Daryl Gregory: The Devil's Alphabet

© 2009

Many people helped make the book you’re holding (or viewing, or listening to) and I owe them my sincere thanks. Chris Schluep, with a deft hand on the editorial stick, guided this book the final miles over the chilly Hudson. Many more people at Del Rey worked to get these words in front of you, including some-Fleetwood Robbins (who acquired this book when its title was Work to be Named Later) , and SueMoe! (one word, with exclamation mark)-who’ve moved on and are greatly missed. Deanna Hoak signed up for a second tour of copyediting. And David Bowie-well, he has no idea how much he helped me write this thing.

My gratitude goes as well to the early readers: Charles Coleman Finlay, Sarah Kelly, Cathrynne M. Valente, and the rest of the Blue Heaven workshop crew who critiqued the first draft; Heather Lindsley, who fine-tuned the second; and Kathy Bieschke, Gary Delafield, and Elizabeth Delafield, who marked up hundreds of pages in between. Emma and Ian Gregory read none of it, but informed all of it.

And to all the Gregorys, Barbaras, Meyers, Riddles, and Heatons, the multitude of aunts, uncles, and cousins-so many cousins!-scattered over the Smokies: thanks for feeding your Yankee relation every time he came to town. Even more than the bizarre residents of Switchcreek, the lonely boy in this book is a creature of pure imagination.

PAX KNEW HE was almost to Switchcreek when he saw his first argo.

The gray-skinned man was hunched over the engine of a decrepit, roofless pickup truck stalled hood-up at the side of the road. He straightened as Pax’s car approached, unfolding like an extension ladder. Ten or eleven feet tall, angular as a dead tree, skin the mottled gray of weathered concrete. No shirt, just overalls that came down to his bony knees. He squinted at Pax’s windshield.

Jesus, Pax thought. He’d forgotten how big they were.

He didn’t recognize the argo, but that didn’t mean much, for a lot of reasons. He might even be a cousin. The neighborly thing would be to pull over and ask the man if he needed help. But Pax was running late, so late. He fixed his eyes on the road outside his windshield, pretending not to see the man, and blew past without touching his brakes. The old Ford Tempo shuddered beneath him as he took the next curve.

The two-lane highway snaked through dense walls of green, the trees leaning into the road. He’d been gone for eleven years, almost twelve. After so long in the north everything seemed too lush, too overgrown. Subtropical. Turn your back and the plants and insects would overrun everything.

His stomach burned from too much coffee, too little food, and the queasy certainty that he was making a mistake. The call had come three days ago, Deke’s rumbling voice on his cell phone’s voice mail: Jo Lynn was dead. The funeral was on Saturday morning. Just thought you’d want to know.

Pax deleted the message but spent the rest of the week listening to it replay in his head. Dreading a follow-up call. Then 2 a.m. Saturday morning, when it was too late to make the service-too late unless he drove nonstop and the Ford’s engine refrained from throwing a rod-he tossed some clothes into a suitcase and drove south out of Chicago at 85 mph.

His father used to yell at him, Paxton Abel Martin, you’d be late for your own funeral! It was Jo who told him not to worry about it, that everybody was late for their own funeral. Pax didn’t get the joke until she explained it to him. Jo was the clever one, the verbal one.

At the old town line there was a freshly painted sign: WELCOME TO SWITCHCREEK, TN. POPULATION 815. The barbed wire fence that used to mark the border was gone. The cement barriers had been pushed to the roadside. But the little guard shack still stood beside the road like an outhouse, abandoned and drowning in kudzu.

The way ahead led into what passed for Switchcreek’s downtown, but there was a shortcut to where he was going, if he could find it. He crested the hill, scanning the foliage to his right, and still almost missed it. He braked hard and turned in to a narrow gravel drive that vanished into the trees. The wheels jounced over potholes and ruts, forcing him to slow down.

The road forked and he turned left automatically, knowing the way even though yesterday he wouldn’t have been able to describe this road to anyone. He passed a half-burned barn, then a trailer that had been boarded up since he was kid, then the rusted carcass of a ’63 Falcon he and Deke had used for target practice with their.22s. Each object seemed strange, then abruptly familiar, then hopelessly strange again-shifting and shifty.

The road came out of the trees at the top of a hill. He braked to a stop, put the car in park. The engine threatened to die, then fell into an unsteady idle.

A few hundred yards below lay the cemetery, the red brick church, and the gravel parking lot half-full of cars. Satellite trucks from two different television stations were there. In the cemetery, the funeral was already in progress.

Pax leaned forward and folded his arms atop the steering wheel, letting the struggling air conditioner blow into his damp ribs. About fifty people sat or stood around a pearl-gray casket. Most were betas, bald, dark-red heads gleaming like river stones. The few men wore dark suits, the women long dresses. Some of the women had covered their heads with white scarves. A surprising number of them seemed to be pregnant.

An argo couple stood at the rear of the group, towering over the other mourners. The woman’s broad shoulders and narrow hips made a V of her pale green dress. The man beside her was a head shorter and skinny as a ladder. He wore a plain blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up his chalky forearms. Deke looked exactly as Pax remembered him.

The people who were seated rose to their feet. They began to sing.

Pax turned off the car and rolled down the window. Some of the voices were high and flutelike, but the bass rumble, he knew, was provided by the booming chests of the two argos. The melody was difficult to catch at first, but then he recognized the hymn “Just As I Am.” He knew the words by heart. It was an altar-call song, a slow weeper that struck especially hard for people who’d come through the Changes. Leading them through the song, her brick red face tilted to the sky, was a beta woman in a long skirt, a flowing white blouse, and a colorful vest. The pastor, Pax guessed, though it was odd to think of a woman pastor at this church. It was odd to think of anyone but his father in the pulpit.

When the song ended the woman said a few words that Pax couldn’t catch, and then the group began to walk toward the back door of the church. As the rows cleared, two figures remained seated in front of the casket: two bald girls in dark dresses. Some of the mourners touched the girls’ shoulders and moved on.

Those had to be the twins. Jo’s daughters. He’d known he’d see them here, had braced for it, but even so he wasn’t ready. He was grateful for this chance to see them first from a distance.

A bald beta man in a dark blue suit squatted down between the girls, and after a brief exchange took their hands in his. They stood and he led them to the church entrance. The argo couple hung back. They bent their heads together, and then the woman went inside alone, ducking to make it through the entrance. Deke glanced up to where Paxton’s car sat on the hill.