The Devil's Evidence

by Simon Kurt Unsworth

  “I think it’s a chapel,” said Gordie, gazing up at the building’s roof. “Look, can you see the symbol?”

  He pointed to one end of the roof, where a symbol was mounted on its highest point.

  “I can,” said Summer, “but I can’t see what it is.”

  “It’s everything,” said Gordie. “It’s changing, can you see?” It was, Fool saw. Like the writing in Mayall’s home, the shape on the roof’s edge was constantly shifting, appearing now as something that might have been a cross and then as a star before becoming a shape that might almost have been a dagger and then changing again into something unrecognizable.

  “I read about it,” said Gordie. “This is one of the places where all the religions meet. They used to have places like this in Hell, but there they were used for blasphemy, for corruption. Here, I suppose it’s used for worship or just to…” He trailed off, unable to say what he thought.

  “To acknowledge them,” said Fool.

  “Yes. We may not even be seeing the same things at the same time, it may be different for each of us depending on our background, on the people we were before we came into Hell.”

  They paused, looking at each other, not speaking.

  “You read about it? In a book?” asked Summer finally, looking at Gordie, head tilted. “When?”

  “Before,” said Gordie, his voice short and tight. “Before now.”

  “You never cease to amaze me,” said Summer lightly, reaching up to stroke the man’s cheek. “We were born in Hell, we died in Hell, and yet you read books and you remember everything you read. How did you find books in Hell?”

  “They’re there, if you know where to look,” replied Gordie, voice still tight. “I just looked.”

  “You just looked,” said Fool. He had never seen books in Hell, except various volumes of the New Information Man’s Guide to the Rules and Offices of Hell and a slim book called Maps and Geographies. Where had Gordie been, to find books?

  Summer and Gordie carried on talking quietly and Fool moved along the wall a ways to give them a little privacy. He leaned against the stone, feeling it breathe out the warmth of the day into his back, unknotting muscles that he didn’t know were tense. From where he stood, he could just see the symbol on the chapel’s roof and he watched it for a few minutes, enjoying the way it changed constantly, never the same thing twice, lost in its blur and shift. What would Summer or Gordie see if they were looking at it with him now? What would Benjamin see? Or the Man? Would he see it not as a chapel but only as some kind of opportunity, something to be used and bled dry before being discarded?

  What would Marianne see?

  Thinking of Marianne made Fool turn and look, discreetly, at Summer and Gordie. They were standing close together, facing each other, and Gordie’s head was bowed so that his forehead was resting on Summer’s and they were talking quietly. Was that something he could have with Marianne? It was a dangerous thing to think, let alone hope for, but he could not help himself. A chance, he thought. Just let me have a chance, that’s all I ask. Gordie and Summer started to kiss, gently, and Fool turned away again, giving them back their privacy.

  Fool walked to where the shadows had caught in earth that had been recently trodden down and buckled beneath passing feet. Close to, he caught the faint whiff of corruption, a scent that grew stronger the closer he came, because they were tracks, fucking tracks, and how the fuck could the angels have missed them?

  They weren’t looking for them, he thought, following the tracks. Because they aren’t Information Men. They don’t understand the unknown, they’re things of absolute and absolution. You need a suspicious eye to see this, not a loving one, not one that sees everything as perfect and cannot even see the imperfect until it’s thrust into your face on a wave of blood and screams.

  The trail led around the side of the chapel to its rear, where the ground was constrained by a low stone wall that created a long, trapped rectangle of grass. As Fool came around the corner he thought that the space was filled with birds, or maybe some kind of tiny angel that he had not seen before. Hundreds of small pale shapes were dancing up and down, flickering across the grass and swooping in tight circles. In the gathering night it was impossible to make out anything but the most basic of details of them, except that he could see that none of the shapes was more than a few inches across, their shapes irregular and ragged. Some seemed to be covered in lines of black or brown or etched shapes. Tattoos, he wondered, rubbing at his arms and at the designs that covered them beneath his clothes without thinking.

  No, he saw as he came closer, not tattoos. Writing.

  The shapes were pieces of paper, hundreds upon hundreds of pieces of paper fluttering and moving on the breeze, torn edges flapping, faces covered in writing or pictures. He reached out as one floated up past his face and managed to grasp it from the air. The paper was old, thin and worn, torn from some larger segment so that the words printed on it appeared to start and finish mid-word, “ot listen to m.” Fool let the paper go and knelt, picking up another, larger piece. On this was printed, “the PRINCIPIA is just a ha-ha, go re.” He let this go, too, and walked off the path, onto the grass, and immediately the ground beneath his feet was missing and he fell.

  At first, he thought he’d fallen into one of the tunnels, that he would fall and fall until he either died or burst into Hell at the other end, where demons would eat his fear and leave him empty and dead, but just a moment after falling he hit a floor that gave slightly under him. The impact drove the breath from him, trapping one arm beneath him and jamming it into his ribs. His head jerked forward and struck something that felt initially soft but was hard underneath, like material wrapped around stone, and he smelled dust and something like linen or cotton left to age and rest.

  It took Fool a second to move, rolling gingerly onto his back so that he could move his arm again. When he tried to reach for his gun, needles of pain ran along the limb, distorting the message between brain and hand, and he missed his grip, fingers thick and not seeming to bend properly. He reached with his other arm, the ground shifting beneath him, and rubbed at his upper arm and the lower, finally taking the damaged hand in his other and flexing the fingers back and forward carefully until he thought he had achieved some more usual level of mobility there.

  Despite his expectations, nothing had attacked him. Reaching out not for his weapon but to his sides, he found walls carved into the earth. It was dry dirt that crumbled beneath his fingers, and as he leaned back more dirt spilled onto his shoulders and head. Above him, a rough square of the night showed, stars and a rich darkness framed by the blacker solidity of the walls. An angel, high, flew across the square, graceful even at this distance.

  When he was sure that the wall wasn’t going to collapse inward and bury him, Fool reached into his pocket and removed the feather. Its light, undimmed, showed him clearly where he was.

  Fool had fallen into a grave. The hole was around six feet long, perhaps three wide, and, from what he could judge, about four feet deep. Had he landed on a coffin? He didn’t think so, it didn’t feel solid enough, was even now slipping beneath his buttocks, shifting him slightly. He lowered the feather, letting the light pool around his thighs and lower legs.

  Books. This was a grave for books.

  Fool picked up the nearest book. It was old, ancient, the pages slipping from the binding and scattering down over him like some patchwork sheet drawn up to keep his legs warm. On the worn leather cover of the book, embossed in gold, were the words Lebor Gabála Érenn. He put the book down, picked up another, and found this to be in a similar state. Its pages fell out to join the others and its cover was peeling, mock leather flapping back from old and damp cardboard. Printed on this were the words, barely readable, Book of Common Worship. When he opened the book farther, more pages drifted loose, leaving only a few leaves attached to the inner spine.

  Using the wall, Fool pushed himself upright, still holding the book. His head and shoulders emerged a
nd he found himself looking out across the space behind the chapel at almost ground level. From this angle, he could see evidence of more holes, disturbed ridges of earth, piles of soil and torn grass, and when he pulled himself free and stood up, stretching to his full height, he saw that the ground was extensively dotted with holes, was sick with them.

  “Fool? Are you okay?” Gordie, coming around the chapel, Summer with him.

  “I’m fine,” said Fool, brushing the dirt from his arms and legs. “I fell, but it’s okay.”

  “Fell where?” asked Gordie, coming closer.

  “Into a grave for books,” Fool replied and, seeing the confusion flit across both of his companions’ faces, gestured at the hole beside him.

  Gordie knelt on the edge of the hole and looked into its depths. “So many books,” he breathed, seeing what the grave contained.

  “But why bury books?” asked Fool.

  “Can we get some light?” asked Summer, who had walked past the two men and started looking into the farther holes. “I can’t see where I’m walking.”

  Fool raised his feather as high as he could and followed Summer, the feather’s eldritch light allowing them to pick a delicate path between the open graves.

  Gordie came with him, pointing to a grave whose inner walls had started to grow a cover of thin, scratchy grass. It was a deeper grave and its far wall had collapsed and the earth had covered the few books that remained in its depths. Here and there, a page or cover stuck up out of the dirt, but there were not many.

  “It’s empty,” said Summer. “The one you fell in was still partly full, but not this one.”

  “Yes,” said Fool, moving to the next one. This one, too, was empty. Fragments of torn pages blew across the ground, sometimes zephyring around their feet, sometimes colliding and dancing together before separating again.

  “What fresh misery is this?” came a voice from behind them as the light picked up, fully illuminating what Fool had now come to realize was a graveyard. Turning, he watched as Benjamin came toward them walking under a phalanx of caretaker angels, a living set of lights casting their glow down on the churned earth.

  “What’s happened here, Thomas Fool?” asked Benjamin.

  “I’m not sure, because I don’t understand what this place was to begin with.”

  “It is where we send religious texts to their rest,” said Benjamin. “When they are old, when they can no longer serve the worshipers because their spines are cracked and their insides are falling loose, they are discarded above and come to us through the Garden of Earth and Air. We bury them with the respect due those that have provided long and faithful service to God.”

  “In graves?”

  “This whole place is one huge grave, Thomas Fool. The chapel is built on foundations of buried texts from all the branches of the tree of faith.”

  “Would they ever be dug up? To move them somewhere else, or to make room for new burials?”

  “No, except to carry out new interments. We gather them in the chapel, and when Mayall commands, we come and pay our respects and we bury them with the ceremony they deserve.”

  “Look around.”

  Benjamin walked under the hovering ceiling of the other angels, going silent among the graves, head bowed. His wings were folded back against him but occasionally they twitched and then stilled, as though the angel was controlling some great anger or shock.

  “They are gone,” Benjamin said after a few long minutes.

  “Yes,” said Fool. Now he could see clearly, he walked deep into the graveyard, finding more and more holes as he went. “And not recently. These holes are old, they collapsed, plants are growing in the collapsed sections.”

  “My God,” said Benjamin, and Fool wasn’t sure if it was an imprecation or a plea.

  Fool went back to the grave he had fallen into and looked around it. The trail he had originally followed around the chapel led to it, and in its trodden face he found one or two of the blue flowers, crushed and dead. Had he done that in the darkness without realizing? Turning and crouching, he followed the trail with his eyes, watching as it split and split again, older parts of it leading back to the rear of the fields and the graves there.

  “Holy books,” he said to himself, “and the Joyful. They’re being taken.”

  “Taken where?” asked Gordie, coming and crouching next to Fool.

  “I’ll bet we’ll find this track leads from the graves to the tunnel opening,” replied Fool. “Or it would if a thousand damned angels hadn’t stepped on all of the ground around it.”

  “We are not the damned,” said Benjamin from just behind the two men, his voice cold. “You are, Thomas Fool. You should never forget that.”

  “How could I?” asked Fool. “Israfil and you remind me of it often enough. I’m a monkey, a damned monkey. Wasn’t that what she said?”

  “And I have to wonder, was she right after all?” said Benjamin. “All this started when you and your demon brethren arrived.”

  “No, it started before that,” said Fool. “That’s why I’m here.”

  “We have only your word for that.”

  “Go and speak to the Malakim, or to Mayall, or believe what you will,” said Fool, feeling the repetition in his mouth. “I don’t really care. Now, if you’ll please leave us alone, we have work to do.”

  Fool stood, Gordie doing the same, but Benjamin did not move. Instead, he placed one hand on Fool’s shoulder and the other on Gordie’s, the grip on Fool unyielding. Behind the angel Fool saw one of the caretakers drop out of the blanket of moving light and land behind Summer, who was watching them closely. Gordie opened his mouth, but Fool sent him a warning glance and the man closed it again without speaking.

  “Benjamin, what are you doing? We need to investigate. I’ve been asked to investigate.”

  “There will be no more of this farce. Matters progress without you now, as they should have all along. Thomas Fool, you and your companions’ presence is required.”

  “Where?”

  “Where decisions are made, in the court of Heaven.”

  21

  Fool was marched back around the chapel, Benjamin’s grip firm on his shoulder but not painful. Summer and Gordie were allowed to walk ahead of the other angel. If we ran now, Fool thought, would that fire leap from them and split us into pieces?

  Yes. Yes, I think they’d kill us.

  Fool had assumed that they would find a transport in front of the chapel, waiting to take them back to the building in which the Delegation was housed, and was oddly cheered to find he was correct. The small black vehicle was idling beyond the wall on a road that had not been there when they emerged from the Sleepers’ Cave, however long ago that had been. Its doors were open and it was empty. Behind it, the night was being gently split by the light of more caretaker angels, these hovering over the exit from the Sleepers’ Cave. As they stopped to watch, shapes, dark and swift, were entering and leaving the cave in quick succession, moving around each other in a complicated, elegant aerial ballet. There was an urgency to their movement that Fool had not seen in Heaven before, a purpose in their arcs and dips that he could grasp even if he could not read its intent.

  From the center of the cave’s mouth a slower, heavier shape emerged and started into the sky. It was like a distant storm cloud, black and shifting as it rose, its edges sharp and then blurring and then making themselves again, and Fool realized it was the small, kindest angels carrying one of the dead onward. The tiny angels were clustered around the body, lifting it, moving around it. As it climbed into the sky another of them flew ponderously from the cave and started its slow journey upward. If he could have given that flesh to Morgan, or even to Tidyman or Hand, what would they find it saying? What horrors would it tell them about its last moments? Or would it lie mute on the table, its story done and told?

  Where were they going? He supposed it didn’t help to speculate, not now anyway.

  “They’re beautiful,” said Summer, watching w
ith Fool. “What are they?”

  “They’re the kindest angels,” said Fool. “That’s what I was told, anyway.”

  “They’re the Sundô,” said Gordie.

  “Pardon?”

  “Sundô,” repeated Gordie. “The angels that carry the dead on, help them complete their journeys. Even Heaven has the dead, after all, and they need as much help as anyone else.”

  “ ‘Sundô,’ ” said Fool. The word rolled around his mouth like oiled silk, soft and rich and gentle.

  “How do you know these things?” asked Summer. “I mean, I can understand you knowing things about Hell, we lived there, but about Heaven?”

  “There are Sundô in Hell,” said Gordie, “haven’t you see them? And you know how I know this stuff; I read books.” Even in the darkness Fool could tell Gordie was smiling, and could tell that the smile was a sad one. He knew these things because of the life he’d lived before he died, before he and Summer both died.

  “Are you sure?” asked Summer, her own voice balanced between disbelief and query.

  “Of course,” said Gordie. “Sundô: angels that move the dead on, the kindliest ones, the kindest ones. Always small and always black and always mute. Sundô.”

  Summer paused, still watching the retreating shape of another that had drifted out from the cave and was floating up, following its companions. “I’m glad they’re not alone. At the end, I mean,” she said eventually. “And we have them in Hell?”

  “Yes.”

  “How? How are they in Hell, if they’re angels?”

  “Because all demons are angels that fell, or the descendants of angels that fell,” said Fool.

  “I’d like to see them,” said Summer.

  “I’ll show you,” said Gordie, and Fool knew the two were looking at each other, and he wondered, if they ever got back to Hell, how long those looks would be allowed to continue before the Bureaucracy took notice and moved against them.