Read Online The Devil's Evidence by Simon Kurt Unsworth - Free Book Online

there were to be found, to try to do his duty until Hell decided upon his fate.
    “Fool.”
    Fool jerked his head up off his knees and looked around; there was no one there.
    “Fool,” again, and the voice was almost familiar, as though someone whom Fool had known years earlier and miles away but had mostly forgotten was speaking. It was soft, as though made from two pieces of leather being carefully rubbed together, his name drawn out in a long, careful syllable. It made him think of the time of the Fallen, made images jumble in his mind, of something tilting out from a wall and collapsing down, of things being eaten or taken from the air, of a wide and toothed mouth opening by his hand and removing the feather from him.
    Of something dead, of something alive.
    “Fool,” a third time, and this time Fool replied.
    “Who is this?”
    “Don’t you remember me? Fool, I’m disappointed,” said the voice, and then Fool
did
recognize the voice, the memory crashing back in.
    The Man of Plants and Flowers.
    Fool stood quickly, hand going to his gun; the Man was dangerous and not to be trusted, despite the help he had given Fool in the past. The ground at his feet rippled as something moved under the cover of dead leaves and then they were tumbling aside as the grass struggled free, weaving upward, knocking aside the mulch. Above him, the branches of the trees began to twist, bending with the creak of straining wood, coming down in front of him and wrapping around each other, forming a face made of stem and leaf.
    “Fool,” said the Man for a fourth time. “It’s good to finally speak to you again.”
    “You’re dead,” said Fool but knew he wasn’t. That last time he and the Man had spoken had the gloss of a dream now, something half remembered and disjointed. Had the Man really spoken to him after the death of the Fallen? Yes, yes he had, and yet Fool had then forgotten him and he didn’t know why.
    “I’m impossible to kill, Fool,” said the Man, “but I have let myself recede into the background for a while, yes.”
    “You told me you weren’t dead,” said Fool, “but I didn’t remember after. Why not?”
    The branches shifted and there was a noise like tearing cloth.
He’s laughing,
thought Fool,
laughing at me, laughing at the little dense Fool.
He drew his gun, raised it, lowered it again, feeling foolish. There was no one to point it at.
    “Fool, you’ve done better than most in Hell, but you still don’t understand it, do you? The whole of the Hierarchies think I’m dead, the Bureaucracy thinks I’m dead, thanks to you and your investigation and the intervention of that glorious angel, and if they think I’m dead then I’m
dead
. You forgot me because if the Bureaucracy doesn’t acknowledge me then I have no reality here, and it has suited me to leave it that way. I’m still here, though, I’ve been here all the time, still the Man of Plants and Flowers, and I’m still
everywhere
.”
    The Man’s voice sounded weak, the words not fully formed by the branches.
He’s lying,
thought Fool,
or at least not telling me the full truth. Whatever he was, he’s different now from what he used to be, and whatever the angel did to him has taken him time to get over, weakened him in a way I don’t think he expected.
Aloud, he asked, “What have you been doing?”
    “Nothing, Fool,” replied the Man, and he was laughing again now, a raspy wooden chortle that filled the glade about Fool. “I found a secluded place, a little island of solitude, and had a rest and simply considered my options. I’ve enjoyed being nowhere, Fool. It’s been fun.”
    “But now you’re back?”
    “I’m back, and thought I’d say hello.”
    “Why say hello? To me, I mean. Why not keep being dead?”
    “Why do I do anything, Fool? Because it amuses me, because
you
amuse me. I enjoyed our chats, and hope to rekindle them one day if circumstances permit. Besides, you helped me die, so I decided I owed you a