A Natural History of Hell: Stories

by Jeffrey Ford

  I handed Ms. Berkley the camera in her office. She took a wire out of her desk drawer and plugged one end into the camera and one into the computer. She typed some shit, and then the first picture appeared. It was the legs.

  “Finding the focus with that shot?” she asked.

  “Every one’s a suspect,” I said.

  “Foolishness,” she murmured. She liked the geese, said it was a nice composition. Then the one of the guy at the newsstand came up, and, yeah, I nailed it. A really clear profile of his face. Eyes like a hawk and a sharp nose. He had white hair and a thick white mustache.

  “Not bad,” I said, but Ms. Berkley didn’t respond. She was staring hard at the picture, and her mouth was slightly open. She shook her head and then reached out and touched the screen.

  “You know him?” I asked.

  “You’re wearing his jacket,” she said. Then she turned away, put her face in her hands.

  I left her alone and went into the kitchen. I made spaghetti the way she’d showed me. While stirring the sauce, I said to my reflection in the stove hood, “Now the dead man’s back and he’s the evil magician?” Man, I really wanted to laugh the whole thing off, but I couldn’t forget the guy’s disappearing act.

  I put two plates of spaghetti down on the kitchen table and then went to fetch Ms. Berkley. She told me to go away. Instead I put my hands on her shoulders and said, “Come on, you should eat something.” Then, applying as little pressure as possible, I sort of lifted her as she stood. In the kitchen, I held her chair for her and gave her a cup of tea. My spaghetti was undercooked and the sauce was cold, but, still, not bad. She used her napkin to dry her eyes.

  “The dead man looks pretty good for a dead man,” I said.

  “It was easier to explain by telling you he was dead. Who wants the embarrassment of saying someone left them?”

  “I get it,” I said.

  “I think most people would, but still . . .”

  “This clears something up for me,” I told her. “I always thought it was pretty strange that two people in the same town would know about Abriel and the last triangle. I mean, what’s the chances?”

  “The book is his,” she said. “Years after he left, it just became part of my library, and eventually I read it. Now that I think of it, he read a lot of books about the occult.”

  “Who is he?”

  “His name is Lionel Brund. I met him years ago, when I was in my thirties. I was already teaching at the college, and I owned this house. We both were at a party hosted by a colleague. He was just passing through and knew someone who knew someone at the party. We hit it off. He had great stories about his travels. He liked to laugh. It was fun just going to the grocery store with him. My first real romance. A very gentle man.”

  The look on her face made me say, “But?”

  She nodded. “But he owned a gun, and I had no idea what kind of work he did, although he always had plenty of money. Parts of his life were a secret. He’d go away for a week or two at a time on some ‘business’ trip. I didn’t mind that, because there were parts of my life I wanted to keep to myself as well. We were together, living in this house for over two years, and then, one day, he was gone. I waited for him to come back for a long time and then moved on, made my own life.”

  “Now you do what needs to get done,” I said.

  She laughed. “Exactly.”

  “Lionel knows we’re onto him. He played me this afternoon, took me in a circle and then was gone with the wind. It creeped me.”

  “I want to see him,” she said. “I want to talk to him.”

  “He’s out to kill somebody to protect himself,” I said.

  “I don’t care,” she said.

  “Forget it,” I told her and then asked for the gun. She pushed it across the table to me.

  “He could come after us,” I said. “You’ve got to be careful.” She got up to go into her office, and I drew the butcher knife out of its wooden holder on the counter and handed it to her. I wanted her to get how serious things were. She took it, but said nothing. I could tell she was lost in the past.

  I put the gun, safety off, on the stand next to my cot and lay back with a head full of questions. I stayed awake for a long while before I eventually gave in. A little bit after I dozed off, I was half wakened by the sound of the phone ringing upstairs. I heard Ms. Berkley walk down the hall and pick up. Her voice was a distant mumble. Then I fell asleep for a few minutes, and the first thing I heard when I came to again was the sound of the back door closing. It took me a minute to put together that he’d called and she’d gone to meet him.

  I got dressed in a flash, but put on three T-shirts instead of wearing Lionel’s jacket. I thought he might have the power to spook it since it belonged to him. It took me a couple of seconds to decide whether to leave the gun behind as well. But I was shit scared so I shoved it in the waist of my jeans and took off. I ran dead-out to the train station parking lot. Luckily there were no cops there, but there wasn’t anybody else either. I went in the station, searched beneath the trestles, and went back to the rundown building we’d sat in. Nothing.

  As I walked back to the house, I tried to think of where he would have asked to meet her. I pictured all the places I’d been to in the past few weeks. An image of Ms. Berkley’s map came to mind, the one of town with the red dots and the triangles, east and west. I’d not found a triangle point to the west, and as I considered that I recalled the point I had found in the east, the symbol spray painted on the trunk of an old car up on blocks. It came to me—say that one didn’t count because it wasn’t on a building, connected to the ground. That was a fake. Maybe he knew somehow Ms. Berkley would notice the symbols and he wanted to throw her off.

  Then it struck me, what if there was a third symbol in the west I just didn’t see? I tried to picture the map as the actual streets it represented and figure where the center of a western triangle would be. At first it seemed way too complicated, just a jumble of frustration, but suddenly, into my head popped a memory of the geese in the park across the street from Maya’s News Stand. The park was a hike, and I knew I had to pace myself, but the fact that I’d figured out Lionel’s twists and turns gave me a burst of energy. What I really wanted was to tell Ms. Berkley how I’d thought it through. Then I realized she might already be dead.

  Something instinctively drew me toward the gazebo. It was a perfect center for a magician’s prison. The moonlight was on the lake. I thought I heard them talking, saw their shadows sitting on the bench, smelled the smoke of Ducados, but when I took the steps and leaned over to catch my breath, I realized it was all in my mind. The place was empty and still. The geese called from out on the lake. I sat down on the bench and lit a cigarette. Only when I resigned myself to just returning to the house, it came to me I had one more option, to find the last point of the western triangle.

  I knew it was a long shot at night, looking, without a flashlight, for something I couldn’t find during the day. My only consolation was that since Lionel hadn’t taken Ms. Berkley to the center of his triangle, he might not intend to use her as his victim.

  I was exhausted, and although I set out from the gazebo, jogging toward my best guess as to where the last point was, I was soon walking. The street map of town with the red triangles would flash momentarily in my memory and then disappear. I went up a street that was utterly dark, and the wind followed me. From there, I turned and passed a row of closed factory buildings. The symbol could have been anywhere, hiding in the dark. Finally, there was a cross street and I walked down a block of row homes, some boarded, some with bars on the windows. That path led to an industrial park. Beneath a dim streetlight, I stopped and tried to picture the map, but it was no use. I was totally lost. I gave up and turned back in the direction I thought Ms. Berkley’s house would be.

  One block
outside that industrial park, I hit a street of old four-story apartment buildings. The doors were off the hinges, and the moonlight showed no reflection in the shattered windows. A neighborhood of vacant lots and dead brick giants. Halfway down the block, hoping to find a left turn, I just happened to look up and see an unbroken window, yellow lamp light streaming out. From where I stood I could only see the ceiling of the room, but faint silhouettes moved across it. I took out the gun. There was no decent reason why I thought it was them, but I felt drawn to the place as if under a spell.

  I took the stone steps of the building, and when I tried the door, it pushed open. I thought this was strange, but I figured he might have left it ajar for Ms. Berkley. Inside, the foyer was so dark, and there was no light on the first landing. I found the first step by inching forward and feeling around with my foot. The last thing I needed was three flights of stairs. I tried to climb without a sound, but the planks creaked unmercifully. “If they don’t hear me coming,” I thought, “they’re both dead.”

  As I reached the fourth floor, I could hear noises coming from the room. It sounded like two people were arguing and wrestling around. Then I distinctly heard Ms. Berkley cry out. I lunged at the door, cracked it on the first bounce, and busted it in with the second. Splinters flew and the chain lock ripped out with a pop. I stumbled into the room, the gun pointing forward, completely out of breath. It took me a second to see what was going on.

  There they were, in a bed beneath the window in the opposite corner of the room, naked, frozen by my intrusion, her legs around his back. Ms. Berkley scooted up and quickly wrapped the blanket around herself, leaving old Lionel out in the cold. He jumped up quick, dick flopping, and got into his boxers.

  “What the hell,” I whispered.

  “Go home, Thomas,” she said.

  “You’re coming with me,” I said.

  “I can handle this,” she said.

  “Who’s after you?” I said to Lionel. “For what?”

  He took a deep breath. “Phantoms more cruel than you can imagine, my boy. I lived my young life recklessly, like you, and its mistakes have multiplied and hounded me ever since.”

  “You’re a loser,” I said, and it sounded so stupid. Especially when it struck me that Lionel might have been old but he looked pretty strong.

  “Sorry, son,” he said and drew that long knife from a scabbard on the nightstand next to the bed. “It’s time to sever ties.”

  “Run,” said Ms. Berkley.

  I thought, “Fuck this guy,” and pulled out the gun.

  Ms. Berkley jumped on Lionel, but he shrugged her off with a sharp push that landed her back on the bed. “This one’s not running,” he said. “I can tell.”

  I was stunned for a moment by Ms. Berkley’s nakedness. But as he advanced a step, I raised the gun and told him, “Drop the knife.”

  He said, “Be careful, you’re hurting it.”

  At first his words didn’t register, but then, in my hand, instead of a gun I felt a frail wriggling thing with a heartbeat. I released my grasp and a bat flew up to circle around the ceiling. In the same moment, I heard the gun hit the wooden floor and knew he’d tricked me with magic.

  He came toward me slowly, and I whipped off two of my T-shirts and wrapped them around my right forearm. He sliced the air with the blade a few times as I crouched down and circled away from him. He lunged fast as a snake, and I got caught against a dresser. He cut me on the stomach and the right shoulder. The next time he came at me, I kicked a hassock in front of him and managed a punch to the side of his head. Lionel came back with a half-dozen more slices, each marking me. The T-shirts on my arm were in shreds, as was the one I wore.

  I kept watching that knife, and that’s how he got me, another punch to the jaw worse than the one in the station parking lot. I stumbled backward and he followed with the blade aimed at my throat. What saved me was that Ms. Berkley grabbed him from behind. He stopped to push her off again, and I caught my balance and took my best shot to the right side of his face. The punch scored, he fell backward into the wall, and the knife flew in the air. I tried to catch it as it fell but only managed to slice my fingers. I picked it up by the handle, and when I looked, Lionel was steamrolling toward me again.

  “Thomas,” yelled Ms. Berkley from where she’d landed. I was stunned, and automatically pushed the weapon forward into the bulk of the charging magician. He stopped in his tracks, teetered for a second, and fell back onto his ass. He sat there on the rug, legs splayed, with that big knife sticking out of his stomach. Blood seeped around the blade and puddled in front of him.

  Ms. Berkley was next to me, leaning on my shoulder. “Pay attention,” she said.

  I snapped out of it and looked down at Lionel. He was sighing more than breathing and staring at the floor.

  “If he dies,” said Ms. Berkley, “you inherit the spell of the last triangle.”

  “That’s right,” Lionel said. Blood came from his mouth with the words. “Where ever you are at dawn, that will be the center of your world.” He laughed. “For the rest of your life you will live in a triangle within the rancid town of Fishmere.”

  Ms. Berkley found the gun and picked it up. She went to the bed and grabbed one of the pillows.

  “Is that true?” I said and started to panic.

  Lionel nodded, laughing. Ms. Berkley, took up the gun again and then wrapped the pillow around it. She walked over next to Lionel, crouched down, and touched the pillow to the side of his head.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  Ms. Berkley squinted one eye and steadied her left arm with her right hand while keeping the pillow in place.

  “What else?” said Lionel, spluttering blood bubbles. “What needs to be done.”

  The pillow muffled somewhat the sound of the shot as feathers flew everywhere. Lionel dropped onto his side without magic, the hole in his head smoking. I wasn’t afraid anyone would hear. There wasn’t another soul for three blocks. Ms. Berkley checked his pulse. “The last triangle is mine now,” she said. “I have to get home by dawn.” She got dressed while I stood in the hallway.

  I don’t remember leaving Lionel’s building, or passing the park or Maya’s News Stand. We were running through the night, across town, as the sky lightened in the distance. Four blocks from home, Ms. Berkley gave out and started limping. I picked her up and, still running, carried her the rest of the way. We were in the kitchen, the tea whistle blowing, when the birds started to sing and the sun came up.

  She poured the tea for us and said, “I thought I could talk Lionel out of his plan, but he wasn’t the same person anymore. I could see the magic’s like a drug. The more you use it, the more it pushes you out of yourself and takes over.”

  “Was he out to kill me or you?” I asked.

  “He was out to get himself killed. I’d promised to do the job for him before you showed up. He knew we were on to him and he tried to fool us with train-station scam, but once he heard my voice that night, he said he knew he couldn’t go through with it. He just wanted to see me once more, and then I was supposed to cut his throat.”

  “You would have killed him?” I said.

  “I did.”

  “You know, before I knifed him?”

  “He told me the phantoms and fetches that were after him knew where he was and it was only a matter of days before they caught up with him.”

  “What was it exactly he did?”

  “He wouldn’t say, but he implied that it had to do with loving me. And I really think he thought he did.”

  “What do you think?” I asked.

  Ms. Berkley interrupted me. “You’ve got to get out of town,” she said. “When they find Lionel’s body, you’ll be one of the usual suspects what with your wandering around drinking beer and smoking pot in public.”

>   “Who told you that?” I said.

  “Did I just fall off the turnip truck yesterday?”

  Ms. Berkley went to her office and returned with a roll of cash for me. I didn’t even have time to think about leaving, to miss my cot and the weights, and the meals. The cab showed up and we left. She had her map of town with the triangles on it and had already drawn a new one, it’s center, her kitchen. We drove for a little ways, and then she told the cab driver to pull over and wait. We were in front of a closed-down gas station on the edge of town. She got out and I followed her.

  “I paid the driver to take you two towns over to Willmuth. There’s a bus station there. Get a ticket and disappear,” she said.

  “What about you? You’re stuck in the triangle.”

  “I’m bounded in a nutshell,” she said.

  “Why’d you take the spell?”

  “You don’t need it. You just woke up. I have every confidence that I’ll be able to figure a way out of it. It’s amazing what you can find on the internet.”

  “A magic spell?” I said.

  “Understand this,” she said, “spells are made to be broken.” She stepped closer and reached her hands to my shoulders. I leaned down. She kissed me on the forehead. “Not promises, though,” she said and turned away, heading home.

  “Ms. Berkley,” I called after her.

  “Stay clean,” she yelled without looking.

  Back in the cab, I said, “Willmuth,” and leaned against the window. The driver started the car and we sailed through an invisible boundary into the world.

  Spirits of Salt: A Tale of the Coral Heart

  The saga of Ismet Toler can only be told in pieces. Like a victim of his battle craft transformed to red coral by a nick from his infamous blade only to be shattered with a well-placed kick and strewn in a thousand shards, the swordsman’s own life story is scattered across the valley of the known world and so buried in half-truth and legend that a scholar of the Coral Heart, such as myself, must possess the patience and devotion of a saint. It’s a wonder I’ve not yet succumbed to the hot air of the yarn-spinners of inns and royal courts. Oh, they have wonderful tales to tell—fanciful, heroic, daunting adventures—but their meager imaginations could never match the truth of what actually transpired.