A Natural History of Hell: Stories

by Jeffrey Ford

  A heartbeat, and then the air was filled with the screech and flap of starlings, pecking and clawing at the assembled. The dark birds were so thick, each breath was a breath through feathers, impossible to see or even scream. A few moments later, when the flock suddenly vanished in a flutter of smoke, three eyes and three tongues were missing, as was Alford Seems and his sled. Also gone was the Kremply girl.

  Needless to say, the loaves held no surprises the following year. Still, the tale of the baker’s turd was told and retold, whispered into the ears of tired children as they lay in bed, the candle out. There were disagreements as to what message it taught, but it was dangerous to discuss the theories aloud. And the days passed. The crops grew. Occasionally a child’s head would burst into flame.

  In the twelfth year of the angel’s protection, during the harvest time, a young woman, Mira Doune, had a dream. The next day she pulled her husband, Jon, into the closet and shut the door behind them. She whispered her dream to him in the dark. When she finished, he promised to help her. No more was said. He went to slaughter a lamb while she got the fire ready. Hours later, when the animal was roasted, Jon cut a huge slab of meat off it and set it on a plate for his wife. Working in silence, by candlelight, Mira used a knife and a cleaver to shape the mutton into a small hand. When it was complete it was put into a clay jar sealed tight with bees wax and sunk on a line into the cool underground stream of the south cave.

  The angel arrived for his harvest dinner, delivered old lady Sharett, who in her service had grown a face on the back of her head exactly like the one on the front, and whisked away the Childs lad to serve in his den. Mira and Jon wondered if it was possible, but a few months after her return old lady Sharett began to show. They were as excited as if they themselves were to be parents. Late that night, they ran across the field to healer Mulithot’s home and whispered to him in his closet.

  Mulithot was not so brave as his mentor, Struth, nor was he as smart. When the plot against the angel was put forward, he became frightened that he was being tested. When he finally agreed, he could not say the words, even in a whisper, but simply gave a subtle nod.

  While they waited for old lady Sharett to come to term, Mira and Jon were torn between the fear that something might happen to her before she could give birth, and the fear that nothing would happen to her, and they would have no choice but to carry out their plan. They and the healer kept the secret for months, like holding in a scream, and Mulithot, in the meantime, though keeping mum, took to strong drink. At night Mira slept on top of Jon to protect him from the doubts she knew tried to invade him in his sleep.

  The hard months staggered by and then . . . the old lady grunted from both sides of her head as the sleek, winged, Alfrod was pulled from her womb by Mulithot’s forceps. Mira and Jon held the creature down by its neck and wrists, while the healer fetched the cleaver. The little Alfrod’s struggle was great, and it was difficult to keep him still what with the desperate action of the violet wings and the fact that he was growing by the minute.

  The cleaver struck through the tiny arm on the second blow, and Alfrod luckily screamed precisely when the mastiffs charged out of the shadow of the forest and onto the open fields. Mira nervously opened the clay jar and withdrew the mutton hand. She then placed the real hand inside and fitted the lid on tight. The healer and Jon held the baby down, and she sewed the false hand onto his stump with a coarse thread woven from vines of the herb dognip.

  Mira and Jon were just closing the closet door when the front door to Mulithot’s home burst in. The healer backed away and slouched against the wall. One dog sniffed at his crotch while the other caught up the newborn and devoured it in three bites. They left as quickly as they’d arrived, and when they were gone the healer passed out. Mira went to the clay jar, looked inside, and gave the barest smile.

  The hand simmered in a stew with carrots and onions. Jon opened the lid to get a whiff of dinner, saw the pale hand bobbing, and shivered, picturing himself picking his teeth with its sharp nails. After many hours, Mira lifted the shriveled mass out of the pot with a fork and called her husband to come eat. Using her sharpest knife, she sliced the meat off the palm and fingers and served it with carrots and onions and gravy . It was so sweet it made them gag, but they hoped it would confer a shred of the angel’s power, or offer some kind of protection. They buried the diminutive skeleton hand in a metal box by the side of the road.

  That night, while the village slept, Mira and Jon left home and carefully made their way across the fields to the forest. They carried no torch or lantern and said nothing. When they reached the tree line and passed into perfect night, where neither the stars nor moon were visible, they tied one end of a length of twine around his waist and the other end around hers. Groping blindly forward, they went in search of the sacred den.

  They bruised their shins and cut their arms and faces on the grasping branches. Although she was frightened and exhausted, Mira took heart in the fact that they’d been in the forest so long without a sign or sound from the dogs. She wanted to trust the recipe given to her in the dream. Jon, on the other hand, doubted everything and was certain they’d end the night being devoured. He tugged gently on the rope attaching him to his wife. She drew close and put her hands on his shoulders. She traced the direction his arm was pointing. Mira turned and squinted into the dark. Off in the far distance, she detected a smudge of light.

  As they approached, the glow of the den allowed them to first distinguish the movement of shadows and eventually to see each other’s faces as if by candle from another room. The light poured forth from a wide hole in the ground. On either side of the opening lay the sleeping mastiffs. The desperate squeals of animals issued up from the tunnel that led to the angel’s den. Jon and Mira held their breath and hesitated only yards from the snoring beasts. They looked at each other. Finally she tugged the twine and moved them toward the bright underground. He shook his head but followed.

  At the same moment, both dogs scratched a dream itch with a back leg as the couple passed. Mira nearly cried out, for it was precisely at this point that her dream ended. She put her arm around Jon, and they both closed their eyes and continued, descending into a tunnel of light. The walls around them were coated with a thick wax that glowed of its own accord. As they inched forward, expecting Seems to appear around every turn of the snake-like passage, a strong, hot wind pushed up toward the surface, lifting their hair behind them, causing them to sweat.

  The den was deep and at its center was a crystal fountain like a tree growing, dripping water from every glistening branch into a surrounding pond. The thing reached nearly to the ceiling of the enormous cavern. From where Mira and Jon hid behind a heap of firewood, they could see an old man on a floating couch drifting through the rain in the fountain pond. He had a long white beard, a mere ring of hair, his head resting on blue pillows. Even from the distance of their hiding place, they could see he was in torment.

  Twenty yards away from the fountain, Alfrod Seems was sitting in an ornate chair at the edge of a pit, slaughtering deer with a long knife. More than a dozen of the creatures stood in line, dazed, with the eyes of sleepwalkers. Each stepped forward to have its throat cut, lose its blood into the pit, sway, and then fall, making a place for the next. The angel moved with grace and expert precision in his work. Only once did he hesitate. He turned, sniffed the air, rested his free hand briefly on the head of his walking stick, which leaned against the arm of the throne, and with a brief ruffle of his wings went back to his work.

  Mira tugged on the twine, and Jon looked at her. She waved her hand, signaling that he should follow. He shook his head. She waved her hand. He couldn’t move. She slipped a knife out of her apron and cut the twine. He reached for her, but she was already gone out from behind the woodpile. With fingers covering one eye, he watched as Mira crept closer to the angel, hiding herself amid the line of deer. As each of the
beasts gave their gurgling death cry, she used the noise to cover her next move forward.

  When she was no more than two from the angel’s throne, a small beast, Jon at first thought it a pig, appeared from behind the fountain. He could tell it had noticed Mira and was hobbling awkwardly toward her. It’s bird calls alerted Alfrod, who halted his infernal work in mid-slice. Without thinking, Jon rushed from behind the woodpile, screaming, swinging a stick of kindling. He saw Alfrod notice him, and he remembered the sight of Marsh on the ground crying blood, which stopped him dead in his tracks. The angel rose from the chair and reached for his stick. As he did, it vanished.

  Mira was upon him with the ivory spike. She drove it with all her might through his chest, which cracked like the shell of an insect. He gasped, his wings buzzing frantically. Then she turned it as he had done to the baker, tuning his heart. He stumbled forward to grab her, but the strange beast that had given her away, leaped, chirping, off the ground and tore at the angel’s stomach. Mira recognized the freckled face of the Childs lad. Alfrod sliced its throat with the knife, and then the two of them, angel and beast fell back into the pit.

  Mira staggered away and turned. Jon moved again, running to hold her, and just before they embraced, a fierce wind rose up from nowhere and swallowed them in its fury. They spun apart as the shrieking gale echoed through the cavern. And the next thing they knew, they were back in the village, standing side by side, clasping hands, and the old man from the couch in the fountain stood beside them. The sun was rising and the birds were singing. The couple shook their heads as if waking from an unexpected nap.

  “I’m God,” said the stranger in a tired voice. Only then did they notice his sky blue wings, composed of feathers. The ends of his beard seemed to fizz in the air. His eyes shone.

  The first question the villagers had, once they heard that the angel had been done away with, was, “What about those two damn mastiffs?”

  “I’ve destroyed one,” said God. “The other is left to roam the woods. Be wary of him.”

  They were confused by his response. Some scratched their heads, others rubbed their chins. They then wanted to know what Mira’s dream had been. She spoke about a woman with a window in her head, through which the stars were visible. “I saw the plan in her head. The stars and planets told me what to do.”

  They shrugged and asked God if Alfrod Seems was an angel.

  “I met him some centuries ago in the Far Islands,” said the old man. “He was an explorer, and I was there convalescing. We spent many nights drinking grog on the beach, pondering the workings of the universe. We became fast friends, and I thought I knew him. To prove to myself that he was true, I tested him. “I will grant you a wish,” I told him, and to my astonishment he accepted.

  “You made him an angel?” asked Relst, the carpenter.

  “Well, I’m God,” said the old man. “Still, Seems turned on me in the moment the wish was granted, and I’ve been his servant ever since.”

  A mumble ran through the crowd.

  “In the end, did the lion not lie down with the lamb?” said God, trying to catch sight of the few who were snickering.

  “Why was the angel slaughtering deer?” asked Jon.

  “Forgive me,” he said. “I’m so weary. I need to lie down.” His couch appeared beneath him, and he lay upon it, resting his head against the blue pillows. “Tomorrow, I will give you my ten commandments.” With this, he closed his shining eyes, his wings went still, and a light snoring could be heard.

  The villagers exchanged no words, but all shared a look. They went back to their homes and readied their weapons. That night they moved against God. As frail as he appeared, he still put up a fierce battle. But the sheer number of villagers and the force of their determination was a weapon the old man could not withstand. He was beaten down to nothing, and all that remained of him come sunrise was his long, fizzing beard, which was hung from a pole like a flag. From that night forward the savage incident would forever be referred to in the village as the Eleventh Commandment, and its memory sustained them through floods and fires.

  As for the remaining mastiff, he roamed the remote places, and every so many years a report of him would find its way to the village. It seems the dog no longer had a taste for human flesh and gave up killing for the joy of it, with the exception of the time those in Cleneth sent a hunting party to trap him. The last he was seen was on the day of Mira’s funeral. Jon lost her to the plague one spring, and the snapping of the twine that joined them was heard far off in the heart of the forest. The beast appeared at the tree line of the last field and bayed as the corpse was set aflame. By the time the smoke cleared, the dog had vanished.

  Mount Chary Galore

  Mrs. Oftshaw was best known for a liniment of her own concoction, Mount Chary Galore, that had no other curative property than to make you feel generally right and was suspected of being some part of the black lace mushrooms she gathered by the light of an orange moon. She was a strange, solitary old bat, who’d been around so long she was part of the landscape. She’d swoop into town out of the deep woods at the base of the looming mountain, swerving all over the asphalt in her rusted Pontiac. Even the young boys with new driver’s licenses and stupid with courage cleared the road when they saw her coming. Sheriff Bedlow wrote her a stack of tickets through the years, but he was not particularly fearless and would only stick them under the busted windshield wiper when the car was parked and empty. She’d just crumple them in her boney hands and toss them in the dirt.

  When she arrived in town, nobody ever came out to greet her, but eyes gazed from behind curtains or betwixt blinds. Those who relied on the Galore were watching, silently counting their nickels and dimes. She eased out of the front seat of that jalopy and gave a little hop down to the ground. She was short and bent with age, but she had a quickness to her—bird-like. Her outfits were layered, mostly the same for either winter or summer, except in the snowy part of the year, when she’d add an oversized sailor’s peacoat to the getup—blue leggings, a loose billowing dress, wooden shoes, and a voluminous kerchief draped around her head, a tunnel of fabric you had to peer into to see her pale, wrinkled face like some critter living in a hollow log.

  If you got close enough, as I did when she came to deliver a jar of Galore to my poor ma, you could catch a whiff of her scent, which was not old or ugly or rotten, but beautiful, like the smell of wisteria. Ma always served lavender tea with honey at the parlor table. Mrs. Oftshaw was partial to a jigger of Old Overholt in hers, and she kept a pint in the pocket of that peacoat when the weather got raw. They whispered back and forth for a time. When I asked my ma what they talked about, she’d smile and say, “Men.” “Like Pa?” I asked. She sighed, shook her head and laughed. Just before leaving, the old lady always slipped a jar of Galore from her pocket and placed it next to the tea cup, never asking for a cent.

  On the 27th of every month, she came to town, the Pontiac’s trunk full of cardboard boxes, each holding six Ball jars of a bright green paste that smelled like, as Lardner Scott, Charyville’s postmaster, had described it, “A home permanent on the Devil’s ass hair.” Once liberally applied to the chest or the back of the neck, the Galore had a way of easing you down, as if taking your hand and whispering, helping you to sit back into the comfy chair that, amazingly enough, at that moment, you would just be realizing was your life. For a woman who was much feared and much gossiped about, Lillian Oftshaw had a lot of customers—some steady as sunrise, some seasonal, some just passing through. The fact is, she never left town at the end of the month that those boxes in her trunk weren’t entirely empty.

  On the other hand, during those liniment runs, her passenger seat was never empty, for she was accompanied each time by a large gray hog, nearly three hundred pounds, named Jundle, who sat upright, resting his spine against the seat back, crossing his short hind legs, the right over the left
, and leaning his right front leg out the open window. I saw it with my own eyes. That remarkable creature sometimes smoked a fat roll-up of a cheroot, holding it in the split of his cloven hoof and every now and then bringing it up to his snout to take a long drag. Jundle got out of the car and accompanied her to each doorstep as she delivered the Galore and collected her cash. Once a couple of smart-alec kids thought they’d have some fun with the old lady and then make off with her velvet sack of quarters and dimes. Legs were swiftly broken, and, as it’s told, those boys were lucky it wasn’t necks. Jundle was a jolly creature, but he had a serious side when it came to the well-being of Mrs. Oftshaw.

  A jar of the Galore cost fifty cents, which, at the time, was a dear price. There were folks with steady income who went for a jar of the green mystery every month, and there were others who had to use it sparingly, skimping on the application to achieve at least half-rightness half the time. Mote Kimber, a veteran of the Great War, who had seen the fellows of his regiment mowed down like summer wheat at the Belleau Wood in France and when captured was tortured—a thin, white hot iron inserted into the opening of his pecker—slathered the Galore onto his bald noggin like he was painting a fence post. After a while the crown of his head had turned jade green, and he could be counted on at any hour after that of breakfast to usually be way past right. He was a bona-fide war hero, though, and drew a nice pension for his courage. Before being taken by the enemy, he’d rescued three men who’d been wounded and pinned down. Mote would tell you himself that he bought two jars of Galore a month from Lillian. “Either that or kill myself,” he said, and everybody knew he meant it.