courtyard he felt an unexpected thing—a swell of emotion that it took a moment to recognize as pleasure. He genuinely liked it out here, and was glad to be back.

  Only, he wasn’t there, not really; rather, he was lying on his bed in Heaven, eyes closed, as Marianne carried the piece of paper with the sketch of his face on it, and only through those open and pencil-sketched eyes could he see a slightly distorted view of the place he used to know well.

  It was like looking at the world through a lens of glass that had fogged at the edges and warped, and which made things off-kilter, uneven and distant. It was also a view out of his control, moving when he did not want it to, focusing on things he wasn’t interested in, and gliding over those things he wanted to spend time looking at, a view dictated by whatever the paper was facing.

  The statues around the courtyard’s edges were the same, Fool thought, when he managed to catch sight of them. A little more weatherworn, maybe, their coats of moss and lichens a little thicker, but they were standing in the same places, old friends waiting to welcome him. The flagged floor was covered in a shroud of old leaves that Fool heard crackle under Marianne’s feet, and the sky above them was filled with stars that were cold and remote. He heard Marianne’s teeth chatter, felt the chatter in the movement of the tattoo, realized it must be cold but did not feel the chill. In Heaven, Fool was warm.

  “What do we do now?” asked Marianne, having seated herself on one of the stone benches that lined the courtyard. She had placed his paper faceup on her knee and his view was suddenly of the underside of her chin, upside down, and the skies above her.

  “Hold me out,” he said.

  “What? Oh, yes, I’m sorry,” she said, fumbling the paper upright and holding it out so that Fool could see the area in front of him. “I didn’t mean to put you like that, I wasn’t thinking. I’m not used to speaking to someone like this.”

  “It’s okay,” said Fool, smiling and grimacing at the way it stretched his healing cheek. “I don’t mind seeing you upside down. The bottom of your chin is very pleasant.”

  She spun the paper toward her, a wary expression of amused surprise on her face. Was she blushing? he wondered. There was a faint tinge to her cheeks, difficult to make out but definitely there.

  “I’d thank you, but you’re only paper,” Marianne said finally. “I don’t suppose the opinion of a paper person matters.”

  “I don’t suppose it does,” he agreed, and the two of them started laughing at the absurdity of it all, Fool wincing as he did so.

  “Well, this is very cozy,” said a sibilant voice, and Marianne jerked back, snapping the paper around so hard that she folded it, and for a moment Fool had a view of the world that was bent, doubling back in on itself so that he could see his own penciled chin and had to open his eyes in Heaven to block the view of Hell. It was dizzying, this jumping between places, between views. He swallowed, aching, and then closed his eyes again.

  He was looking at an empty courtyard. The shrubs in the borders around the courtyard twisted, tangling around each other, and then the Man was there in front of him. More of the plants were pulled into the mass being created by the continual twisting of the stems and branches so that it formed a growing bulk with a vaguely human shape. At its top, a knot of thorns and flower heads had clustered together to form a full head, the first time the Man had done so in front of Fool.

  “Hello,” said Fool, talking through the picture.

  “Hello, Fool,” said the Man. “You look different.”

  13

  Talking to the Man was easier than talking to Marianne. With his real eyes closed and his paper eyes open, he could see relatively clearly the moving plants that the Man had created himself from, despite the vision having a slightly blurred, sepia hue, and hear him through the sketch Fool’s ears; only when the real Marianne spoke did the tattoo Marianne split his skin, and for most of his conversation with a thing made of growth and leaf she stayed quiet. She was, he thought, wary; it was a sensible approach to the Man.

  “How’s Heaven?” asked the Man.

  “Cleaner than Hell,” said Fool, truthfully. He still wasn’t sure how much, or what, he was going to tell the Man. He didn’t trust him, was cautious of him in the way that he had learned to be cautious of distant demons, where safety was only temporary and delicate because they could come closer at any time and he was unsure of what would attract them, start them moving in his direction.

  “Oh, Fool, you have to tell me more than that!” said the Man, his eagerness showing in the way his fronds twisted and curled around each other, the urgent edge his voice had taken on.

  “I have another feather,” said Fool, still avoiding.

  “Fool, really? Is it as beautiful as the one you had before?” asked the Man, and Fool could practically hear the wanting in his voice. “Will you be bringing it back with you?”

  “If I can.” What to tell?

  “And what of the angel it came from?”

  “I don’t know,” said Fool. “It was given to me to replace the one I lost. They said it was in thanks for my services to them. To the angels, I mean.”

  “Fool, you mean to say you’re well known in both Heaven and Hell? You may be the first human ever who’s managed that trick. Think about it, we all know of the Devil himself, black and afire in Crow Heights, and we know of God creating the Heavens and the rest of existence, but tell me, do you think the Hosts of Heaven cared about the names of the demons in Hell, or of the people in Hell? Except as part of the trading missions?”

  “No.”

  “So there’s the Devil himself, the summoner of fires and terrors, the thing of flies and sin, and there’s God, the nameless goodness above, that all of us know.”

  “Yes.”

  “And now there’s you, and you are known, Fool, part of an elite triumvirate known in both worlds. Thomas Fool, equal of God and the Great Enemy! It’s too rich, Fool, too interesting for words! Now, what else have you got for me?”

  I’m a little paper Fool, talking to the Man of Plants and Flowers, thought Fool as he started. I’m in Heaven and in Hell, and in pain and the equal of God and the Devil, and I’m nothing, all at the same time. No wonder I’m confused, little damaged, helpless Fool that I am.

  So Fool talked. He told the Man about the places outside of everywhere and the creatures they contained, those multi-limbed things that cleaved to each other with such accuracy, about the way angels ate happiness like demons ate fear, about the changing landscapes that all still existed, about the Joyful standing and swaying and spinning. He did not mention Mayall or dead people or tunnels, and the Man did not ask about his slashed face. My paper mask is protecting me, he realized, showing the Man a flat and unmarked version of me. I’m a lie. In Heaven, eyes still closed, he raised a hand to his cheek to feel the crusted lines of damage, and then dropped it again.

  At the end of the conversation, the Man said, “And you, Fool? Are you enjoying your time in God’s realm? Are you making friends, brokering deals?”

  “No.”

  “Why not, Fool, why not? There are riches to be had there in among the carousels and in the seas you tell me about, grand secrets hidden in the school buildings and the caves, Fool, and if you reach out and take them, you could be the most powerful man in Heaven or Hell.”

  “I don’t want to
be,” said Fool and realized, as he said it, that it was the truth. “I want to do my job, that’s all.”

  “Really?” The Man sounded disappointed in Fool, and Fool felt, for the shortest moment, oddly ashamed before remembering that the Man wasn’t his friend, was only friends with the Man himself. “Then go, Fool, solve your crime and talk to me again.”

  “Yes.”

  “And Information Man Marianne?”

  “Yes,” she said, and Fool heard her voice simultaneously in his ears in Hell and through the tearing and ripping of his arm as the tattoo moved.

  “I thank you for your assistance in this matter. If you ever need help, simply come out here and ask for me. After all, Fool isn’t likely to be here forever. None of us are, are we? His star is clearly in the ascendant, and if he leaves us all behind you may find you need a friend in the future.”

  “Thank you, but I have faith in Commander Fool,” said Marianne.

  “Faith? Faith, in Hell?” asked the Man, and started laughing and did not stop until the cluster of plants in front of Fool had collapsed down and was lying still on the damp earth.

  —

  They came for him in the morning. Fool didn’t remember falling asleep, didn’t remember saying good-bye to Marianne, just knew that suddenly it was light in his room and that someone was knocking on the door. It wasn’t a demon’s knock, it was too polite, so he hadn’t missed the start of a Delegation meeting, which meant it had to be the angels. Dressing in his stained and torn uniform, every part of him groaning with aches and discomforts, he made sure the feather was still in his pocket. He hadn’t written his report last night, he realized; he’d have to do it tonight. If he was right, there would be more to add anyway.

  He was right.

  The building was long and low, its ceiling glass reflecting the sun in painful darts.

  “Why are we here?” asked Fool, suspecting he knew before the angels answered and confirmed his suspicion.