A Natural History of Hell: Stories

by Jeffrey Ford

  “I want you to help me kill a child,” he said.

  She shook her head vehemently.

  “Hear me out, Miss Dickinson, hear me out,” said Quill, and tapped his stick twice on the carriage floor.

  “Speak,” she said.

  “First, keep in mind what I told you about the world being made of metaphor. I know you’re an adherent of reality, a devotee of science. ‘Microscopes are prudent in an emergency,’ you write. Yes, sound advice, but there are those moments of—shall I call it magic? Sorcery? The supernatural, let us say . . . .”

  “You mean something like a coach carrying Death, pulling up to take you hither and yon?”

  “Well put,” he said. “Now, this is where things stand—there’s a child, a boy, who has for all intents and purposes died, succumbed to scarlet fever. But his mother has cast a spell upon him to keep him living.”

  “Can this be real?” she asked.

  “It’s real. I’m speaking of the power of words. Your father, a devout preacher, would be disappointed in you, not to mention what Reverend Wadsworth might think. In Genesis, God spoke the world and all that’s in it. He said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was.”

  “Sophistry,” she said. “But go on.”

  “The fact that I’m prevented from taking the child has caused all manner of problems. In fact, I’d not have had to come for you so early if it wasn’t for this one boy—you, and a dozen more whose times were not nigh. I’ve got to compensate for the aberration. It’s not right.”

  “Why a poet?”

  “The spell has to be undone. I’m not sure how, but word magic, I’m guessing, can best be subdued with words. You know, I almost decided to snatch Walt Whitman instead.”

  Emily winced. “The man’s pen has dysentery.”

  “For me, there’s a method to his madness,” said Quill. “Like you, he writes about my work quite a bit. He writes that the grass is ‘the beautiful uncut hair of graves.’ Now that’s the spirit. He writes, ‘And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.’ You can see why I appreciate the gentleman.”

  “Please, allow Mr. Whitman the honor.”

  “For this task, though, I need a surgeon not a dervish.”

  She turned again to look out the window and noticed the road was lined with trees. “Where are we?”

  “Just beyond Holyoke, heading toward the Horse Caves. The woman in question, the Widow Cremint, has a fine old home there in a clearing just a few hundred yards off the road. It’s recently come to my attention that she’s been advertising for domestic help in town. We will apply for the positions—a governess for the child and a laborer. No one else will dare to apply. They’ve all heard rumors and know what she is. I spread those rumors myself in the guise of a traveling preacher. She’ll have to take us on.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Nothing’s a certainty, but I’ve been doing this for millions of years.”

  “Oh, my,” said Emily, and brought her open palm to her mouth. “I just remembered one time when a very old woman came to the door of my father’s house inquiring where she might find lodging in Amherst. This was when I still answered the door. I gave her directions that would eventually lead her to the cemetery, and told myself, this way she wouldn’t have to move more than once in a year.” She shook her head. “How I laughed at that mischief. I was laughing at myself.”

  She looked up for his reaction and noticed some commotion on his shadowed side of the compartment. There was a sound like the flapping of wings, and then something flew toward her. She closed her eyes and brought her arms up.

  “Gather yourself,” said Quill.

  Emily lowered her arms and opened her eyes to morning sunlight. She blinked and then focused on a set of steps before her. When her gaze widened, she took in what she could see of a large, sprawling house that seemed to surpass the Homestead in size but not in upkeep. White paint was peeling, porch railing supports were missing, and one of the front windows had a meandering crack traversing its pane.

  The suddenness of day forced her to adjust her balance, and she took a step back and then one forward. Quill, somehow she knew it was Quill, although he was no longer the gentleman of the brougham, stood next to her in front of the door. He was older, tired-looking, with a puffy, wrinkled face and white hair. His drab jacket and trousers were on the verge of tattered. She looked down and saw that she was now wearing a dark blue day dress, but thankfully her walking boots were her own.

  “I wear white,” she said.

  “Not for this,” he said, and stepped forward to rap on the door. “All that white you wear; I have a theory that it’s symbolic of the blank page.”

  “Think again, Mr. Quill,” she said.

  “I hope you don’t mind, I’ve supplied you with undergarments. White, by the way.”

  “I’ll treat them like a blank page,” she said, and noticed now that he was carrying a large sack over his shoulder.

  The door opened and a tall young woman stood before them. Quill stepped forward and said, “Good day, Mrs. Cremint. I heard in town that you were looking for a laborer and a woman to watch your child. Allow me to introduce myself: I’m John Gullen, and this is my daughter, Dagmar.”

  Emily wondered if the witch would know there was treachery behind Quill’s smile. She averted her gaze, but not before noticing the woman’s voluminous hair and the inordinate length of her neck. When Emily looked down, she realized that she was wearing the very same blue day dress that Mrs. Cremint wore.

  “You, there,” said the woman. Emily looked up. “Do you have any experience with children? Have you cared for them before?” Her tone was demanding, and the poet was too nervous to answer. She merely nodded.

  “We have a letter of recommendation from our last employer, Jessup Halstone, Albany, New York. A very wealthy and well-respected gentleman,” said Quill. He handed Mrs. Cremint a piece of paper, folded in half. The woman took it and read through it quickly. She handed it back to Quill.

  “You can see the place needs work,” she said, her voice softening. “I’ll take you on. But I want the young lady here—Dagmar, is it?—to know that my child is very frail. He has a serious condition that the doctors cannot diagnose. I should say, those from outside might think his demeanor something strange. If she thinks she can bring herself to treat him as she would any other child, she can have the position.”

  “I understand,” said Emily.

  Mrs. Cremint stepped beyond the doorway, approached Quill, leaned forward, and sniffed. She paused for a long spell as if contemplating his aroma while the breeze, laced with pine, played in the surrounding oaks and a chime sounded in the corner of the porch. Then it was Emily’s turn, and the woman drew closer than the poet could tolerate. A lump formed in her throat but she dared not swallow. She feared that at any second, she’d tremble and give herself away. A few more moments of deep thought and the lady said, “Come in. I’ll show you to your rooms.”

  She led them down a hallway, Quill directly behind Mrs. Cremint and Emily following. The hall they traversed was lined with the most magnificent paneling, a butterscotch wood with a thousand dark knots visible. There were daguerreotypes lining the walls; sienna portraits of an older gentleman with prodigious mutton chops and dressed in a military uniform. “The pictures are of my late husband, General Cremint,” the woman called back. “You may call me Sabille.”

  “Sabille, very good,” said Quill, and the party turned left into a large parlor. The furniture was plush, and the books and figurines were arranged neatly on the shelves, but all was cast with an indefinable dinginess, as if the very atmosphere and light had been corrupted. Emily wondered if nature itself might be in revolt against a child denied his death.

  After Sabille had shown them to their separate rooms, and she’d briefly hag
gled with Quill over the terms of employment, she came to Emily and said, “Come and meet Arthur.” Her tone was far more pleasant than before, almost conspiratorial. She led Emily back toward the front of the house and then mounted the steps leading to the second floor. “As you can see, there’s a lot that needs to be done here. I just haven’t had the strength to do everything since my husband died, and also watch the child. The accounts alone—my husband was a well-to-do gentleman—have been neglected, and I need to give them attention before I lose money. Your father will be a godsend in reviving the house.”

  At the end of the upstairs hallway, there was a door that Sabille waited at as Emily caught up to her. The woman reached out and gently touched the poet’s shoulder to draw her near. She whispered, “The boy is very frail, very frail. He likes to hear stories and to play with his wooden soldiers. You’ll see that his vitality diminishes with the day. By late afternoon, you’ll not recognize him as the child of the morning.” She opened the door.

  The room was circular, no doubt a turret Emily had not caught a glimpse of in front of the house. There were five windows evenly spaced along the circumference. There was a small bed, a bookcase, a dresser, and a play table with a child’s chair, all resting upon a large braided rug. In the miniature chair, there was a boy with his back to Emily. The first things that drew her eye were the intermittent clumps and strands of brown hair on the otherwise bald head. The sight of it depleted her.

  He wore a red flannel shirt and a pair of overalls; moccasins on his feet. There must have been a hundred wooden soldiers, each the size of a thumb, arranged on the table as if on a parade ground, readied for inspection. The boy held one in each hand and mumbled to himself. Sabille cleared her throat and spoke. “Arthur, I want you to meet someone.”

  The boy turned at the sound of his mother’s voice, and Emily desperately tried to stifle her astonishment, knowing her life depended on it. Still, an expression of awe escaped her lips, and she instantly recovered by turning the sound into the boy’s name. “Arthur, I’m Emily, and I’ve come to keep you company.”

  His complexion was tinged green, and there were scabs and oozing scrapes across his cheeks and forehead. The whites of his eyes were yellowed and the pupils faded to white. Behind his crusted lips, his teeth were brown pegs. He looked to his mother and grunted. Cautiously, he left his chair and stepped across the room to hug Sabille’s legs.

  Emily lowered herself on her haunches to the child’s height. The boy smelled like a muddy streambed, and there was something shiny dribbling from the side of his mouth. “I’m Emily,” she said again. She reached out to take the child’s scabbed hand, but at the last second he drew it quickly away. His sudden movement frightened her and she reared backward, nearly falling over. As she stood, he opened his horrid mouth at her. A second later, she realized he was laughing.

  “A joke?”

  Arthur nodded.

  “Well,” said Sabille, “I see you’ve got an understanding. I’ll leave you two to get acquainted.” The boy went back to his chair and soldiers. When the door closed, Emily took a seat on the bed and watched as if she were watching a neighbor through wavy glass on Main Street. The child seemed some kind of little beast sprung up from the forest floor. She worked to reconcile this with the fact that she could detect a child’s spirit within the rotting husk. As horrid a figure as the boy cut, something about him reminded her of Austin and Susan’s Ned, just born in June. And I’m to kill him with words, she thought.

  Arthur mumbled continuously, the two soldiers in hand, facing his troops, for over an hour. She waited for something to happen, for war to break out or for the wooden men to suggest an adventure, but the game, in which he seemed entirely invested, was all talk. She listened to make out his words and heard nothing but low barks and burbling mumbles, occasionally a heave, like a fatalist’s sigh.

  “Arthur,” she called to him. “What’s happening to the soldiers?”

  The boy stared at her over his shoulder. Emily waved to him. Then he turned, put the two soldiers in their empty places in the parade ground revue, and walked to the bookcase. He took a book down. She was horrified at his approach. She knew he would want her to take him in her lap and read him a story. No sooner had that realization dawned than she noticed his flesh had gone from a pale green to a light morbid blue. A clump of his hair fell out as he came across the room, a thin lock tumbled off his shoulder.

  He held the book out and grunted. She took the volume from him, and then, holding her breath so as not to smell him, she reached out to take him into her lap. His flesh was the slick consistency of rotting mushrooms. When she began to read, she had to eventually breathe, and his aroma conjured in her mind an image of her holding a boy-sized toad. When Arthur made noise and pointed to the book’s illustrations, she heard it as croaking.

  Only a chapter into the story of Saint George and the Dragon, the boy fell asleep in her arms. His stillness won over her revulsion, and she grew accustomed to his weight and scent. She thought of a spring day a few years earlier when last she’d gone out walking. Carlo was at her side. Just beyond town, the meadow was full of black-eyed Susans. The day was warm and the sun bright. Across the meadow she and the dog moved in among the birch trees and continued on for a mile or more. As she approached a pond, leaves floating upon its surface, she felt a sharp pain in her breast, and woke to Arthur trying to bite her through her day dress.

  She cried out and quickly set him on the floor. He showed her his big mouth full of brown shards and she smacked his face. The boy crumpled down onto the rug. She called out his name in a whisper, so as not to let his mother hear. He sprang up onto all fours, gave her another smile, and crawled in circles around the table and chair. To her horror, she noticed her handprint in pale green against the darker blue of his flesh. For the rest of the afternoon, he kept his distance from her and growled if she made any overture of contact.

  Luckily, by dinner her handprint had vanished into the overall violet of his face. His flesh seemed to have come unstrung, sagging down in ripples around his neck and making cuffs at his wrists. His breathing had grown labored, and he cried out occasionally as if in pain. He sat, at the head of the dining room table, strapped into a high chair that was much too small for him. Sabille sat to his right and Emily to his left. For the sixth time his mother lifted a spoon of gruel into his mouth, forcing it far down his throat. The child gagged the portion into his stomach and a moment later Emily lifted the half-full bowl she held in order to catch his vomit. The process was repeated with each spoonful. “It’s the only way,” Sabille repeated as if saying a prayer. Emily was desperate to scream “The dead don’t eat,” but held her peace.

  At the other end of the table was Quill in the guise of the old laborer, John Gullen. He watched the bizarre feeding, seemingly unable to touch his stew. At one point, Emily looked at him and caught his eye. In her mind she heard his young gentleman’s voice say, “I’ve seen few things grimmer than this.”

  “I’m nauseous,” Emily told him in her thoughts.

  “At bedtime tonight, try to be near enough to them to hear the spell. If I have to spend another day here chopping wood, I’ll expire.”

  The last spoonful had been loaded and returned, and Sabille said, “Dagmar, if you’ll clean him and bring him upstairs in a minute, I’ll prepare his bed.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Emily.

  Quill stood when the Widow Cremint left the table. Emily set to washing up Arthur, who was slick with gruel and vomit. She gagged more than once in the process. The entire time she worked on him, the boy mumbled at a furious pace, and every now and then released a weak howl of pain. When she was finished cleaning him, he pulled his thumbnail off. It came away from its bed easy as breathing. He dropped it into her open palm, and she put it in her pocket. She hugged him to her and thought she felt him kiss the spot he’d earlier bitten.

&
nbsp; Sabille stripped the day’s clothes from Arthur’s sagging, violet body, and then she and Emily fitted him into the felt bag he slept in. His head stuck out of the end of the sack, and a drawstring was tied snugly around his neck. Carrying him to the bed, Sabille called him “my little caterpillar.” When she set his head upon the pillow, strands of hair fell free. Emily waved and wished the boy a sweet night’s sleep. She stepped back but didn’t leave the room.

  “You may go now,” said Sabille.

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Emily, and exited but made sure to only close the door partway. She hid just outside in the darkened upstairs hallway and waited. Through the sliver of an opening, she watched as the mother knelt next to the bed, cooing and shushing the child who rocked frantically from side to side. After a time Arthur finally lay still. She watched Sabille lean over, her mouth near the child’s ear.

  Emily turned her own ear to the opening. Sabille’s whisper was so very low, but each of the words of the spell registered in the poet’s mind with utter clarity, like the tap of a pin against a crystal goblet. There were three stanzas, and she thought she knew them. She pulled away from the door and leaned back against the wall. “I’ve got it,” she thought, hoping he would hear her.

  His voice sounded behind her eyes. “Good. Now run,” he yelled, and the words echoed through even her most distant memories. “Run to the road.”

  She slipped away from the open door and crept down the stairs, easing her boots down on each step so as not to be discovered. When she reached the door, her fear banished caution. She flung it open and trounced across the porch, knowing now she’d be heard. Emily hadn’t run since she was a girl, but her walking in the woods with Carlo allowed her to keep a steady pace. She dashed along the winding, tree-lined path that led to the road. Only ten yards into her flight, she heard the ungodly baying of some creature. She ran faster, but before long heard the thing galloping behind her.