A Natural History of Hell: Stories (28 page)

Even before Talejui lurched out of the Day and Night, a spy for the church had slipped away from the inn and gone in search of the Prelate. The painter stumbled along the road, weaving and talking to himself. He
’
d decided to head toward his cottage instead of the workshop. The one thing he wanted more than even another drink was to lie upon his own bed with the blanket pulled up to his chin, and sleep. “To the devil with the devil,” he said, spat, and shuffled forward with determination. Soon enough, he approached his cottage. Its shadow in the dark brought tears to his eyes. He
’
d not been inside since returning from his journey to find the evil one. He opened the low wooden gate at the edge of the road and stepped one foot on the path to his door. Before taking another step, though, he felt a presence in the road behind him. Turning, he saw a large darker shadow amid the darkness. From out of the night, Hermes the donkey stepped forward, his lips curling back to reveal all his teeth.

Talejui laughed upon finally recognizing the beast. He let the gate shut and walked back into the road. “What are you doing here?” he said and petted the side of Hermes
’
face. The donkey was restless and pulled back away. “What is it?” asked the painter.

The creature reared its head back and opened its mouth. “I
’
m here to tell you whom I want you to kill,” it said in the devil
’
s voice. Talejui froze, and his drunkenness evaporated in an instant. He stood with his mouth open and stared, all his limbs numb.

“Do you hear me?” asked the devil.

Talejui shook his head but said, “Yes.”

“Listen well, for I want you to kill
. . . ,
” he said, but with the next word language exploded into the braying of a donkey.

“Who?” whispered Talejui. “Who?”

“I want you to kill
. . .
” and then more braying. The same repeated again and again, and each time Talejui leaned forward, hoping for the name but instead heard the screech of an ass. Finally, he drew his dagger, lunged at Hermes, and with a sudden slice cut the animal
’
s throat. Blood spilled onto the road, and still the creature managed to speak it twice more. “I want you to kill
. . .
” It fell while braying, a waning cry that gave way to gurgling. The carcass twitched and wheezed as the devil rose in the steam from the warm blood and floated away on the wind. The painter opened his gate and took the path to his cottage door. He retrieved the key from a chain round his neck. Inside it was cold and musty. Completely sober now and calm, he built a fire in the hearth and sat in his armchair with a blanket round him, staring at the motion of the flames.

The next morning, long after the hearth was cold, he was still there in his chair, wrapped in a profound sleep. That was how the soldiers found him, who broke down his door and ripped him from the chair and a dream of the Holy Ghost. They shoved him along through the village to the cathedral, where a pyre of kindling and logs and a crowd had already been gathered. His neighbors drew away when he passed among them. He was roughly ushered up onto the kindling, and the soldiers tied him by the wrists and feet to a pole. The cathedral workers moved quickly, painting the larger wooden logs below with pig fat to make them burn more fiercely. When all was prepared, and the captain of the cathedral guard held a lit taper, the charges were read by the Monk in Good Standing. “For consorting with the devil, the painter, Talejui, is condemned to burn at the stake until death.”

Talejui was paralyzed with fear, his chest heaving for every breath, his heart pounding in his ears. He thought nothing, and though he tried to cry out, not a word found its way. Among the crowd, he saw Codilan and his workers being held at bay by guards with pikes and drawn swords. The master screamed, demanding his apprentice
’
s release. The captain of the guard looked up to the Prelate
’
s office window, where the holy man stood dressed in golden robes and triangular hat, the ritual vestments for immolation. The prelate made the sacred signs with his left hand, and the crowd was astonished by the graceful manner with which he moved his wrist and fingers as if an afterthought. The pyre was lit, and the smoke rose. Talejui cried out when his blood began to boil and his flesh bubbled up and sloughed away to become smoke. His screams made the crowd weak, and they cowered where they stood while the Prelate stared down at them from his perch. He waited until the smog obscured his view of them, and then closed the wooden shutter of the window and stepped away.

He waved his hand in front of his nose in an attempt to clear the stink of burning flesh. “Heinous,” he said and tried to cough the taste out of his mouth. On his way back to his desk, he looked up and from the corner of his eye noticed that the blank canvas was no longer blank. At first he glimpsed only the golden, holy vestments, and groaned, “It can
’
t be me.” He froze in place until it became clear that he wasn
’
t the devil, although the evil one wore the habiliments of someone of his religious station. He studied the portrait for a long time and after searching his memory was sure it was no one he knew. The gentleman in the painting was of an advanced age yet had a jolly aspect, a round face like that of a favorite fat uncle, and tufts of white hair above the ears. He wore a golden brocade jacket pinned with the Axe of Stone, a medal given by the Holy See to those who had seen combat for the church. Both a warrior and a spiritual leader.

In the days that followed, the Prelate had numerous clergy, nuns included, into his office to see if they could identify the man in the portrait. “That
’
s the devil,” he
’
d tell them, and they would nod and back slowly out of the door. If he wasn
’
t mistaken, they seemed more frightened of him than of the painting. With all his attempts to discover who the man was, he managed to find out nothing.

Two weeks to the day after the painter was turned to ash, at the crack of dawn, the very man in the portrait, dressed in gold brocade, rode a white horse through the open gates of the cathedral. Riding with him were three dozen of the Holy See’s finest soldiers. The strings Codilan had pulled had finally resulted in something. The soldiers took the Prelate away, and the old, rounded man with the jovial disposition, whose portrait already hung behind the Prelate’s desk, became the new Prelate.

The old Prelate was thrown in a dungeon in the basement of an ancient basilica of the Holy See where dead saints were entombed. He was fed slops once a day and his cell had but one spot where the sunlight managed to send a beam through a crack in a floor above. At night, the spirits of the saints tormented him, brought him nightmares full of anguish and lunged now and then from the dark to bite him. Eventually, the guard who fed him was reassigned to the worksite where Codilan
’
s new dome was to be built. Without sustenance, the old man starved and withered away.

As the Prelate drew his last labored breaths, the ice-blue devil appeared to him.

“The poor Prelate brought low by his own vanity,” said the evil one as the temperature of the room plummeted. “You believed you would be the one to outsmart me? Your scheme, a work of genius more resplendent than any cathedral?”

The old man cowered in a dark corner, praying for death before his soul was snatched.

“It seems, your holiness, that your name has already been forgotten.”

The Prelate prayed as loud as he could, which was little more than a shallow croaking, to try to block the sound of the devil
’
s voice.

“Do you know why I
’
m here?”

“No,” came the whispered reply.

“To grant your wish. That
’
s what I do.” With this, the devil stepped forward, leaned over, dug his icy nails into the gaunt hollow beneath the old man
’
s stubbled chin, and with a laugh ripped upward. There was an agonizing scream that snaked up from beneath the ground and pierced the afternoon. It sounded throughout the Holy See, so that all stopped for a moment in their daily tasks and looked around. The devil held up the face of the Prelate, which hung loose as a worn leather sac in his cold hands. Pulling it taut, he stared at the mask of flesh and then vanished with it. At some point in the days that followed, that withered visage replaced the angry face of God upon the inner dome of the Cathedral of St. Elovisus.

Acknowledgments

A heartfelt thanks to all of the editors who helped to make these stories the best they could be—Ellen Datlow, Maurice Broaddus, Gordon Van Gelder, Terri Windling, Ann VanderMeer, Jonathan Strahan, Gavin J. Grant and Kelly Link.

About the Author

Jeffrey Ford was born on Long Island in New York State in 1955 and grew up in the town of West Islip. He studied fiction writing with John Gardner at S.U.N.Y Binghamton. He’s been a college English teacher of writing and literature for thirty years. He is the author of eight novels, including
The Girl in the Glass,
and four short story collections. He has received multiple World Fantasy and Shirley Jackson awards as well as the Nebula and Edgar awards, among others. He lives with his wife, Lynn, in a century-old farm house in a land of slow clouds and endless fields.

Publication History

“The Blameless” is published here for the first time.

“Word Doll” was first published in
The Doll Collection,
2015.

“The Angel Seems” was first published in
Dark Faith, Invocations,
2012.

“Mount Chary Galore” was first published in
Fearful Symmetries,
2014.

“A Natural History of Autumn” was first published in
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction,
July/August 2012.

“Blood Drive” was first published in
After,
2013.

“A Terror” was first published on Tor.com, July 2013.

“Rocket Ship to Hell” was first published on Tor.com, 2013.

“The Fairy Enterprise” was first published in
Queen Victoria’s Book of Spells,
2013.

“The Last Triangle” was first published in
Supernatural Noir
, 2011.

“Spirits of Salt: A Tale of the Coral Heart” was first published in
Fearsome Journeys,
2013.

“The Thyme Fiend” was first published on Tor.com, 2015.

“The Prelate’s Commission” was first published in
Subterranean Magazine,
2014.

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