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  "You, Fenroc?" says Death, his voice sounding deep and ancient as he stalks across the surface of the Devil's face. "Is it you, of all people, who come to claim the prize?"

  "I do not claim the prize," Fenroc sneers. "I demand it! I will take it!"

  "Then it shall be yours," Death replies.

  "It's time!" Fenroc shouts, turning back to stare into the Devil's vast right eye. "Rip this world apart! There's nothing left here but pain and misery and hopelessness! It's time to start a new world! A richer, happier world where great men can thrive! This pathetic reality has had long enough to organize itself, and all that happened is that it fell into disrepair and disrepute. Pain, death, war, loss... None of these things should exist! The world has been malformed and damaged for too long! Good and evil have been mixed up and confused with one another! Life and death have become separated! It's time for the world to be destroyed and remade in a stronger form! I want paradise!"

  "Wait!" Sam shouts, stumbling across the face until she's just a few feet from Fenroc. "Are you really going to take Henry with you? Are you really going to save him?"

  "Why, Sam?" he asks. "Have you changed your mind at last? Have you finally decided to be a mother to the child you tossed aside?"

  "I..." Sam starts to say, trying to work out what to do. On the one hand, she feels compelled to accept Fenroc's offer and go with him, at least so she can look after Henry; then again, there's a part of her that feels her son would be better off without her. While she's tempted by the idea that she could go and live in a whole new world with Henry, and maybe abandon all her guilt and fear, she knows it wouldn't be that easy; she knows she can't get rid of her past by literally making a deal with the Devil. At the same time, she knows that if the Devil rises and destroys the world, Henry's only chance of life is to go with Fenroc.

  "Well?" Fenroc continues. "Have you made a decision, or are you still just a bad mother? Can't you work out what's best for your own child?"

  "I don't know," Sam replies. "I..."

  "Henry's better off without you," Fenroc says after a moment. "You don't have a clue, do you? You're incapable of making the right choice. First, you dump him outside a church, and then you try to deny him safe passage to a safer world!"

  "Do you also claim the prize?" Death asks, slowly turning to stare at Sam.

  She stares back at him, unable to get the words out.

  "She's a weakling!" Fenroc sneers. "I'm the only one who dares to look into the Devil's eye and claim passage to the new world! I'll take the child, but it'll be better off without this miserable excuse for a mother! The boy can become stronger with me. I'll raise him in my own image, and one day he and I will laugh as I tell him about his mother's imperfections and vanities!"

  "Then it is settled," Death says slowly, stepping toward Fenroc.

  "This is nothing to do with you," Fenroc sneers. "Your power is over. The Devil's in charge now. You'll be consigned to the dust along with the rest of this miserable world."

  "On the contrary," Death replies, reaching out and placing a hand on Fenroc's shoulder. "You have claimed the prize that is offered to all those who come to this place, and now you shall receive passage to a new world."

  "There is no -" Fenroc starts to say, before he lets out a gasp of pain as his shoulder starts to burn. Dropping to his knees, he desperately tries to push Death's hand away, but slowly his entire body ignites and finally he's engulfed in flames.

  Stepping back, Sam watches as Fenroc's skin starts to melt away, revealing the bones beneath. He tries to get up, but already his bones are starting to blacken and finally his eyeballs drip down the front of his skull; he screams, and his jawbone falls away to reveal his bright pink tongue, which quickly shrivels up in the heat of the flames. Finally, his skeleton begins to disintegrate entirely, and the fire flares up one final time before Fenroc's entire body is reduced to nothing more than a pile of ash.

  "You will be with me," Death says slowly, as he leans forward and takes a deep breath, bringing the ashes of Fenroc's body into his mouth.

  "What did you do?" Sam asks, staring as Death steps back.

  "I sent him to a new world," Death replies, slowly turning to face her. "My world. He'll remain trapped inside my body forever."

  "But the Devil..." Sam turns and sees that the huge eye is slowly closing. "The Devil was awake!"

  "The Devil's grave remains undisturbed," Death continues, "and the prisoner sleeps. This place was created as a trap, to expose all those who would seek the Devil's audience. In his rush for glory, Fenroc didn't stop to question whether he had found the right grave."

  "So this isn't the Devil?" Sam asks, looking down at the skin beneath her feet. "He isn't here?"

  "Where better to hide a grave than beneath other graves?" Death asks. "Where better to hide one who sleeps, than among the dead?"

  "So the Devil's here?" Sam asks. "He's really buried somewhere in Rippon?"

  "Very few have seen his real grave," Death says slowly, taking a step toward her, "but you, Sam Marker... You must be shown the truth. Nothing is to be hidden from the last gardener."

  Chapter Six

  "She's gone!" Anna shouts as she stands on the small platform. Staring out across the darkness, she starts to slowly make out a huge shape, almost like a giant body resting a few meters below. "What..." she starts to say, before taking a step back and bumping into Sparky. "What's that?"

  "What do you think it is?" Sparky asks, his voice sounding steady and calm. “There's nothing we can do here.”

  "I think it's..." She turns to him with a look of absolute horror in her eyes. "It's not, is it? It can't be!"

  "The Devil?" Sparky pauses for a moment. "No. It's not. It's a trap, laid for anyone who seeks the Devil's grave."

  "So he's not buried here?"

  "He's here," Sparky says, "but his body's further underground. This is just a barrier, something that was placed in the way in an attempt to stop trespassers going further."

  "But where's Sam?" Anna asks, turning to look back out at the vast cavern. "What happened to her?"

  Sparky opens his mouth to reply, but for a few seconds the words hang in his throat. "Death took her," he says finally. "She's with him now."

  "But..." Anna pauses. "Is she coming back?" She waits for an answer, but finally she turns to Sparky. "She's coming back, right?"

  "I don't know," Sparky replies, staring into the darkness. "It all depends on how she reacts to the truth."

  Chapter Seven

  "This is the Devil?" Sam asks, standing to one side of the small, dark room and staring at the brightly-lit glass coffin. "Are you serious? This is the Devil?"

  "You were expecting something more dramatic?" Death replies, standing a little farther back. "Something huge, with horns and a tail?"

  "No, but..." Sam's voice trails off as she takes a step forward, approaching the glass case and looking down at the body. Although the Devil's corpse is roughly the size and shape of a man, it looks more like the blackened, shriveled-up remains of some kind of creature that was once hideously burned. The face, twisted and contorted, has two dark holes for eyes, and the mouth is open wide, as if he died screaming. "This is really him?" she asks eventually, still not able to believe what she's seeing. "He looks so... so..."

  "Normal?" Death asks darkly.

  "Yeah, normal," Sam replies, "and... weak. I mean, seriously, he just looks like some kind of husk."

  "Everyone expects something bigger," Death replies. "That's how the trap works. Even Gabriel Fenroc, usually such a smart man, expected the Devil to be a huge, hulking monster. In fact, the beast in the chamber up there was just a mindless demon that Martello and I captured many years ago and imprisoned as a distraction. Of course, the locals weren't to know that. It was on that day back in 1965 that Fenroc first tried to get down here to the Devil's grave. He failed, of course, but he refused to give up. As a former gardener himself, he should have become a stone angel, but he used human blood to prevent the tran
sformation from taking place. He's been blackmailing half the town in order to gain access to large supplies of blood from every possible source, as a means of keeping himself from assuming his final form. It wasn't easy to beat him back, and there were certain consequences all across the town. Things are different these days, though. We have a better system in place."

  "Why not just destroy him?" Sam asks. "Just get rid of him forever."

  "The body is his prison," Death replies, "and it's the only prison that has a chance of holding him. If we destroy the body, his mind will be free. It's best to leave him here like this, trapped forever. Believe me, the torment he's suffering is beyond anything that either of us can possibly imagine."

  Leaning closer, Sam stares straight into the burned-out eyes of the charred husk. "Can he see us?" she asks after a moment. "Does he know we're here?"

  "Yes."

  Startled, Sam steps back.

  "He can hear us too," Death continues. "In his own way he's probably trying to scream out at us. There's nothing he can do, though." Reaching out, he places a bony finger against the glass, directly above the Devil's face. "He's trapped down here for eternity, or at least that's the idea. But to kill him completely... The world needs a balance. If we remove the Devil from the equation entirely, some other evil will come to fill the void. It's better to keep him alive but have him under our control, than to risk the chaos that would follow. Besides, we're not executioners."

  "You keeping saying 'we'," Sam points out.

  "I could never have trapped him down here alone. There are more forces working in Rippon than you could possibly imagine. Guards, warriors, overseers... we need all of these people in order to keep the Devil hidden. We also need a gardener, someone to provide pastoral care to the cemetery and keep an eye out for any dangers."

  "I'm not part of this," Sam replies.

  "You are," Death replies. "The moment you arrived in Rippon, you locked your destiny in place. Maybe you were guided here from the moment of your birth, or maybe your destiny just happened to hook up with everything else along the way, but there's no way back for you now. You're not only a gardener, you're the last gardener, which makes you the most important. There have been hundreds before you, but none shall come after you. I never understood what that meant until I saw the knife in your head. The responsibility is huge -"

  "I don't want it," Sam replies firmly. "I didn't ask for any of this. The last..." She pauses. "What happens after I'm done? What if I quit?"

  "You can't quit."

  "I can! I can just grab my stuff and walk out the door! I can..." She pauses again, and slowly she raises her hand and touches the handle of the knife, which is still stuck in her head. "I'm not tied to this place," she continues, although suddenly most of the confidence has left her voice. "I can go any time I like. What are you gonna do, tie me down?"

  "Rippon exists in a state of perpetual grace," Death explains. "This is the reason for some of the stranger things that have happened around here over the centuries. It's also the reason why life and death work in slightly different ways. If you walk over the threshold and leave this town, you'll exit the state of perpetual grace and the rules of Rippon will no longer apply. What, exactly, do you think would happen to you? Do you believe that somehow the knife in your brain would just vanish? Think it through."

  "It hasn't killed me so far," Sam points out.

  "If you leave Rippon," Death says firmly, "you will drop dead. That's what usually happens to people who have knives in their brains."

  "I'll pull it out," Sam says, taking hold of the handle. As soon as she tries to move the knife, however, she feels an intense pain in the center of her brain; as she drops to her knees, flashes of sharp white light dance in her eyes for a moment, and eventually she lets go of the knife altogether, leaving it embedded in her brain. "I can't be trapped here," she continues, with a hint of desperation in her voice. "I can't be trapped in this stinking backwater town!"

  "This town is the only thing keeping you alive right now," Death replies. "You're the last gardener. You must not be distracted from your task."

  "I don't want this!" Sam shouts at him as she gets to her feet. "I don't want..." She spots her own reflection in the surface of the glass coffin, and for the first time she sees the hilt of the knife sticking out three or four inches from the top of her head. "I can't walk around with a goddamn knife in my skull," she continues. "Are you serious? There's no way I can just go around like this."

  "Wear a hat," Death says.

  "What?"

  "That's what I'd do."

  Sam stares at him.

  Death shrugs.

  Looking down at the Devil's charred corpse, Sam takes a deep breath. "So I'm stuck here, yeah? All because this asshole needs to be guarded, right? All because someone decided to stick his body down here."

  She pauses for a few seconds, and all she can think of is Henry. She doesn't know where he is, or how he's doing, but she's convinced that the social workers must have found him a new home. A proper home, with a proper family and a proper mother. A faint smile crosses her lips for a moment as she realizes that somewhere out there, he might actually be happy.

  "This wasn't in the job description," she mutters eventually. "Like, the advert I answered. It just mentioned gardening. It didn't mention anything about being an undead defender of the Devil's grave."

  "We must leave," Death says, turning and heading toward the door. "It's not a good idea to spend too much time down here. His mind is capable of leaking from his body, and I wouldn't like to test how much damage he can do. You must never come down here unless it's absolutely necessary. There are so many things for you to learn, but this is perhaps the most important lesson. Stay on the surface as much as possible and leave the Devil down here, undisturbed."

  "So what happened to him, anyway?" Sam asks, following Death out of the chamber. "I mean, how did he end up here? How the hell does someone trap the Devil and force him into a place like this?"

  "It's a long story," Death replies as they continue to walk away, making their way along the dark corridor that leads back up toward the cemetery.

  "And?"

  "And it's slightly embarrassing."

  "For him?"

  "For... Never mind."

  Sam pauses for a moment. "Wait, if the Devil's real, then what about... the other guy?"

  "The other guy?"

  "You know. The other guy."

  "Oh, you mean the boss. Don't worry, he doesn't poke his nose in very much. He checks in from time to time, but you won't spot him."

  "I won't notice God?"

  "He likes it that way. He likes to tiptoe meekly around the edges. You're unlikely to see him, but he'll pop by occasionally."

  "The mayor?" Sam asks. "Is he God?"

  "Mayor Winters? Absolutely not. Don't worry. Just get on with your job, and let everyone else get on with theirs." With that, Death pushes the heavy stone door shut, returning the Devil's chamber to darkness.

  Chapter Eight

  "So you're not going to go and find him?" Anna asks, as she gets her arms sewn back on by Sam. "Don't you want to see him? Don't you want to find out what happened to him? Aren't you curious?"

  "It's not a matter of curiosity," Sam mutters, passing the needle through slowly-graying Anna's flesh. "I don't have a choice."

  It's a bright summer's day, and despite everything that happened during the previous night, the cemetery isn't looking too bad. Once Fenroc's unholy water wore off, the walking dead dropped in their tracks, and Sam has spent the morning hauling them back to their graves one by one. She's not convinced that she's got them all back in the correct graves, but she's decided not to worry about it too much. Instead, she's focusing on the fact that she needs to sow some more grass seeds as quickly as possible, since right now the cemetery is still showing the scars of the previous night's mass resurrection, and she's struggling to come up with an excuse.

  "If I had a kid out there somewhere," Anna cont
inues, "I'd totally want to go and find him. I'd want to, like, see what he was doing and -" Suddenly she lets out a yelp of pain as the needle goes a little too far into her flesh.

  "Sorry," Sam says with a faint smile.

  "I was just saying," Anna replies grumpily.

  "He's better off without me," Sam continues. "I can't dip in and out of his life. I already made one mistake by letting him go, and I'm not gonna make another by trying to get him back. Anyway, do you really think I could give him a good life? Look where I live. Look at my friends. Look at my head!"

  "You're his mother," Anna says, staring at the knife that's still firmly wedged in Sam's head.

  "No," Sam replies, flinching at the simple honesty of those three words. "I'm not his mother, and I never will be. I'm just the woman who carried him to term." Lost in thought for a moment, she continues to sew Anna's arm back into place. "There's only one thing I can do for Henry now,” she adds eventually. “I can stay here and keep an eye on this place. Sure, he'll never know anything about me, and he'll probably spend his whole life thinking I abandoned him and never gave him a second thought, but at least I'll know that I'm doing something useful. I'll be saving the world he lives in."

  "But how do you -"

  "Can you stop asking?" Sam continues, with a hint of irritation in her voice. Sitting back, she stares at Anna's restored arm. "There. That's the best I can do. Can you move it?"

  Slowly, Anna raises her arm and flexes her fingers. "That's pretty cool," she mutters. "I'm not sure I understand how it works, but it's definitely cool. I feel like a rag doll."

  "Sparky says the state of grace means you'll stay alive for as long as you're within the town," Sam continues. "Like me, basically. He's not quite sure why you're affected this way when the other bodies aren't, but he's working on a few theories. He thinks there must be something special about you."