A Natural History of Hell: Stories Read online

  She pictured a muscular, sleek animal with six legs. When she turned to steal a look, she saw it in the moonlight. It was no beast, but the gentleman in the daguerreotypes, General Cremint. He was naked and wielding a saber. Both the sounds of galloping and baying issued from his open mouth. His eyes were missing, just two black holes. When he noticed Emily glance at him, Sabille’s voice came forth, “Spy,” she screamed. “Spy.”

  The old man gained on her, and she could feel the breeze of his flashing sword at the back of her neck. Up ahead she saw the end of the path and the silhouette of the brougham, waiting. Just then the carriage’s lanterns blossomed with light. She was tiring, her legs cramping, and she heard Quill calling from the open door, “Lap the miles, Miss Dickinson. Lick the valleys up.” She pushed harder but felt the sword tip slice through her hair. The brougham was only feet away.

  As she reached for Quill’s outstretched hands, Emily saw the driver stand in his box, his arm moving in a sudden arc. She heard the crack of his whip. General Cremint whimpered and fell behind. Quill grabbed her then beneath the arms and lifted her into the brougham. The horses sprang forth, the door of the carriage slammed closed, and they were off. Emily looked quickly to catch one more view of her assailant, the general, sitting in the road, crying, turning slowly to smoke. She moved to the bench across from Quill. Leaning back, catching her breath, she said, “I’ve forgotten the spell.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Quill, again a young gentleman, the rose still fresh in his lapel. “Once you heard it, I was able to hear it, and I’ve got it. Part of the spell was that every night when she used it on the boy I’d never be able to hear it. Once you heard it, though, I could hear it in your thoughts. Sabille is already weak. Evidence of that is the illusion of her dead husband she set on you. She must be going mad.”

  “An illusion?”

  “A deadly illusion, but still conjured from nothing.”

  “It’s inevitable she’ll lose the child?” Emily asked.

  “Exactly. And now you must get to work on the counterspell.” The brougham came to a halt. She looked out the window to see that they’d returned to the Town Tomb. Again it was snowing and the drifts around the entrance to the sunken house were ever higher.

  “Why are we here again? I’ve done what you asked.”

  “I certainly didn’t recruit you for your running prowess,” he said. “You’re a poet, and now begins your work. Come see,” he said. “I’ve brought your writing table from home.” He’d removed his glove again. His fingers snapped.

  She stood in freezing, damp darkness. She heard the wind howling as if at a distance, and then heard the scratch and spark of Quill lighting a match. The flame illuminated his face. He smiled at her, his breath a cloud of steam, and tossed the lit match over his shoulder. A moment later there was a hushed explosion, a sudden burst of flame, and the place came into view. At first she thought she was in a cave, but a moment later realized it was the Town Tomb.

  Quill stood warming himself before a fireplace dug into the rock wall. She saw her writing table and chair. “See here,” he said, and pointed to a swinging iron bar that could put a cauldron of water over the flame. “I’ve acquired your gold and white tea set. You can make tea. What type are you partial to? I’m guessing marble.”

  She glared at him. “Something strong, and I’ll need a bottle of spirits.”

  “Spirits?”

  “Whiskey,” she said. “I’ll need paper and a copy of the spell.”

  “There you are,” he said, and pointed to her writing table, now complete with pen and inkwell and a stack of fresh paper. He turned and pointed again, and a few feet left of the fireplace there stood a wooden bar, a decanter of whiskey, and glasses. “If you need ice, you can go outside,” he said. “It will always be winter while you’re here.”

  “What exactly am I to do?”

  “Create a counterspell to Sabille’s spell.”

  “How is one to begin on something like this?”

  “That’s the challenge,” said Quill.

  “How long do I have?”

  “Eternity, or until you succeed.”

  “Then I go back.”

  “For twenty-five years,” he said.

  “It’s blackmail,” she said.

  “Laws don’t apply here, Miss Dickinson. Death is no democracy.” He walked toward the door of the tomb. “Might as well get started,” he said.

  “How will I know if I’m even close?”

  “That’ll be up to you.” The huge door of the tomb slid open. As Quill went out, winter came in, snow flying and a wicked chill. With a distinct click, the door closed, and the wind and world were again distant. Emily took her seat at the writing table. She lit the taper in the candlestick for extra light and adjusted the tulle across her shoulders, a meager attempt at protection against the darkness of the tomb. She felt its blind depths like a breathing presence behind her. Lifting the page on which Quill had copied the spell, she noted his clear and elegant handwriting. The paper smelled of saffron. She read the words of the spell, but nothing registered. It didn’t seem to be what she’d heard. Leaning over the scented page, as if to communicate with it as much as read it, she recited its stanzas in a whisper.

  Stir, stir, stir

  And stay

  No leave to go away

  Burn, burn, burn

  And rise

  The sun will be your open eyes

  Stir, stir, stir

  And stay

  All of time to love and play.

  After an hour of contemplation, Emily decided that the spell was useless to her. The magic of the words sprang from the traditions of a culture she knew nothing about. She surmised that her first solution, attempting to rearrange the words of the spell into a poem in order to counteract it, would have no effect. Dogmatic belief in anything was foreign to her. She crumpled the sheet of stanzas, got up, and threw it in the fire. The moment the flames licked the balled sheet black, she felt lighter, like a boat cutting loose its anchor and drifting. She made tea and put whiskey in it.

  Sitting, sipping her brew, she noticed that she again wore her own white cotton day dress. She was clear that what she would do was simply write a poem, whatever came to her, and hope that somehow it would have some bearing on the spell. Presentiment, something she’d written about before—“The Notice to the startled Grass that darkness is about to pass”—was to be the order of the long night. She set a sheet of paper in front of her, moistened her pen in the inkwell and then sat there, staring, listening to the blizzard outside, searching for words in its distant shriek. An hour passed, maybe a day or year.

  Later, she was brought to by the sound of a groan emanating from the dark back of the tomb where the winter’s harvest lay frozen. When the enormous stillness had swallowed the noise, Emily was unsure if she’d really heard it or only heard it in her thoughts. She turned in her chair and looked into the shadows. “Hello?” she called. While she waited for a response, she realized that as long as she’d been in the tomb, she’d not been hungry, she’d not slept, and had no call for a chamber pot. No answer came back from the dark.

  She put the tulle around her shoulders and opened the door of the tomb. She was surprised by how easily the enormous weight of it slid back. In a moment the blizzard was upon her. She took two steps out into a drift that reached to her thighs and looked up into the snow-filled night. It wasn’t long before the fierce wind forced her to retreat. Once back inside, the tomb door closed, she swung the water cauldron out over the perpetual fire. Tea and whiskey were her only pleasures. She’d noticed that, when she wasn’t looking, the decanter refilled itself.

  Waiting for the water to come to a boil, she rubbed her hands together in front of the fire, and once they’d warmed she shoved them into her dress pockets. When first she felt the
dried gentian petals, she thought them just some scrap of paper she’d jotted a line on at some point. But when she touched the child’s nail, she remembered. The water boiled, and she made the tea she’d dreamed about, lacing the brew with a generous shot of whiskey to offset the taste of the boy’s nail that twirled atop its plum-colored depths.

  In the dream the gentian tea, tasting like the sweetest dirt, had made her mind race, and now too, beneath the ground, her mind raced. Phrases flew, their letters visible, from every grotto of her mind. She stood at the center of the storm, scythe in hand, cutting through the dross. Eventually she lifted the pen and drew ink. The first line came strong to the paper, and there was a pause—a moment, a day, a year—before she hesitantly began on the second line. Slowly, the poem grew. Midway she sat back and wondered which came first, the words or the visions. Her thoughts circled, and then she leaned forward and resumed her work. When she finished, she read the poem aloud.

  The night woke in me—And I rose

  blindly wandering in a Snow

  To the Sunken house—

  its Cornice—in the ground.

  Parlor of shadows—in the ground

  The distant Wind—a lonely Sound

  Winter’s orphans and Me

  Undoing knots with Gentian tea.

  The instant the last word was spoken, she rejected it; too obvious to undo a spell of life. She crumpled the sheet and tossed it into the fire. A belief in complexity and complication crept into her thoughts and with that the years fell like an avalanche. She drank tea, and stared at the blank sheet, went outside, and listened for groans in the dark back of the tomb. A million times, a place to begin arrived, and she would think of Arthur trapped in his high chair at dinner, and the line would vanish, too insubstantial to survive.

  Later, she was brought to her senses by the sound of something shuffling in the dark behind her. She spun in her chair, her heart pounding. It sounded like weary footsteps. Realizing the sound was approaching, she stood and backed against the writing table. Out of the gloom and into the glow of the fireplace, a wasted figure staggered, an old woman, dressed in black, wearing a black muslin cap atop her white hair. Her face was wrinkled and powdered with dust, and there were patches of ice on her brow and sunken cheeks. She clutched a Bible in her crooked hands.

  “Hello,” said Emily, surprised as she did so. Even before the old woman stopped and looked up, the poet knew it was the same woman who’d come that time to the house for directions to a place she might stay.

  “Excuse me, miss, could you tell me where I might seek lodging in town?” Her voice was low and rumbled in echoes through the tomb. Emily noticed part of the woman’s nose had rotted away and that there was something alive in her glassy left eye by the way it bulged and jiggled.

  “Go that way, into the dark,” said the poet and pointed.

  “Thank you for your kindness, dear.” The woman turned and shuffled into the shadows.

  Emily stood numb from the encounter. “Is the gentian tea still steering my mind?” she whispered.

  “No,” came the old woman’s reply from the back of the tomb. “It’s the rising tide of years.”

  Some piece of eternity later, she sat with pen poised above paper, her arm aching for how long it had been in that position. She barely recognized anymore the crackle of the fire, the distant wind. The pen’s tip finally touched the blank sheet, and she heard a new sound that distracted her from her words. The nib made a fat black blotch, and she drew her hand back. “What was that noise?” she said. In her loneliness she now spoke all her thoughts. Finally it came again, something outside. “A person shouting?” No, it was the barking of a dog. She leaped up from the chair and rushed to the door of the tomb. Opening it, she stepped out into the blizzard.

  Sitting a few feet off, up to his chest in snow, was Carlo, her Newfoundland, a bear of a dog. He barked again and bounded the drifts to reach her. She was overwhelmed and blinked her eyes to be certain he was there. But then she felt his furry head beneath her hand, and he licked her palm. It came to her as if in a dream that she was freezing, and she stepped back into the tomb. The dog followed. After closing out the winter, she sat in her writing chair, leaning forward, hugging Carlo to her. “You’re good,” she repeated, stroking his head. When she finally let go, the dog backed away and sat staring for a long while. His sudden bark frightened her.

  “What?” she asked.

  The dog barked three more times and then came to her and took the sleeve of her dress. Carlo tugged at her, long his sign for her to follow. It came to her, with his fourth tug and tenth bark, that he was there to take her back. “You know the way,” she said to him. The dog barked. She turned to face the writing table and lifted her pen. She quickly scribbled on the blotched sheet, “Gone Home. Mercy.” Dropping the pen, she stood and wrapped the tippet around her shoulders. The dog came to her side and she took hold of him by the collar. “Home,” she said, and Carlo led her into the dark back of the tomb.

  They walked forever and before long he led her by way of a narrow tunnel back into the world. When the moonlight bathed her, she felt the undergarments Quill had given her vanish like a breeze. The dog led her down a tall hill to the end of Main Street. Walking the rest of the way to the Homestead they encountered no one. Quietly, in the kitchen, she gave Carlo a cookie and kissed him between his eyes. After taking off her boots, she tiptoed up the stairs to her room. She removed the white dress and hung it in the closet. She swam into her nightgown and got back into bed.

  As her eyes began to close, she felt a hand upon her shoulder. In her panic, she tried to scream but another hand covered her mouth. “Shhh, shhh,” she heard in her ear, and feeling cold breath on the back of her neck knew it was Quill. “Lie still,” he said. “Let’s not wake your parents.”

  “Leave me alone,” she said. She lay back on the pillow without getting a look at his face.

  “I intend to,” he said. “I merely wanted to tell you that the piece you left in the tomb worked the trick. Three simple words were the key to the spell’s lock; a mad but marvelous thing. Arthur is resting peacefully, so to speak.”

  “So I owe you nothing.”

  “I’d like to ask you a question, if I may.”

  “What?”

  “All these poems you’ve written and hidden—so many poems. Why?”

  While she thought, morning broke and the birds sang in the garden. “Because I could not stop,” she said, and he was gone.

  * Story Note: In April of 1862, Emily Dickinson struck up a correspondence with the poet and war hero Thomas Wentworth Higginson in response to an article Higginson published in the Atlantic Monthly, offering advice to new poets. In her second letter to him she made this odd statement: “I had a terror—since September—I could tell to none.” She is obviously referring to September of 1861, which is the setting of my story. The poem I’m riffing off of is one of her most famous, “Because I Could Not Stop For Death . . .” The earliest known version of this poem, of which there are many, was written, as far as I can tell, in 1863. I imagine the “terror” Emily refers to is her experience that plays out in my story. After mulling it for a year, I’ve imagined she decided to capture it in that famous poem.

  Rocket Ship to Hell

  Twelve years ago, I was at the Millennium Worldcon in Philly, and with the exception of the incident I’m about to relate, I only remember three other things about that long weekend.

  1. I recall going to a cocktail party at night in a dinosaur museum.

  2. Somewhere along the line, Michael Swanwick told me I should check out Fritz Leiber’s Our Lady of Darkness.

  3. I remember the walking. The convention center is enormous. I must have walked a hundred miles a day in that place—spacious, empty hallways with columns, rotundas, vestibules. With all the people attending, I couldn’t bel
ieve I could trudge for twenty minutes along some dimly lit, marble concourse and never see a soul. I suppose I attended panels and maybe even did a reading, but I can’t conjure one shred of an image of any of that—just the slogging from one distant point to another. Think Kafka’s “An Imperial Message.”

  Somewhere in the middle of the third day, exhausted and confused, not having seen the sun since arriving at my hotel attached to the convention center, I found myself near an exit and seized the opportunity. I plunged into a hot, blue day and the light momentarily blinded me. A few moments later, when I could see again, I noticed there was a bar right across the street from where I’d exited. Unfortunately, the place was packed with fellow con-goers having lunch. I had a hangover from the dinosaur cocktail party the night before, and I needed a drink. Before I moved to Jersey, I’d lived in Philly for a while. I was almost certain that there was a little place called Honey’s a few blocks east and then one south.

  I found it wedged into the middle of a block of grimy storefronts. It was dark inside and air-conditioned, cool relief from the August day. The walls were covered in cheap wood paneling and the floor was a black-and-white checkerboard that must have been laid back in the thirties. There were a few tables and chairs, and the bar was covered in the same splintered wood paneling. There was no mirror behind it or decoration, just rows of bottles of cheap liquor. I took a seat and the young woman behind the bar told me she had forty-ounce Colt 45s as well as the hard stuff. I ordered one. She gave me a forty and a glass.

  Other than the two of us, the place was empty. She looked to be in her early twenties, tall and thin, her hair shaved into a crew cut. The blue-gray T-shirt she wore bore the words Cannibal Ox and The Cold Vein and carried an image of what could have been astronauts with guns. She was busy, wiping things down with a wet rag, adjusting the placement of the bottles, drying glasses.