Emerald Hell (7 page)

 
CHAPTER 9

—

A low-lying mist shrouded the emerald hell, coiling upon the green darkness as the sky, the color of a bruise, grew brighter. Quickly the world amassed weight and substance, minute by minute growing in clarity, as if great hands were shaping each detail of life from scratch.

“Wake up, son,” Lament said, and shook Hellboy's shoulder.

Hellboy was already awake, still curled beneath the blanket, staring at his stone fist. It was clenched tightly as if he'd been holding onto something. Even now he was a little worried to let go of whatever it was. He'd been dreaming deeply but he couldn't remember of what, and it took a while before he was able to open his hand and see that it was empty.

He sat up and noticed how the swamp not only looked much different in the light of day, but felt it as well. Fertile and vital but no longer imposing, there was a beauty here that he hadn't seen in the dark. Hummocks of scrub surrounded the tongue of land where they camped. Oleander and geranium blossoms added even more color so that the green jungle no longer overwhelmed.

The world around assailed him with so much noise that at first he almost hadn't been able to hear it. There were the sounds of crows, bullfrogs, polecats, skinks, egrets, squirrels, and ducks.

Hellboy was stiff and still sore from mixing it up with the gators. Gingerly he untied his makeshift bandages and was surprised to see his wounds looked clean and on their way to healing. He flexed his leg, did some deep knee-bends, and loosened up.

Checking the special cartridges on his belt, he held one up to the sun to make sure it wasn't damaged.

“What you got there?” Lament asked.

“A blood-soaked splinter taken from the wheel that broke the back of St. Catherine.”

“Saints? Son, this is Southern Baptist Country. They ain't afraid of saints 'round here. They're afraid of Revenuers.”

Hellboy persisted. “Stops djinn and Ambassadors of Mammon in their tracks, let me tell you. Guaranteed to slow down any member of the infernal order.”

“Well, you'll surely hear a hoot of joy from me iffun we come
'cross any infernal order members thisaway.”

Cool winds washed over the lake and whispered through the loblolly and catclaw briar. The old lady's ears told him which trees were which just by the sound of their leaves rippling in the breeze.

Pawing through his rucksack, Lament drew out provisions and started cooking breakfast. Hellboy spotted canisters of milk that should've curdled in this heat. He said, “Can I have a drink?”

Lament handed over the milk. Hellboy sipped it cautiously at first, and then drank deeply. It was cold and fresh. “Where'd you get this?”

“In town.”

“Yesterday afternoon?”

“Tha's right.”

“It should've gone bad by now.”

“Enigma cows is fit.”

Looked like Lament was making eggs, but much larger than those of a chicken. Hellboy watched him crack the shells and pour the yolks into a skillet he placed over the fire.

“Your stomach still distressing you any?” Lament asked.

Hellboy was surprised it wasn't. He was actually hungry. “No. I think I can eat.”

“Glad to hear it. Pull up a patch of log here and come have breakfast. We got miles to cover and I fear the weather is gonna change. Now get you some bacon and corn griddle cakes.”

“I like pancakes.”

It took Lament ten minutes to make breakfast and serve it on tin plates. Until Hellboy took his first bite he hadn't realized how famished he was. The pancakes were sweeter and fluffier than he was used to, covered with a thick honey syrup. He ate quickly, enjoying himself. The bacon was thick and burned just right. The eggs were unlike anything he'd ever tasted before.

He knew he should let it slide, but he just had to ask. “What kind of eggs are these?”

“Turtle,” Lament said.

Hellboy flipped his plate over into the dirt. “Gah!”

It got Lament chuckling softly again. Then snickering as he tried to hold in his laughter, but eventually it got away from him and he started guffawing, clutching his belly.

“It's not funny!” Hellboy shouted, though he found he was grinning himself. Strange to discover his mood had lifted in such an odd place as this. Still, a few minutes later, he realized he couldn't fully quit staring at his hand, trying to remember the dream.

“It wasn't a nightmare,” Lament said, carrying the plates to the water's edge, where he washed them. “Not entirely. He come
'round visitin', Brother Jester did.”

Hellboy didn't see any tracks in the dirt besides Lament's boots and his own hoof prints. “When? How?”

“He's got gifts. He's been blessed by the archangels. They haven't turned their backs on him just because he went crazy and became a killer. That's not their way. If they done that to everyone in the Bible who'd done lost their grace, there'd be no heroes at all. Sinning and redemption are at least as important as purity. They're fated to be with him no matter what evil he might do. They bear witness and whisper truths in his ear that no man should hear. Their shadows drop favors at his feet. They're just children lost without a heavenly father, searching for an earthly one. It's no wonder the prophets were all mad.”

Angels. You just couldn't trust them. “Granny Lewt said you had a history with the walking darkness.”

“Oh fer sure,” Lament said, breaking camp, gathering up his provisions and repacking them. “I known him for a good long while now. Lot of rumors follow that old boy 'round.”

“Granny said the same thing of you.”

Lament nodded. “She's right on both counts.”

“Who is he to you?”

“When I was a child, he was the man I wanted to grow up to be. Righteous, strong, full of God's word and a need to bring comfort and blessing to those who hurt. A man, I'm inclined to believe, much like yourself.”

“And then he found out Bliss Nail was fooling around with his wife.”

“That's right. And he went insane. Killed his own wife. Almost murdered Sarah in her crib.”

“What stopped him?”

A gliding shadow moved out across the tree line and cut across the bright blue sky. Hellboy looked up and reached for his pistol, but it was only a white egret sailing through the air, its bill filled with squirming worms as it headed for its nest.

Lament was staring into space, lost in thought. His eyes cleared and his brow furrowed with the intensity of his memories.

“I did,” he said. “I wasn't hardly eight years old, but I'd been singing gospel since I was old enough to speak. He had another name then. He come to town . . . this was up in the Appalachians, way back in the mountain woods . . . and he found me preachin'. He was famous by then, and I was but an orphan looked after by the whole town. Good God-lovin' folk, well, they wanted him to teach me in the ways of a travelin' pastor. So together we went off, and eventually come back to Enigma together. We preached in the swamps for a while 'fore he even set foot in his own house again. He loved the Word that much.”

“It doesn't take much to derail a good man.”

“That's the truth. He found his wife holding a newborn wasn't his own. Took no time at all for his heart to turn stone hateful. He run for the hatchet and I tried to stop him, but couldn't do much.”

“You were only a kid,” Hellboy said.

“And didn't fare so well. He brained me pretty good, ole Jester did. Then he went and murdered his wife, a kind and generous lady by all accounts. I prayed with the blood running out of me, and managed to stumble to where he was plannin' on stranglin' Sarah in her crib. And I prayed. A part of him that hadn't gone crazy and evil yet heard me. Anyway, he didn't get to kill her.”

They finished packing up the goods together and Hellboy helped Lament load everything into the skiff. They both looked around one last time to make sure nothing had been left behind. Before they started off, Hellboy had one last thing he wanted to know.

“Are you the father of Sarah's baby?”

Lament glanced up, genuine shock and appall written into his features. “Considering we just met a few hours ago, and we haven't so much as shared a sip of moonshine yet, or even had a bite of gray squirrel or possum together, or passed a corncob pipe back and forth, and you done spit out the eggs I made, I reckon I don't see how it's any of your damn business, friend.”

Hellboy shrugged. Jeez, these people were sensitive. “Okay. So where are we going?”

“Other side of the basin breaks up into more inlets that flush back into the marshes. The shanty town's in that direction.”

“You've been there?”

“Not since I was a child. Me and Jester preached there once. But I recollect that's the way to go. The blackwater has a way of letting you know if you're aimin' right or wrong.”

“How's that?”

“It either kills you or it don't.”

Hellboy thought, That's what I get for asking. “Will we catch up to them today?”

“I reckon so. Sarah can move through the swamp with ease, but them other girls swole with chile have to be slowing her down some. Come on and help me with the skiff.”

The keel of the boat had sunk a foot into the mud and they both had to grip an end and work it hard side to side before they could lift it to clear the rut. With a loud gurgle the drying muck gave way and the skiff came free.

“Hey,” Hellboy said. “Something's been on my mind. Why'd you call me princely?” It had been a damn strange thing to hear.

Lament stared at Hellboy's head, or perhaps at the spot in the air just above his head, and his eyes gleamed with what could be a sad and distant knowledge he couldn't fully understand himself.

“Seems to me you're someone destined to wear a crown, tha's all.”

 
CHAPTER 10

—

They carried the skiff down the shore's incline back to the stale waters and stobpoled out of the mired shallows. They made their way through the curving narrows out into the lake. There, Lament boated the pole, slotted two oars into metal rings, and rowed them across the basin.

When they reached the other side Lament appeared to be unsure of which direction to go. Stunted dead sycamores lined the shore of another dark inlet, thick with hummock islands, matted with roots and silt. He rowed as long as he could, until the oars were stirring up deposits of sediment, then groaned and wiped his brow.

“Hell, boy!” Lament said.

“What?”

“What?”

“Oh, I thought you were calling me,” Hellboy told him.

“I'm calling you a damn heavy heifer. Come spell me for a while.”

It took Hellboy a second to figure out what Lament meant, but once he understood he moved up in the boat and took a turn at the oars. They started going around in circles. After a minute he realized he had to ease up on drawing too hard with his right hand, and finally got a good rhythm going.

Lament played the mouth-harp and then started to quietly sing. The song sounded vaguely religious and a little silly, but Hellboy enjoyed the sound of Lament's vibrant voice and even found himself humming along. When he realized what he was doing he frowned, shut the hell up, and rowed harder.

Broken tupelo spotted the area, the earth heavy with a peaty loam smell. They were entering a bog of maiden cane and wide draperies of hanging moss. Hellboy had a difficult time imagining people living out here. It had its own beauty but he just couldn't picture church folk coming out so far into the morass to hold revivals. Parents bringing their children this far for baptism and confession and gospel singing. All this green would have to drive a normal person out of his mind.

The oars struck root and the water churned with silt. The prow of the boat got trapped in log litter and mounds of slough as the small hummock islands thickened and their passage tightened.

“We have to row through all that?” Hellboy asked.

“Too shallow to stob,” Lament told him. “I got to admit to my quandary though.” He pointed at a trampled mud bank nearby. “That's gator ground for sure. They're everywhere. Watch that next log comin' up.”

“I see it.”

“It ain't no log. He's a big ole boy. Ding him and he'll chew the skiff to pieces. Skirt right.”

“You sure the girls came this way?”

“No,” Lament said, and left it at that.

Struggling with the oars, Hellboy put some more muscle into it and got the boat moving at a fair clip despite the thick grass
and jetsam.

“Does she know you're coming to help her?” he asked.

“No, me and Sarah ain't talked in a couple months.”

“Why not?”

Lament blinked a few times, like he couldn't believe the question. “I been adrift.”

“But you somehow knew Jester was coming for her.”

“I knew. I felt the shadows on me more than once, and I knew their intent.”

Hellboy watched the hillbilly, thinking, Jesus, suspenders in this day and age. He felt oddly uneasy at the way Lament seemed to
put him
at ease. Humming along with that stupid mouth-harp, what was up with that? He knew he had to watch himself. Granny Lewt's spell might be working on him too well or the wet heat of the swamp was baking his brain, but something was having its effect.

Lament caught Hellboy's eye and said, “What?”

“I can't figure you out.”

“Son, ain't we all got more than enough to do with figurin' on our ownselves? Without needin' to do it for other folks too?”

Sudden surface ripples broke against the side of the skiff. Drops of swamp water flew into Hellboy's face.

“We're coming to a bad spot,” Lament said.

“A bad spot? What's that mean?”

“Can't you feel it?”

“No.”

It would be nice to be able to feel a bad spot, Hellboy thought. Then he could step left or right instead of just plowing ahead the way he usually did. So no, he didn't feel a damn thing, and never did until some creep or another was trying to kill him.

But he could smell rain in the air, and he sensed how the swamp was beginning to hush and muse. “A storm's coming.”

“It's already here,” Lament told him.

A moment later the rain burst down upon them. One of those torrential downpours so powerful and immediate that they were both instantly as wet as if they'd fallen overboard. The wind rose and waves kicked up and washed over the bow. It was like they were lost at sea in a dinghy. Acres of watergrass waved about as if alive.

Hellboy realized they didn't have a pail and would very soon need to start bailing if they were going to stay afloat. Otherwise, they'd have to beach on one of the hummocks.

“I see a shack,” Lament said. “Shore's closer than it looks.”

“Is it the swamp village?”

“No, I don't think so. Just a loner out this far on the blackwater.”

“We gonna knock and ask directions?”

“I reckon we will at that.”

“But didn't you just say this was a bad spot?”

“I did,” Lament said.

“Terrific.”

It always came down to this. Heading into the place where you knew you shouldn't head.

Lament pointed to an area on the far bank of a small lagoon-like cove that eased away to a slimy shore covered with leaves and dead branches. The turbulent waters bubbled violently with rain. Lizards ran along the weeds as Hellboy brought the boat to a stop and he and Lament slogged to shore, dragging the skiff behind them.

The gray hanging mossbeard flapped and danced in the wind. Lightning skewered the skies. Lament parted the cypress streamers and climbed past the massive trunks. Strangler-fig vines as fat as garden hoses tangled around his legs and he nearly fell over. Thunder pounded. Hellboy reached down and clutched a mighty handful of the fibrous jungle vine in his right fist and tore away great lengths of it.

“You've got my gratitude,” Lament said.

“Sure.”

They continued on for another fifty yards on a slow incline until Hellboy saw the shack. It was a little larger than Granny Lewt's place but just as ramshackle and desolate.

Lament drew his wet curls out of his eyes and said, “It's Granny Dodd's place.”

“She Granny Lewt's sister?”

“So I've always reckoned.”

“Well, I'm telling you right now,” Hellboy said, “I'm not eating anything, and if she tries to make me or if she's got a big brute of a son who aims to push me around, I'm going to knock somebody through the roof.”

“I thank you for lettin' me know your intentions,” Lament said. “But Granny Dodd's been dead a few years. Only her granddaughter Megan lives out here. 'Leastways I think so.”

The storm kicked up another notch and the wind heaved the trees around, dead branches whirling and flying by, lost in the surrounding titi brush. Wind roared and wailed, alive with purpose. Rain pummeled like the angry hands of children. Lament turned to look at Hellboy. “There's evil will in the air.” He pointed east. “Sun's still shinin' a mile or two off. Storm's breakin' right on
top of us.”

“Pretty standard where I go,” Hellboy said. “Let's get inside.”

They fought their way to the shack, both of them searching the heavy brush and mire for whatever they could see: pregnant girls, gators, walking shadows, who the hell knew what. Thunder shook the hanging willows and tattered beards of moss. Finally Lament got to the door of the shanty and pounded on it with the side of his fist.

A terrified woman's voice responded. “You go on and get away from my place now! I got me the two barrels of this here shotgun pointed right at you belly-high!”

“That you Megan Dodd? It's me, John Lament. You might remember me from some years back, when I used to sing in these parts as a child.”

“You gotta be gone from here!”

Okay, Hellboy thought, so here it comes. The reason why this is such a bad spot.

“Why?” Lament asked.

“My man is gone. My husband . . . he . . . he gone away. He's been taken from me.”

“Taken?” Lament asked. “By who? Who gone and done a thing like that, Megan Dodd?”

“You get on out of the blackwater now, you hear! Go on now!”

“Ain't no need to fear me or my friend here. Fact is, if you want a good belly laugh, feed him some turtle eggs.”

“Hey!” Hellboy said. “Don't go starting any rumors.”

“Ain't a rumor, it's a fact.”

“What you want at my door?” Megan cried.

“I want to know if you've seen my Sarah and some other young ladies come through this way. They left Mrs. Hoopkins's home two days ago and I been trackin' them through the blackwater.”

“No,” Megan said, and that seemed to be the end of that.

“These are strange hours, and I need to find them.”

“If they come this way they likely dead.”

Lament froze in the rain and the wind hurtled and broke against his form at the door. He'd been bridling it well so far, but Hellboy could see how worried he was about Sarah and his unborn child. “Why do you say that? Who took your man, Megan?”

“Iffun you don't steer clear you gonna get took by Mama's girlies just as quick!”

“What are these girlies she's talking about?” Hellboy asked.

Lament shrugged. “I never heard tell of them before.”

Hellboy could just see it. Roving bands of teenage girls, flaxen-haired and with their blouses knotted at their midriffs, wearing ragged jean shorts, glowering with cornflower blue eyes, running around in the swamp causing all sorts of damage. Men screaming and waving their arms in the air, ruffian girlies smacking them around. He turned up his ragged collar against the rain and scratched between his horns.

“Megan, let me in,” Lament implored. “You gotta hold on now, and tell me what you're so afraid of. I felt it in the air, the cold and the cruel. What is it that's happened here since the last time I passed through.”

“The Mama growed strong in the wooly patch,” Megan whimpered. “I don't dare say she was never there before, 'cause Granny Dodd, she knowed about it, kept the Mama at bay. But when Granny died, her spells grew weak and the swamp gone bad.”

Lament tried the latch on the door and found it jammed. The resistance caught him off-guard and he spun in the silt and slime frothing beneath her shack, pitched sideways, and nearly dropped into it. Hellboy caught him and righted him, and their faces burned gold and then white in the flare of another eruption of lightning.

“Don't you come in,” Megan Dodd whispered, her face pressed to the slats, the glint off her eyes and wet lips shining through the cracks in the planks.

“Why not?” Lament asked. “If you're afearin' this Mama and her girlies and your man gone missin', seems to me you'd be wantin' someone nearby to look out for you.”

“It ain't me I'm a'fearin' for. You got to get on 'fore she learns you're here.” The panic in her voice took on the tone of hysteria—words clipped with a little girl squeak, as if she were trying to crawl inside herself, or claw her way out.

Hellboy realized the whole wall of the shanty was groaning in protest beneath the heaving wind's onslaught, leaning horribly to one side. The years of rain and Spanish moss bleeding into the wood had rotted it until it was hardly more than tissue. He was afraid the next strong gust might blow the whole place down on the woman's head.

“Stand away,” he told Lament, who refused to move aside.

“We can't push our ways in.”

“Why not? I mean, it's wet out here. It's really wet out here.”

“We can't go in unless we're invited.”

“What are you, a vampire?”

“I abide by a code of manners.”

“So do I,” Hellboy said. “But it's really wet.” He stuck out one finger against the knob and gave a little push. The door popped open and there was Megan Dodd, staring at them. She was holding the shotgun but the shells had broken open in her hands and the shot had spilled onto the floor. He could see they were so old they'd rotted in the humidity.

Long, dirty-blonde hair dangling mostly in her face, braided loosely on the left and clipped in tufts with broken pink barrettes on the right, Megan Dodd, granddaughter of another one of these witchy women had dark unforgiving eyes and a sorrowful presence. Who knew how many jars full of weirdo bits and pieces might be around here?

Middle-aged but with an air of inexperience to her, as if she'd been held back from the world and knew nothing beyond a hundred yards of the shanty. Both shoulder-straps had slid down her arms. The catclaw briar scars, sycamore scratches, and welts didn't mar her flesh in the least. Anywhere else she'd have appeared ridiculously child-like, but here it seemed natural, and more than that, perhaps even necessary. A peculiar and powerful musk like a bull gator's pervaded the shack.