A Natural History of Hell: Stories

by Jeffrey Ford

  Just past the library, we cut down an alley, crossed a vacant lot, snow still on the ground, and then hit a dirt road that led back to this abandoned factory. One story, white stucco, all the windows empty, glass on the ground, part of the roof caved in. She led me through a stand of trees around to the left side of the old building. From where we stood, I could see a lake through the woods. She pointed at the wall and said, “Do you see that symbol in red there?” I looked but all I saw was a couple of fucks.

  “I don’t see it,” I told her.

  “Pay attention,” she said and took a step closer to the wall. Then I saw it. About the size of two fists. It was like a capital E tipped over on its three points, and sitting on its back, right in the middle, was an o. “Take a good look at it,” she told me. “I want you to remember it.”

  I stared for a few seconds and told her, “OK, I got it.”

  “I walk to the lake almost every day,” she said. “This wasn’t here a couple of days ago.” She looked at me like that was supposed to mean something to me. I shrugged; she scowled. As we walked home, it started to snow.

  Before I could even take off the dead man’s jacket, she called me into her office. She was sitting at her desk, still in her coat and hat, with a book open in front of her. I came over to the desk, and she pointed at the book. “What do you see there?” she asked. And there it was, the red, knocked over E with the o on top.

  I said, “Yeah, the thing from before. What is it?”

  “The Last Triangle,” she said.

  “Where’s the triangle come in?” I asked.

  “The three points of the capital E, stand for the three points of a triangle.”

  “So what?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “Here’s what I want you to do. Tomorrow, after breakfast, I want you to take a pad and a pen, and I want you to walk all around the town, everywhere you can think of, and look to see if that symbol appears on any other walls. If you find one, write down the address for it—street and number. Look for places that are abandoned, run down, burned out.”

  I didn’t want to believe she was crazy, but . . . I said to her, “Don’t you have any real work for me to do—heavy lifting, digging, painting, you know?”

  She shook her head. “Just do what I ask you to do.”

  Ms. Berkley gave me a few bucks and sent me on my way. First things first, I went downtown, scored a couple of joints, bought a 40 of Colt. Then I did the grand tour. It was fucking freezing, of course. The sky was brown, and the dead man’s jacket wasn’t cutting it. I found the first of the symbols on the wall of a closed-down bar. The place had a pink plastic sign that said Here It Is with a silhouette of a woman with an afro sitting in a martini glass. The E was there in red on the plywood of a boarded front window. I had to walk a block each way to figure out the address, but I got it. After that I kept looking. I walked myself sober and then some and didn’t get back to the house till nightfall.

  When I told Ms. Berkeley that I’d found one, she smiled and clapped her hands together. She asked for the address, and I delivered. She set me up with spaghetti and meatballs at the kitchen table. I was tired, but seriously, I felt like a prince. She went down the hall to her office. A few minutes later, she came back with a piece of paper in her hand. As I pushed the plate away, she set the paper down in front of me and then took a seat.

  “That’s a map of town,” she said. I looked it over. There were two dots in red pen and a straight line connecting them. “You see the dots?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Those are two points of the Last Triangle.”

  “OK,” I said and thought, “Here we go. . . .”

  “The Last Triangle is an equilateral triangle. All the sides are equal,” she said.

  I failed math every year in high school, so I just nodded.

  “Since we know these two points, we know that the last point is in one of two places on the map, either east or west.” She reached across the table and slid the map toward her. With the red pen, she made two dots and then made two triangles sharing a line down the center. She pushed the map toward me again. “Tomorrow you have to look either here or here,” she said, pointing with the tip of the pen.

  The next day I found the third one, to the east, just before it got dark. A tall old house, on the edge of an abandoned industrial park. It looked like there’d been a fire. There was an old rusted Chevy up on blocks in the driveway. The E and o thing was spray painted on the trunk.

  When I brought her that info, she gave me the lowdown on the triangle. “I read a lot of books about history,” she said, “and I have this ability to remember things I’ve seen or read. If I saw a phone number once, I’d remember it correctly. It’s not a photographic memory; it doesn’t work automatically or with everything. Maybe five years ago I read this book on ancient magic, The Spells of Abriel the Magus, and I remembered the symbol from that book when I saw it on the wall of the old factory last week. I came home, found the book, and reread the part about the last triangle. It’s also known as Abriel’s Escape or Abriel’s Prison.

  “Abriel was a thirteenth century magus . . . magician. He wandered around Europe and created six powerful spells. The triangle, once marked out, denotes a protective zone in which its creator cannot be harmed. There are limitations to the size it can be, each leg no more than a mile. At the same time that zone is a sanctuary, it’s a trap. The magus can’t leave its boundary, ever. To cross it is certain death. For this reason, the spell was used only once, by Abriel, in Dresden, to escape a number of people he’d harmed with his dark arts who had sent their own wizards to kill him. He lived out the rest of his life there, within the last triangle, and died at one hundred years of age.”

  “That’s a doozy.”

  “Pay attention,” she said. “For the last triangle to be activated, the creator of the triangle must take a life at its geographical center between the time of the three symbols being marked in the world and the next full moon. Legend has it, Abriel killed the baker Ellot Haber to induce the spell.”

  It took me almost a minute and a half to grasp what she was saying. “You mean, someone’s gonna get iced?” I said.

  “Maybe.”

  “Come on, a kid just happened to make that symbol. Coincidence.”

  She shook her head. “No. Remember, a perfect equilateral triangle, each one of the symbols exactly where it should be.” She laughed, and, for a second, looked a lot younger.

  “I don’t believe in magic,” I told her. “There’s no magic out there.”

  “You don’t have to believe it,” she said. “But maybe someone out there does. Someone desperate for protection, willing to believe even in magic.”

  “That’s pretty farfetched,” I said, “but if you think there’s a chance, call the cops. Just leave me out of it.”

  “The cops,” she said and shook her head. “They’d lock me up with that story.”

  “Glad we agree on that.”

  “The center of the triangle on my map,” she said, “is the train station parking lot. And in five nights there’ll be a full moon. No one’s gotten killed at the station yet, not that I’ve heard of.”

  After breakfast she called a cab and went out, leaving me to fix the garbage disposal and wonder about the craziness. I tried to see it her way. She’d told me it was our civic duty to do something, but I wasn’t buying any of it. Later that afternoon, I saw her sitting at the computer in her office. Her glasses near the end of her nose, she was reading off the internet and loading bullets into the magazine clip of the pistol. Eventually she looked up and saw me. “You can find just about anything on the internet,” she said.

  “What are you doing with that gun?”

  “We’re going out tonight.”

  “Not with that.”

 
She stopped loading. “Don’t tell me what to do,” she said.

  After dinner, around dusk, we set out for the train station. Before we left, she handed me the gun. I made sure the safety was on and stuck it in the side pocket of the brown jacket. While she was out getting the bullets, she’d bought two chairs that folded down and fit in small plastic tubes. I carried them. Ms. Berkley held a flashlight and in her ski parka had stashed a pint of blackberry brandy. The night was clear and cold, and a big waxing moon hung over town.

  We turned off the main street into an alley next to the hardware store and followed it a long way before it came out on the south side of the train station. There was a rundown one-story building there in the corner of the parking lot. I ripped off the plywood planks that covered the door, and we went in. The place was empty but for some busted-up office furniture, and all the windows were shattered, letting the breeze in. We moved through the darkness, Ms. Berkley leading the way with the flashlight, to a back room with a view of the parking lot and station just beyond it. We set up the chairs and took our seats at the empty window. She killed the light.

  “Tell me this is the strangest thing you’ve ever done,” I whispered to her.

  She brought out the pint of brandy, unscrewed the top, and took a tug on it. “Life’s about doing what needs to get done,” she said. “The sooner you figure that out, the better for everyone.” She passed me the bottle.

  After an hour and a half, my eyes had adjusted to the moonlight and I’d scanned every inch of that cracked, pot-holed parking lot. Two trains a half hour apart rolled into the station’s elevated platform, and from what I could see, no one got on or off. Ms. Berkley was doing what needed to be done, namely, snoring. I took out a joint and lit up. I’d already polished off the brandy. I kept an eye on the old lady, ready to flick the joint out the window if I saw her eyelids flutter. The shivering breeze did a good job of clearing out the smoke.

  At around three a.m., I’d just about nodded off when the sound of a train pulling into the station brought me back. I sat up and leaned toward the window. It took me a second to clear my eyes and focus. When I did, I saw the silhouette of a person descending the stairs of the raised platform. The figure passed beneath the light at the front of the station, and I could see it was a young woman, carrying a briefcase. I wasn’t quite sure what the fuck I was supposed to be doing, so I tapped Ms. Berkley. She came awake with a splutter and looked a little sheepish for having corked off. I said, “There’s a woman heading to her car. Should I shoot her?”

  “Very funny,” she said and got up to stand closer to the window.

  I’d figured out which of the few cars in the parking lot belonged to the young woman. She looked like the white Honda type. Sure enough, she made a beeline for it.

  “There’s someone else,” said Ms. Berkley. “Coming out from under the trestle.”

  “Where?”

  “Left,” she said and I saw him, a guy with a long coat and hat. He was moving fast, heading for the young woman. Ms. Berkley grabbed my arm and squeezed it. “Go,” she said. I lunged up out of the chair, took two steps, and got dizzy from having sat for so long. I fumbled in my pocket for the pistol, grabbed it, and groped my way out of the building. Once I hit the air, I was fine, and I took off running for the parking lot. Even as jumped up as I was, I thought, “I’m not gonna shoot anyone,” and left the gun’s safety on.

  The young woman saw me coming before she noticed the guy behind her. I scared her, and she ran the last few yards to her car. I watched her messing around with her keys and didn’t notice the other guy was also on a flat-out run. As I passed the white Honda, the stranger met me and cracked me in the jaw like a pro. I went down hard but held on to the gun. As soon as I came to, I sat up. The guy, I couldn’t get a good look at his face, drew a blade from his left sleeve. By then the woman was in the car, though, and it screeched off across the parking lot.

  He turned, brandishing the long knife, and started for me.

  You better believe the safety came off then. That instant, I heard Ms. Berkley’s voice behind me. “What’s the meaning of this?” she said in a stern voice. The stranger looked up, and then turned and ran off, back into the shadows beneath the trestle.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” she said and helped me to my feet. “If that girl’s got any brains she’ll call the cops.” Ms. Berkley could run pretty fast. We made it back to the building, got the chairs, the empty bottle, and as many cigarette butts as I could find, and split for home. We stayed off the main street and wound our way back through the residential blocks. We didn’t see a soul.

  I couldn’t feel how cold I was till I got back in the house. Ms. Berkley made tea. Her hands shook a little. We sat at the kitchen table in silence for a long time.

  Finally, I said, “Well, you were right.”

  “The gun was a mistake, but if you didn’t have it, you’d be dead now,” she said.

  “Not to muddy the waters here, but that’s closer to dead than I want to get. We’re gonna have to go to the police, but if we do, that’ll be it for me.”

  “You tried to save her,” said Ms. Berkley. “Very valiant, by the way.”

  I laughed. “Tell that to the judge when he’s looking over my record.”

  She didn’t say anything else, but left and went to her office. I fell asleep on the cot in the basement with my clothes on. It was warm down there by the furnace. I had terrible dreams of the young woman getting her throat cut but was too tired to wake from them. Eventually, I came to with a hand on my shoulder and Ms. Berkley saying, “Thomas.” I sat up quickly, so sure I’d forgotten to do something. She said, “Relax,” and rested her hand for a second on my chest. She sat on the edge of the cot with her hat and coat on.

  “Did you sleep?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “I went back to the parking lot after the sun had come up. There were no police around. Under the trestle, where the man with the knife had come from, I found these. She took a handful of cigarette butts out of her coat pocket and held them up.

  “Anybody could have left them there at any time,” I said. “You read too many books.”

  “One of them was still warm,” she said.

  “You mean he went back under the trestle and waited for someone after we’d chased him away?”

  She nodded. “This is a serious man,” she said. “Say he’s not just a lunatic but an actual magician?”

  “Magician,” I said and snorted. “More like a creep who believes his own bullshit.”

  “Watch the language,” she said.

  “Do we go back to the parking lot tonight?” I asked.

  “No, there’ll be police there tonight. I’m sure that girl reported the incident. I have something for you to do. These cigarettes are a Spanish brand, Ducados. I used to know someone who smoked them. The only store that sells them in town is over by the park. Do you know Maya’s News Stand?”

  I nodded.

  “I think he buys his cigarettes there.”

  “You want me to scope it? How am I supposed to know whether it’s him or not? I never got a good look at him.”

  “Maybe by the imprint of your face on his knuckles?” she said.

  I couldn’t believe she was breaking my balls, but when she laughed, I had to.

  “Take my little camera with you,” she said.

  “Why?

  “I want to see what you see,” she said. She got up then and left the basement. I got dressed. While I ate, she showed me how to use the camera. It was a little electronic job, but amazing, with telephoto capability and a little window you could see your pictures in. I don’t think I’d held a camera in ten years.

  I sat on a bench in the park, next to a giant pine tree, and watched the newsstand across the street. I had my 40 in a brown paper bag and a five-dolla
r joint in my jacket. The day was clear and cold, and people came and went on the street, some of them stopping to buy a paper or cigs from Maya. One thing I noticed was that nobody came to the park, the one nice place in crumbling Fishmere.

  All afternoon and nothing criminal, except for one girl’s miniskirt. She was my first photo—exhibit A. After that I took a break and went back into the park where there was a gazebo looking out across a small lake. I fired up the joint and took another pic of some geese. Mostly I watched the sun on the water and wondered what I’d do once the last triangle hoo-doo played itself out. Part of me wanted to stay with Ms. Berkley and the other part knew it wouldn’t be right. I’d been on the scag for fifteen years and was now somebody making breakfast and dinner every day. Things like the camera, a revelation to me. She even had me reading a book, The Professor’s House, by Willa Cather—slow as shit, but somehow I needed to know what happened next to old Godfrey St. Peter. Staying off the hard stuff, the food and the weights, made me strong.

  Late in the afternoon, he came to the newsstand. I’d been in such a daze, the sight of him there, like he just materialized, made me jump. My hands shook a little as I telephoto’d in on him. He paid for two packs of cigs, and I snapped the picture. I wasn’t sure if I’d caught his mug. He was pretty well hidden by the long coat’s collar and the hat. There was no time to check the shot. As he moved away down the sidewalk, I stowed the camera in my pocket and followed him, hanging back fifty yards or so.

  He didn’t seem suspicious. Never looked around or stopped, but just kept moving at the same brisk pace. Only when it came to me that he was walking us in a circle did I get that he was on to me. At that point, he made a quick left into an alley. I followed. The alley was a short one with a brick wall at the end. He’d vanished. I walked cautiously into the shadows and looked around behind the dumpsters. There was nothing there. A gust of wind lifted the old newspapers and litter into the air, and, I’ll admit, I was scared. On the way back to the house, I looked over my shoulder about a hundred times.