A Natural History of Hell: Stories (6 page)

“Why’s this lady live all the way out here by herself?” asked Alice, slow pedaling beside me.

“I don’t know too much about her, but she had a husband who either died or ran off.”

“Probably ran off,” said Alice.

“Ma says Mrs. Oftshaw’s from some other country.”

“Which one?”

“From across an ocean.”

I didn’t say anything for a while, and Alice asked me, “Is that all you know?”

“Oh, you must
’
ve seen her. She’s got a smoking hog name of Jundle.”

We laughed, and when I focused back on the road, I spotted Pretty Please, way up ahead, making for the tree line.

Alice no doubt saw it before I did and had taken off, pumping her legs furiously. I worked to catch up with her. Every once in a while, Pretty would get what we called “the urge.” Sometimes he just bolted away. It didn’t happen often, maybe once every couple weeks. This time he was really moving at a clip, and we both saw him reach the boundary of the woods and slip inside. We left the road and cut across the short field that bordered the tree line. Riding our bikes amidst the trees was slowing us down, so we dropped them and went forward on foot. Alice’s voice could be ear-splitting, and she used it every few steps. “Pretty, Pretty, Pretty, Please,” she called.

She grew more frantic the farther we went. “I can’t lose him,” she said to me.

I tried to tell her he’d turn up, but every time I spoke those words, she shook her head and walked faster. By the time I had to take her hand to calm her down, we’d come to the top of a rise. We stood at the crown of the hill and looked down through the trunks of cedar pine and birch trees at a glittering pond. Sitting at the water’s edge was Pretty Please, investigating something in the sand. At the sight of him, Alice sighed and turned in toward me. I put my arm around her and froze. She shrugged me off and took a seat a few feet down the incline. I followed and sat next to her.

“I want to ask that brother of yours, pretty please to not run off like that anymore.”

“My old ma, not your ma, told me once that Pretty was a bag of flesh filled with wind.” She took a couple breaths, staring down at her brother. “My Ma was a mean bitch.”

When she said that, we both broke out laughing. That one knocked me over. When I sat back up I took her hand in mine again. She didn’t make like she noticed. We sat there quiet, taking in the smell of the cedar pines and the sound of goldfinches. The glitter on the water was diamonds and stars. She turned to look into my eyes and said, “We should kiss.”

At the moment, I couldn’t think of one good reason not to. So we did. And before long she stuck her tongue in my mouth and then we were rolling on the ground rubbing each other up. So much rubbing—we had “the urge”—I thought the two of us would be erased. We reached a point where I had my hand up her shirt, and she had just grabbed my pecker down my pants, when out of the blue, she gets suddenly still, turns her head, and yells, “Pretty Please.” In a heartbeat she was off the ground, fixing her clothes. Pretty was gone, and it was the only time I ever wished him ill.

We ran through the woods, toward the base of the mountain, and the undergrowth grew more tangled and difficult to manage. We’d follow a natural path through the trees and then eventually be stopped by a wall of thorn bushes and turn back to find another way forward. Alice was frantic again, and I had to keep her a few times from trying to find passage through the heart of one of those bushes that would rip her to shreds. Eventually we came to a clearing in the shade of the mountain. It was, by then, late afternoon, but dark as twilight where we stood. I was happy just to have some open ground before us.

Alice noticed it first. The place was so covered in ivy and some other trailing vine I didn’t recognize it as a house. Only when she pointed to where lamplight glowed through a small window, one mere corner of its glass not covered by leaves, did I see it. Then I noticed that there was smoke issuing from inside through the metal chimney of a stove. The house wasn’t huge but it had two floors and seemed out of place in the woods—more like a home you might find in a big town. It had a slate roof, and you could make out the fancy wood carvings they call gingerbread beneath the ivy.

“Should we do some spying?” I asked Alice in a whisper.

I know she was thinking about Pretty ’cause she hesitated for a second. “Twenty cents is twenty cents,” she said. “We’ll just peek in the window and see what we see. Then we gotta get. Whatever we see, we’ll tell the minister.”

“What if it ain’t much?”

“We’ll make something up like good deputy angels.”

“Stay quiet,” I said to her and tried to take her hand. She pushed me away.

“I can do this myself,” she said, and we proceeded side by side.

As we approached the back of the house we heard noises coming out from inside. I realized the back door was slightly ajar. The closer we got, the smaller the steps we took until we were only inching along a little at a time. I felt cold in my gut, slightly dizzy, and my legs felt weighed down like in those dreams where you need to run but can’t. Alice was breathing quickly, her eyes focused on the light coming through the sliver of an entrance.

Sitting on a tree stump, right outside the back door, there was a little painted box with a design like fancy wallpaper. Alice lifted it quickly, tipped the lid up, and peered inside. She slipped it into her pocket. “That
’
s thievery,” I whispered. She shhh
’
d me and showed me the back of her hand as if getting ready to smack me.

No less than a breath later, the door suddenly flew open and there stood old lady Oftshaw without her tunnel scarf, her pale face and wild hair unhidden. She was lit from behind, and the glow made her seem some kind of spirit. I stopped dead in my tracks and froze. Alice grabbed my hand and spun us around. She started to yell “Run,” I think, but whatever the word was it vanished, ’cause standing right in our path was Jundle. Alice took a step, and the hog made a noise from deep inside his huge body that sounded like the earth grunting. He came at us, plodding slowly, and we turned and walked toward Mrs. Oftshaw. I couldn’t get any spit in my mouth, and my legs were like two dead fish.

“Come in, children,” said the old lady, and she stepped back and held open the door for us. We stepped into her kitchen, first Alice and then me. We stood right next to each other and kept some distance between us and Mrs. Oftshaw. She let the door go, and it slammed shut, making us start. I don’t know how, but I was able to look up at her face. I’d never seen it clearly before. In that moment, I saw that she wasn’t a homely old woman but just an old woman.

“You kids here to spy on me?” she asked and smiled in a way that made me scared.

I was all set to spill the beans, but before I could open my mouth, Alice stepped forward and said, “We brought my brother out to the pond in the woods, but we lost him. Can you help us find him?”

The old lady said, “He’s not lost.”

“We really don’t know where he is, and I have to find him.” Alice said.

“He’s not lost, child. He’s on an expedition.”

“Where is he?” I asked.

“He’s travelling far,” she said. “But I can help you. I’ll send Cynara, the world’s oldest heifer, after him. She’ll bring him home.” She went to the door, opened it, and whistled. With her hand, she motioned for us to come and join her by the entrance. In a few moments, Jundle slowly came waddling into sight. He stood in front of us, a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, smoke issuing in pigtails.

“Take Cynara and go and fetch the Pretty boy.”

Jundle dropped a little pile of turds, grumbled, and trotted off.

“Done and done,” said the old lady. “Now let me make you kids a snack.”

She led us into her house, through the kitchen and into the parlor, all lace doilies and puffy furniture in pea green. There was a small chandelier above, its pendants glinting, and below a braided rug in blue and silver.

“You can sit on the love seat,” she said and pointed at a small couch. “I
’
ll be right back. Gon fetch you some of my special cookies.”

When she left the room, we saw it. It had been sitting behind her on a shiny wooden pedestal. No, not a radio, but a big clear glass ball with a man
’
s head floating in it. I jumped at the sight and Alice whispered, “What?” And “what” was right—a head with wavy black hair, waving in the water, a black beard and mustache, eyes shut and mouth part way open to show a few teeth. At the bottom of the glass ball there was sand and a little hermit crab scuttling around in it. Tiny starfish were suspended around the head.

Mrs. Oftshaw suddenly appeared with a tray full of cookies and two glasses of what looked like yellow milk. “Have a treat,” she said and laid it down on the little table in front of us. She backed away, and said, “Go ahead.”

The cookies were fat and misshapen, the color of eggplant, with shreds of something sticking out all over. Neither of us made a move for them. She sat down in the armchair next to the pedestal. “I see you
’
ve met Captain Gruthwal,” she said and pointed to the floating head.

We nodded.

“Have a cookie, and we
’
ll wake him up.”

Alice leaned over first and took one of the lumpy “treats.” I followed her lead. The thing was soggy as a turd and smelled like what Pa used to pull out of the gutters in spring. We bit into them at the same time, like biting into a clod of dirt, but the taste was better than sweet and made me shiver. One bite and you wanted another till the thing was gone. We each ate two more, and every time one of us would slip one off the tray, the old lady nodded and said, “That
’
s right. That
’
s right.”

After the third, we sat back. I don
’
t know about Alice but my head was spinning a little and I felt kind of good all over. I looked at her and she smiled at me, lids half closed. “Drink your peach milk,” said Mrs. Oftshaw. It seemed like a good idea, so I did and so did Alice. I can
’
t recall what the peach milk tasted like, whether peaches or something else. We put the empty glasses on the tray, and the old lady turned to face the glass globe beside her.

“Wake up, Captain Gruthwal,” she said. “Wake up.”

I swear, Alice screamed louder than me when the eyes of the floating head opened and stared at us. “Captain,” said Mrs. Oftshaw. “These children want to know about the big-headed boy.”

The floating face grimaced, as if annoyed at being awoken. Its eyes shifted toward the old lady and then rolled up, showing only white. The captain
’
s mouth opened wider and then wider, and I thought he would scream in the water. We waited for a torrent of bubbles and the muffled sound, but instead something showed itself from within the dark cavern. It was a pale knob, like a diseased tongue but much larger. It filled the rim of his lips and continued to squeeze itself out from inside him. Two tentacles emerged and then more. “
An octopus,
” I said and gagged.

“Ugghh,” said Alice and turned her face from the sight.

“Watch it, child,” said Mrs. Oftshaw. “Watch it good. The captain
’
s gonna show us something.”

I felt Alice’s hand on my shoulder, as the octopus, now free, swam, pulsing its tentacles in circles around the floating head. As the pale sac of life swept in orbit around the captain, its ink oozed out of it in black plumes. Alice’s grip tightened as the face and everything else inside the globe was slowly obscured.

“Like a dream,” said Mrs. Oftshaw, and out of the murk came an image of Pretty Please walking along the side of the road in the moonlight.

“Pretty,” yelled Alice, and her brother turned his potato head and glanced over his shoulder. She yelled again, “Come back,” but the ink was already swirling the image away to reveal a different scene of Jundle riding atop a sorry old cow all skin and bones, the way a person might, straddling its back. They moved along at a snail
’
s pace, the hog strumming the steel strings of a little guitar and grunting softly.

More swirling of the ink and image and then we were back to Pretty and saw him standing next to a one-story house, not much more than a shack. He was peering in a window with the moonlight shining over his shoulder. Through the dirty glass and the shadows, I saw two people sleeping in a bed: a man and a woman.

“That
’
s my ma,” said Alice and stood up.

“Very good, child,” said Mrs. Oftshaw.

“What
’
s that in Pretty
’
s hand?” I asked, noticing something glint in the moonlight. I squinted and saw it was an open straight razor, the one Pa had left behind in the bathroom cabinet. “Either Pretty
’
s ’bout to do some shavin’ or he
’
s possessed by a bad idea,” I said.

Alice noticed the razor and stepped toward the globe. “No, Pretty,” she said. Her hands, fingers spread wide, reached for the glass.

Just then he lifted the blade and the man in the bed next to Alice
’
s ma, my pa, opened his eyes and witnessed the scene at the window. We saw him shake his head, look again, and heard, muffled by the window glass, him yell, “Mattie, your nitwit kid
’
s outside and he
’
s totin
’
a cutthroat.”

“What?” said Mrs. Adler, and she woke and looked and shook her head too. “Christ, it
’
s him. How can it be?”

“It
’s bewitchment,
” said Pa. “I
’
m gonna take care of this right now.” He stood up, naked, in the further shadows behind the bed. I lost sight of him for a moment, and then he appeared again in the moonlight, holding his 22 rifle. He left the room.

“Ya can
’
t shoot him,” called Mrs. Adler.

As the front door to the little house creaked open, we could hear Pa yell back, “Self-defense.”

Alice screamed, “No!” and lunged at the globe. She tripped, hit the pedestal, and although Mrs. Oftshaw moved to catch either her or Captain Gruthwal, she caught neither. The globe hit the floor and exploded into stars of glass as the ink seeped into the parlor. There was more blackness in that glass bubble than you could have guessed. Darkness filled the room by the time I
’
d grabbed Alice
’
s hand and was helping her off the floor. I couldn
’
t see a damn thing, but I held on tight to my sort of sister and she held on to me until the moonlight shone.

We were standing in the clearing of pines where the shack was. Pretty was walking around the side of the place, obviously heading for the front door, while Pa, naked as a jaybird, his pecker flopping, the 22 raised and aimed, was heading for the side. At the corner they met face-to-face.

“Say yer prayers, tater face,” said Pa, and I yelled out for him not to shoot.

He turned quick and saw me and Alice standing there, and his eyes bugged. “Oh,” he said, and it was like he lost his breath for a second. It was the first time I seen him scared.

“The whole fuckin’ family,” he said. “
No problem, I’
ll plug all you crumb snatchers at once.” Mrs. Adler was at the window just plain screaming, not even saying anything.