Hannah Green and Her Unfeasibly Mundane Existence

by Michael Marshall Smith

  The imp stood with him, and nodded as best a mushroom can. He’d found it all right. This patch of forest, perhaps a hundred feet square, had never suffered the passing of a human foot. Not once, not ever. Somehow, out of all the people who’d trekked through the region, exploring for king or country or the US Forest Service, hiking and hunting and fishing, or trying to peck out a living among these unforgiving mountains a hundred or five hundred years ago, not a single human being had ever crossed this particular space.

  It was clean and clear and empty. It was virgin ground.

  ‘Now what?’ Vaneclaw whispered.

  ‘You may wish to cover your ears.’

  ‘Ah. Bit of a problem.’ The imp held up its stubby little arms to demonstrate they didn’t reach up that far. ‘See?’

  ‘No matter. It’s possible you will not be harmed.’

  ‘Um,’ the imp said, feeling – for the first time in his eleven hundred years on the planet – genuinely and extremely afraid. ‘I’m not loving the word “possible” in this context, boss. Any chance you can change it to “absolutely and completely definite and certain-sure”?’

  The Devil wasn’t listening. He stood bolt upright, body straight and tall, like a spike of ancient rock. His eyes had turned black. The darkness coursing off him was luminous.

  Then he opened his mouth, and said the word.

  There are words that are different to other words, ones that are dark and secret and unknown. They used to exist in many languages, the closely guarded property of shamans and wise women, held close as a source of power, ways to open strange doors. Over time we have lost nearly all of them, especially since science convinced us that numbers hold the keys to reality instead. As a few languages started to establish dominance, the few tongues that nurtured and cherished a stock of secret words withered and died, taking their magic with them – but in the process also closing windows on to the dark unknown: windows for whose lack we should, by and large, feel extremely thankful.

  The Devil still knows those words, however. He uttered one that had not been spoken in nearly two thousand years.

  Every leaf in the forest shivered.

  Every insect and bug and worm in the ground froze.

  The clouds high above stayed their course for a moment, before hurrying on their way. The ambient temperature dropped twenty degrees.

  Vaneclaw was relieved to discover that he neither melted nor exploded. But when the sound of the word faded, it left the world changed.

  Five minutes later, the first of them appeared. A column of hooded shadow, less than the height of a man, at the far edge of the virgin ground. Its presence was reluctant, but the summoning word was of an age and power that brooked neither resistance or denial.

  Soon afterwards another could be seen.

  And then another.

  And then more, coalescing out of the darkness and from between the trees like wolves made of shadows. Within ten minutes, eleven of the entities sometimes referred to as Watchers were gathered within the space.

  They stood at angles to one another, keeping their distance. None of their faces – assuming they even had such things – were visible. The silence was so deep that it would have made any normal person vomit. Even Vaneclaw felt nauseous, and had to keep reminding himself to breathe.

  The Devil strode towards the middle of the space, head lowered. When he reached some nexus only he could see, a point where the lines between them crossed, he looked up at them.

  The Fallen.

  The angels with whom he had once tried to usurp God, to claim Heaven for himself, and the entire universe as his rightful domain.

  Tried, and failed.

  Chapter 28

  Hannah’s story ended just as the first motel lights started to twinkle a hundred yards ahead. By then they were in the heart of Big Sur – or as close as you can get to it by road – and the trees hung heavy in lowering darkness.

  ‘I … see,’ Aunt Zo said, after quite a pause.

  ‘It was just a story,’ Hannah muttered. ‘To pass the time.’

  ‘Of course. And the fact the man in your story is called Eric, like Granddad? And that Granddad’s surname, and mine, and yours, is an Anglicized version of Gruen? These are mere coincidences?’

  ‘No,’ Granddad said. He had remained silent throughout Hannah’s retelling of his tale, except for gently correcting her pronunciation of Leipzig.

  ‘So, Father of mine. The machine that you – pardon me, Hannah – that the not-real man in your totally made-up story built … that’s the old battered suitcase we hid under Hannah’s bed earlier, right? After it had been dropped into the backyard out of the fog, in a way that some people might describe as “extremely unusual”?’

  Granddad nodded.

  ‘And that ominous ancient dude in the black suit who’s bossing everyone around like he owns the place, the one who’s off in the woods somewhere … he’d be the man who instructed you – I’m so sorry, I mean who instructed the entirely fictional Erik Gruen, who only lives in made-up storyland – to build the machine, what, how many hundred years ago?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Nice. OK – I’ll go round once more on this carousel of the crazy. So who is he?’

  ‘He’s …’ Granddad hesitated.

  ‘We’re here,’ Hannah said.

  Aunt Zo hissed at being diverted from the conversation, but they were approaching the first of the motels on the strip. It was called the Pennyweather Motel, and – like most accommodations in the area – consisted of a series of low, old wooden buildings gathered around a small central lodge, nestled among trees. Apart from a couple of more recent and outlandishly expensive places on long driveways off the road (establishments where, Hannah’s dad had said with a sigh, children weren’t allowed, which meant they obviously sucked) all the motels here were like this. You didn’t come to Big Sur to watch Netflix on a big flat-screen TV or laze in high-thread-count sheets or order room service – or, if you did, you were destined for disappointment as none of the motels had any of these things. They didn’t even have phones in the rooms.

  ‘So what do we do?’ Aunt Zo asked as she caused the car to slow. ‘Go into each of these dives in turn?’

  Hannah didn’t know what to say.

  ‘I need a decision,’ Aunt Zo added.

  ‘Where do you normally stay?’ Granddad asked.

  ‘The Creekside,’ Hannah said. ‘It’s farther along. Not the next one, or the next. The one after that. But …’

  She didn’t want to explain in front of Aunt Zo why she knew the Creekside Inn would be a bust. It was a place she’d stayed every year of her life, whose every nook and cranny she had explored. They had big, rough-hewn wooden chairs in the river behind the lodge where you could sit and dangle your feet in the bracingly frigid mountain stream that gave the place its name. She could see, in her mind’s eye, her mother and father perched together in the love seat there, holding cocktails in plastic cups, laughing as Hannah took their picture on her iPod.

  When was that? Only last year.

  But it might as well be a century ago, an incident from someone else’s life. Right now it seemed harder to believe in than anything that had happened to Erik Gruen. Her dad didn’t take her to the Crow’s Nest any more, and he wouldn’t have gone to the Creekside. Some stories end.

  ‘… he won’t be there,’ she finished.

  ‘OK,’ said Aunt Zo, steering into the lot of the Pennyweather. ‘So we’re back to checking each in turn.’

  ‘Drive on,’ Granddad said, however. ‘Go to the other place first.’

  ‘But Hannah just said—’

  ‘I know,’ he interrupted, quietly but firmly. ‘And she may be right, in which case we’ll be searching them slightly out of geographical sequence, at a cost of approximately ten minutes, which I will do my best to make up to both of you. With ice cream, if necessary. OK, Hannah?’

  ‘Sure,’ she said glumly.

  Even Granddad didn’t listen so
metimes.

  Aunt Zo swerved back out of the lot and on down the highway. There was half a mile of forest between the Pennyweather and the next place, the Log House Resort, a bunch of cabins and camping spaces with nothing but a tiny office to tie them together.

  Another long stretch of woods, and then the Forgotten Inn, kind of like the Creekside, but not as old or nice-looking.

  Another patch of woods.

  Then Aunt Zo was pulling into the Creekside.

  She parked in front of the lodge. They got out of the car, Granddad wincing. It was all so much the same that it was bizarre. The portico in front of the entrance. The main building, the heart of which – as you can tell from the black-and-white photos on the walls inside – has been unchanged in a hundred years. The tiny gas station on the right; the little general store on the left where you buy water and sandwiches to take to the cove down on Pfeiffer State Beach, the most windswept place in the world. All of it in darkness, glow-lit with lamps. The still quietness that comes from being amongst redwoods, apart from the faint buzzing sound Big Sur seems to have, which Hannah’s mom said came from its energy. It was all so much the same that it felt uncanny.

  Aunt Zo spotted the door on the short right wing that said ‘Office’, and also that it was closed. ‘So, where …’

  ‘Inside,’ Hannah said.

  She led them under the portico and in through the wide wooden door. A rustic lobby area; a big river-rock fireplace with a log fire burning. The strong, familiar smell of woodsmoke. There was a stand-up desk on the side where you made dinner reservations, and this doubled in the evenings as a way of getting in contact with the people who ran the place if there were no towels or the lights in the bedroom had stopped working, neither of which were unknown at the Creekside.

  Hannah ran to it, eager to be the one to ask if her dad was here, even though she was confident that he would not be. She didn’t notice Granddad and Aunt Zo stopping in their tracks, staring across the casual lounge/restaurant area beyond at a table in the far corner.

  ‘How did you know?’ Zo asked him.

  ‘I never thought he was running away,’ Granddad said, though there was some relief in his voice. ‘I believe he’s starting to face the future again instead.’

  He spoke Hannah’s name. When she turned, he pointed into the far corner. Hannah’s shriek caused a waitress to drop an entire tray of calamari and buffalo wing appetizers.

  Hannah ran straight through the debris and threw herself at a tired-looking man sitting at a table with a laptop.

  After a moment of bewilderment, he wrapped his arms tightly around her too.

  Chapter 29

  ‘What do you want?’

  It was one of the farthest Watchers who spoke, or caused the shadows of words to be cast and their meaning to be known.

  ‘To talk,’ the Devil said.

  ‘There is nothing to discuss.’

  The Devil frowned. ‘You’d rather hide?’

  ‘We are not hidden. Merely unknown, through choice.’

  ‘Always with the semantics,’ the Devil said. ‘You guys slay me. So – how’ve you been?’

  None of them spoke. The Devil let the silence stretch, looking at each in turn. Eleven angels, all of whom, long, long ago, he had known almost as well as he’d known himself. He’d continued to work with them after the Fall, after he and they had been cast down to this ball of rock. They were his co-constructors of Hell, the Stygian Council of Pandemonium. In the glory days when, OK, so they might no longer be in Heaven, but there was new work to be done – dark, sour work – and great things had been achieved. The destruction of entire civilizations. Pestilence and terror that had killed nine in every ten. Wars so dire that history had shied away from even recording them; events whose horror had been sealed into black holes of silence from which neither light nor words could escape. A few of the angels had drifted away or turned their backs, but these others …

  The Devil spoke to one of them, to whom he had been close. ‘I don’t merit a greeting even from you, Ytr?’

  The Watcher in question remained silent.

  Another, the one who had spoken first, caused his assumed form to suddenly be closer to the Devil. ‘You summoned,’ it said. ‘We came. Our contract with the word has been honoured. Now we will leave.’

  ‘The Sacrifice Machine isn’t working,’ the Devil said, cutting to the chase. ‘It isn’t channelling the dark currents to Hell and back to us in the way it should.’

  ‘That is of no account.’

  ‘It doesn’t bother you to grow weaker and weaker every day? To steadily lose your power?’

  Another Watcher spoke, the one that had been called Zhakq, using one of the Devil’s old names. ‘Tell me, Diabolos, what good did it ever do us? We did as you commanded, and we fell. We continued to do your bidding in the aftertime. We were not raised back up on high. The world here continued as it always had. We facilitated its inhabitants in death and spoilage, and still the waves rose and fell on the shores, and the sun shone, and life persists. Power that affects nothing is mere vanity.’

  ‘You were always a weak link, Zhakq,’ the Devil said in a low, hard tone. ‘You only joined us because of a slight God committed by accident. I remember the day I talked you into our campaign, how pathetically glad you were to have something to cleave to. And yet now you lead a shamble into nothingness. Congratulations, angel. You’ve grown into your weakness.’

  He turned and spoke again to the Watcher that had been styled Ytr, and who had once been almost equal in darkness to the Devil himself. ‘What about you, old friend? You didn’t need convincing. You fought to be at my right hand.’

  ‘Long ago, in a different place,’ the Watcher said. Its voice was deep and dreadful still, a rumble that had once turned hearts to stone. ‘Things change.’

  ‘They certainly do,’ the Devil said. ‘And it will start happening faster if action is not taken. Is that what you want?’

  ‘Your time is done,’ Zhakq said. ‘And we no longer wish to be your allies. Humans have become too distinguishable from one another. Their dooms and terrors are shifting, individual. Your precious Hell is no longer relevant. Nobody believes. Nobody cares.’

  ‘Wow,’ the Devil said. ‘You see that imp?’ He pointed at Vaneclaw, who’d been standing well back, trying – though he knew it was pointless in this company – to be even more invisible than usual.

  ‘Hi,’ Vaneclaw said, very quietly.

  ‘Until this evening, I believed that imp was the most dull-witted entity I’d ever interacted with. I see now I was mistaken. Compared to you, he’s an intellectual titan.’ He directed his full ire at Ytr. ‘Do even you not understand? You, who at least stayed with Xjynthucx and me long enough to see how things work here?’

  The Watcher was silent.

  ‘Once upon a long ago,’ the Devil said, ‘the creatures here had a life that made sense. They lived in caves, as animals should. They survived in collections of families. Everybody knew each other. They understood a duty of care, or at least knew that if they did wrong it would be noticed and brought to account. Then things changed. They gathered in larger numbers, in villages and towns and cities. Nobody knew everybody any more. The shadows and back alleys grew dark, and sometimes ran with blood. People stopped knowing how to behave, and most of all they stopped remembering why. They needed reasons to toe the line, and that was what they were given. Two reasons. Heaven, and Hell. Equal in resonance and moment. No one will ever be able to tell whether it has been the promise of Heaven or the threat of Hell that has kept this world from teetering into chaos ten thousand times. That is why Hell matters, and that’s why the power of black deeds must always be directed there. Without evil there is no good, and without Hell’s focusing lens there can be no true evil – just a great deal of extremely poor behaviour.’

  The Devil’s words rang out in the forest, but found no home. After a disrespectful pause, one of the Watchers who had not yet spoken suddenly came towards him
.

  ‘We are eleven gathered,’ it said. ‘Only one remains to fold in. Once we draw him to us, we will be complete. Our circle of twelve will close. You are lost and alone.’

  ‘You should leave,’ Zhakq added, and in its chill, inhuman voice lay a hint of deep satisfaction – and threat. ‘Leave, and perhaps hide. We have power yet to harm. We are the tide now.’

  The Devil threw a last look at Ytr. When we are betrayed, it is the actions of those who once stood closest that cut the deepest. Ytr, however, made no sign – Ytr, whose fierce roar on the morning of the Fall had been enough to split planets half a galaxy away, but who now looked like nothing more than a shadow-monk in the wilderness, something to trigger spooky campfire stories that nobody believed in any more.

  ‘There are lost angels here, true enough,’ the Devil snarled. ‘But I am not one of them.’

  The rage he felt was sufficient that, fifteen miles away, a father of three who was camping in the woods with two other families reached immediately for the axe he’d used to help build the fire upon which he and his best friends were about to grill steaks and deployed it to commit acts so appalling that they passed into local legend. Two heads were never found.

  The Devil stalked away, Vaneclaw hurrying after him.

  The Devil was so very furious, in fact, that only when they were two miles from the virgin ground, striding down the forested slope towards the highway, did he suddenly stop dead in his tracks.

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Oh, you foolish old god.’

  Vaneclaw was so short of breath that he was incapable of speech. Instead he waved his short arms in a way that he hoped would communicate that, what with him being famously non-smart, further clarification was necessary, should the big man be so inclined, but if he wasn’t, that was also totally fine.

  This wasn’t an easy gesture to pull off and towards the end of it Vaneclaw toppled slowly over on to his back.