A Natural History of Hell: Stories (20 page)

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.

Many of them will recount for you, as if they were there, the Coral Heart’s battle on the island of Saevisha, against the cyclopean ogre Rotnak, tall as a watchtower and ever ravenous for human flesh. They’ll supply the details, no doubt—the whistling wind from the swing of the giant’s club, the tremble of the earth in the wake of his monstrous stride, Toler’s thrust to that single eye, and the whole massive body crackling into a weight of red coral the size of a merchant ship. I hate to disabuse you, but the incident never happened. Please, an ogre? Remember we live in the world, dear reader, not a children’s bedtime story.

One of the aspects of Toler
’
s life most abused by these fabrications is the story of his upbringing in the Sussuro Mountains. Yes, they manage to capture well enough the location and the fact that he lived out his childhood in a cave in the side of a cliff—common knowledge—but that
’
s about the extent of any accuracy. All of these tale-tellers have him raised by a hermit, who taught him the art of swordsmanship. The old man was a master of the blade, a fallen knight who had fled the world for a life of contemplation. And even some of this is truth, because Toler was raised by a hermit. The difference between legend and truth, though, is that the hermit was a woman—an assassin who had spent half her life killing for the Alliance of the Back of the Hand, a clandestine society of the very wealthiest of aristocrats who pulled the strings of commerce and manipulated the fate of the powerless.

She was known, or more her work was known, under the alias, -I-. Even those in the secret council of the Alliance, those who sent her on her missions, had never seen her face. What they knew was her black cloak, her silk boots, the speed and grace of her sword. And they knew her mask, a blank white shell with two small circular eye holes and a small circle for a mouth. She killed swiftly, simply, and accurately and moved like an eel through a sunken pasture in the escape. Most of her victims practiced sorcery. The Alliance had secretly declared war on all magic, fearing its promise of hope to the powerless. In -I-
’
s years of killing, her prey had thrown spells at her, frightening illusions, distracting dreams, creatures of the imagination. She trusted in her sword, her darts, her leather club, and dagger. Once she parried with an enchanted hog, wielding a sword. Once she wrestled with an angel in the heat of the afternoon. She kept her focus as sharp as the blade, able to cut through illusion, sharper than magic.

In the summer of her fortieth year, she was sent on a mission to kill a witch, the crone of Aer, who lived on the outskirts of the city of Camiar. There, in a small cottage, she kept a vast flower garden from which she drew her sorcery. The warm sun and cloudless blue skies did their best to distract the assassin as she rode out of the city to the edge of the Forest of Sans. Along the way, she repeatedly caught herself daydreaming. When she neared the spot where the council had told she
’
d find the witch’s
cottage, she slipped off her horse and sent it silently away to graze in the pasture of tall grass. Moving against the breeze, she crept amid six-foot stalks swarming with yellow butterflies. Some small pest stung her on the back of the neck but she ignored the distraction. At the edge of the pasture, with the place finally in sight, she drew her sword.

She found the door of the cottage wide open and a black cat sitting on the top of three short steps. It never so much as cast a glance her way. Stepping through into the cool shadows of the cottage, she felt the adrenalin pulse and crouched into the fighting stance known as the fly trap. Her eyes immediately adjusted and she noted the basket of fruit on the table, the collections of animal skulls and cleaved rocks displaying green and purple crystals at their centers. Melted candles and crudely fashioned furniture made from tree branches. Crystals hung by twine in the place
’
s one window; blown glass bottles on the sill held nasturtiums. -I- moved cautiously from one room to the next till she
’
d searched all three. Then from the kitchen, through a back door, she let herself into the garden.

The aroma of the blossoms was relaxing. She felt the muscles in her sword arm slacken and released a sigh she
’
d not intended, which she knew was enough of a slip to get her killed. The garden had a fountain and diverging paths lined with egg-like stones shining in the summer sun and radiating warmth through the soles of her boots. More butterflies and grasshoppers and thickets of flowers of all types and colors spilling onto the edges of the walk. Passing a shock of blue daffodils twice her height, she was startled by a figure standing amid a bed of foxglove. Her blade instantly swept through the air and stuck with a knock three inches in the neck of a wooden statue. Its eyes were seashells, its heart a puffball. She pulled the sword free and spun around to see if anyone had heard. There was only a breeze and the sun in the sky.

-I- found her target farther down the path, sitting in a wicker chair beneath an awning of huge, broad leaves. Beside the old woman there was a table on which sat a teapot, two cups, a lit taper, and a pipe. Upon noticing -I-, the witch smiled and motioned for the assassin to join her. She pointed to the empty wicker chair across from hers. -I- was startled by the realization that she
’
d let herself be detected.

The witch pushed her gray hair behind her ears and said, “Come sit down. There
’
ll be plenty of time for killing later. And take that ridiculous mask off.”

Disarmed as she was, realizing that any chance of surprise was gone, she walked forward, sheathed her sword, and sat down. “Did you hear me coming?” she asked.

“I smelled you two days off,” said the witch. “Sweet enough but somewhat musty. Please, dear, the mask.”

“Brave for a woman who
’
s about to die,” said -I-, unable to believe she was speaking to her prey. Until that moment, she
’
d never have conceived of the possibility. By every measure, it was bad form. Still, she removed her mask and set it on the table. The witches
’
glance made her blush. “Do you mean me or you?” asked the crone of Aer.

“You intend to kill me?” -I- went for her sword.

“Easy, dearest,” said the witch. “For someone who
’
s killed so often, you know little of death.”

-I- returned her sword and sat back. From her years of assessing her prey, her glance instantly registered the woman’s lined face and hunched form, noted her strange beauty—ugliness made a virtue—and the grace with which she poured a cup of tea.

“If I
’
d wanted you dead, I
’
d have sent a thought-form servant with a silver rope to strangle you in your sleep two days ago,” said the witch. She pushed the steaming tea cup across the table.

-I- shook her head at the offering.

“Drink it.”

She reached for the teacup at the same time she wondered which poison the old lady had used. Bringing it to her lips, -I-’s senses were enveloped with the aroma of the pasture, its steam misting her vision. She meant to ask herself what she was doing but felt it would have to wait until after she
’
d tasted the tea. It was soothing and made her body feel cool in the breeze of the hot day. Drinking in small sips, she quickly downed the cup while the witch packed a pipe with dried leaves from a possum-hair pouch.

As
-I- placed the empty cup back on the table, the witch handed her the smoldering pipe—a thin, hollowed-out tibia with a bowl carved to resemble the form of an owl.

“What was the tea? And what is this?” asked the assassin.

“The tea was clippings from the garden, stored underground through a frost, drying in sugar. The smoke is Simple Weed.”

“It makes you simple?”

“Does everything need to be complicated?”

-I- laughed and accepted the pipe and candle with which to spark it. She forsook caution, drew deeply, and woke in the middle of the night, the stars shining overhead. She sat up suddenly, confused, her joints aching from the cold ground she
’
d slept upon. She staggered to her feet and drew her sword only to find she was completely alone. The starlight was enough to show her she
’
d lain among the ruins of an old stone building, roof gone and walls three-quarters shattered. Grass grew up around the fallen masonry and crickets sang.

She reached her free hand to the back of her neck and found the tiny dart she
’
d put off to an insect still lodged there. It was instantly clear that she
’
d been out cold since the moment she
’
d felt the sting amid the tall grass, and all else had been a dream. She called for her horse, and it approached from the pasture. Mounting it, she rode fiercely toward Camiar, and within the first mile realized the witch in the dream was her future-self. It was then she decided to assassinate all in the secret council of the Alliance of the Back of the Hand.

And she did just that. Five fat, miserable old men. She stalked them and dispatched them without remorse. Each of the three remaining after the first councilor was found, his head stuffed in his hindquarters, hired his own small army of bodyguards and assassins, but -I- cut through all of them. It was a time known to those in the know as the “Hemorrhage,” for there was a great bleeding although none of the blood seeped into public view. She killed the councilors and their minions, quietly, secretly, each assassination merely a whisper. She killed the head of the Alliance, the so-called “middle finger of the Back of the Hand,” so exquisitely that it took him an hour to realize he was dead before dropping over. And when the last was opened like a mackerel to let the insides become the outside, she rode out of Camiar and lost herself in the Sussuro Mountains.

She ate what hermits eat, locusts and honey, weeds and flowers, fruit and fish. She hunted with her sword, facing off against mountain goats, bears, wildcats, badgers. Those she assassinated for the Alliance rarely had a chance to fight back, but these creatures were cunning and fast and fought to the death every time. Her style of engagement became more calculated than ever, seeing that the fierceness in creatures was a mask of fear. While they pounced, she analyzed and then in the last instant struck with accuracy—one thrust of the blade to let the fear out.

Her dagger trimmed the hide from the meat, which she wrapped in an animal skin and dragged back to her cave. There she had fire and fresh clothes she stole on raids of Camiar
’
s clotheslines. At night she read her only book,
The Consolation of the Constellations,
by the light of a lantern that cast a silhouette of an ibis on the wall of the cave. When reading wouldn
’
t do, she worked through her imagination to create a thought-form servant like the one mentioned by her dream witch.

When she finally climbed into her sleeping bag nestled upon willow branches, let the fire burn low, and closed her eyes, she always wondered who it was who
’
d cast the dart that day she
’
d gone to kill “the witch.” She wondered if there
’
d ever been such a sorceress as the crone of Aer or if the whole thing had been an ambush. Since she wasn
’
t killed, she believed that perhaps a larger spell had been cast that might strike a blow against the Alliance and remove her deadly art from the covert war between the powerful and the people. The longer she stayed away from Camiar, the more she considered that dart an act of kindness.

In spring of her second year in the mountains, while chasing down a stag, she followed the creature into a place she
’
d never been before. It led her down a canyon as wide as an alley to the floor of a gorge. There, things opened up to a vast mudflat shadowed by three-hundred-foot vertical walls of granite. She looked up and saw the blue sky over the rim of the cliffs, and the sight of it made her cold. In an instant, she felt that the place was haunted and she turned to flee. It was then that she noticed the bodies, lying here and there, dressed in finery, decomposing in the mud. They were badly broken, limbs in odd twisted positions, obviously having fallen from the cliffs.

Seeing the manner in which the corpses were dressed, she remembered from her days with the Alliance having heard of a place in the mountains where people were coaxed to commit suicide by leaping to their deaths. The natural setting of the gorge was staggeringly beautiful, and so the secret council gave some of their victim
’
s the choice—either -I- could come for them or they could willingly take the plunge at Churnington
’
s Gorge surrounded by nature and with a modicum of dignity. When she realized who the dead were, she rifled their pockets and took the mink coat of a recent arrival. Her fear of spirits was strong every second she delayed to pillage them, and eventually she left behind a string of pearls she easily could have had and ran, heart pounding, back through the narrow canyon.

That night, lying in the cave, the fire burning low, -I- remembered looking up to the cliffs and seeing that sliver of blue sky. With that image in mind, she had an idea that wealthy people about to jump might leave something behind for the world to remember them by. She daydreamed a large man in a violet suit, brandishing a cane, leaving behind a short stack of books before stepping over the side, and realized she would go there, to the top of the gorge and see what treasures could be found.

The journey was arduous, the trail leading over a mountain and then a descent to the plateau that ended at Churnington
’
s. What she found at the edge of the cliff was a small boy, sitting, staring out at the afternoon sun. In his pocket, she found a note that read, “
I am Ismet Toler.
” She judged him to be three years old. When she leaned down to him and reached out her hand, he took it. “Come,” she said, and led him back to the cave where she raised him.

Little is known about Toler
’
s younger years. Although there are many opinions about what kind of mother -I- made for the boy, or what kinds of qualities he
’
d carried over from the poor soul who
’
d chosen to leap to his doom, there exists no proof for any of it. The only verifiable record from this time was a letter written by a sixteen-year-old Toler to himself about his training in swordsmanship. There were cadavers dragged from the gorge and strapped to the trunks of trees or hung by a rope from a branch—lifelike dummies on which one could practice the precise arc and velocity necessary to slice the heel tendon of a large man. There was dance. There was acrobatics and contemplation. About sparring with -I-, he confessed to himself, he couldn
’
t conceive of victory.

The only other verifiable incident from Toler
’
s youth was related to me by Lady Etmisler, who had heard it from The Coral Heart himself at a banquet they
’
d both attended in the palace at Camiar. He told her that when he became masterful with the sword, -I- told him that he
’
d reached the second of three levels of development. She told him to leave the cave and go out in the world and ply his trade. He wanted to know when the third level began, and she told him, “In five years, you can return to me if by then you
’
ve renounced the sword. We can only continue if you forsake it.”