Emerald Hell (13 page)

 
CHAPTER 17

—

They had stobbed to the far side of the dark lake and were working their way around inlets too shallow for the pole. It had rained briefly but the black clouds had quickly rushed across the sky as if with great intent. Deeter had his hands on the oars, careful of running atop gator ground and sinkholes. Duffy had just torn off a wad of chaw and was offering it to his brother when Jester let out a cry like a dying loon and both Ferris boys practically jumped out of the boat.

Jester shot straight up in his seat, standing there with his head thrown back and eyes wide, crying up to the sky the way their ma had when they'd used the ax handles to beat her to death. Ma with her mouth open and hissing all manner of vile words right up to her unholy departure. Brother Jester was now looking the same way with his muscles locked, his top lip skinned back to bare his teeth.

Deeter's first thought was that this was their chance to be free of the damn crazy preacher. If the lake had been a little deeper then who knows, maybe he would've run forward and cracked Jester across the head with an oar and thrown him from the skiff.

As things were though, he was much too afraid to make any kind of move except nervously hop from foot to foot, which caused the boat to rock wildly and froth the silt beneath them.

Duffy knew that his brother's gesturing meant Deeter was hesitating on some kind of stupid thought. He reached out to put a hand on Deeter's shoulder to calm him some. As he did, an explosion deep in the jungle blew timber and scrub high up across their line of sight. The breeze rose through the cypress and a ghastly, putrid smell wafted toward them.

“Lord almighty,” Duffy said, “boiled radishes and cabbage!”

“You reckon one of them old stills back in the woods done blown up?” Deeter asked.

“Don't smell like it none.”

Jester's demented howl grew louder. The Ferris boys watched him, unsure of what to do.

With sparks of energy drifting from Brother Jester's eyes and mouth and fingertips, and skipping across the blackwater, the preacher floated a few inches out of the skiff. His heels caught on the slats of the seat for a moment and then struck the gunwales as he climbed into the air with his teeth electrified.

Deeter whispered, “The devil is with us this day. He done paying us a mighty long visit.”

“Mayhap you're right,” Duffy said, his head cocked, almost entranced by the scene. “But we always known it was comin'.”

“I reckon, but it don't salve my heart none.”

“Salvin' hearts is the last thing on the devil's mind, I s'pect.”

The strange lightning played havoc across the marsh prairies ahead. The swamp was smoking now. A whitish-gray haze crawled over everything.

Both Ferris boys covered their noses and mouths, the stink of death heavy in the air. The foggy fumes crept closer and reached across the bow of the skiff. Deeter and Duffy backed into one another and held there unmoving. They'd dumped quite a few old boys in the mud from time to time, but neither had ever smelled anything like this. Meanwhile, Brother Jester just kept hanging there above the boat, looking all prophetized and full of apocalyptic vision.

“Should we just wait?” Deeter asked. “I'm really hungering.”

“How can you eat with that hell-broth reek all over the marsh?”

“I'm a little partial to boiled radishes myself.”

Brother Jester's mangled voice came from some endless well inside him. And yet, somehow, it also sounded as though that ruination came from far off in several directions as the preacher began to speak. “
The mother dies without bearing any children. The seeds never taking root, the pollen too strange for the bitter soil. What grace is this? Where is the beauty promised by the land?
”

“What's he sayin' about his mama?” Deeter asked.

“I figure it ain't his own mama he talkin' about.”

“He gonna come back down in the boat or he just gonna hover there like a wasp all day long? I don't see why we can't have no fritters and beans while we waitin'.”

“Let's give him whatever time he needs,” Duffy said. “I don't want him trackin' behind us if we go on our way. Man like that, he don't forget those that cross him.”

“I remember his grievous touch, but I don't like bein' no man's drudge, 'specially if he don't even allow me to have no lunch when it's past midday. We got any jerky and biscuits left?”

“Forget that. Ain't much more to this venture so long as we find them girls today and attend them fellas. We be home by sunset.”

“Iffun Preacher ever come on down from the mid-air.”

“The mother burns and bubbles and boils.”
Jester went on.
“She who was alone and without any friend. She who did nothing except give. Give to the prey and give to the ground and water. There was love and kindness. And now only fire and splinter and ash. Whoever heard, whoever listens to the heartfelt plea, blight those that eradicate me. Do unto them as they have done. Burn them. Burn the children.”

With that Brother Jester's head slumped and he dropped back into the boat, the sparking display of power dwindling and going out. He landed so hard that the boat tipped hard to one side, and the twelve-gauge pump sloshed overboard. Deeter whispered, “Why that no good—”

“Hush,” Duffy told him. “We still got Plume Wallace's weapon.”

“A damn double-barrel intead of a pump.”

“I'll get you a new one fer yer birthday.”

“You will?”

“Iffun we live to see the day.”

Jester sat there in the stern, his eyes full of terrible thoughts. The Ferris boys waited. They chawed their chaw and spit into the water. Deeter's stomach rumbled. The smoke drifted out of the deep brush and across the waterways.

Shadows wreathed Jester, within and without, his body and soul, and they told him how the destructive hand of his hellish enemy had murdered a strange and unique being out in the greenery.

Its death throes continued to send harrowing shockwaves through the mystical currents that Jester was privy to. Its dying petitions assailed and besieged him. Ivory as his skin was, it paled further.

He had not felt such a strong sense of sorrow and faithlessness since his own death.

His archangel shadows offered bits of knowledge about the great mother, now dead, and the swamp was more desolate for it. He was mournful that they had not been faster today. The murder might have been averted, the mother saved, the lonely men attended and set free upon the backs of seraphim.

“You all right, Preacher?” Duffy ventured. “What was all that caterwaulin' about?”

“Row us out of here.”

Deeter sat and took the oars again. “Iffun you say.” He kept to the same course, which would lead to the tussocks and the mired shore where all the smoke seemed to come from.

“No,” Jester said. “Not that way. Take the other inlet.” Pointing with a claw-like finger. “There, you see.”

“Why that one?” Duffy said. “It ain't nothin' much but a creek.”

Jester looked at him. “It is where we wish to go.”

“Well, that'll learn me for ponderin' on a foolish question.”

Deeter rowed them over the shallows and into a new channel that brought the skiff to thinner tracks of tattered pine. Timber wolves prowled in the lightwood, their eyes anxious in the underbrush. Duffy took to stobbing again and Deeter angrily picked up the double-barrel shotgun. They might run aground on a sandbar and the wolves, though fearing man, might still take a run at them.

The emerald thickness around them fell away as they passed more hummocks. Bull gators in the distance roared and tore up the stillness of the late afternoon.

“It brings us to the women,” Jester said, grinning. “To my Sarah. And her child.”

Duffy worked the stobpole, easing it free from jetsam and occasional logjam. “And what we gonna do when we get there, Preacher, if you don't mind me askin'?”

“You'll do as you're intended to do.”

Deeter spit some chaw. “And for me and my brother, those intentions in this case might be what . . . ?”

“Well . . . murder, Deeter,” Jester the walking darkness said, his teeth burning. “Whatever else are you good for except murder?”

 
CHAPTER 18

—

The ill children led Hellboy and Lament through the scrub, hopefully toward the swamp village. The pumpkin-headed kid, the kid with eyes like an insect, the beautiful girl without bones in her legs who rode on Lament's shoulders, the dwarf with the big feet, the really weird conjoined twins who had two legs, two arms, and two heads, and Fishboy Lenny.

It made for a heck of a troupe, all of them moving through the marshy woodland together like some bizarre grade-school field trip. The oddest part of the whole situation was perhaps how familiar and natural this course felt to Hellboy, as if it had always been meant for him to be here.

Despite their appearance the children acted like you'd expect any happy children to behave. They chased each other through the cabbage palms and slough, their laughter echoing across the green. They bumped their heads and scuffed their knees and cried, then shake it off and forget about it.

They were so used to the semi-solid, soft ground that they hardly threw any mud as they went by. They moved with ease through the runty bay bushes and matted catclaw thickets. They slithered and hopped, bounded and rollicked, and kept up a steady stream of patter in what sounded like a half-dozen different languages. Granny Lewt's ears weren't helping him at all with understanding any of them, and he was wondering if the magic might be wearing off a little by now.

Luckily Fishboy Lenny didn't happen to look like a catfish. Hellboy was thankful for small graces, thinking, Jesus, no more catfish for the time being, all right? The kid just looked like your
average
fish, with flippers instead of hands, two slashes of nostrils where a nose ought to be, and a mouth that was hardly more than a small hole through which he made lots of happy noises. The boy also had vestigial gills just under his shrunken ears.

Fishboy Lenny's name was the only one he'd managed to catch, although all the kids had introduced themselves. But Lenny, he just swept up through the mud and said, “Fweep mwah fsshhh. Lenny.” So there it was.

Every now and again one of the kids would turn back to Hellboy and playfully grab his hand, trying to get him to move along a little faster.

But he didn't feel all that hot to trot at the moment and Lament looked even worse. The hillbilly's hair was singed, his wounds still bled a bit, and he had welts across his face and burns on his arms and hands. None of it slowed him up much though, and he pulled out his mouth-harp and started to play a tune.

The girl on Lament's shoulders knew the song and began to sing, keeping time by tapping at his chest with her soft unformed feet. Soon the rest of the children joined in on the lilting melody. Hellboy didn't understand the words at all.

When Lament finished and put his mouth-harp back in his pocket, the girl gestured to be let down. Hellboy lifted her off Lament's back and put her on the ground, where she swung herself along wriggling and using her arms as crutches. Soon the pumpkin-headed kid and the kid with insectoid eyes each gripped one of her hands and carried her between them.

Lament stopped and threw a shoulder against a hurrah bush, breathing sharply. Hellboy asked him, “You need a rest?”

“I could use hot meal,” Lament said, “a bubblebath, a lengthy foot massage, a long drink of moon, some dry long johns, and a warm downy bed, but even without them kind privileges I s'pect I'll survive.” He turned and smiled. “How you holdin' up, son? Wishin' you'd never had no truck with us southern folk?”

“I've had a lot of truck with southern folk before,” Hellboy told him, “but none of that trucking ever turned out quite like this.”

“Make your memoirs interesting though.”

They trudged on. They'd already walked at least a couple of miles, and Hellboy kept wondering about the kids' parents, if they'd be worried. They had to be, right? If all the noise and fire and smoke hadn't drawn them out to the Mother Tree, there still would've been a chance they'd wound up on gator ground or in some other kind of trouble. Lost in the woods, attacked by wolves, bitten by snakes. He mulled and started to brood a touch.

Lament picked up on it right away. “What's the matter with you?”

“What are they doing out so far from home?”

“What do you mean? This is home. They were just playin'.”

“What were they doing out there by the flats?”

“They heard tell that some swamp men got drawn away from their homes and decided to take a looksee for themselves. No child can resist a good mystery.”

“They could've been hurt.”

Nodding, Lament said, “Coulda been killed. No different than a city child walkin' home from school, I reckon.”

“I'm not so sure about that.”

But of course he was. He'd been in the Syrian desert with kids only a little older than these who'd been his contacts and guides. He'd seen children playing in bombed out cars in Beirut. He'd once visited a monastery in China and met with a ten-year-old Buddhist abbot whose only purpose in life, along with his brotherhood, was to recite one hundred million prayers to hold back the undoing of all creation. He'd met a lot of kids who had been put into the thick of things.

“What's really on your mind, son?” Lament asked.

Good question. Hellboy glanced at the kids and could almost see how it would be if they ever decided to leave their swamp village. The prejudices they'd face. The pain of not fitting in. Even if you didn't want to fit in, even if nobody else needed you to fit in with them. The kids were oblivious now, but they wouldn't always be. It struck him deep, knowing what it would be like for them eventually.

Hellboy hissed something and Lament said, “What's that?”

“How's this happen?” Hellboy repeated. “How does something like this happen?”

“How's what happen?”

“
This
.”

With a little heat in his voice, Lament said, “You think you got the bloom on strange births?”

“I didn't say that.”

“No, you didn't. The Lord don't differentiate between the unsightly and the adorable. We're all born under Heaven. We're all God's children, every one of us, you never heard that before?”

“I've heard it,” Hellboy said, his hooves sinking deep in the muck, and thinking Lament might just be a little on the stupid side after all. “Never figured it applied to me.”

“Oh, you're just feelin' a touch of melancholia. That's natural enough after the day we've had, for a man far from home. The world is full of odd beauty. I already done told you that, iffun you recall. No different here than anywhere.” They marched along and, after a while, Lament went on. “I'm sorry, son, I shouldn't have snapped at you like that. How's this happen? You can have your pick of answers. There's plenty of them. Maybe none are true or maybe all of 'em are.”

“I wasn't really asking. It was rhetorical. I know about mutations.”

Lament's face hardened. “Maybe you only think you do. Got your mind set on poisoned moonshine and improperly buried bodies during epidemics, don't ya? Or we can talk about all the toxic waste dumping going on. I seen them chemical polluters myself, throwing in barrel after barrel. I fought 'em off with fists and a good hunk'a chicory. Men from the town kept a watchful eye for a year or two, and sent some of them boys runnin' with their keesters full of buckshot. But I don't know that it ever stopped them. There's too much money to be saved dumpin' into these depths. Corporations aren't always righteous. Nor the government.”

Hellboy, who'd been a part of the government practically since he was born, said nothing.

“And the granny witches,” Lament went on, “they say there's ancient forces in the blackwater, and you and I know that's true. Whether said evils reach into the blood of men and women to affect the children or not, I guess everyone has their own say about that.”

Putting it like that, Hellboy wondered exactly how it was that all these people weren't on the verge of mutation or cancerous illness or zombification.

“The real question is, why you askin' the question at'all?”

“I don't know.”

“Yeah, you do. You thinkin' about family.”

“I don't think about family. Ever.”

“Iffun you say.”

Far ahead, the pumpkin-headed boy turned and rushed back, excitedly chattering to Hellboy although Hellboy couldn't understand him. Lament would have to translate.

“Enoch says we're almost there.”

“That's his name? Enoch?”

“It's biblical.”

“I know it's biblical. How is it you can speak their languages?”

“They just speakin' English, as well as they can manage it.”

Fishboy Lenny went, “Fweep mwash. Wooph.”

Hellboy said, “I can't understand a word of it.”

“Neither can I.”

“You don't know the language, the language knows you.”

Lament let out a smile. “That's right, son. Now we're confabulatin'.”

—

An ugly thought struck Hellboy and he stopped short. “Hey, these swamp people, they're not luring these teenage girls here with their babies to try to bring new blood to the people, are they?”

“Why'd they want to go and do that?”

“To clean up the gene pool.”

Lament frowned, scratched at the scabbing wound on his neck, and looked at Hellboy for a long time. Enoch stepped up, leaned toward Lament's ear, and let loose with a stream of quiet gibberish. Lament listened and nodded, and finally went, “Oh, now I see. Thank ya.”

“What was that about?” Hellboy asked.

“Oh, he was just explainin' to me what it was you meant.” Lament blinked at Hellboy. “You got yourself a complex mind, son, you truly have. The answer is no, the babies ain't here for no genetic purposes.”

“Well, good.”

The kids climbed over a sycamore log in the brush upsetting bitterns, limpkins, and squawk herons. There was a quick flutter of many wings and a rush through the leaves. The land gave way to more solid soil littered with clumps of palmettos, oak, and palm trees.

“You sure this is the right way?” Hellboy asked.

“I've never lost myself quite this badly before. So no, I ain't sure of much at the moment. But the children, they know. So long as we follow, we'll get to the village soon enough.”

“I still don't get why Sarah came all this way. What's so safe about this place?”

“Prayers and will have power. This was once a shanty town where the swamp folk held their all-night sings. A lot of healin' and good will and faith and miracles took place on this ground. Suppose it's about as holy a spot as you're likely to find anywhere near Enigma.”

“And yet it's where all these poor people live now. The ground hasn't done much to make them well.”

“Depends on whether you think they're sick, I reckon. Do you?”

“I didn't say that—”

“It's all right, son, I know what your intent was. You just need to understand that what some folks might call freaks, others consider blessed.”

“I think I understand that pretty damn well.”

“See that then? Already you better off than a whole slew of ignorant dullards.”

“That makes me feel a lot better.”

“Good. Always glad to help a friend.”

It began to rain lightly and the kids all let out whoops of joy. Hellboy didn't quite get it, but he liked that they were so full of energy and elation. He hoped they stayed here in their little corner of the planet, where they might count on one another and their people to get them through. The rest of the world would try to steal that laughter from them.

Passing beneath a sharp palmetto frond he felt something cold brush against his cheek. He looked up and a huge snake was hanging uncoiled from the leaves, its mouth open.

Hellboy shoved Lament aside. “Watch it . . . a snake!” He brought his stone hand up and caught the snake just as it was prepared to leap.

Lament said, “It's only a timber rattler.”

“Only a rattler?”

“At least it ain't a cottonwood mocassin. Just don't let it bite you. Go on and let it get about on its way.”

“Oh.” Hellboy opened his fist. The rattler wasn't about to ever get about on its way again.

“I don't think you needed to squeeze it quite so hard, son,” Lament told him.

“Guess I overreacted a bit.”

The kid with the insectoid eyes came running over and asked Hellboy in perfectly nuanced English, “Are you plannin' to keep it?”

“I hadn't thought about it.”

“May I have it, please?”

“You want a crushed dead snake, kid?”

The boy nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, please.”

Shrugging, Hellboy figured, All right, whatever. He handed the timber rattler to the kid, who grinned, and the snake was reflected and refracted about a billion times in his eyes. The boy ran off to rejoin the others ahead.