The Devil's Evidence

by Simon Kurt Unsworth

  “Wambwark, I have business here, business that my involvement in Hell has agreed to. Get out of my way.”

  “We have received no such instruction about help you may provide,” said Catarinch, also standing and coming around the table. The demon’s rotten flesh dripped and spattered, and Fool saw that it had left a series of long, oily smears on the seat when it stood. Bugs began to wriggle and fall from Wambwark again, the surface of the demon becoming a moving, constant fleshy wave.

  “If the Bureaucracy has chosen not to inform you of its decisions, just like you don’t inform them of yours, that’s no concern of mine,” said Fool. “Get out of my way.”

  “No.” So, it came to this, the powers of Heaven and the representatives of Hell pulling in two directions again, and Fool himself now the stretching point in the center of them. It’s a question of loyalty, he thought, a question of who needs me the most.

  “Catarinch, this is work agreed to by Mr. Tap and Rhakshasas,” said Fool, trying one last time to avoid the conflict he knew was inevitable. Not exactly true, but one lie in the center of all this anger and death hardly mattered, did it? “I serve no purpose here in the meetings, but out there I can be useful.”

  “Why should we care about being useful to Heaven? We have a job to do here, and your job is solely to assist in that. You are Hell’s man, Fool, nothing more or less.”

  “As are you, yet you chose to act without reference to those above,” reminded Fool. “Ask Rhakshasas when we get back, or explain to him your refusal to let me go if you like. You can tell him at the same time as you tell him why you didn’t achieve what you were told to in these discussions.

  “My doing this puts Heaven in Hell’s debt, a debt that might soften the disappointment of whatever agreements you eventually reach here.”

  Catarinch was silent. Fool could see the thoughts churning in that rotten skull, the need to show its authority set against the chance that it might anger demons older and more powerful than itself. The struggle danced for a few seconds and then, with a wave of a hand that was little more than leathery skin and exposed bone, it stepped aside and gestured Fool onward. Wambwark, after another moment, moved out of the way as well.

  “My apologies for interrupting your discussions, but we should go,” said Benjamin to the room. “Thomas Fool, please, I should escort you now. Mayall would send the bees only if what he wanted was urgent.”

  “That’s fine,” said Fool, “we’re done.” The two of them started for the door.

  As they passed the table, Catarinch suddenly leaned forward and gripped Fool’s upper arm. Its foul head came close to Fool’s and lips that flapped and sprayed spittle brushed against his ear.

  “Be careful, Fool,” the demon hissed, the stench of it washing across Fool’s face and making him gag. “You are not always going to be protected.” Another rumble from Wambwark that might have been laughter, and then the two demons sat back at the table, and as Fool left the room he heard the meeting start up again.

  Israfil was waiting for them outside the building, her flames pale in the light. She looked at Fool angrily as they emerged, then at Benjamin, who merely said, “Mayall requested him.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know, Israfil. He does not explain himself to me, or to you. Now, we should leave.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “The Sleepers’ Cave.”

  “What’s the Sleepers’ Cave?” asked Fool, seeing the expression of surprise and something else, something closer to fury, pass across Israfil’s face.

  “It is Heaven’s holiest of places, and nowhere that you should be allowed entry to,” said Israfil, her eyes becoming globes of pure red in a face that was wreathed in smokeless flame. “It is a place for the saved and those who serve them, and this does not, by my reckoning, include you, monkey.”

  “Nonetheless,” said Benjamin, “that is where we go, and we take Thomas Fool with us. His companions will meet us there.”

  “Companions?” asked Fool, before realizing: Summer and Gordie.

  “God’s mercy, Benjamin,” said Israfil. “Are we to allow hordes of monkeys, of the damned, into the caves? Are we to allow Hell itself to take root there, to corrupt it? It is where the sleepers are, Benjamin, the sleepers. Are we to disrupt their sleep?”

  “If we are being sent there, then that’s where we go,” said Benjamin, resolute and calm. “Have faith, Israfil.”

  “You still haven’t told me what the Sleepers’ Cave is,” reminded Fool.

  “True. Well, Thomas Fool, the Sleepers’ Cave is where the Joyful go to die.”

  —

  There were thousands upon thousands of them.

  The Joyful were motionless, lying on cots that had been placed into niches carved in the cave’s walls. The cave itself was vast, a honeycomb of walls and tunnels, each itself honeycombed by the sleepers’ spaces, lit by myriad globes of light mounted on sconces, and fixed at regular intervals along the walls. The niches had been carved into the stone in rows and columns so that the Joyful were lying alongside and on top of each other in ranks, all of them covered in thin blankets.

  The cave was warm, and smaller caretaker angels walked its shadowed lengths constantly checking on their sleeping charges. Sometimes, the angels beat their wings to rise up the columns, stopping at this niche or that and checking the inhabitant before rising on or drifting back down.

  The bee swarm had been waiting for Fool and the angels outside the cave’s entrance along with Summer and Gordie, both of them looking into the impossibly blue and clean sky, heads tilted back so that their faces caught the sun. They were still holding hands, Fool saw, their fingers intertwined, anchored to each other.

  “You’ll grow into each other and never be able to separate,” he said, smiling, when he saw the linked hands.

  “Can’t imagine anything better,” said Gordie, grinning.

  “Good,” said Summer, and her voice was fierce. “We’ve been separated once but I won’t let it happen again.”

  “Wonderful,” said Israfil as they walked into the vast opening of the cave system. “Two more monkeys, monkeys in love with each other. They are not raised up, Benjamin. Whatever is happening, it is our business. I say again, this is Heaven, we do not need them or any help from the residents of Hell. They should not be here, Benjamin, we are enough authority.”

  “Mayall doesn’t think so,” replied Benjamin. “The Malakim don’t think so. Whatever we think, we are bound by their wishes, Israfil. You know that. Complain to them if you feel strongly enough.”

  Israfil didn’t reply but Fool recognized her body language, the way her fires suddenly pulled in and she made herself somehow smaller; like Catarinch, she was unsure of her place, he realized, and that made her uncertain. Her bluster and anger were not strong enough to stand against the thought of challenging the voice that came from lips formed from shadows or the mysterious Mayall. There are hierarchies even here, he thought, even in the place of perfection there are those who are more powerful, more perfect. Patterns, repeated everywhere, little Fool, patterns if only you could see them.

  Fool looked at her, at the red glow of her flames, the sullen anger that coruscated across her flesh as fire, the look of disdain on her face as she stared at him and Summer and Gordie, and wondered, Was this how the original Fallings had started? An anger that had nowhere to earth itself, resolved itself into violence that was argued away as good, appropriate, that had a greater purpose? Israfil had a little power, a little authority, but around her things were happening that she could not control, could not understand or even acknowledge. Had she gone further than her position allowed? Was she the one?

  Was it Israfil? Israfil, murdering the Joyful for some reason he had no concept of, becoming a Fallen before the Fall?

  It could be, Fool supposed, but it didn’t make sense, not really. If it was Israfil, why the curious setups of the deaths, why the tracks and the broken windows, why the complex schemes? Just to
throw observers off track? It seemed overly elaborate, unwieldy in its execution when simpler methods would surely have presented themselves. And how did the dancers fit, and the attacks in Hell? Could it really all be Israfil, lashing out against a Heaven that had altered in ways she could not accept, fighting against things whose outlines she could not grasp?

  The bees dipped and swung above them, agitated, communicating without speech that they needed to move. A single bee dropped from the group and landed lightly on his shoulder; he could feel the tiny whisper of its wings blow across his injured cheek, hear the near-silent buzz of it. A voice made of buzzes and metallic clicks but so quiet he was sure only he could hear it said, “Come, please,” and then the bee rose and rejoined its companions. Fool nodded at the swarm, moved across the cavern, and Summer and Gordie and the two angels, after a moment, followed him.

  As they crossed the space, Fool began to appreciate just how truly massive the place they’d come to was and how many sleeping Joyful it contained. Countless tunnels opened up from the atrium, and in the gentle light Fool saw row after row of the spaces carved into the rock and motionless people in the shadows. Apart from the caretaker angels, nothing moved and the only sound was that which Fool and the others made themselves.

  The bees flew along at head height, leading them through the labyrinthine structure, buzzing somnolently ahead of them as they hurried along, waiting with an air of impatience whenever their followers didn’t keep up. As they walked, the party passed the sleeping Joyful, recumbent and still. Some of the humans moved their mouths in their rest, and close to, their voices were wordless rustles like leaves of falling paper brushing together. It accentuated the silence rather than breaking it, and was strangely pleasant.

  “I don’t understand,” said Fool as they walked. “I mean, I understand that the Joyful can die from accident or murder, that happens to the humans in Hell, but what’s happening to these people?”

  “Their time in Heaven is over,” said Benjamin. “They’ve been here long enough, and they grow tired. Eventually they let go of the Heaven in their minds, their dreams, and embrace joys that are less defined, less easy to hold. For some it happens quickly, for others more slowly, but it happens to all of them eventually. They fall asleep, more deeply asleep, and are brought to the cave. We tend to them until eventually they let go completely.”

  “And then what?” No one in Hell died naturally; even the old man Fool had held as the life fled his body had done so as a result of fear, and he had no frame of reference for what Benjamin was telling him. Simply letting go? Falling asleep and drifting off, tended by angels? It sounded like a dream, like something that people in Hell hoped for knowing it would be impossible to ever attain.

  It sounded wonderful.

  “I don’t know,” said Benjamin simply. “That part of the plan is not for me to see. We minister to this part of these people’s journeys and no more. Where they go from here is their business; theirs and God’s.”

  Fool couldn’t help but stop and look at the Joyful, despite the urgent buzzing from the insects above him. They were all old, lined, and pale. Their skin seemed thin, almost translucent, as though he might see their blood moving beneath its surface. Were they fading, he wondered, their flesh slowly vanishing as they let slip the grip on the Heavens they inhabited? Would they simply vanish, the life slipping from them and leaving a thin skin like a deflated bubble, the imprint of a person no longer there? And then? Was there a Heavenly version of Limbo the skin would return to until it was fished out and used to house another new soul? It was too big, too complicated for his head to hold, and he had to turn away, to look at Summer and Gordie and his own feet, at smaller things, things he understood or, at least, almost understood. Looking at the Joyful made him think of freedom and pleasure, of peace and stillness, of joy, and the thought of those things he would never truly have hurt him in ways he couldn’t articulate; he only knew it hurt.

  Fool started walking again, away from things beyond his grasp, focusing on putting one foot in front of the other and moving toward the thing ahead of him, toward the simpler mysteries of what he assumed would be another crime, toward something he could grasp and perhaps understand and maybe solve. Toward something he could give shape to.

  Ahead of them, one of the caretaker angels leaned into one of the sleepers, brushing the hair from her face gently, and then kissed her. The angel’s lips drifted against the sleeper’s forehead and then it opened its mouth, the lips swelling and clamping onto the skin. The angel’s jaw stretched, the bottom of its face writhing momentarily as the lips flexed against the sleeper’s head, and then spread out and swallowed the whole face. The angel’s neck worked, swallowing, its wings stretching out from its back and shivering slightly, feathers rattling, and then it detached.

  The angel’s face contracted back, the lips rippling and smoothing, the cheeks ballooning in until it was back to its smoother, more usual perfect visage, and then it walked away. Several beds along, it stopped and did the same thing, its face elongating as it leaned over the sleeping woman on the bed. When it had finished, it backed away and licked its lips. The angel had seemed insectile as it leaned over the Joyful, parasitic, something alien and dangerous like the demons that prowled the Houska in Hell’s brutal evenings. He realized his hand had dropped to the butt of his gun, and he forced himself to relax, to let it go, to let his hand fall back to his side. What would he shoot at? I’m out of my depth, as ever, he thought, and getting deeper.

  They walked on.

  The bees swept along the caves, threading through the air ahead of them, a shifting cloud caught by the light from the lamps; at once a single mass and a thousand individual pieces moving around each other. Fool and the others followed, and as they did so they passed more of the silent angels moving slowly among the Joyful. Mostly they tended the sleepers, rearranging the bedding or wiping foreheads, repositioning them to make them more comfortable, but sometimes they fed off them like beautiful parasites. After a while, Fool had to stop watching.

  In one gallery, the roof was covered in the smallest, blackest angels, clinging to spars with their toes, dangling with their eyes closed and their arms folded across their smooth, pudgy chests, wings neatly lined along their backs.

  Still the bees led them on. The ground they walked along wasn’t sloping down, so at first Fool assumed that the space was hollowed out into the rock behind the cliff, stretching back into the solid earth, but then he realized that this was Heaven, where the landscape seemed able to shift at will. Maybe they were actually deep in the earth moving down or padding happily through the sky. Maybe they were upside down and inside out and backward and forward all at once.

  Eventually, they came to an open space, the walls of the cave tunnel falling away to either side to form a huge, roughly circular room. The bees circled up, losing themselves in the darkness above Fool and the angels, their buzzing fading to a distant drone before vanishing altogether. The room smelled of something rich and metallic and there was a different sound here, the distant drip of liquid hitting rock.

  “Why has the clown angel brought us here?” asked Israfil, walking out into the center of the space, her flames growing larger again as she became more irritated. Fool didn’t reply; in her expanding light, he could already see what the bees had led them to, what Mayall had wanted them to find.

  One of the Joyful on the far side of the space was hanging from its alcove, head down, upside down and arms swinging out so that its upper body formed a pale cross against the rock. It was a man, his chest scrawny and covered in dark hair like the moss one of Hell’s old trees, the shape of it also cruciform as if in a parody of the position of his body. The sheet covering the man’s bottom half had tangled around his legs, shroudlike and pale in the shadows of the niche, and his shoulders were covered in scratches that were still bleeding. Blood dribbled down the wall below him, was dripping onto the sleeper below.

  “Another accident?” Fool called as he walked over
to the man. Neither Israfil nor Benjamin replied.

  Close up, he knew he was too late. One of the scratches started at the man’s nipple, ran up to the man’s shoulder, and then curved into the side of his neck, exposing the meat of the man. In the depths of the slash, an open artery winked at Fool, and a spray of blood curled around the wall of the alcove. The bed below the man was soaked in blood, glinting and wet in the light from the wall lamps. The smell of it was rich, like metal heated over a cooking fire. He knelt, putting his face close to the dead man, trying to see everything at once.

  Look, Fool thought, really look. What’s happened here, what’s the story? What’s this poor bastard’s body telling me? I haven’t got Morgan or Hand or Tidyman to question this dead flesh, so I’ll have to do it myself.

  Footsteps from behind Fool, two sets in rhythm with each other. Gordie leaned over Fool’s shoulder, his face furrowed in concentration. Summer came to the other side of him and also knelt, her leg brushing against Fool’s, and even now he marveled at their presence, hers and Gordie’s. They were here, really here, and even in the sight of death, Fool took a moment to enjoy their return. He was not, he remembered, totally alone.

  “I think…” said Gordie, and then let his voice trail away. He held out both hands, fingers spread, over the slashes in the man’s chest. Although the injuries were wider apart than Gordie’s fingertips, their spacing was similar, and when he mimed pulling on the man, the shape his fingers traced in the air ran back along similar lines to the wounds. He looked at Fool, the question half answered in his frown.

  “Yes,” said Fool. “Someone grabbed him but didn’t have a good hold and they cut him when they tried to pull him. They had claws, I assume.” Gordie nodded and went to the alcove alone, leaning in and grasping at the sleeper it contained without actually touching him. His back bumped against the roof of the space and it was quickly clear he couldn’t get his arm around the person without a struggle, leaning on the mattress on either side of him.