The Devil's Evidence

by Simon Kurt Unsworth

  Plants covered in spikes and thorns grew sparsely along the path, and all three sweated as they walked, the sun above them seeming lower and closer and hotter than any other part of Heaven they had visited. It was directly above them, puddling their shadows squat around their feet. There were Joyful here as well, most of them still, some of them sitting down, all with the red dirt smearing their clothes and faces. They appeared unaware of the sun. Farther back from the path Fool saw several Joyful lying down, their bodies partly obscured by mounds of dust and small rocks. What must they be dreaming of, to create this landscape? he thought. What kind of people are these, to love somewhere so rough and harsh?

  If I was dreaming, what landscape would I make? An angelic version of Hell, the place I know best? Or somewhere from a past I don’t remember, haven’t ever been able to know, some space that meant something to me before I was born into Hell?

  The sun blazed, huge and yellow in a sky that shimmered with heat, and they walked and the sweat gathered in their boots and rolled across their foreheads. Fool’s clothes had started to smell, the dried blood upon them beginning to flake and crust, and he wished he had taken the chance to rinse them at the spring. He wished they weren’t black.

  He wished, and knew wishes were the bastard children of hope and that hope was dangerous.

  How long they walked, Fool wasn’t sure. It felt like it should be nighttime but it was still day and he wondered, Is that because I’m so tired or is that because the time of day is like the landscape, different in different parts of Heaven? I entered the Sleepers’ Cave in daytime and left it in night, but had enough time passed to make it night or was that just Heaven, just the changing of Heaven? He took his jacket off and draped it over an arm, wanting to drop it by the wayside but not daring to because the next place they came to might be cold, might be one of the seascapes in the Estedea’s painting, the air gray and bitter and filled with stinging needles of spray. Besides, it was his, the skin he wore as an Information Man, and he couldn’t simply drop it and leave it behind. Even marked in his own blood and the blood of others and the thick, clinging dust, filthy with sweat and dirt, it was his and he would keep it because he had nothing else.

  “There,” said Gordie and pointed at a distant shape. Fool squinted at it as Summer raised a hand to her eyes to shield them as she stared.

  “Yes,” she said.

  They had found the chapel.

  —

  As they approached the chapel, the temperature dropped and the air began to feel heavy with rain. The clouds that gathered above the angels were gradually expanding, their edges slithering out, the mass ballooning across the sky and shading the earth from the sun’s gaze. Here and there lightning flashed in the clouds, the sharp white streaks illuminating the grayness around them and sending skittering leaps of shadow across the ground. The wind was picking up, chilling the air and making Fool’s clothes flap. He put his jacket back on as a larger spike of lightning, still contained within the cloud, flashed. There was no thunder.

  The landscape changed as they came to the chapel. The arid, rock-strewn gulches and cliffs eased, and although the fields that had surrounded the chapel the last time they were there did not reappear, the earth did flatten and smooth. They came to the wall that surrounded the chapel and the graveyard, now made of old stone and tumbled down in places, and walked along it until they could see the tunnel.

  There were angels around the opening in the earth, although their number was fewer than in the period after the initial attack and Israfil’s taking. They were standing facing the tunnel’s mouth in the earth and each had their flame already burning, coils of fire held down and steady, curling around their feet while above them clouds gathered and churned. They ignored Fool and Summer and Gordie as they watched them from beyond the wall, their attention never shifting from the tunnel.

  “What do we do?”

  “The graveyard first,” said Fool. “We didn’t get a chance to inspect it properly last time and I want to look around.”

  “Will they let us?”

  “Yes,” and he was confident they would because, like the dead Joyful, they weren’t supposed to be here, so the angels wouldn’t see them. They were invisible unless they made themselves visible by pushing themselves into the foreground, except perhaps to the likes of Mayall.

  “Come on.”

  They clambered over the wall and made their way to the building. Gordie went to go around the far side but Fool pulled him toward the tunnel and its attendant angels.

  “No,” he said, “this way. This is the direction the things from outside would have come from, and we have to go where they’ve been.”

  For all his bluster, Fool was nervous. This wasn’t his territory and he understood too little to be anything other than anxious. The sound of his footsteps seemed terribly loud, echoing even over the increasingly powerful gusts of wind, and his breathing roared in and out of him. Surely the angels would hear, would turn to see what was creating this clamor, would see them then and respond? But no; the angels remained transfixed by the tunnel and ignored them as they made their way to the chapel’s front.

  Its door was open and Fool couldn’t help looking into the chapel as they passed it. The inside of the building was plain, with neither decoration nor furniture, and it was filled with books. They were piled in huge towers, taller than he was, carefully lined up so that they balanced perfectly, some of the columns joined at their upper heights by carefully constructed bridges of larger books, overlaid so that the weight of the upper tomes was borne by all those below. The books were worn and, in some cases, damaged, spines etched with lines and cracks, the edges of covers fraying and loose. The effect was to make the space into a strangely worked lattice that appeared both elegant and decaying.

  “I think they’re waiting to be buried,” said Gordie. “Look.”

  He was pointing at the far end of the chapel, where another series of columns made from books was standing, these shorter and draped with cloth, each cloth stitched with symbols. Fool saw crosses and stars and half circles and other sewn shapes, neat and small and regular in the cloths’ weave. By the piled books, on the floor, were scrolls and what looked like pamphlets, their printing cheap and uneven.

  Fool backed away from the door. The sight of the books was unnerving, things that had never been alive but that nonetheless now looked dead, collected together, stacked and sculpted and awaiting disposal. Awaiting burial.

  “Let’s go,” he said and carried on along the front of the chapel, glad to turn his back on the dead tomes and walk away. Turning along the chapel’s side, they started toward the graveyard.

  Even with the light made gray by the clouds and the wind pushing and pulling at the air, Fool could see the signs now that he was looking for them. There were long striations in the earth alongside the base of the walls, as if something had skulked low and dragged itself along the chapel’s side. Some of the scores were older, had grass growing in their depths, were overlaid by newer marks in which the only growths were the tiny blue flowers. Indentations around the marks might have been made by clawed or pincered feet.

  The chapel was made of rough, dark stone, and when Fool turned his Information Man’s eye on it, he saw the marks of the things’ passing here, too. Long scratches had been dragged into the stone, hard carapaces or shells scraping the building as the things went by. The scratches were at all heights, from just above ground level to above Fool’s head, too high for him to reach even when stretching. The marks undulated in irregular jags, as though whatever had made them had been moving unevenly, jerking from point to point.

  “Summer, stay here and see if there’s anything else,” said Fool after pointing out the scratches on earth and wall. “See if they left anything physical, like the scale, that we can use. Look properly, Summer; you were an excellent officer and I need you to be one again. Gordie, come with me.”

  The two men went around to the rear of the building, hurrying now. In pallid
daylight, Fool saw that the graveyard was far larger than he had realized. It stretched off into the distance, the rows of stone markers and occasional gnarled, twisting trees eventually blurring together and then down to nothing and merging with the horizon. There were no angels here, and Fool and Gordie were free to walk among the gaping, ravaged mouths of the graves and to see the disinterred and damaged books without distraction.

  The holes were rough and uneven, the earth of the graves ripped apart in the things’ desperation to reach the buried tomes. Around the graves’ lips were tears in the turf that exposed the rich, dark soil below, and at the bottom of the holes were the fragments of books. Now that he was able to observe without obstruction and to take a little time over the viewing, Fool saw that the books had been buried in large shrouds of the same stitched cloth he had seen in the chapel and that these had been torn open by the grave robbers, the material ripped to strings and peeled back like the skin of one of the bodies on Tidyman’s or Hand’s tables. The damp earth had stained the material and the paper that remained in the graves, painting everything with a dirty brown luster.

  “Be fast,” said Fool to Gordie. “See if there’s anything that’ll help us persuade Heaven or Hell what’s happening here. We need to move.”

  They looked around, spreading out their search and calling to each other as they went, but found nothing. Fool gestured Gordie back to him and they went to the edge of the graveyard, staring out over it and trying to see what they had missed. There must be something, somefuckingthing we’ve not grasped, some other way of reading this place, surely, thought Fool, feeling the tension knot inside him. They had to be quick, to be quicker than they were; otherwise all this was going to be for nothing and the war would start despite them.

  “The books are evidence, aren’t they?” said Gordie eventually. His voice was whipped around by the growing wind, and Fool had to concentrate to hear it and to raise his own voice in reply.

  “They don’t prove anything by themselves,” said Fool, snapping, frustrated. “They’re just books, buried and dug up. If we show them to Mayall he’ll say, ‘Yes, we know, the demons that came from the tunnel did that,’ and if we show them to Rhakshasas he’ll say, ‘So fucking what?’ We need more than this. We need something solid. We need something.”

  “Solid? Like what? There’s nothing here, not that we have time to find,” said Gordie, almost but not quite shouting. “We have the scale, there’s the pincer in the office in Hell, the claw, what else can we show them?”

  “I don’t know,” cried Fool. “I don’t fucking know!”

  “How about this?” said Summer, coming around the corner of the chapel and holding something up for them to see.

  At first Fool couldn’t tell what she was holding. It was swinging in her hand and, by the look on her face, it wasn’t pleasant; she was carrying it away from her, and when it swung back in toward her she twisted away from it. What was it? A bag? A dead bird?

  No, none of those things, he realized; it was a demon.

  It was small and dead. Summer was holding it by its hands and feet so that it was bent double, hanging loose and swaying at the end of her outstretched arm.

  “It’s a dead demon,” said Gordie.

  “It’s not,” said Summer.

  “It is,” said Fool. “Look at it, Summer. Fuck, if Heaven sees that, it’ll confirm every suspicion they’ve got. ‘This is Hell’s doing,’ they’ll say. ‘Look, we have a dead demon as proof!’ ”

  “It’s not,” said Summer.

  “It is, Summer, it’s a demon. A dead demon, not a thing from outside,” Fool said, and then carried on, almost to himself, “I was wrong. This was Hell all along.” Little confused Fool, little wrong Fool.

  “Fool, will you look,” said Summer loudly and tossed the demon at him. The thing spun in the air, lazy and flailing, and its intestines spilled from it as it spun, fluttering down to the earth below. It hit the ground by Fool’s feet and slithered toward him, still spilling itself, and Fool took an involuntary step back. His heels dug into air and he teetered on the edge of a grave before Gordie gripped his arm and pulled him forward, stabilizing him.

  “You weren’t wrong,” said Gordie when he’d let go of Fool’s arm and knelt down by the dead demon. He started pushing through the thing’s guts, now lying in a pale fan behind it, his fingers turned and teasing at the intestines.

  No, not intestines, not guts, something else, something dry and pale, something that rustled and crinkled. Something that fluttered in the wind, rose up off the ground, and danced and dropped and spun.

  Paper. The demon was filled with paper.

  Fool knelt as well, took hold of the demon, and lifted it. It was light and came up from the ground easily, hanging limp in his hand. As he lifted it, it unfurled and more paper fell from it, spilling into a messy pile at Fool’s feet before being picked up by the gusting wind and leaping away from him out of his reach. He took hold of the demon’s clawed feet and small, clawed hands and pulled it flat and stretched it in front of him. Flaps of its skin sagged away from it, dangling in a parody of angels’ wings, but the thing had no real shape. “What?” Fool asked aloud and then saw, really saw, and dropped the demon with a cry of disgust.

  The thing had been hollowed out and its skin used to carry the unearthed books.

  The demon had been split up its back, along the line of its spine, and the whole of its chest cavity had been opened up and the contents besides the spine itself removed, the ribs and intestines and heart and lungs all gone, assuming it ever had them. The job had been done inexpertly and the inside of the little thing’s skin was still crusted with gobbets of flesh, now dried and dark. Paper had stuck to the blood and lined the thing like clumsy decoration, rustling and crackling as Fool poked at the body with his toe cap, flipping it over and over and feeling a curious mix of disgust and sorrow. Even demons didn’t deserve to be treated like this.

  Its eyes had fallen in, were still attached to the skin but popped and dry now like old fruit skin left in the sun, and several joints of its spine had been snapped to make it bend back on itself. Fool forced himself to pick it up again, not liking the way its flesh felt in his hands, and folded it up. Its skin had been stretched and torn, the holes placed so that the thing’s hands and feet could be used to keep the skin up, turning it into the sides of the makeshift bag. Its head hung down limply, staring back at itself as though shocked by what had been done to it. The back of its head was crushed, and gray brain matter bulged from the wound, dry and old. It stank, the rotten stench of its dead flesh making Fool’s eyes water. He put it back onto the ground and wiped his hands on the wet grass.

  “I found it behind the wall,” said Summer. “They needed something to carry the books in, so they used it as a bag. It’s proof, Fool; demons wouldn’t do this to other demons.”

  “No,” Fool agreed, because Summer was right; demonkind violence was only ever toward humans, toward the Sorrowful.

  Could this be the Evidence, then? Was this what they did? No, they simply vanished things into the shadows and never returned them, and besides, they were in Hell, not Heaven. And what had Mr. Tap said, that demons were vanishing that the Evidence hadn’t taken? This was the work not of Hell but of something else, some other terrors attacking Hell, killing its denizens.

  This was the things from places outside of everywhere, breaking in.

  Yes, yes, because that’s what this was, it had to be, two sets of attacks carried out at once, the assaults on Hell and the assaults on Heaven, one fueling the other, parallel lines of savagery and violence. This little thing and how many others taken from Hell and used in Heaven, Israfil and the Joyful and the books taken from Heaven and used where? Used how?

  It didn’t matter. The where and the why could come later, after he stopped the war, because if the war went ahead, so many would die and both sides would be distracted, weaker, ripe for a head-on assault rather than these sneaky, secretive stabs.

  “G
ordie, get one of the cloths from a grave,” said Fool, “one that’s not too badly damaged. Put the demon in it and some of the damaged books. Have you got the scale and the claw?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Put them in as well, we’ll take it all. We’ll show Rhakshasas first, get him to understand. If he listens to us and to the Man, he may help us persuade the rest of the Bureaucracy and might be able to speak to Heaven, to Mayall or whomever it is he needs to speak to. To get them to come together and listen.”

  “Will that be enough?”

  “I don’t know,” said Fool. “But we have to try. At the very least, we have to try.”

  “There’s something we haven’t thought about,” said Summer. “How do we get back to Hell?”

  “The angels told me that the Flame Garden was the link between all the worlds, but I don’t have time to find Heaven’s version of it, the Garden of Earth and Air, and I don’t know how to get into it. Even if I could find it, I don’t know if we can travel those roads only if we have angels or demons with us, so there’s only one way to go.”

  “How?”

  “The tunnel. We have to go through the tunnel.”

  25

  They gathered up the evidence, putting the demon in the bag first and then covering it with the ripped remains of the religious texts. Fool knelt and filled his pockets with torn paper for reasons he wasn’t completely sure of, and then turned and watched as Gordie took the scale from his pocket, looking at it carefully, lifting it to the sun, and rotating it slowly. Fool watched him, the question unasked, waiting. Gordie’s brain was analytical, kept facts in a viselike grip, but sometimes it took him time to make connections.

  “There’s something,” he said after a minute. “I don’t know what, but this is strange. It’s odd.”

  “Odd?” Again, odd.

  “Odd,” the man repeated helplessly. “I can’t work out why, though.”

  “Gordie, it’s from outside,” said Summer. “Of course it’s odd.”