Tim Pratt: Sympathy for the Devil

I didn’t have any time to think about it because B.C. dropped his Happy Meal and came at me. I swung the bat at his head. Lucky for him, he was able to turn a bit at the last second so instead of hitting a home run I only knocked him flat.

The clang of metal-on-head sounded like a cooking pot dropped on concrete. I knew I hadn’t killed him because he was already dead, but also because he was twitching and frothing up ugly stuff out at the mouth. I stood over him a few seconds to see if he’d get up again. But most of him was on vacation and what wasn’t, was busy jerking around.

So I swung that fine silver bat again, this time through one of the large windows into what I assumed was the Dickey living room. After the first crash of glass, I knocked out some slivers still stuck in the window frame and after a last glance at him just to be sure, I climbed in.

I’ve never been to a jungle. I’ve never been most places but that’s okay because I don’t speak other languages and the idea of a passport makes me nervous. But as soon as I put both feet down inside the Dickey’s house I was hit by a wet tropical heat the likes of which I’d never experienced. Everything around me was like this 3-D green. A green so strong it almost hurt my eyes. When I took a step forward, I was hit in the face by some kind of nasty thick vine that was a whole new scare in itself. When I managed to push that out of the way I tried to get my bearings looking left and right but all I saw was green everything and sounds that screamed and screeched and cawed and pretty much made me deaf. I was in a jungle somehow and as that sunk into my brain I somehow remembered a line from school that just popped up out of nowhere but said it all-the forest primeval.

Mel Shaveetz had said they got to choose a décor when they came back to Earth. So of course a caveman would want one exactly like where he had been living. In the forest primeval. The Earth a million years ago or fifty thousand or whatever.

Instead of Eric Dickey’s living room, I was back on Earth a zillion years ago, standing like a rabbit frozen in the headlights. And there were no walls in this “décor,” it wasn’t limited to a few closed-in rooms like Rick’s Bar. Everywhere I looked was jungle that went out in every direction with no end in sight. This wasn’t a room-this was forever. Right about then the next words came to my mind.

“ Jurassic Park,” I said out loud but couldn’t hear very well for all the screeching going on around me.

“Dinosaurs!” Monsters with teeth as big as the baseball bat I still held. Walking houses with serious appetites for anything fleshy. I had to get out of here. In a panic I turned around, planning to go right back through the window into my world. But there was no window. Only trees and vines and green and noise.

Eventually my brain stopped its own screeching in fear. And although I was scared shitless of what might come stomping out of the trees at any minute, I was losing control so fast that there was only one thing left to do-close my eyes. A trick that almost always worked for me when things got so bad I could feel life unraveling. Close my eyes and say, “I am driving my life. I am steering this car. I CONTROL THINGS.”

I started the “I am-” but it was drowned out by the terrible new sound of something very big-and near-coming my way through the jungle. THUMP THUMP THUMP. It was running! As huge as it sounded in the not-so-far distance, the speed of its footsteps said it was running at me. It was my turn to be lunch.

“What are the six questions?”

How did I hear that? The voice had spoken calmly and in no hurry. But I heard it clearly above everything else. What six questions? Who is this? Were they the last words I’d ever hear? WAS IT GOD?

“No, Mr. Gallatin, it’s Beeflow. What are the six questions?”

Thump Thump Thump. I heard bushes crashing, birds crying out like they do when they’re disturbed or attacked. This monster was closer, it was almost here.

“WHAT ARE THE SIX QUESTIONS?”

“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about! Get me out of here!”

And then the biggest shock of all-I heard him sigh! A disappointed sigh. The sigh of a teacher when you’ve answered a question wrong in class.

“All right, I’ll help you this one time but not again. Name one experience from your past you wish you could repeat. That is the third question.”

“Are you nuts? Now? The thing’s coming! Get me out of here!”

“Then answer the question, and quickly.”

“An experience I want to repeat? I don’t know. Jeez, I don’t know. Help me, willya?” My voice sounded like one of the scared birds up in the trees.

“No, help yourself-answer that question.”

And when he said that, an answer came so clear and calm to my mind that I was surprised I hadn’t known it immediately. “I wish I could have sex again for the first time with Rae. That was the best night of my life.”

“Very very good. Now look in your hand.”

I looked, even though the bushes nearby rustled hard which meant whatever monster was coming had arrived. Instead of the silver baseball bat, I held a black metal cylinder about two feet long. The dinosaur burst out at me like a rocket with legs. Its teeth were even bigger than I had thought they’d be. Its open mouth looked ten feet wide. I didn’t even have a chance to raise the cylinder up to do whatever it might do to fight off the thing. Because it was there.

And then gone.

That’s right-it whizzed right by me. Whatever kind of prehistoric piece of shit it was, the creature ran by and went crashing on into the jungle behind me. It didn’t even stop to have a look or say hello. Not that I was disappointed. I stood there looking after it and then I looked at the black cylinder in my hand, trying to figure out how it played into all this. No answer came. It was just this metal thing that a while before had been a baseball bat.

I stood there listening while Tyrannosaurus-whatever galloped farther away into the jungle. And then it became quiet around me, or as quiet as a place like that is ever going to be. It took me some more time to detox from the scare that was still sending fireballs of adrenaline to all corners of my body. I stood a while longer and then sort of collapsed on the ground in a heap, dropping the cylinder as I did.

I looked at it and wondered what kind of magic had changed it from a baseball bat into this without my ever having felt it. I wondered if it had somehow saved me from being eaten. Or had answering Beeflow’s question been the reason? What were the six questions he was talking about? What was this cylinder lying on the ground a foot away? How was I going to get out of the forest primeval and back to my world?

“Don’t turn around.”

I didn’t but sure was tempted. It was Beeflow again. “Why can’t I look at you?”

“Because I told you before, Mr. Gallatin, I am everything ugly about you. I’m your shit in the toilet, the dark side of your moon, the worst lies you’ve told, the hurt you dropped on others. I am everything bad about you and if you want to look that square in the face then go ahead. But I warn you, looking your own evil in the eye is as bad as looking at Medusa. It will wreck you, turn part of you into stone.”

“And you say you’re me?”

“Only in part. I’ve chosen to take all that’s bad in you for the time being so you can face challenges other than your own.”

“Are you, uh, human?”

“I was once, but am no longer. Years ago I had a vision and it changed me forever.”

“What kind of vision?”

“You’re looking at it now.”

I happened to be looking at the cylinder next to me. “That thing? The baseball bat?”

“Yes. I was in a flea market in London and on a table amongst other junk was a brass object. I worked as a travel agent but my great hobbies were inventing and the history of tools. So I was well versed in the function of all sorts of machinery, archaic tools, and the like. I was no newcomer to obscure gadgets. But for the life of me I could not understand what purpose this gizmo served. Written on the side of it in thick letters were the words ‘Heidelberg Cylinder.’ I picked it up and turned it over and over in my hands but its purpose still baffled me. I was perplexed and fascinated, so I paid three pounds and put it in my pocket.