A Natural History of Hell: Stories

by Jeffrey Ford

  “I think she got Jimmy to kill her husband, and then she killed Jimmy. Oh, and I almost forgot, the pastor was part of it. He was outside the icehouse and helped her make the fire.”

  “The pastor too?” said Benton.

  “He did something to the brakes on his wife’s car. He’s gonna kill her. Jimmy put the spider kiss on her.”

  “All right, calm down now. This is getting crazier by the second.”

  “I can prove it,” said Emmett. “Or at least part of it.” He stood up and reached into the pocket of his jeans. His hand came out in a fist. Leaning over the desk, he opened his fingers, and three little nuggets dropped onto Benton’s calendar. “I found those on the floor of the icehouse. Jimmy Tooth’s teeth. I bet they’d match up to where they were busted out of his jaw.”

  “She killed him in the icehouse?” asked Benton.

  “With a hammer, I think.”

  “I’ll need these for evidence.”

  “Okay.”

  “All very interesting,” said the chief. “Now, Mrs. Williams could have pressed charges. She claims you burned down her icehouse. Mr. Dibble did find a charred box of wooden matches among the debris. Anyway, this woman you are claiming beat a man to death with a hammer is willing to forgive your trespass and mischief and let you go scot-free. She says she understands your insane condition.”

  “She’s in romance with the pastor, and he’s guilty so he wears the hat,” Emmett blurted out.

  “In romance?” Benton laughed. “That’s a neat little theory, but it’s time for you to stop thinking, son. I want you to go home with your parents and stay there. I want you not to go near the carpentry shop or Mrs. Williams anymore. In fact, you can stay out of school till after Christmas too. I’ll tell Miss Maufin I told you to. You need some rest, my friend. Peace and quiet and try to think of something other than walking skeletons and farms in hell.”

  Two days later, the news spread through Threadwell that Mrs. Holst, the pastor’s wife, was killed in a tragic car accident on the way back from Mount Victory. She came around the curve by the Vesper Woods, lost control, and smashed into an ancient horse chestnut tree. She was flung through the windshield, and the broken glass ripped her face off. The pastor was distraught, but still he presided over her wake.

  The town gathered at the church to pay their last respects to the poor woman. She had been a great favorite of nearly everyone in the community. Even Emmett attended with his parents. Neighbors, having heard of the icehouse incident, gave him a wide berth and dirty looks. Even his parents kept a few feet between themselves and him. Before leaving for the wake his father had wanted him to smoke a thyme roll-up, but he refused, saying he didn’t need it anymore. The church was packed, and he sat in a separate pew, his parents in the next one over. He paid no attention to the words that rhythmically puffed out the handkerchief of the pastor, but scanned the crowd. Sitting in the back row of pews he spied Gretel Lawler, dressed in white and carrying a hymnal. When no one but Emmett was looking she winked at him, and he smiled, relieved to know she had somehow escaped the icehouse and run for it. He was amazed by her. The only other person to look Emmett’s way was Chief Benton, and he stared at the boy all through the pastor’s eulogy.

  Emmett went through his days in Threadwell an outcast, shunned by everyone, ignored by his parents. He felt like a ghost in his own home. They gave him his dinner separately and rarely asked him to do a chore. His mother still did his wash and swept out his room now and then, but conversations were never more than a sentence. He stopped going to school and instead roamed the countryside on his bike, which still stood next to the bench by the creek when he went to recover it weeks after the icehouse night. Mr. Peasi still let him borrow books from the barbershop, and so he read when he wasn’t out exploring. His only real joy was the nights he snuck out and met Gretel Lawler at the top of Chowdry Road. From there, they rode their bicycles everywhere while Threadwell slept.

  On the night of the day in early July when Chief Benton ordered the exhumation of Jimmy Tooth’s body and matched the three teeth to their homes on the jaw, Emmett sat with Gretel in the moonlight on the bank of Wildcat Creek where it wound through the cemetery beyond the church. It was after midnight, and a beautiful breeze blew across the fields. They leaned together and she kissed him. His hand, resting on the ground, gripped the grass, and when they pulled apart, he’d squeezed his fist so hard he pulled a clump of it up. “Do you love me?” she asked. He smelled the aroma of wild thyme and realized that’s what he clutched in his fingers. The sound of water passing over stones, the light on Gretel’s face, the scent of the herb, dark green and peppery, intoxicated him. “Yes,” he said, and then ripped a swatch of thyme off the clump and put it to his mouth. She grabbed his wrist. “Don’t,” she said. He never did again, and from then on, she was always with him.

  The Prelate’s Commission

  The new fresco that graced the inner dome of the Cathedral of St. Elovisus was a masterpiece of perspective and illusion—the fall of the rebel angels into hell. They hurtled downward through an aquamarine sky swirled with pale pink clouds, their feathers disintegrating in the descent, their features growing ever more monstrous. Some, just ejected from paradise, appeared small and vastly distant, while the progressively larger ones took on weight and velocity. The largest seemed just above the viewer, desperately clawing the sky, eyes wide with the discovery of gravity, about to slam into the marble floor, which was inlaid with a deep and spiraling scene of Hell. At the center of the inner dome above was an illuminated circle where one could glimpse, as if from the bottom of a well, the enormous, angry face of God.

  The Prelate who oversaw the project for the church had watched closely the processes of the master, Codilan—the mixing of the plaster and lime, the cyphering of how much could be painted in a day, and the rendering of the marvelous figures. The look in the eyes of any who beheld it revealed its genius. Codilan had also designed the dome itself, an engineering feat of equal astonishment, but it wasn’t the great artist that the Prelate gave most of his attention to. There was an assistant to the master, a very young man named Talejui, who hailed from the northern forest of the realm. The master had turned over to him the responsibility for the rendering of the figures. After the first day of painting, it was clear the young man was a prodigy. The expressions and postures of the falling angels were mesmerizing. Even the mere rendering of the hands, fingers clutching at nothing, made the Prelate sense them clutching his soul.

  Word of the great work spread quickly, and in the months following its completion, throngs came to the cathedral from all corners of the realm to gaze first upward and then down into the illusion of the abyss. Sinners were brought to their knees, and quite a few converted on the spot. The Prelate, of course, took much of the credit for the fresco, but there was still a surplus to go around and the master and even Talejui were given appropriate shares. In having witnessed the creation of a masterpiece, the Prelate, over the five years it took them to paint the inner dome, slowly conceived of his own magnificent project, one no less intricate than the dome, nor less angry than God.

  Codilan had already begun planning for his next work, a marble sculpture of the Holy Ghost. “The ineffable made manifest in stone” was how he put it to his patron at the house of Walsneer. He and Talejui spent days conspiring just how to render a spirit in marble. Work went along well for two weeks, and then the young man was summoned to a meeting one rainy afternoon at the Prelate’s chambers. He feared he had been called in due to his recent nightly conduct of drinking and fighting. He’d felt the need for a certain wildness, a release from the concentration on the fresco. When he reached the cathedral, he stood beneath his handiwork and marveled, his neck craning back till it ached. Suddenly he felt a hand upon his shoulder and the words, spoken softly, “Don’t forget what’s beneath your feet.”

  Talejui looked down into H
ell before turning to see who’d touched him. It was the Prelate.

  “I have a mission for you,” said his holiness.

  The young man’s heart sank as he knew that whatever was asked of him, he could not refuse.

  “A mission from God. Follow me to my chambers and I’ll explain.”

  The office of the Prelate was carpeted and hung in red velvet. They sat in hand-carved wooden thrones, the older man and younger on either side of an ornate desk. Each had a goblet of honeyed wine and each a lit roll of tobacco from the distant Islands of Night.

  “I was much impressed by your work on the inner dome,” said the Prelate.

  “Thank you, your holiness, but I owe my inspiration to the master, Codilan.”

  “This is where you’re wrong, my son. You owe it to God. Your gift is from heaven, and now you’re called upon by the church to serve the almighty.”

  “Yes, your holiness.”

  “You will go on a journey.”

  Talejui took the tobacco from his lips and said, “But we’ve just begun a new commission for the Walsneers’ . . .”

  The old man leaned forward across his desk and fixed the artist with a withering stare. His pointy fingernail twice tapped hard wood. “The House of Walsneer is a dung pile, its members feast on shit, do you understand?”

  “Yes, your holiness.”

  “Now I have something that will test your talents to the limit. As an artist and a man of the church, you can’t refuse.”

  Talejui nodded.

  “I want you to go forth into the world, find the devil, and paint his portrait.”

  The young man could not suppress a laugh.

  “Your arrogance will be your undoing,” said the Prelate.

  “No, your holiness, I laugh with joy that you might think me capable of such a feat. How exactly am I to locate the devil?”

  “Men such as you find the devil every day. He’s always gracious about stopping to tempt a sinner.”

  “And if I do find him, how will I convince him to sit for me?”

  “The church asks not for your questions but for your action. That’s all.”

  “Why, though?”

  “He is a great trickster with infinite guises. Men and women are defenseless against him. They need to be able to identify the demon, so that they know when he comes for them. I want his true portrait executed with all the art God gave you.”

  “Yes, your holiness. And when am I to begin my journey?”

  “Immediately. We will bequeath you a donkey to carry your supplies and a bag of gold for expenses. When you complete the portrait, you will be paid handsomely for it.”

  Talejui never actually agreed, but he need say nothing. To refuse the Prelate would find him cooking atop a stack of logs and kindling in the town square, his flesh disintegrating into smoke like the feathers of the falling angels. He finished his tobacco while the old man offered a suggestion.

  “There’s a legend that he keeps house in an abandoned summer palace on an island in a lake somewhere amid the Carapace Mountains.”

  The artist nodded humbly, but behind his eyes he made his plan. He’d travel on the church’s money for a year, and then when the mystery of the open road lost its charm, he’d simply paint a portrait of the devil from his imagination and make up a story as to how he got the demon to sit for him. The Prelate would buy it without a doubt. And still, he would be able to return to work on the master’s Holy Ghost.

  “The devil is sly, so stay awake.”

  “Yes, your holiness,” he said. “I leave tonight. Please have someone from the stable bring the donkey around to my place and I will load the beast with my easel and paints.”

  The Prelate tossed a pouch of coins onto the desk. “Twelve pieces of gold,” he said. “It should take you far.”

  “And what if I find the devil in the arms of a woman?”

  “It’s not her arms I’d worry about,” said the Prelate.

  “And what if I need break the law to find the devil?”

  “More questions? I told you, action. You know what needs to be done. Do it. Let your faith guide you.”

  By the time Talejui left the cathedral, the rain had stopped and he walked through the village of thatched, stone homes, over and down the green hills on a dirt path that was said to have been trod by Adam and Eve as they fled paradise. Out at the edge of things, he came to the master’s workshop. The helpers were off to the south, purchasing a block of marble for the coming sculpture. Talejui found Codalin sitting at his drafting table, his head propped by one fist under his chin, snoring. The window looking out into the meadow was flung open, and a warm breeze carried the buzz of insects, the grief of mourning doves. All was hushed in the huge workshop, motes of marble dust floating in the sunlight.

  “Master,” whispered Talejui. The old man stirred and slowly came back from sleep.

  “Yes,” said Codalin, yawning. “I wanted to tell you what I realized about the sculpture. It will all depend on light. Only through light can stone become weightless.”

  “I’ve come to tell you I must leave town.”

  “What’s this? I’m not paying you enough?” Codalin sat straight, fully awake.

  “The Prelate has given me a secret mission for the church.”

  “The Prelate? An imbecile.”

  “Yes, but burning at the stake is an inconvenience.”

  The master reflected and then nodded. “A worthy argument,” he said.

  “I intend to pretend for a year’s time and then end the comedy through my art. Can you delay the Walsneer commission until then?”

  “Only if you promise to finish it should I grow too old. Now what’s this secret mission?”

  “Forgive me, but I’m sworn to secrecy. I leave tonight.”

  Talejui, good to his word, set out at the propitious hour of midnight, beneath a silver moon. He wore his cape and wide-brimmed hat. The donkey, Hermes, a slow and cantankerous beast, was piled high with supplies. The journey was not a race, though, and the young man was content to follow the animal’s lead. They took the path away from the village into the greater realm. Talejui whistled the simple psalm of St. Ifritia, and every hundred steps or so, Hermes made a sound like a sinner’s last breath.

  A beautiful day broke around the travelers, warm sun and cool breeze, and Talejui decided to sleep. He bedded down in a stand of cedar trees at the top of a tall hill. Wild flowers of white and yellow dotted the needle-strewn floor, and the sunlight through the branches fell soft upon his face. The morning swirled around him and he dreamed about the Holy Ghost in marble, like a bedsheet on a line rippling in the wind yet made of stone. It spoke to him in a hollow, holy voice that echoed in the caverns of itself. “Your mission is no less important than the work of the bees,” it said.

  Talejui awoke in the late afternoon to the donkey’s loud braying. Only when he got to his feet did he realize there was a man standing behind him. It was the hunter Pervan. He had feathers twisted into his nest of hair and a string of rabbits over his shoulder, a pheasant tucked into his belt.

  “What are you doing out here, Talejui?” he asked.

  “I’m on a mission for the church, sent by the Prelate.”

  “You have my pity,” he said.

  The artist smiled. “Do you know of an island in the mountains where the devil lives?”

  Pervan laughed for a long time and then dried his eyes. “The Prelate is a flagon of lunacy. To the west from here. Straight over these hills. Find a path that’s marked every few leagues by a stone with a cross carved into it. These stones go back to the earliest folk. That pass winds through the mountains. Take it till you come to a barren area next to a lake. You’ll see the island and the roof of the palace from the shore. Wait for the tide to go out and you can walk
through shallow water to it.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “I kill for a living. I’ve been there.”

  “How far must I go?”

  “If you start now, you can make it before the weather gets cold.” The hunter turned and walked away through the trees.

  “Can you tell me anything about the devil?” called Talejui.

  “Nothing you don’t already know.”

  The artist and the donkey walked through the mornings of the coming days, and in late afternoon, after a bite to eat, Talejui painted small landscapes to keep his brush adept. At night, he smoked nettlemare in his long pipe and, in the fog that followed, carried on a one-way conversation with Hermes about his dreams of the Holy Ghost. The donkey stared at him with knowing eyes and expressions, gasping last breaths at the perfect moments.

  There were times during the journey when Talejui would completely forget where he was going and be taken up by the beauty of the landscape and the sounds of birds that filled the forest to either side of the path. And then there were other instances when he felt a prisoner to the Prelate’s demand and sorely regretted his time for creation being scattered like dust. On these bad days, he was unsure if he could last a year and began contemplating how the devil should appear in his painting. The images that came to him were fleeting and soon forgotten, as if a spell had been cast to weaken his imagination.

  It had already grown cold by the time they stood on the edge of a lake the very color of the sky in the fresco at St. Elovisus. A brisk wind blew ashore from the direction of the island a half mile out. From where he stood, Talejui could see the slanted roofs of the devil’s palace above the barren trunks of oak. The tide was high, so the travelers took shelter beneath a ledge of an enormous boulder sitting in the sand like an egg in a nest. The artist made a fire, ate a fish he’d caught the day before, and lit his pipe. Hermes stood close to the flames and every now and then turned to warm a different part of his body.