The Devil's Evidence

by Simon Kurt Unsworth

  Behind him, he heard Summer and Gordie follow. Fool glanced over his shoulder and saw his friends running with him, no longer holding hands but still at his back, still by his side. He gestured back at them but they ignored him, keeping behind him but coming along nonetheless.

  Israfil screamed again, the sound of it echoing and furious and agonizing in the cave. Her light tumbled across the cave walls, catching in pockets and illuminating those Joyful who slept on undisturbed. The glow of her was weaker now and Fool risked looking at the angel directly. She was still caught in the center of a struggling mass on the far edge of the cave, shifting inexorably along the wall, visible and then lost in the darkness and then visible again. Dark shapes moved around the angel, dragging at her and clambering over her. Benjamin sent another bolt of fire toward them, and between its light and Israfil’s pulse, the attacker surrounding the struggling angel was more fully revealed.

  It was made of a huge number of writhing shapes, the angles of them wrong somehow, as though they had extra limbs that they were waving as they moved. There were joints that were in the wrong places, limbs bending backward rather than forward, bending in three or four places rather than simply one, lashing the air. They moved oddly, capering even as they attacked the fallen angel, apparently unable to move in easy lines. It was as though some terrible spiderweb had come alive, huge and rippling, gathering into itself spiders and forcing them to work together in grotesque yet horribly, awfully efficient harmony.

  One part of the whole turned and glared at Fool and then at Benjamin, its face a torn and bloody mess of mouth and teeth and weeping, crusted eyes. Seeing how close they were, it reached back into the mass and clasped at something, threw it up at Benjamin, the throw exposing its body to the light briefly. It was foul, a black mass made of fractured and jerking shadows and black lines that caged and punctured a body that was buckled and wrenched, skin peeling to reveal bones that showed a sickly yellow against that dark flesh. Whatever it had thrown arced up toward the flying angel above it and then fell away, white and spinning. Benjamin beat his wings and chased the falling thing, calling, “Fool! Fool, help me!”

  Fool ran.

  Despite their odd gait and the angel fighting them, the mass made fast progress, moving rapidly along the wall, its various parts working alongside each other in a disjointed rhythm. Fool chased it as, behind him, Benjamin howled, the sound even louder than Israfil’s scream.

  Some new part of the attacker broke away from Israfil, again throwing something into the air. The thrown thing jerked spastically up and out, hitting the cave wall high and slithering down, leaving a dark streak behind it. Benjamin flew to it, grasped the now-falling thing, and wailed, high and keening. A third curl of flame rippled out from him and snaked toward the part of the creature that had thrown whatever it was, but it dodged easily, leaping over the fire so that it passed harmlessly underneath. As it jumped, it flung a third thing out, and this time Fool realized what it was: a Joyful, naked, limbs flailing bonelessly. Benjamin swept toward the hurled sleeper but missed her, overshot as the still-sleeping woman reached the peak of her arc and then started falling, spinning toward the cave floor, where she landed with a deep, rich crunch.

  There was an exit in the far wall of the cave and the mass had reached it now, was bunched around it, pulsing and feeding itself into the narrower space in surges. There was another cracking sound, ragged and dull, and the noise of something ripping, and then Israfil’s light bulged at the center of the mass, sending out darts and shadows in equal measure. The angel shrieked, the clamor furious, the echoing yammers of something lost in agony, and then a white shape spun from the light. At first, Fool thought it was another Joyful, thrown to keep Benjamin busy, but it wasn’t. It was a looping, graceful curve of white in the cave’s darkness, and even at this distance Fool thought it looked smooth and clean except for one end, which tapered to an uneven red stump.

  Israfil’s wing, torn free and discarded, and then the second followed it.

  The two wings landed apart, slithered across the cave floor in different directions before coming to rest, one in front of Fool and the other away to his side. Benjamin, above Fool, dropped toward the farthest wing, making a sound that Fool had not heard before, a yowling as though he had hooks in his throat that were stretching his vocal cords taut, stretching them beyond taut. The angel landed, dropped the battered Joyful he was still holding, and collapsed to his knees over the mutilated piece of Israfil. His own wings shook as they stretched away from his back, shivering violently.

  Fool, still running, had little choice but to leap over the other wing, over the weeping stump and the perfect feathers that were now ruffled and torn, landing clumsily on the other side of it. The jolt of his landing sent waves of pain through his face and burned wrist and he cried out, stumbling then regaining his equilibrium. Israfil screamed again, the sound now ragged and lost and weak, the shape of her gone into the web creature now, the surges of it almost done, the bulk of it through the entrance and vanished from sight. The rearmost part of it, the part he had seen before, lingered a moment after the rest of it had vanished, throwing several more Joyful in different directions back into the cave. Benjamin, still keening, left Israfil’s wing and launched himself into the air, trying to catch the hurled people. He managed to clasp the first of them to him but the rest, too far away to reach, fell like dropping clouds to the rocky ground and the sound of them hitting was like tomb doors thudding closed.

  Fool chased the departing creature, reaching the exit a few seconds after the last piece of it had vanished. The tunnel that the exit gave on to was dark, the lamps, assuming there were any, were extinguished. Fool listened but could hear little over Benjamin’s continual howls. “Go and tell him to be quiet,” he said to Gordie, resigning himself to the fact that they weren’t going to obey his instructions to leave. “Summer, you come with me.”

  Inside, the tunnel smelled of dirt and blood. Torn feathers were scattered across the floor, bloodied and mangled, their glow already almost nothing, little penumbras of light that were gathering in and fading even as he walked past them. He reached into his pocket, felt his own feather still safe, and pulled it out, holding it above him.

  The glow revealed a long throat of stone, empty apart from more of Israfil’s feathers and streaks of blood along both the walls and floor. Some of the streaks glittered and Fool thought they probably came from Israfil, the duller ones from injured Joyful. Summer tapped him on the shoulder, pointing at something without speaking. Ahead of them, just at the edge of Fool’s feather’s glow, was a white bundle, and Summer went to it and picked it up, holding it out to him. It was a sheet, filthy with dust and blood, from one of the Joyful’s beds.

  “Summer, come back here,” said Fool quietly, but he was too late; the shadows behind her moved and something lunged forward and struck at her.

  This time, oh thank God oh thank fuck, Fool was faster, lifting his gun, aiming and firing at the same time. The crash of the shot was huge in the tunnel, the sound shattering back against him, the explosion burning his eyes, illuminating the tunnel behind Summer.

  The creature filled it, an interlocking mass of limbs and teeth and claws and hating eyes.

  Summer dropped as the part of the thing behind her that had tried to take her jerked away, a spray of thick, viscous liquid bursting from it as the bullet tore through its flesh. It grunted, falling, and then it was on its knees and scuttling back toward her. She crabbed away, moving toward Fool, who felt the reassuring weight of the bullet formed in his gun and fired again.

  This time, the bullet tore through the thing’s face and exploded through the rear of its skull. Pieces of it spattered away, spraying up the tunnel wall, flesh and liquid clinging to the rough surface. The thing spun back and collapsed and the tendrils connecting it to the others pulled tight, dragged it back into the mass. Moving as one, the various parts of the creature gathered it in and carried on retreating, moving away from Fool and Summer.
Deep inside it, he caught a glimpse of Israfil, still moving, flames burned to almost nothing, her beautiful face twisted in agony and fury.

  “Let her go,” said Fool, moving in front of Summer, gun still pointing at the creature. It shifted, drawing farther back along the tunnel. Some parts of it were clinging to the ceiling, some to the walls, all backing away and watching him carefully. Face after face peered at him from the mass. What was it? It looked like separate creatures but moved as one, although its movement was jumbled and twitching. The separate parts themselves were all different, some vaguely humanoid and others more insectile, but all were surrounded by the connecting tissues. Fool studied it as it moved back, trying to fix its details in his mind in the hope that afterward he might be able to identify it. Assuming he survived, of course.

  The creature, or some part of it, snarled at Fool. He gestured with his gun, pointing it at the nearest thing he thought might be a face. There were eyes there, anyway, a mouth splitting back around the skull and filled with teeth. “Let the angel go,” he said, but the thing merely snarled again. Its mass of connecting limbs twisted and rippled, surging forward and tangling together in front of the faces, forming a thick caul across the tunnel, the surface of it moving like thorned and bitter ink. Fool fired and, briefly, a hole tore open in the barrier, but it was filled quickly by more of those rapid, writhing limbs. The way it moved reminded Fool of something, although he couldn’t think what it was. Something he’d seen recently, though, something constantly shifting and connecting and surging, filling spaces.

  Outside, again outside.

  Fool fired again, more out of frustration than the hope it would achieve anything. Again, a hole was torn in the thick skin that now filled the tunnel, and again it was filled almost instantly.

  The tunnel narrowed as they moved down it, the creature shifting quickly, its makeshift shield protecting it from Fool’s bullets. The ceiling was just above Fool’s head now, scratching at his crown and hair. There was no light ahead of him, the illumination at his back coming from the cave but becoming fainter as he went farther from it. Behind the caul Fool could hear scuffling, the sound of claws clicking across stone, and then Israfil groaned again, low and weak like a candle about to gutter out.

  I’m helpless, Fool thought, a little helpless Fool listening as an angel is tortured. He fired again, and again the hole his bullet created was filled within seconds by a ripple of angular, twisting strands.

  “Get out of the way,” said a voice from behind Fool—Benjamin, his tone low and dangerous. Fool, still holding his gun out ahead of him, still wary, moved to the side of the tunnel, flattening against the wall, hearing Summer do the same behind him.

  “Thing, give the angel back,” said Benjamin. The tunnel filled with a fierce, angry light as Benjamin came along it, this light the sullen red of fury. As he passed Fool he felt the angel’s heat, his rage, felt the light wash over him and it stank, the sour tang of burning metal and distant ovens and righteous justice and loathing. The angel’s hands, he saw, were dripping with blood, spots of it spattering across the floor as he walked.

  “Thing,” the angel said again, “let her go.”

  The caul shifted, the parts that created it moving, twisting more tightly around each other. It thickened, crackling as it filled the tunnel, forcing itself against the wall but still moving away from them steadily. Fool held his gun out front as the angel raised its blood-streaked hands and summoned his fire and then, suddenly, the barrier collapsed.

  The pieces flopped to the floor, relaxing, and then were sharply dragged away. Benjamin launched himself forward but the tunnel’s narrowness prevented him from opening his wings properly, made him slow, and the creature and the dying angel it carried managed to stay ahead of him as it burst from the tunnel’s mouth and fled into Heaven’s night.

  20

  Benjamin shrieked in anger and launched himself out of the tunnel and rose up into the sky as a dark and speeding shadow. Fool followed far below, running as fast as he could, Summer at his side, an angel’s anger ringing in his ears.

  They emerged onto a gently sloping area of grassland. Before them, the ground inclined away, dropping to a flat, smooth plain that reached out to surround a ramshackle building perhaps half a mile distant.

  The creature carrying Israfil had already covered half the distance to the building, moving fast, visible in the moonlight as a black and flowing stain on the earth. Above them, Benjamin loosed twin bolts of flame that crashed into the ground near the creature. Despite its ungainly movement it dodged the attack with ease, moving more and more quickly, gathering itself into a thicker and smaller mass as it went. Benjamin let fly more fire but this, too, missed as the creature shifted and went around the blast as soil and grass were thrown into the air and then fell back like rain.

  “Where’s it going?” asked Summer.

  “There,” said Fool, pointing, starting to run again. Just before the building was an area that looked at first glance like a darker patch of shadow but that Fool recognized.

  The creature was heading for another of the tunnels that burrowed into the ground.

  Benjamin saw it as well and swooped low, flying ahead of the thing and sending his fire down to block its passage, but it again jerked sideways, never stopping, and darted around the explosion. The mass moved strangely, its edges jittering in an arrhythmic pulse. Benjamin circled as Fool fired, knowing as he did so that the shot was pointless; the thing was too far away for him to hope to hit it. Benjamin came around in time to see another Joyful be flung from the creature, thrown behind it so that the angel had to launch himself past the creature, fires and attack forgotten, trying to save the sleeper. Fool ran for the tunnel as Benjamin crashed into the falling human, the two connecting just above the earth and then crashing into it, rolling in a spray of dirt and frustrated noises. Fool’s breath was hot in his lungs, his wrist and face throbbing, chest burning, but still he ran, trying to close the gap.

  As Benjamin untangled himself and rose once more into the air, the webbed creature reached the edge of the tunnel and, without hesitation, plunged over and vanished from sight. Benjamin shouted something that Fool didn’t hear clearly as he reached the flat part of the ground. A low hedge ran across the ground in front of him and Fool vaulted it clumsily, falling into an uneven roll on the far side before coming up and starting to run again. At his side, Summer hurdled the hedge gracefully and landed still running, sprinting ahead of him. Benjamin came in low over the tunnel, fire curdling from him in loops that provided a guttering illumination. Beyond, darker shadows were filling the sky, the stars blotted by them.

  Fool reached the lip of the tunnel just after Summer and found himself looking down into an endless thing, tapered in its depths to a tiny black point, its walls a swirling blur of colors and shimmering rainbow patterns. Benjamin shouted again and dived into the tunnel, his flame dwindling as he dropped into it, his voice fading.

  “Benjamin,” Fool shouted. “No!” He waited, helpless, expecting the tunnel to close as the one near the beach had done, vanishing to nothing and trapping the angel, but it did not. Instead, the tube began to grow dark, the colors in the walls fading and blackening like fires gradually slumbering to embers before being completely extinguished, the earthen sides becoming a cracked and ravaged skin. As Fool and Summer watched, Gordie arrived at their side, gasping.

  “Where is it?” he managed to ask through his gasps.

  “Gone,” said Fool.

  “Gone where?” said Gordie, peering into the now-dark tunnel.

  “I don’t know,” said Fool.

  “Isn’t it obvious?” said Benjamin as he rose out of the tunnel, wings beating wearily. “It has gone home. It has returned to Hell.”

  —

  The shapes in the sky were angels, hundreds of them. They flooded the plain, landing in ranks, wings beating the air raw and lifting clouds of dust that swirled and lined Fool’s throat and made it dry and uncomfortable. The angels’ g
leam was like moonlight and it lay over the ground like gossamer, the shadows between them like threads of moving cotton.

  Rising in the air above the angels, Benjamin began to bark out orders, sending some back to the cave and ordering others to surround the tunnel that descended through Heaven’s earth. Still others he sent out on tasks that Fool didn’t understand, to borders and places that he had never heard of.

  As the angels went about their tasks, they sang, a low lament whose words Fool could not understand but whose meaning was clear enough; they were mourning Israfil. The missing angel’s wings were brought from the cave onto the plain and laid down, one over another, and then more angels formed a circle around the wings and stood with their heads bowed until, eventually, the kindliest angels came and lifted the wings away to wherever their journey was bound to end.

  In the chaos, Fool tried to look into the tunnel again, but there were no gaps he could slip through in the wall of angels guarding it. When Fool tried to explain that he needed to investigate, the angel he spoke to gave him the kind of brief look that Fool might give to an insect and then looked back at the tunnel’s mouth, arms folded in front of it and wings bristling out to its rear.

  With little else to do, Fool and the others walked to the building beyond the tunnel. The space in front of it seemed to have become a staging ground for whatever operation Benjamin was controlling. The angel would rise into the air, spinning and floating, and then descend to give out more instructions to angels who would then go back to the waiting ranks, presumably to gather troops and carry out the orders they had been given. Fool tried to get to Benjamin but was again blocked, and eventually the three Information Men found themselves leaning against the side of the building.

  “What is this place?” asked Summer, looking up at the structure. It was small, only two stories tall, and its roof was sloped and incomplete; holes dotted it here and there, although in the pale light it was impossible to tell if they were the result of missing tiles or breaks in something more solid. The building was made of rough stone, carefully hewn into bricks, and its heavy wooden doors were locked and resisted Fool’s experimental push.