Mister B. Gone (17 page)

This rampage had left the landscape I passed through deserted. If there had indeed been survivors, they had fled rather than linger to bury the dead.

Finally, the scenes of destruction became less regular, and I saw figures in the distance, and heard the sounds of marching feet. I hid behind the scorched remains of a stone wall, and watched as a battalion of uniformed men went by, led by their officer who rode on horseback, his face, unseen by his men, betraying a profound unease as he surveyed the smoky sky and smelt, as I smelt, the stench of cooked Humankind.

Once the anxious captain and his battalion of equally unhappy men had tromped by, I got up out of my hiding place, and returned to the road. There was a patch of forest ahead of me, but whoever had laid the road had decided against pushing through the dense interior. Instead the road skirted the trees in a leisurely curve. There was no sign of any further fireworks from Quitoon, the reason for which became apparent when the road brought me out the other side of the forest. The outskirts of Mainz lay just a few hundred yards ahead. There was nothing about the town that distinguished it from countless other towns Quitoon and I had seen. Certainly there was no hint that anything world-changing could be conceived there, much less be born. But, that said, the same was probably true of Bethlehem at a certain time.

I didn’t quicken my step, but rather slowed it to a hobble as I entered the streets, so as to convince any citizen of Mainz who looked my way that the possessor of a face so traumatically unmade by fire was wounded everywhere about my body. Your kind has a superstitious terror of things ugly and broken; you fear that their condition may somehow infect you. The God-fearing citizens of Mainz were no exception to the human rule.

They called their children off the street as I scuttled by and summoned their dogs to drive me away from their thresholds, though I never met a dog so obedient to its master that it would obey an order to attack me.

And if, by chance, any of the citizens did get too close to me and my willful tails started to stir in my breeches, I had a gamut of little grotesqueries that invariably drove them off. I would let my mouth loll open like that of a man whose mind had drained away, the spittle running from it freely, while green-grey snot bubbled up from the scabby holes in the middle of my face where my nose had once been many, many fires ago.

Ha! That disgusted you a little, didn’t it? I caught that little flicker of revulsion on your face. Now you’re trying to cover it up, but you don’t fool me with that oh-so-confident look, as though you knew every secret under Heaven. You don’t fool me for an instant. I’ve been studying you for a long time, now. I can smell your breath, feel the weight of your fingers as they turn the pages. I know more than you’d ever think I know; and a lot more than you’d like me to know. I could give you a list of the masks you put on to cover up things you don’t want me to see.

But trust me, I see them anyway. I see everything—the lies and, just as clearly, the nasty truth beneath.

Oh, while we’re having this heart to heart, I should tell you that this is the last piece of my history I will be telling you. Why?

Because after this there’s no more to tell. After this, the story is in your hands, literally. You
will
give me my fire, won’t you?

One last conflagration, in a life that’s been full of them. Then it’ll be over, for both of us.

Mister B. will be gone.

First, though, I have the secrets of the Gutenberg house to relate: secrets hidden behind several sturdy, commonplace wooden doors, and behind another door, this one made of light, a Secret greater than even Gutenberg could have invented.

I’m trusting you not to cheat me once I’ve given you the whole truth of things. You understand me? Though it’s true that a demon born of lowly stock has no aptitude for great magical workings, time, solitude, and anger can teach even the least of creatures the power that simply living a long life can accrue, and the harm and hurt that such power can then cause. In Hell, the Doctors of Torment called those hurts the Five Agonies: Pain, Grief, Despair, Madness, and the Void.

Having survived the centuries I have sufficient power in me to introduce you to every one of the Five, should you deny me my promised flame.

The air between these words and your eyes has become dangerously unstable. And though when we began you seemed to genuinely imagine you had a place assigned to you in paradise, and that nothing of the Demonation could touch you, now your certainty has slipped away, and it’s taken your dreams of innocence with it.

I can see in your eyes that there’s no seam of untapped joy left in you. The best of life has come and gone. Those days when sudden epiphanies swept over you, and you had visions of the rightness of all things and of your place amongst them; they’re history. You’re in a darker place now. A place you chose, with me for company. Me, an insignificant demon with a seeping scar for a face and body that even I find nauseating to look at, who has killed your kind countless times, and would kill again, happily, if the opportunity were before me. Think about that. Is it any wonder that the soul you once had—the soul that was granted those moments of epiphany that made the degrading grind of your life easier to bear—has passed from sight? The other you, the innocent, would never have pressed on through stories of patricide and executions and wholesale slaughter. You would have waved it all away, determined to keep such depravities and debaucheries out of your head.

Your mind is a sewer, running with filth and hurt and anger.

Its rancor is in your eyes, in your sweat, on your breath. You’re as corrupted as I am, yet filled up with a secret pride that you possess such a limitless supply of wickedness.

Don’t look at me as though you don’t know what I’m talking about. You know your sins very well. You know the things you’ve wanted, and what you would do to get them if you’d the opportunity.

You’re a sinner. And if, by some unfortunate chance, you were to perish without dealing with the pain you’ve caused, the fury you’ve unleashed—
without making amends
—then there is a place for you in the World Below, more certain than any home in paradise.

I’m mentioning this now because I don’t want you thinking that this is all some game you can play for a while and then put down and forget. It wasn’t at the beginning and, trust me, it certainly won’t be that at the end.

I’ve started counting, in my head. I’ll tell you why later.

For now, just know that I’m counting, and that the end is in sight. I’m not talking about the end of this book, I’m talking about THE END, as in the end of everything you know, which is to say: only yourself. That’s all we can ever know, isn’t it? When the rhythm of the dance stops, we’re on our own, all of us, damned Humankind and demon-lovers alike. The objects of our affections have been spirited away. We are alone in a wilderness, and a great wind is blowing and a great bell tolling, summoning us to judgment.

Enough morbid talk. You want to know what happens between here and the End, don’t you? Of course, of course. It’s my pleasure. No, really.

I didn’t tell you yet that Mainz, the town where Gutenberg resided, was built beside a river. In fact, there were parts of the town on both banks, and a wooden bridge between the two that looked poorly built, and likely to be swept away should the river get too ambitious.

I didn’t make the crossing immediately, even though it was clear from a quick visit to the riverbank that the greater part of the town lay on the far side. First I scoured the streets and alleyways of the smaller part of the town, hoping that if I kept to the shadows, and kept my senses alert, I’d overhear some fragment of gossip, or an outpouring of fear-filled incoherence; signs, in short, that Quitoon was at work here. Once I had located someone who had information it would be quite easy, I knew, to follow them until I had them on some quiet street, then corner them and press them get to spit out all the little details. People were usually quick to unburden themselves of their secrets as long as I promised to leave them alone when they’d done so.

But my search was fruitless. There were gossips to be overheard, certainly, but their talk was just the usual dreary malice that is the stuff of gossiping women everywhere: talk of adultery, cruelty, and disease. I heard nothing that suggested some world-changing work was being undertaken in this squalid, little town.

I decided to cross the river, pausing on my way to the bridge only to coerce food from a maker of meat pies and drink from a vendor of the local beer. The latter was barely drinkable, but the pies were good, the meat—rat or dog, at a guess—not bland but spicy and tender. I went back to the beerseller, and told him that his ale was foul and that I had a good mind to slaughter him for not preventing me from buying it. In terror, the man gave me all the money he had had about his person, which was more than enough to purchase three more meat pies from the pieman, who was clearly perplexed that I, the thuggish thief, had returned to make a legitimate purchase, paying for the coerced pie while I bought the others.

Pleased to have my money though he was, he did not hesitate, once he’d been paid, to tell me to go on my way.

“You may be honest,” he said, “but you still stink of something bad.”

“How bad is bad?” I said, my mouth crammed with meat and pastry.

“You won’t take offense?”

“I swear.”

“All right, well, let me put it this way, I’ve put plenty of things in my pies that would probably make my customers puke if they knew. But even if you were the last piece of meat in Christendom, and without your meat I would go out of business, I’d go be a sewer man instead of trying to make something tasty of you.”

“Am I being insulted?” I said. “Because if I am—”

“You said you wouldn’t take offense,” the pieman reminded me.

“True. True.” I took another mouthful of pie, and then said:

“The name Gutenberg.”

“What about them?”

“Them?”

“It’s a big family. I don’t know much except bits of gossip my wife tells me. She did say Old Man Gutenberg was close to dying, if that’s what you’ve come about.”

I gave him a puzzled stare, though I was less puzzled than I appeared.

“What would make you think I was in Mainz to see a dying man?”

“Well, I just assumed, you being a demon and Old Man Gutenberg having a reputation, I’m not saying it’s true, I’m just telling you what Marta tells me, Marta’s my wife, and she says he’s—”

“Wait,” I said. “You said demon?”

“I don’t think Old Man Gutenberg’s a demon.”

“Christ in Heaven, pieman! No. I’m not suggesting any member of the Gutenberg clan is a demon. I’m telling you that I’m the demon.”

“I know.”

“That’s my point. How do you know?”

“Oh. It was your tail.”

I glanced behind me to see what the pieman was seeing. He was right. I had indeed allowed one of my tails to escape my breeches.

I ordered it to return into hiding, and it scornfully withdrew itself. When it was done, the dullard pieman seemed congenially pleased on my behalf that I should have such an obedient tail.

“Aren’t you at least a
little
afraid of what you just saw?”

“No. Not really. Marta, that’s my wife, said she’d seen many celestial and infernal presences around town this last week.”

“Is she right in the head?”

“She married me. You be the judge.”

“Then no.” I replied.

The pieman looked puzzled. “Did you just insult me?” he said.

“Hush, I’m thinking,” I told him.

“Can I go, then?”

“No, you can’t. First you’re going to take me to the Gutenberg house.”

“But I’m covered in dirt and bits of pie.”

“It’ll be something to tell the kids,” I told him. “How you led the Angel of Death himself—Mister Jakabok Botch, ‘Mister B.’ for short—all the way through town.”

“No, no, no. I beg you, Mister B., I’m not strong enough.

It would kill me. My children would be orphans. My wife, my poor wife—”

“Marta.”

“I know her name.”

“She’d be widowed.”

“Yes.”

“I see. I have no choice in the matter.”

“None.”

Then he shrugged, and we took our way through the streets, the pieman leading, me with my hand on his shoulder, as if I were blind.

“Tell me something,” the pieman said matter-of-factly. “Is this the Apocalypse the priest reads to us about? The one from Revelations?”

“Demonation!
No
.”

“Then why all the presences celestial and infernal?”

“At a guess it’s because something important is being invented. Something that will change the world forever.”

“What?”

“I don’t know. What does this man Gutenberg do?”

“He’s a goldsmith, I believe.”