Sully and the Devil
- Jack
- Apr 20
- 13 min read
In a cave in North Carolina, the Devil counts his coin. He has no need of money. No ills to be cured, no comfort to be sought. But, just as the orchid mantis, disguised as the bounty rather than the harvester, he knew that a clever predator doesn’t hunt. Rather he shows his prey what they want to see and waits for them to damn themselves. He had been hunting men since they were first wrought and had learned over time to be subtle. He counted his coin carefully, venerably making small stacks, as though each ingot and dollar were sacred. Though he couldn’t be seen, for his act to work he needed on some level to believe it himself. In this way, to which he was not blind, he was just as ensnared by his greatest trick as those he sought to trick with it. Money was to him as it was to all men that came to know him, both the means and the end. It became perversely sacred to him. He had no need of grand and tedious plots, and he certainly never had to debase himself by anything so crass as competition for a man’s soul. Whenever he went out amongst the mortals, which he did frequently, bound by his appetite, he simply marked out a small spot on the globe, unblemished by too much attention, and set to assembling coin. Before long the avaricious, the desperate and those unfettered by either good sense or conscience beat a path to his door. And they were never, ever turned away.
✞
Sully Allbones, scavenger, sailor, drunk and sometime murderer, turned his face to the sea. The breeze carried a tang of ozone that registered as a play along his tastebuds.
‘Storm come’ he dribbled into the night, which, as ever, did not reply. He allowed his eyes to draw themselves along the dirt track to the lighted coachhouse. He had nothing to offer except himself, and that was a meagre tithe indeed, but he had no other means to spend and the sickness was on him. If he did not take a drink soon, his reason would evade him. He steeled himself against the wind whipping off the sea and put himself to the labour of setting one numb foot before the other. He recited a nonsense litany for no other reason than to remind him the blood still flowed in his veins.‘Storm come, not for Sully, take a drink, find a hole, storm come, not for Sully, take a drink, find a hole, storm come, not for Sully, take a drink, find a hole, Sully come, find a drink, no storm, no storm, no storm for Sully.’
The words rolled over one another, blended, losing some aspect of meaning with each repetition. It seemed as though the words relinquished their meaning and form they had acquired over the span of years and in his mouth became once more senseless noises.
The coachhouse was unadorned, squatting on the crest of the rise. Situated as to look balefully over the incoming boats and to hold the pass to the mountains. It was an unloved outcrop, with no mineral or animal wealth to draw particular attention to this corner of the country. A community, of sorts, had grown up around waiting for someone new to have an old idea. That the bones of the hills might conceal some undiscovered treasure was a rumour kept alive by the locals themselves. Seafaring men were always hungry for stories of secluded hills shot through with veins of gold, or else engorged with oil. The unfortunate men born here headed out to sea as soon as their legs would support them, to seek fortune of their own but always to spread the word. Over time, every few years, a group of deserters, scavengers, would-be pillagers, tracked along this same dustchoked trail and came to the coachhouse. The lucky ones would be brash or careless enough to be murdered as they slept. The others, with more guile or experience, would take to the foothills. The locals would let the mountains do their work for a week or so, before setting out to separate the loot from the remains.
