The Devil in green

The thoughts stilled him for a while, but he found it hard to deal with the pauses that magnified the dim whistling outside. 'I had to get out in the end. My girlfriend, Sue… we were going to get married, been in love for ages… couldn't imagine being with anyone else.' His voice took on a bleak tone. 'Then one day she dumped me, just like that. Said she was moving in with this complete moron… a thug… God knows what sort of things he was involved in. And she'd always hated him, that was the mad thing! But she said he made her feel safe.'

'These are dangerous times. People do what they have to, to survive.'

'But I didn't make her feel safe, you know?' Miller made no attempt to hide his devastation; he reminded Mallory of a child, emotional, almost innocent.

'That's what made you decide to come down here, to sign up?'

Mallory obviously wasn't really interested; it was a friendly gesture, but after the rigours of the night it felt to Miller as if Mallory had clapped his arms around him. 'Partly. I mean, I'd been thinking about it for a long time. I knew I wanted to do something. To give something back. So many people were making sacrifices for the greater good and I didn't feel as if I was doing anything at all. I know you don't believe, but it felt as if God had put us through all this suffering and spared some of us for a reason.'

Mallory made a faint derisive noise.

'No, really. Sometimes when you sit back and think about it, you can see patterns.'

'There aren't any patterns, just illusions of patterns. It's the human condition to join the dots into something cohesive when all there is… is a big mass of dots.'

'I can't believe that, Mallory. When you see some of the goodness that has come out of all this… the goodness people have exhibited to others. They could have wallowed in self-preservation.' His voice became harder as he went on, 'Just done things to survive, like you said.'

'Well, I'm not going to try to change your mind.'

Miller's shoulders sagged so that the rainwater ran from his crown to drip into his lap. He suddenly looked burdened by some awful weight. 'It's hard to be scared all the time, do you know what I mean? Life was difficult enough before everything changed, but now there's just… threat… everywhere, all the time. It wears you down.' He trembled with a deep, juddering sigh. 'Why isn't the Government doing something? Where's the army, the police?'

'I don't think they exist anymore.'

'But if it's left to people like us, what's going to become of us all?'

Mallory couldn't answer that.

They sat in silence for a while until Mallory said, 'Well, it's not all bad.'

'What do you mean?' Miller mumbled.

'No more Stars in Their Eyes'

Miller brightened. 'Or Euro-disco.'

'Or public-school boys getting drunk at Henley, or…' He made an expansive gesture, just caught in a flash of lightning. The depressive mood evaporated with their laughter.

It was echoed by another laugh away in the dark, only this one was an old man's, low and throaty. Miller yelped in shock, pushing himself back until he felt the stones hard against him. The shotgun clattered as Mallory scraped it up and swung it in an arc, waiting for another sound to pinpoint the target.

'I've got a gun,' he said.

The laugh sounded again, slow and eerie, though with a faint muffled echo as if it were coming through the wall.

'Who's there?' Miller whined. He shivered at the haunting, otherworldly quality of the laughter.

'My names are legion,' the old man said.

Miller started to whimper the Lord's Prayer.

'He's playing with you,' Mallory said. 'Aren't you?'

The old man laughed again. 'No fooling you, Son of Adam.'

'No!' Miller said. 'He's lying! It is the Devil! And he always lies!'

'There are devils and there are devils,' the old man snorted. 'You must know the Devil by the deed.'

Miller hugged his knees to his chest. 'What are you?'

'Not of the Sons of Adam.' The statement was simple, but edged with an unaccountable menace.

Not wishing to antagonise whatever was nearby, Mallory's tone became slightly less offensive. 'What do you want?'

'The question, more likely, is what do you want? My home has looked out over this place since before your kind rose up.'

'We didn't realise,' Miller protested. 'We don't want to trespass-'

'We're sheltering,' Mallory said. 'We'll be gone at first light, if that's all right with you.'

'Perhaps it isn't and perhaps it is. I would have to say, in this day and age I'm not wholly sure where the boundaries lie. You may be trespassing, and then again you may not.'

'We'll pay you,' Miller said. 'Anything!'

'No.' Mallory's voice was sharp, cutting Miller dead.

'You're very cautious,' the old man said slyly, 'but are you as wise as you seem, I wonder?'

Mallory replaced the shotgun on the floor, instinctively knowing it was useless. 'You like questions-'

'I like questions and games and riddles because that's what everything is about, is it not? One big riddle, and you trying to find out what the answer is.' He chuckled. 'Trying to find out what the question is.'

'And you have all the answers, I suppose,' Mallory said.

'Many, many, many. Not all, no. But more than you, Son of Adam.'

The wind dropped a little, the crashing rain becoming a mere patter. Mallory remained tense. 'Do you want something of us?'

A long silence was eventually ended by words that were heavily measured. 'Curiosity was my motivation. Few venture up this hill in these times. I had a desire to witness the extent of the bravery in our latest visitors.' A smack of mockery.

Tension filled the air, driving Mallory into silence. It felt as if they were in the jungle with some wild animal padding slowly around them, content in the knowledge that it could attack at any time. Mallory decided it was better to engage the old man in conversation rather than allow any lulls where other ideas might surface.

'Perhaps you'd like to provide us with some answers, as we're so sadly lacking,' he said.

The old man mused on this for a time, then said, 'Answers I can give, and questions too. But if you seek my advice, it's this: keep your head down doing honest work and give offence to none. Avoid drawing unwanted attention at all costs.'

'What kind of attention?'

'Ah, you should know by now,' the old man said with a cunning tone, 'that when the mouse gets noticed by the cat, it won't leave him alone… until he's long gone.'

'What's going to happen?' Miller was whimpering again.

'Many things,' the old man said, pretending it was a question for him, purely for the sake of malice. With another chuckle, he added, 'The wormfood will come up for air, and the quick will go down for a way out, but find none. There'll be a man with three hands, and one with one eye. Some will be bereft in more profound areas. Friends will be found in unlikely places, but where friends should really be, there will at times be none. And consider this: a religion isn't as good as its god, only as good as its followers.'

'Is that supposed to help?' Mallory said.

'The joy of a riddle is two-fold: in the solving, or in the enlightenment that comes from hindsight. Riddles are lights to be shone in the darkest corners, where all secrets hide.' 'Secrets?'

'Everybody has secrets,' the old man said pointedly.

'Thank you for your guidance,' Mallory said with irony. 'We'll take it with us when we leave.'

'Oh, you will be back, Son of Adam. Back here, and back there. Sylvie doesn't love you any more. It's a hopeless case.' Then, 'Your sins will always find you out.'