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Authors: Simon Kurt Unsworth
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favor. Something is coming, Fool, coming for you.”
“What’s coming?”
The grass writhed, tangling over Fool’s shoes and sending slimy strands up inside his trouser legs to caress his ankles. The branches hanging in front of his face shook as they formed the words, “Something big, Fool, big and terrible and dangerous. Watch out, little Fool, for where you are going even I cannot help you.”
The branches had untangled, springing back up into the canopy above him, and the grass had fallen back from his feet. The Man had gone.
“Fool.”
“Yes?” Thinking it was the Man back for one last utterance, hoping that it was, panic gathering in his chest, and wanting to run.
“You are wanted,” said Mr. Tap, yanking Fool off his feet in a violent, startling jerk, and Fool knew that he had missed his chance and that if there had ever been a time for running, that time was past.
4
Fool’s head was in a bag that smelled of blood and vomit.
He had tried to lift his gun, still in his hand from his time with the Man, but Mr. Tap was quicker, or Fool too slow, and the demon had wrapped Fool’s fist in its bony hand and squeezed until Fool felt his fingers would be cracked against the gun’s stock. When he yelped in pain, the sound escaping from between clenched teeth that wanted to give Mr. Tap no satisfaction, Mr. Tap loosened its grip and said in a strangely conversational tone, “Drop it.” Fool dropped it.
Mr. Tap spun Fool about, tying his hands behind his back and pulling the bag down over his head; Fool’s last view of Hell was of the farmlands beyond the copse, the dry fields stretching out and the ragged lines of workers moving across them. Then he was lost in a bitter darkness and was lifted, draped over Mr. Tap’s bony shoulder, the edge digging into his belly, and then they were running. He was jolted, bouncing, the smell of the bag in his nostrils, dust tickling at his eyes when he opened them until he eventually left them closed; there was nothing to see anyway, just blackness and the fears that his mind wrote in the bag around his head.
He didn’t know how long it took, in the end. Ten minutes? An hour? Fool’s sense of time had deserted him, somehow closed out of that terrible bag along with the light; he knew only that the journey was ongoing, and he waited and itched and imagined the worms from the cracks in Mr. Tap’s skin wriggling between the folds of his clothes and burrowing into his skin, writhing and burning, and then it was over. Mr. Tap suddenly halted and Fool was flung down, crashing hard onto a stone floor. He was flipped over onto his front, face pressing against the rough burlap of the sack and the foul odor was deep in his nose and mouth like muddy water, and then his wrists were untied and the blood was rushing back into his hands in a painful wave.
“Good-bye, Fool,” said Mr. Tap in that same conversational voice. There was a sharp clatter by Fool’s head and then the sound of footsteps as Mr. Tap left.
Fool sat up, reaching cautiously for the bag over his head.
What will I see when I remove it?
he wondered.
All the disappeared, hundreds of us heaped together, Hell’s forgotten left together in some vast cell? Marianne, gathered from the streets as well, bagged and broken? Will they be dead? Will I be? Or am I alone, a man in the darkness?
He tugged at the rough material, the bag came away, and the space about him was revealed.
Fool was in a small, anonymous room. It was mostly bare except for a long table at one end and a door behind the table, with high windows set in one wall. The panes in the windows were grimy, cataracted with dirt and showing nothing through themselves except a gray that might have been sky or the ceiling of a corridor.
When Fool looked back at the table, Rhakshasas was sitting behind it.
“So, we find ourselves here again, Thomas Fool, Commander of the Information Office of Hell,” Rhakshasas said, and the entrails around its torso
“What’s coming?”
The grass writhed, tangling over Fool’s shoes and sending slimy strands up inside his trouser legs to caress his ankles. The branches hanging in front of his face shook as they formed the words, “Something big, Fool, big and terrible and dangerous. Watch out, little Fool, for where you are going even I cannot help you.”
The branches had untangled, springing back up into the canopy above him, and the grass had fallen back from his feet. The Man had gone.
“Fool.”
“Yes?” Thinking it was the Man back for one last utterance, hoping that it was, panic gathering in his chest, and wanting to run.
“You are wanted,” said Mr. Tap, yanking Fool off his feet in a violent, startling jerk, and Fool knew that he had missed his chance and that if there had ever been a time for running, that time was past.
4
Fool’s head was in a bag that smelled of blood and vomit.
He had tried to lift his gun, still in his hand from his time with the Man, but Mr. Tap was quicker, or Fool too slow, and the demon had wrapped Fool’s fist in its bony hand and squeezed until Fool felt his fingers would be cracked against the gun’s stock. When he yelped in pain, the sound escaping from between clenched teeth that wanted to give Mr. Tap no satisfaction, Mr. Tap loosened its grip and said in a strangely conversational tone, “Drop it.” Fool dropped it.
Mr. Tap spun Fool about, tying his hands behind his back and pulling the bag down over his head; Fool’s last view of Hell was of the farmlands beyond the copse, the dry fields stretching out and the ragged lines of workers moving across them. Then he was lost in a bitter darkness and was lifted, draped over Mr. Tap’s bony shoulder, the edge digging into his belly, and then they were running. He was jolted, bouncing, the smell of the bag in his nostrils, dust tickling at his eyes when he opened them until he eventually left them closed; there was nothing to see anyway, just blackness and the fears that his mind wrote in the bag around his head.
He didn’t know how long it took, in the end. Ten minutes? An hour? Fool’s sense of time had deserted him, somehow closed out of that terrible bag along with the light; he knew only that the journey was ongoing, and he waited and itched and imagined the worms from the cracks in Mr. Tap’s skin wriggling between the folds of his clothes and burrowing into his skin, writhing and burning, and then it was over. Mr. Tap suddenly halted and Fool was flung down, crashing hard onto a stone floor. He was flipped over onto his front, face pressing against the rough burlap of the sack and the foul odor was deep in his nose and mouth like muddy water, and then his wrists were untied and the blood was rushing back into his hands in a painful wave.
“Good-bye, Fool,” said Mr. Tap in that same conversational voice. There was a sharp clatter by Fool’s head and then the sound of footsteps as Mr. Tap left.
Fool sat up, reaching cautiously for the bag over his head.
What will I see when I remove it?
he wondered.
All the disappeared, hundreds of us heaped together, Hell’s forgotten left together in some vast cell? Marianne, gathered from the streets as well, bagged and broken? Will they be dead? Will I be? Or am I alone, a man in the darkness?
He tugged at the rough material, the bag came away, and the space about him was revealed.
Fool was in a small, anonymous room. It was mostly bare except for a long table at one end and a door behind the table, with high windows set in one wall. The panes in the windows were grimy, cataracted with dirt and showing nothing through themselves except a gray that might have been sky or the ceiling of a corridor.
When Fool looked back at the table, Rhakshasas was sitting behind it.
“So, we find ourselves here again, Thomas Fool, Commander of the Information Office of Hell,” Rhakshasas said, and the entrails around its torso
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