Mister B. Gone

  There were noises coming from beyond the grove however, as was a smell that I knew all too well from childhood: the stink of burning flesh. Its pungent presence made sense of the two kinds of cries that accompanied it: one, the agonized shrieks of burning men and women; and the other, the appreciative murmur of the crowd that was witnessing their cremations. I’ve never had a great fondness for human meat; it’s bland and often fatty, but I had not eaten since taking Cawley’s bait, and the smell of the cooking sodomites wafting from Joshua’s Field made me salivate. Drool ran from the corners of my mouth and down my chin. I raised a trembling hand to wipe the spittle off, an absurd touch of fastidiousness given my general condition, and while I was doing so Quitoon said:

  “Hungry?”

  I looked up at him. The blaze in his head had been extinguished while my mind had wandered off to Joshua’s Field.

  Now I was back, and so was Quitoon.

  His pupils, like those of every member of the Demonation, were slits, his cornea rays of burnt umber flecked with gold.

  There were hints of gold too in the symmetrical arrangement of turquoise and purple patterns that decorated his body, though if they had ever been flawless many years of scarring had taken their toll.

  “Are you just going to stand there staring or are you going to answer my question?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Are you hungry? I’m so starved I could even eat fish.”

  Fish. Disgusting. Fish was the Nazarene animal. I shall make you fisher of men, it was writ. Ugh. It was no wonder I’d choked on a bone both times I tried eating it.

  “All right, no fish. Bread and meat. How’s that?”

  “Better.”

  Quitoon shook himself, like a wet dog. Flecks of brightness, remnants of the power he’d unleashed that had been lodged between his scales, now flew off him and died in the sunlight.

  “That’s better,” he said.

  “I . . . should be . . . no, I mean, I am . . . very . . .”

  “What?”

  “Grateful.”

  “Oh. No problem. We can’t let this human trash kick us around.”

  “They made quite a mess of me.”

  “You’ll heal,” Quitoon said, matter-of-factly.

  “Even if I got two knives in my heart?”

  “Yeah, even then. It’s when they start dismembering you that things become difficult. I doubt even Lucifer could have grown himself a second head.” He thought on this for a moment. “Though now I come to think of it nothing’s impossible. If you can dream it, you can do it.” He studied me. “Are you fit to walk?”

  I tried to be as casual as he was being. “Sure. No problem.”

  “So let’s go see the Archbishop cook.”

  Fires. They’ve marked every important moment in my life.

  Are you ready to light one last fire then?

  Surely, you didn’t think I’d forgotten. I got a little carried away by the story, but all the time I’ve been telling it I’ve been thinking about how it’ll feel when you do what you promised.

  You did promise, don’t say you didn’t.

  And don’t say you’ve forgotten. That’ll only annoy me. And I’d have every right to be annoyed, after going to all the trouble I’ve gone to, digging through my memories, painful many of them, and sharing what I dug up. I wouldn’t do that for just anybody, you know. Only you.

  I know, I know, it’s easily said.

  But I mean it. I’ve opened the doors of my heart for you, I really have. It’s not easy for me to admit I’ve been as wounded and weak as I have or foolish or as easily duped. But I told you because when you first opened the prison door and I saw your face there was something about it I trusted. That I still trust.

  You’re going to set fire to this book very soon, aren’t you?

  I’ll take your silence as consent.

  You have a slightly puzzled look on your face. What’s that about? Oh. Wait. I get it. You’re expecting everything to be wrapped up neat and tidy, yes, like a story. This isn’t a story. Stories have beginnings, middles, and ends.

  This doesn’t work like that. It’s just some scraps of memory, that’s all. Well no, that’s not really right. I’ve told you things that were very important to me, because those are the things I’ve remembered. The Bonfire, The Bait, Killing Pappy, My First Love (though not my last), What Happened on Joshua’s Field, Meeting Quitoon, and How He Saved My Life. That’s about it.

  But I can see from your expression that isn’t what you expected. Did you think I was going to be telling you about the Great War between Heaven and Hell? Easy answer to that: There wasn’t one. All papal propaganda.

  And me? Well, I survived my wounds obviously, or I wouldn’t be sitting in these pages telling you all this.

  Huh. That makes me wonder—the idea of me telling you makes me wonder. What do I sound like in your head? Did you give me the voice of somebody you’ve always hated, or someone you love?

  Oh wait, do I sound like you? No, do I? That would be weird, that would be so weird. It’d be like I didn’t really exist, except in your head.

  I, Mister Jakabok Botch, presently residing inside your skull . . .

  No, I don’t like that. I don’t like that at all, for obvious reasons.

  What reasons? Oh, come on, don’t make me spell it out for you, friend. If I do, then I’m going to tell you the truth, and sometimes the truth isn’t pretty. I might bruise your tender human feelings, and we wouldn’t want that, would we?

  On the other hand, I’m not going to start telling you lies now, not when we’re so close to our little book-burning.

  All right, I’ll tell you. I’m just saying that I don’t think anybody in their right mind would think of your head as prime location, that’s all.

  Your head’s a slum. I’ve been here long enough to see it for myself. You’re up to your skull lid with dirt and desperation.

  Oh, I’m sure you fool your more gullible friends and relatives with little tricks. I’ve seen them on your face, so don’t try to deny it. You’d be surprised at how much I’ve seen looking up at you from these pages. The smile you put on when you’re not sure what’s true and what isn’t. You don’t want to show your ignorance, so on goes this little smile to cover up your confusion.

  You put it on when you’re reading something you’re not sure about. I bet you didn’t know that. You put that little smile on for a book, believe it or not.

  But you’re not fooling me. I see all your guilty little secrets scurrying around behind your eyes, desperately trying to keep out of sight. They make your eyes flicker, did you know that?

  They jiggle back and forth really quickly whenever the conversation we’ve been having has moved on to something you’re uncomfortable about. Let’s see, when did I first notice it? Was it when I was talking about the family fighting and me picking up a kitchen knife to use on my father? Or was it when I first talked about the corrupt priest, Father O’Brien? I can’t remember.

  We’ve talked about so much. But take it from me, your eyes put on quite a performance when you’re nervous.

  I can see right through you. There’s nothing you can hide from me. Every vicious, corrupt notion that passes through your mind is there on your face, for all the world to see. No, I shouldn’t say all the world. It’s just me, really, isn’t it? I get the private view. The only one who maybe knows you better than me is your mirror.

  Wait, wait. How did I get on to talking about your mind. Oh yeah, me being resident inside your skull, your slummy skull.

  Is it full enough now? Demonation knows, I’ve told you plenty. Sure, there are some details I’ve neglected. Most of the rest of the stuff is self-evident, isn’t it? Obviously I didn’t die, even with two wounds to my heart. Just as Quitoon had prophesied, every knife wound and cracked bone had healed eventually, leaving me with a constellation of small scars to accompany the Great Burn.

  Speaking of burns, when we, that would be Quitoon and me, wandered back to
the fringes of the forest and looked down over Joshua’s Field, we discovered that while most of the condemned had long since gone up in smoke, the three sinners who were nailed upside down on the crosses in the middle of the half-circle of fires had yet to be put to the flame. The Archbishop was addressing them, enumerating their sins against the Laws of Heaven. Two of the condemned were men, the third a very young and very pregnant woman, her swollen belly, its skin shiny-tight, hanging down, decorated with rivulets of blood that ran from her crudely nailed feet. It was only when the Archbishop had finished his speech, and the three executioners carefully lit the base of each of the tinder piles that the crosses began to slowly rotate.

  “That’s clever,” I remarked.

  Quitoon shrugged. “I’ve seen better.”

  “Where?”

  “Anywhere they’re causing harm to one another. That’s where you really see human genius at work; war machines, torture instruments, execution devices. It’s incredible what they create. They had the spinning crosses last October, for the execution of the previous Archbishop.”

  “His women were nailed upon crosses, too?”

  “No. Just the Archbishop, on the circling device. Anyway, it didn’t work. It started to move, a bit jerkily, and then halfway round it stopped. But look at the skill of these people, they’ve solved the problem in just a few months. Those crosses are going ’round so smoothly.” He smiled. “Look at them.”

  “I’m looking.”

  “It’s a machine, Botch, a device for doing what Humankind can’t do for itself! I swear, it will make a machine to fly, if it lives long enough.”

  “It has enemies?”

  “Only one. Itself. But the machines it makes are usually free of the stupidities of its inventors. I love machines, whatever they’re for. I never get tired of watching them. Oh Demonation, listen to that screaming.” His smile grew broader still.

  “It’s the girl.”

  “I suppose it’s understandable. She’s screaming for two.”

  He chuckled. “Still, it’s making my teeth ache. I think I’m going to take my leave. It’s been quite a day, Mister B. Thank you.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Right now, away from here.”

  “But after that?”

  “No particular plans. If I hear something interesting is being invented somewhere—whether it’s a better rat trap or a machine that beats women who talk back to their husbands, I don’t care—I’ll just go. I’ve got plenty of time. Like I heard rumors yesterday that an angel had been caught in the Low Countries, helping someone invent a flower.”

  “Do you know what an angel looks like?”

  “I have no idea. What about you? Have you ever seen one?”

  I shook my head.

  “You want to see this angel?” Quitoon asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Demonation, you are dense! I’m asking if you want to come with me. It’s a nomadic existence but every now and then you see somebody working on a project, usually in secret.”

  The word sounded strange when he said it. He seemed to realize this fact, because he said:

  “It’s not really important, The Secret Thing. Things! I mean Things.”

  “No, you don’t.” I said. “You mean a Thing. A single Thing.

  You can’t fool me.”

  Quitoon was plainly impressed. “Yes!” he said. “It is a single thing I’m hearing rumors about. Somebody’s working to invent this secret thing that will . . .” He left the sentence unfinished.

  “That will?” I said.

  “Are you coming or staying? I need an answer, Botch!”

  “That will what?”

  “That will change the nature of Humankind forever.”

  Now I was intrigued. Quitoon had a secret. A big secret.

  “This is the biggest Secret since that thing about Christ,”

  Quitoon went on. “I mean it.”

  I glanced back across the Field to the woods on the far side.

  I knew it wouldn’t be difficult to find my way back through the trees to the crack in the rocks where Cawley and his mob had hauled me up. Nor would it be that hard to make the descent. In a matter of hours I could be back in the comforting familiarity of the World Below.

  “Well, Botch?”

  “You really think there’s an angel in the Low Countries?”

  “Who knows? That’s half the fun of it, not knowing.”

  “I think maybe I need to chew it over for a little while.”

  “Then I’ll leave you to your chewing, Jakabok Botch. Did I tell you what a mouthful that name of yours is, by the way?”

  He didn’t wait long enough for me to tell him I heard that observation often. He just turned his back on the field, saying that he couldn’t take another second of the girl’s screams.

  “Her hair’s on fire.”

  “That’s no excuse,” he replied, and strode off into the forest.

  This was an important moment, I knew. If I chose wrongly I could end up regretting the decision I made now, and here, for the rest of my life. I looked down at the Field again, and then back towards the trees. Bright though the designs on Quitoon’s scales were, the shadows were already obscuring them. Just a few more steps and he’d be out of sight, and my opportunity for some adventure would have disappeared.

  “Wait!” I yelled to him. “I’m coming with you.”

  So now you know how I went traveling with Quitoon. We had a fine time in the years that followed, moving from place to place, playing what he liked to call the Old Games: causing the dead to talk, and babies to turn to dust as they suckled; tempting holy men and women (usually with sex); even getting into the Vatican through the sewers and smearing excrement on some new frescoes that had been painted using a device that allowed the artist to achieve the illusion of depth.

  Quintoon was irritated not to have been there when the invention had been used, his bad temper making him fling the dung around with particular gusto.

  I learned a lot from Quitoon. Not just how to play the Old Games, but how he always said the sport of invention chasing was keener if the human you were playing who really had a chance—just a little one, maybe, but nevertheless a real chance—of outwitting him.

  “You didn’t give the mob in the forest much of a chance of winning,” I reminded him. “In fact, you didn’t give them any.”

  “That’s because we were outnumbered. I had no choice. If we’d been able to go up against them one by one it would have been an entirely different story.”

  That was the one time I ever really pressed him on any matter of significance. After that we were a much neater match than I would ever have believed. Like long-parted brothers who’d been finally reunited.

  Well, that’s the end. Not of my life, obviously, but certainly the end of my confessions to you. I never intended to tell you so much. But now that it’s done, I don’t regret it. I feel lighter, unburdened I suppose you’d say.

  Perhaps, in some misbegotten fashion, I owe you my thanks.

  If you hadn’t kept staring at me with those puzzled expressions on your face, I would never have told you one of my guilty little secrets. Not The Secret, of course. That Secret I got from adventuring with Quitoon and, if I gave it away, it would be like giving him away. At least, the good bits.

  So, no Secret. Don’t even bother to hope. I never promised it to you, and it wouldn’t even have come up if I hadn’t been telling you what Quitoon said.

  All right? Are we clear?

  No Secret.

  Just burn the book.

  Please.

  Take pity on me.

  Damn you! Damn you!

  What do you want from me?

  WHAT IN THE NAME OF THE DEMONATION DO YOU WANT?

  Just stop reading. That’s not too much to ask is it? I’ve paid the price for getting into this infernal book. You’ve used me up, demanding my confessions.

  And don’t say you didn’t. You just read an
d read and what was I going to do? I could have erased the words if I’d chosen to.

  Or worse I could have erased every other word, so _____ wouldn’t _____ what _____ was _____ you. _____ only _____ you _____ be _____ to _____ was _____ a _____ game. _____would _____ liked _____. He _______ so _____ of _____ righteous _______ about_____ Humankind _____ chance _____ winning _____ bent _____ of _____ _____ _____ armadillos.

  See how easy it would have been to frustrate you? I should have started doing that right after you first kept reading. But the words got their hook in me, and once I began telling the truth, it was as though I couldn’t stop. I could see the shape of the stories ahead of me. Not just the big stuff—How I Got Burned, How I Got Out of Hell, How I Met Quitoon—but the little anecdotes I picked up, or minor characters who appeared along the way and had some business with me, whether it was bloody or benign, before heading off to get on with their lives. If I was a really good storyteller, I mean a real professional, I would have been able to make up some clever twist to finish their stories off, so you weren’t left wondering what happened to this one or that one. Shamit, for instance. Or the Archbishop who’d burned his predecessor. But I don’t know how to invent things. I can only tell you the things I saw and the things I felt. Whatever happened to Cawley’s people, or the Archbishop who was the father of the girl behind the rock I never found out. So I cannot tell you.

  Yet you still stare. Still you look backwards and forwards along the lines as though I’m going to suddenly turn into a master storyteller and invent wonderful ways to bring things to a conclusion. But I’ve told you, I’m burned out, so to speak. I’ve got nothing left.

  Why don’t you make this easy. Just take pity on me, I’m begging you. I’m on my knees in the gutter of the book, entreating you.

  Burn the book, please, just burn the book. I’m tired. I just want to die away into the darkness and you’re the only one who can give me that gift. I’ve cried too long I’ve seen too much I’m just tired and lost and ready to go to my death so please, please let me burn.