The Devil's Detective (14 page)

Were they the skeletons of humans?
Fool wondered. Or of larger chalkis, the ones that were as large as men or larger? Or were they the skeletons of something else entirely?

Was the Man eating demons? Was that what Gordie had intended to tell him, just before they entered the Orphanage?

“Fool,” said a voice that was not, truly, a voice, “what are you doing?”

“Nothing,” said Fool, almost truthfully. “Thinking.”

“Indeed? Well, I would prefer you come inside and speak, Fool. I have need of entertainment. Oh, and Fool?”

“Yes?”

“Did you bring it?”

Inside the Man's home, it was dark, the shadows bristling and shifting about Fool as he entered. Things rolled and slipped under his feet as he went to the far room, the skin of them rough and warm through the thin soles of the boots. Once, something gasped in the blackness above Fool's head, the gasp accompanied by a sound like dry twigs snapping and a tiny, sickly flash of blue. The Man, ever hungry, ever eating.

Once Fool was in the room, the Man stretched his ever-growing limbs around him, the fronds and branches covering all the walls now. The doorway to the room, to Fool's back, was the only space left empty, an open mouth spitting him into the Man's foliage and flesh. He stepped toward the mass in the corner, where he assumed the Man to be, where the human skin and bone of him had been in those first visits, and finally replied, a low “Yes.” He took the feather from his inner pocket, marveling even now at the way its light filled the room, and held it out.

One of the Man's mouths rose up before Fool like a snake, the furred head split wide and with the purpled flesh of its maw showing. Curled thorns along its edges looked like teeth, and although the mouth had no eyes above it, Fool was suddenly convinced it was looking closely at him, that it was licking lips that it did not have with a tongue that did
not exist. “Give, Fool,” said the Man, the words elongating as though he were breathing as much as speaking, the sound coming from all around the room. Fool hesitated, knowing he had little choice but reluctant nonetheless.

“Give,” said the Man again, the word stretching out even further, and Fool placed the feather into the open mouth. It snapped shut, trembling, locking the glow into itself, and then whipped back into the Man's mass.

There was a stillness in the room, and then the Man's bulk began to shake, shivering vibrations dancing along the stems that surrounded Fool and setting the room about him into a palsy that continued for several minutes. As the Man pulsed around Fool, he made a noise like bubbling water that Fool realized, after a moment, was laughter. The movement alarmed the creatures that clung to the room's ceiling, setting them fluttering, dropping away from perches on water-slicked cornices and in the holes in the plaster to dart through the air above him.

The feather's glow was traveling along the Man, traveling
through
the Man; Fool tracked it by watching the pale gleam as it moved around the room, sometimes close to the Man's surface and at others almost disappearing, visible only as a fragmentary glimmer or as a set of leaping, shifting shadows.

“Fool, it's magnificent!” said the Man eventually. “Truly magnificent! In all my time here, in all the places I have grown into, and in all the things I have consumed, I have never held anything so magnificent. And to think, this is a thing of mass and weight and touch! Sometimes, just sometimes, I can see the attraction of the meat and flesh, of remaining tightly bound in a single shape, if this is the way in which that binding can be. Although, of course, this isn't really from a thing of mass, of bound flesh, is it? This is something else, something above and beyond, the gristle and bone and skin of an angel that is neither truly gristle nor bone nor truly skin, but something more, a thing of Heaven's lightness and Heaven's grace. Fool, do you understand what you have been given here? Understand its power?”

“No,” said Fool, “but I know it's beautiful.”

“It is, it is,” said the Man, “but it is so much more, Fool, so much greater than mere beauty. It is a tool, Fool, so powerful that I do not like the idea of giving this back to you, of you possessing this when I do not.
I am considering killing you so that I may own it, Fool. You entertain me, it's true, but you also investigate me, peering around my home and setting your quisling to ask questions about me so that you can tell Hell all about me, and I worry, Fool, I worry that you are becoming a nuisance.”

Mouths rose up around Fool, opening, purpled inner surfaces and thorn teeth rustling like dry leather. They swayed as they rose, hypnotic, sinuous, their stems curling back and forth, writhing around each other. Fool dropped a hand to his gun but one of the mouths was quicker, darting forward and tearing the weapon from Fool's leg and sending it spinning across the room. It clattered against the far wall and he went to follow it, but the stems came together and stopped him, fatter limbs threading through the barrier so that he could not tear his way through. He stepped back, hoping to find the doorway without turning, but bumped into another moving wall of fronds and jagged, hard edges and knew he was surrounded.

Vines, or something like them, began to curl around Fool's feet, humping up over his shoes and catching at the edges of his trousers, tearing the thin cloth as they twisted about him. More of the vines wove themselves around his arms, pulling them out from his body, tugged at his legs, and then lifted him, spreading him out and holding him above the floor. The flying creatures began to screech, chittering to themselves and to the Man and Fool, swooping around him as the Man's many limbs dug into his skin and more of the mouths rose up, trembling and snapping.

“No,” said the Man after another long moment during which the mouths came closer and the vines drew tauter. “No, not now. Despite your inquisitiveness, you are too interesting, Fool, what's
happening
is too interesting to interrupt it now, and you are such a part of it that if I took you away it might all stop. Besides, you may prove useful yet.” The mouths dropped away, closing and drooping so that they looked like seed pods again, their stems coiling in loose whorls on the floor, and the vines unthreaded themselves from around his arms and legs, springing away so that he fell to the floor. It smelled of dirt and wetness and old, dead blood.

From somewhere in the Man's bulk a pale glow reappeared, fractured and torn by his writhing branches, growing brighter as the feather was brought out and held toward Fool. It was clenched in a mouth,
unmarked, its barb sticking out from between two thorns. Fool reached out and took it, pulling so that it slipped out from the closed mouth with a low, silken sound. As the Man released the feather, the room around Fool shivered again, violently at first, before calming. Fool had the idea that it was a shiver of release, as though the Man had shuddered his way down from orgasm into relaxation.

A moment later, a languid stem rose in front of Fool with his gun twisted within it. Fool took the gun and slipped it back in the holster, finding that the Man had torn the straps when it ripped the weapon away and that he could no longer secure it. The stem retreated slowly back into the Man's mass, which settled all around the room into comfortable, watchful stillness.

“Fascinating, don't you think, Fool?” said the Man. Fool didn't know what to say, so he stayed silent. “Why do you think, Fool, that I told you I was considering killing you? That I know you've been asking questions about me?”

“I don't know. To toy with me? Because I don't matter?” Fool's heart was still beating too fast, his skin clammy with sweat and sick with unused adrenaline.
Little helpless Fool, little vulnerable Fool
, he thought briefly.

“Ah, Fool, but you do matter! I told you because I could do no other,” said the Man. “The feather is a tool, I told you that; it is the angelic matter, and it compels the holder to be truthful. It is the stuff of God's closest, Fool, of God's trusted servants and mightiest weapons, and it is created of God's truth and beauty and honor and love. It allows only the truth because it is, itself, absolutely true.”

“I don't understand,” said Fool. He understood so little, not Hell nor Heaven, certainly not demons nor angels nor people.
Perhaps the only thing I understand is violence
, he thought,
murder and rape and beatings. Headless corpses and flesh with no soul left within it and babies that burn. Perhaps that's all I'm allowed to understand.

“What is there to understand, Fool?” said the Man, interrupting Fool's thoughts. “What is there to comprehend? This is Hell, and you have been given a piece of Heaven. Treasure it, Fool, for you may not have it long; it has no place here in Hell.”

“Then why give it back to me at all?”

“Because it amuses me to leave it with you,” said the Man, “to know that it is out there somewhere out of my ownership, exposed to Hell and Hell exposed to it. It is a spark of order in Hell's chaos, Fool, and chaos and order do not mix well. They make infernos, Fool, great conflagrations that can burn entire worlds to the ground. I shall enjoy seeing this play out, I think, enjoy watching you dance to tunes you cannot possibly comprehend played by beings you cannot see, lighting flames around you as you go.”

“And you do?” said Fool, angry and weary and thinking of Gordie, burning. “You understand? You comprehend, do you? You can see everything? So tell me what's going on, tell me where to look for this demon.”

“You're growing brave, Fool, and that's part of the joy of this situation, and the Bureaucracy is growing nervous and that's joyful, too! Who would have thought Fool the Information Man could kill demons, would dare to speak to me like that? Would be charged with investigating me? Would venture into an Orphanage, would emerge dragging the corpse of one of Hell's slain? Oh, Fool, this is fascination itself, and watching it unfold is an endless delight! I could tell you some of this, Fool, but less than you might think or hope. No, this is for you to sort, Fool, to solve!

“And Fool? Be careful. I have chosen not to kill you, but I can change my mind. My reach is long, Fool, from the great trees that line the Flame Garden to the moss that creeps up the walls where the humans live. My vision may not yet take in all of Hell—there are some places that are not yet available to me—but most places are reachable.
You
are reachable, Fool, you are takeable, don't forget that.

“But still, the feather deserves something, does it not? And I brought you here with the promise of news, yes? Very well. First, a suggestion that you have no doubt considered but that I will make anyway: look to the Heights, Fool, to Crow Heights. It is where Hell's grandest and oldest live, cloistered together, hidden from Hell's tawdry delights. Ask yourself, Fool, where would something ancient and violent live? In among the ancient and violent, where it might stay hidden or ignored. Surely this is where the thing you seek must hide itself, in the sight of things that would consider it normal? And a last thing, Fool, a last piece of information for you to take: yesterday, Fool, yesterday there were miseries in one of the boardinghouses out beyond the Houska's
edges, where the Genevieves live. Someone has vanished, Fool, a beautiful someone with young flesh. Purchasable flesh. Beatable flesh, Fool, maybe the beaten flesh that you are investigating and that refuses to talk to you despite Morgan's most tender ministrations.”

“A boardinghouse? Which one?”

“The one with the demons lining its roof, Fool. Now, I have told you what I know and I shall tell you what more I can, when I can, but I expect payment for my wisdom, Fool. I expect amusement, not orders or anger, Fool; remember that. Investigate away, Fool, investigate! Find me a demon that I have not seen before, a murderer of humans and a devourer of souls. Tell me where it is that I might introduce myself. Tell me what the Bureaucracy thinks, what Rhakshasas asks about me, and tell them what you want about me, tell them all of it so that they might fear me more, that the knowledge of me and all I am and might become can sew threads of disquiet about them. I am growing, Fool, every day, and they have reason to fear me and I would have them know it. Tell all, Fool, and catch your demon.”

It sounded so simple, so compact, put like that. Merely find it and catch it, this demon newly emerged or newly woken and capable of doing such violence to human flesh. Fool closed his eyes for a moment, seeing in the darkness body after torn body, human and demon alike. “Aren't you worried? Scared? You were human once, and this thing could discover you helping me, could find you, find your soul. Kill you.”

The Man shook around Fool again, this time with amusement. He was laughing, Fool realized, laughing at Fool's question. Laughing at Fool. “No, Fool, my soul is a splintered, spreading thing, hidden in the tiny and invisible, in the plants. I am the drab greenery, Fool, and I am spread too wide to be worried about any demon. Parts of me die every day, Fool, torn up or eaten or crushed flat, yet I live on unharmed, and the heart of me is protected. I have weapons and defenses, Fool, more than you or that flesh-draped lickspittle Rhakshasas will ever know. Now, Fool, we are done. I have to eat, and you have to entertain me. Go, Fool, and be amusing.”

Amusing Fool, little entertaining Fool
, thought Fool and turned to go. The Man pulled himself apart, revealing the doorway. Above Fool, darting back and forth in the humid air, the flying creatures swooped toward
the doorway, flashing around his head. One of them came too close and its wing brushed his face, its touch surprisingly soft and smooth, the smell of it powdery and dry. It chirped, high-pitched and shrill, as it went past him, its wings beating, moving the air across his scalp in a warm, anxious breath.

As Fool stepped out of the room there was a crunch as one of the Man's mouths caught a flying thing, and a long, moist sigh from the Man.