Daniel O'Thunder by Ian Weir

Author:Ian Weir
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC019000
ISBN: 9781926706825
Publisher: Douglas and McIntyre (2013) Ltd.
Published: 2010-04-01T00:00:00+00:00

THE DEVIL STANDSvery still indeed. He stands like the very Statue of a Devil, for he has heard this before. The Risen Jew had uttered those very words as he stood before the Infernal Gates long centuries ago. Such a little man, with great mad haunted eyes, still wearing his grave clothes. The end of the winding-sheet had unravelled and trailed in the dirt behind him.

“It is not too late.”

The Devil remembers thinking: can it truly have come to this? This quiet little fellow, and the ruination of all the Devil’s darkest hopes. A tattered child, roused from sleep, trailing its blanket.

“You can still repent.”

He had said it in Aramaic, of course. A tongue the Devil had once spoken himself, along with all the other languages of the earth. The Devil had replied in Latin: “Non serviam.” Servire, to be a slave or servant.

The Devil had started to say much else as well, had vowed eternal defiance and unutterable revenge, which caused the Risen Jew to shake his head in sorrow. Then all at once it was indeed too late, for the little man had raised his arm—an arm like a stick, and a hole clear through his hand. The Devil remembers this most vividly of all: the hole, sudden and startling, and the curious thought that a cork would fit. In the next instant there was a flash of unbearable light, and a terrible grinding of stone, and then with a mighty crack the Gate burst wide.

They all came stumbling out—the Devil remembers this as if it were yesterday. All that ancient rabble, condemned by original sin to languish in Hell until the Son of Man should set them free. Noah and Moses and Solomon, and Adam and Eve themselves, all weeping with the joy of it and shouting loud hosannas. Or possibly he just remembers reading about it. The Mystery Plays, perhaps. Or else the poem, the great rumbling Latinate monstrosity by that poet—not Dante but the English one, the Puritan, the one who went blind from tugging at himself—Milton. Perhaps that’s what it was. The Devil remembers reading about it, as if it were yesterday.

And now this Irishman.

A wisp of smoke curls from the neck of the Devil’s shirt as he looks out of the window. Peers down through cracked and soot-blackened glass upon the Gray’s Inn Road, and the little tableau that has enacted itself. The Devil has bolt-holes all over London, and this is one of them: a filthy room in an appalling rooming-house, with a stench of humanity wafting up from below and rats rustling in the walls. It is foul, but it affords a view of the Irishman’s redoubt, which is why he engaged it.

There is a creak from the narrow bed behind him, and a slap, and a querulous execration. It is the little mollie from the White Swan discovering a louse. He is a spotty creature with a shock of hair that stands straight up and pale eyes that bulge as if he were being throttled, which perhaps he will be, presently.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.