Emerald Hell (15 page)

Led by Ma'am McCulver, the party moved steadily toward a three-story, coffee-colored house in the distance. Hellboy heard babies crying again, sometimes in his ears and sometimes, it felt like, at the back of his head. The granny woman glanced his way from time to time, smiling vaguely.

As they approached her home he saw it had a whitewashed wraparound veranda bordered by palm trees and sugarcane. Three teenage girls sat out on porch swing cut from fresh pine. One held a baby in her arms. Lament's step began to speed up until he was almost running. Losing a few pints of blood didn't mean much in the face of love. One of the pregnant girls broke from the others and moved to meet him.

So this was Sarah.

He could see touches of Bliss Nail in her right off. The same steel-gray eyes full of tenacious strength, unyielding and with a hint of defiance in even her most modest gestures. She wasn't exactly what you'd call beautiful, but there was an attractive and compelling earthiness to her that really struck him.

Still not even twenty, her long brown hair was edged with strands of silver. It sort of matched Lament's white streak. These two kids with such youthful vigor and intensity, but somehow brushed by age, tragedy, and worldliness.

She and Lament held each other and moved in close, cheek to cheek, his mouth at her ear whispering, her lips pressing along his jaw line. Lament eased his hand over her bulging belly, and Hellboy knew what would be coming next.

He started to count off . . . one, two, three, four . . . and then looked over at Ma'am McCulver and saw that she was doing the same thing. They both let out a sigh just as a growl of thunder grumbled overhead.

“I couldn't wait for you,” Sarah said to Lament. “I felt the devil's breath on my neck and knew we had to get on out of Enigma. I knew you must be worryin' somethin' dreadful but I thought it best to move on.”

“I know that,” he told her. “I'm sorry I was late gettin' to you. We had some trials along the way. I wouldn't have gotten through at all if not for this fella right here though.”

Lament put his hand on Hellboy's shoulder and drew him closer. Sarah smiled at him and said, “Thank you for what you did for my John.”

It was the kind of thing that made you go, Aw shucks, ‘twern't nuthin', but Hellboy resisted. It was harder than he expected. “I was just doing what I had to do. Someone has to.”

“Ain't no man's mere service to save another. It's a calling of the courageous.”

He didn't know what to say to that so he let it go by. “You and your friends are the brave ones, battling through the swamp in your, ah, condition.”

“We had us a time, with Becky Sue all but ready to have her baby girl in the bottom of the skiff, but thank the Lord, she managed to hold off.” She turned to Lament. “The dreams, John.”

“I know, I've had my share as well.”

“But mine . . . the baby. I woke two nights ago and found a pair of bullfrogs on my belly croakin' together. I fear. I fear a'mighty.”

“Don't . . . it's gonna be all right. Whatever happens, it's the Lord's will and we'll trust in that.”

Hellboy wondered if he should talk about his own dream last night, except he couldn't remember what it was about. But it had been there and it had meant something.

The pumpkin-headed kid loped up onto the porch out of the drizzle and the others followed. He bent and made faces at Becky Sue Cabbot's newborn. Hellboy was introduced to her and Hortense Millford, two stern-faced, sunburned, tired-looking young women, one of whom had just delivered a child and the other close to bearing her own.

The music from the other end of the village drifted in and brought with it a sense of solace. Now Hellboy knew what Lament had meant when he said the music had charms. The songs were spells of protection. Just because Ma'am McCulver was easy on the eyes didn't mean she didn't know a little something about spellcasting.

They moved into the house and he was a bit surprised to see it was sparsely decorated, without all the batwings, frogs' tongues, bubbling cauldrons, and magical potions of Granny Lewt's home.

More thunder groaned. He thought that whatever was going to happen would have to happen soon. That was just the way of these things. Ma'am McCulver gave him the look again and this time he stared back. There was a humanity and sadness in her eyes that worked its way into his chest.

Suddenly Sarah's face twisted as if in pain, and her back straightened. She hissed through her teeth and reached out to grip Lament's arm. He held onto her tightly.

“It's startin',” she said.

“Now?” Lament asked, then frowned that he'd say such an asinine thing. But it was a father's prerogative to be a little dopey when his kid was being born.

“Contractions. Damn, that felt odd. Not sure what I was expectin' but I wasn't expectin' that.”

Sometimes you were glad when you were proven right and sometimes you weren't. Hellboy thought, Yeah, the kid's got to come along just before the big beat down.

He said, “Take her to the bedroom. Stay with her.” He told the pumpkin-headed kid, “You, think you could go get Doc Wayburn?”

The boy nodded eagerly and took off through the village.

Hellboy asked, “Which way do you think Jester will be coming from?”

“Most probably the creek,” Ma'am McCulver said, pointing. “It connects to the river. It isn't an easy pass, but if he remembers his way, that's how he'll come.”

“It's getting dark and the storm's about the break over us. It's been my experience that that's when the trouble usually hits. I'm going to go see what I can see.”

Torn by responsibility, Lament's eyes filled with concern. “You're gonna need my help.”

He was ready to leave his girl. For the good of the rest of them. Jesus, the guy had heart. Hellboy said, “You stay here. Don't do anything crazy.”

“You ain't seen crazy yet, son.”

“Let me handle it.”

“You? That's my true foe. Why'm I gonna let you handle it?”

“I've been doing this a long time. I can handle myself. You just watch over your girlfriend and your baby. That's what this is about, remember?”

With a bleak expression, Lament narrowed his eyes. Hellboy laid a hand on his shoulder and said, “Trust me.”

“I do.”

“Well, all right then.”

All the tension seemed to snap from Lament then. “Don't forget, he's got the Ferris boys with him. Don't be fooled by their graceful features, they're killers.”

“If it's one thing I'm not fooled by, it's graceful features.”

“So you say.”

Sarah, struggling to mask her pain, said, “The Ferris boys comin' here too?”

“Yeah, he roped them in.”

They exchanged a glance heavy with meaning.

Fishboy Lenny went, “Fweep mwash. Wooph.”

Ma'am McCulver said, “I wish to help but I'll be unable to do so.” She stared out the window at the brush, the land, the homes. “He performed miracles here. He saved lives. He healed the ill, the crippled, the blind. He brought God down to us when the Lord did not listen to us. And since then the divine has not left us. The very land itself owes him. Do you understand?”

Hellboy shook his head. “No.”

“My sisters and I have always been a part of the swamp. We can effect little change on its nature, on the things that it wants.”

“Things that the swamp wants?”

“Yes. We help where we can but we are, like all, merely slaves to the greater forces about us.”

He didn't quite understand, but enchantresses and goblin kings and trolls often talked like this. Even Lament did it, saying how the magic knew him. Sometimes you just had to nod and go forward on your own. Most of the time, in fact.

Hellboy started for the door but the granny witch stepped in front of him, blocking his way. She leaned forward and he expected maybe a kiss for his troubles, which would've been just fine under the circumstances.

“Hold still,” she said.

“What is it?”

When her hands touched him he watched as a black spark skittered across his stone fist. There was nothing to it, he felt no different at all, but in the light of the setting sun he could see a shadow slowly making its way over the ridge of his knuckles. He didn't know what that meant but it couldn't be good. He plucked at it and couldn't touch it. Ma'am McCulver, though, snatched at it and somehow got a grip. She tugged at the small piece of darkness and tore it from Hellboy. She held it in her pale hand where it coursed across her fingers, tame and almost loving.

“I dreamt of shadows,” Hellboy said, remembering.

“And they dream of you,” she told him. “The night's nearly upon us. Jester will arrive soon.”

“He's already here,” Fishboy Lenny said. Then, “Fwashh fweep!”

 
CHAPTER 20

—

Deeter checked the load in Plume Wallace's shotgun and said, “I hear music. Goddamn, that boy sure can play a jug. You listenin' to that?”

“I am,” Duffy said, dragging the skiff up onto the creek bank. “It's some fine banjo-playin' and squeezeboxin' too.”

“As good as Pa used to play.”

“Better'n him, I reckon. Better'n him before his third or fourth tap of moon anyways. Pa always improved as the night went on.”

Brother Jester, pressing through the palmettos, allowed the magics of the music to rake against him like barbed wire. He grunted, enjoying the raw ache, and said, “It's a powerful charm, a circle of peace and protection. Harmonies of the heavens, it lures even the angels astray.”

The Ferris boys stared at one another, then down into the mud and around at the wet brush, looking for circles and seeing none. Deeter placed a hand on the sheathed Bowie knife at his belt, and handed the shotgun to his brother. Protection to them meant bear traps or a twelve-gauge, and they didn't see those either.

“What is, Preacher?” Deeter asked.

“The songs. Woven into the notes are charms and spells of celestial love. A granny witch has composed this, and they play it well under her direction.”

“Sure is a catchy tune, right 'nuff.”

Duffy still had Mrs. Hoopkins's cutting knife in his belt and he slid the handle aside for an easy draw. He said, “Some nice ladies' voices carryin' it just fine too, reelin' right along with the washboard. About time we stopped off for some companionship with the feminine persuadin'. I'm'a feelin' a might lonely after all this travelin'.”

“And I smell hog cracklins!”

“They got themselves a right proper hootenanny goin' on. I say we get out of this rain and have us a terrible ruckus of fun.”

The archangels pressed their hands to Jester's face. Like over-eager children they flew and returned with more and more images and knowledge that he couldn't fully understand. He dropped his chin to his chest as the shadows roamed about him, within and without, fluttering their great wings and confiding their tender testimonies, urging him onward. His life and death had been a trial before the eyes of man and God, and it still wasn't over. Would never be over. He needed the daughter that should have been his. He needed the grandchild that would share his burden. He deserved the family that had been denied him before.

He said, “It grows dark. Wait until the moon rises and then we'll visit ourselves upon our swamp neighbors. Until then, leave me.”

“Leave you?” Deeter asked. “Just where in the hell we gonna go, preacher?”

Jester turned and his eyes pulsed with energy. Duffy tugged at his brother's arm and drew him back through the palm leaves. “Let's just let the preacher go on about his own business. We'll go sit down the creek this'a way.”

“Well then, I'm in agreement,” Deeter said, “let's get on. But I'm a'gonna get some hog cracklins 'fore this night is through.”

As they moved off, the ghost of Jester's murdered wife—
the wife he had murdered
—appeared beside him and said, “You claim you've done this for family, but you destroyed the one you had. Iffun you cared so much about kith and kin, you'd not have been so anxious with the blade.”

The voice again, and always, so much more than her own, filled with the kind of peace he craved and could not contain.

“It's no empty claim,” Jester said. “I've a right to my own fulfillment and serenity.”

She stroked the bone-white curls at his neck, the way she would during summer picnics at the river, after the baptisms. “By warming your hands in the blood of children?”

“I've never hurt a child yet.”

“Oh,” she said, as if stricken. “You forget.”

And it was true, he suddenly realized, he had forgotten. The child rushing him, the hatchet, the struggle. Here he was following the trail of his true enemy, and he had ignored how close they'd once been, even at his bleakest hour.

Brother Jester said, “My mistakes were made for love. Anything done for love is beyond the righteous and the wrathful.”

“That's an excuse meant to soothe your scratched heart.”

“God's will is greater than man's.”

“You speak with such conviction on judgments left best to the Lord,” his dead wife said.

“I speak with the tongue He gave me. It's what I've always done. Back when I had a honeyed voice and now that I don't. I've always spoken the words He presents me.”

Her ghost, despite knowing the harmony of the afterworld, looked almost aggrieved for a moment.

“You'll not see me at your side again,” she said. “Does that worry you?”

“Yes.”

“Take my hand and let your pain end.”

“There was a reason I murdered you,” he said. “And I have not forgotten or forgiven it.”

“If only you'd ever loved as well as you learned to hate, these last twenty years wouldn't have been so empty.”

“Better than being dead.”

“You are dead,” she reminded him.

“I'll miss you,” Jester said, his ruined voice thick with emotion, and in turning he knew he would no longer find her there.

And then seeing he was alone he understood he truly had nothing now, and the child seemed that much more important.

He remembered the all-night sings during the tent gatherings and revivals, when he'd stand in a pulpit surrounded by the lame and the blind and the abandoned and the damned and the doomed, and side by side with a golden-voiced boy he'd feel the will of God flowing through his hands and he would heal them all.

They would praise the name of Jesus and kiss Jester's palms and hug the boy, and the evils of the world would perish for a moment, an hour, a night. He'd end his summers staring up at the stars and listening to the evening gales rolling in, and the sweetness of life would fill him until he wept. While at home in his bed his wife had taken up with Bliss Nail, and the arrival of his own oblivion fell upon him.

Now he was back, and the shielding music played, and the golden-voiced boy was now a man who awaited him. Another circle was about to close. Jester stood and moved toward the creek. He was ready.

Despite the storm clouds, the stars began to shine down. Jester smiled, crossed his arms, and hugged himself as he walked, and the sweetness of life filled him once more so full of love that he wept black flame for what would soon be his.