Emerald Hell Read online

  They both thought, He gonna eat that old boy?

  Jester’s shadows let him know this. It almost made him smile.

  He’d eaten much worse things than human flesh. He’d supped on his own venom, he’d swallowed the tenets of God’s law. He’d drank from puddles of rain provided by the great seraphim. Warm waters which tasted of the great flood and Noah’s destroyed earth. Tasting God’s wrath and the near-end of humanity in stagnant pools by a roadside—now that weighed on a man’s heart. Or it would’ve, if Brother Jester had still been a man.

  The silver whipcord thread chimed beside him and he felt the impeding return of Plume Wallace’s ghost rushing toward the skiff.

  After a moment the spirit appeared and jester asked, “How went your mission?”

  “Weren’t no damn mission,” the bound ghost said, “just a wrong-hearted errand you sent me on. Like we dead got nothing better to do all the long day but attend your beck and call. My first wife Ettie, now she was a lot like you, son. Would get it into her head at all crazy hours of the night that she needed herself some Epsom salts for her foot bath, like I’m’a gonna go be able to find her salts at three in the morning just ‘cause she got bad corns. Yeah, you and Ettie got a lot in common—”

  “I want an answer,” Jester said. There were just as many flies crawling across his forehead as there were on Plume Wallace’s ashen brow. “What did you see?”

  “You already know what I saw, you sent me to go see it.”

  “Stop being contrary.”

  “The morning a man’s murdered for his boat and his poor wracked body brought along on a snipe chase is a day meant for bein’ cantankerous, I say. But all right, all right, I’ll tell you what you crave. I seen John Lament, growed up. Side by side with a big red fella lookin’ a little dinged up hisself. They’re up yonder, across the basin in a bad patch of land, where the wind is colder and the jungle got itself teeth.” The ghost grinned with its ethereal lips. “John Lament. All these years gone and still you a’fear him, the one who was just a boy at your bent knee, learning the ways of God by your very own tutelage.”

  “I know his past as I know my own. I didn’t ask you about that.”

  “And I’d say you still need to hear about it anyways, ‘lest you be forgettin’. You ain’t minded your Bible, preacher. You reapin’ what you done sown.”

  Brother Jester’s hand began to burn. It ignited buzzing flies and soon the air was filled with their blazing flights until they all disintegrated. Jester plucked at the silver cord connecting spirit to corpse. It vibrated and hummed like a choir of ill children, and Plume Wallace winced and let out a sob. “Lord God, no, don’t do that. It—it pains me so—”

  “God not only can’t help you, child of man, but He won’t. He chooses not to, as is His way. I control your afterlife. I can leave you in oblivion forever if I choose. Such is my power, instilled in me by His very angels.” Jester pulled at the thread and drew the ghost to him until they were nose to nose. “I serve God’s purpose. He decrees this to be your fate, not me.”

  “No, it ain’t possible, a foul critter like you. It just can’t be ...”

  “It is,” Brother Jester told him, and a hint of sadness entered his voice. “But you’ll meet the Lord this day and then you can argue His folly to His great beatific face if you so choose. But first you’re obligated to me. Now tell me what I wish to know.”

  “I done told you already what I seen.”

  They passed close to the shore as Duffy Ferris stobbed them toward the inlet to the dark lake, palmetto leaves and fronds pressing in on the skiff. Some loblolly berries fell and bounced off the face of Plume Wallace’s corpse and rolled across his blue lips. The phantom jutted his tongue as if trying to taste the sweet flavor one last time. He reached to touch his own chin but he couldn’t put a hand to that flesh anymore.

  “You’re a ghost now, not bound to body or the five senses. Tell me what you know beyond your being. Stop your chattering and say what you experienced and brought back with you.”

  “But I ... wait, there was ... they were in a bad spot, rife with murder.” Surprised by his own phantom knowledge, Plume Wallace began to speak of what he hadn’t witnessed but still somehow perceived. His gaze took on that same faraway, understanding clarity that Jester’s wife’s eyes had. His voice lost some of its expression. “That’s right, they’re in a bad place of pain. There were many other who were dying or already gone, all of ‘em with smiles on their faces.”

  “Yes?”

  “They been brought to a patch of swamp used as a farm ... a blood farm. They went about writhing, in the graceful arms of the swamp itself.” The ghost made as if to wipe sweat from its brow. “I don’t like this sight. I ain’t cut out to be deceased!”

  “As much as any of us, Plume Wallace!”

  “Well, they heard as much about the men gone missing from Granny Dodd’s granddaughter, Megan. Granny Dodd, she’s gone now too, poor woman, and her witchy ways are weakening. The chains she forged to hold back evil have broken. And I presume she’s handling her state of interment better than me. Better than I will, once I get interred, is my meaning.”

  “What of the demon, what do you prophecy of him?”

  “Ain’t no demon,just a big ole red fella tryin’ to help out some folks in trouble. He’s powerful, tinged by great fate. He’s got an admirable heart. You recognize that already. He’s got a good many blessings on him. He’s righteous. So’s Lament. He’s got grace, that boy, an old and wise soul.”

  “And my daughter?”

  “I ain’t seen nor felt her passin’ by, neither livin’ nor otherwise. Can’t tell you nothin’ more.”

  Brother Jester nodded, “Then go on now, Plume Wallace.” He held the silver thread up to his mouth and snapped it apart with his teeth. “I release you from this earthbound custody. Go on up the jeweled stairway to Jesus, if you think you can find it.”

  He tossed the cord into the wind, but the ghost of Plume Wallace continued to sit in the skiff another moment. He said, “God got you in His sights, son. He’ll be comin’ for you soon enough, devilspawn.”

  And then was gone.

  But his words struck Jester as wonderfully amusing. Absurd even, considering his own damnation and who he now followed.

  Devilspawn. He snickered as he shoved at the corpse beside him and threw it into the lake, watching it roll over behind them.

  On the far shore two bull gators crawled down a hillock of mud and began to swim toward the body. Jester couldn’t control himself and continued laughing until he was whooping.

  The Ferris boys moved closer together in the bow of the skiff, staring at the madman. Brother Jester tossed his head back and howled, and the black clouds ushered in across a sky of pain.

  Chapter 15

  Sometimes you just had to prove to some giant monstrosity or another that survival of the fittest didn’t have anything to do with size.

  For some reason they all got it into their enormous heads or manifold forebrains or multifarious cranial casings that they could just mow over folks because they were bigger or faster or a little nastier than most everybody else.

  That’s why, when you got right down to it, Hellboy’s function was knocking over the biggest creeps on the block and showing them there was something even worse around.

  He reached underwater and filled his stone hand with several of the mother vines, secured his grip, and tugged hard, holding the women back from Lament.

  This whole trip was starting to get on his nerves. Hellboy muttered, “That’s enough of this crap,” and with a powerful wrenching motion that made him bite into his tongue, he jerked until the tendrils connected to a half-dozen women started to rip loose.

  Their limbs flailed, those luscious mouths opened as if to scream, but all they emitted was that same noise of the wind through the woods. He grimaced and pulled harder. Those catfish eyes gazed at him, incapable of sadness or any kind of honest pleading for mercy. That was something to
be thankful for. He swallowed the taste of blood and roared, and with one powerful final twisting yank he separated the bodies from the vines and the rest of Mama.

  The no longer animate husks fell into the muck and immediately began to sink, Lament came sputtering up from the mire.

  Suddenly the remaining girlies hovering over the dying men were snapped back through the brush. They flew high into the trees and thickets and vanished.

  A hush fell over the area broken only by the soft, lonely whimpers of the few emaciated men who hadn’t yet perished. Soon even that stopped. Hellboy stood ready, checked behind himself, and watched the water.

  Yeah, sure, like he was going to believe it was all over and drop his guard now.

  He made his way to Lament, who floundered in the shallows choking and spitting out weeds and blooms. Hellboy got his arms around him, pulled him to his feet, and held him securely while Lament vomited.

  It took him a while to clear his guts. When Lament was through he pressed himself to Hellboy’s chest and stood there wide-eyed and shuddering.

  “You all right?” Hellboy asked.

  Okay, so it was a stupid question. Lament drew back and stared at him with little recognition, his gaze clouded. He rasped, “Asleep ... feels like I’m still ... dreamin’...”

  “It’s the flowers,” Hellboy told him. “They’re some kind of narcotic.” He checked his belt, came up with a small first aid kit, and drew out some smelling salts. He shoved them under Lament’s nostrils. “Here, this should help.”

  “What’s that you say?”

  “Come on, sniff these.”

  Lament did so and instantly revived. “Whew, lordy!”

  As an afterthought Hellboy waved them under his own nose and was startled at how the acrid odor sobered him. He’d been a lot more out of it than he’d realized.

  The atmosphere became palpable. They could both feel it, the afternoon darkening again with storm clouds moving in once more.

  Every tap of branch against branch caused Hellboy to wheel, the wet mossbeards of cypress dripping and drawing his attention. The stink of death and rot flooded the area now that the women’s alluring fragrance began to thin. He and Lament stood side by side, shoulder to shoulder, covering all directions.

  “Feeling better?” he asked.

  Nodding slowly, Lament said, “Greatly improved, thanks to your ministrations. My gratitude is stacking up to near chin-high right about now.” He scanned the morass. “Watch yourself, there’s still gators about.”

  “That’s not the worst of our problems.”

  “Hardly ever is.”

  Lament stood with his arms out, hands open as if to make mystical gestures, in a stance Hellboy had seen sorcerers take many times before. He expected the hillbilly to start speaking in some unknowable language or hurl hexes from his fingertips.

  But instead Lament simply shrugged out of his shirt and tore strips from the tail. He bound the deepest gash along his ribs, wincing as he knotted the rags around his chest. Hellboy still didn’t understand what the guy was all about, but he had to let it slide. You could only cover so many things at once.

  After tightening his bandage, Lament buttoned the remainder of his shirt back up, got his suspenders back on, and moved toward the paddies where the backwoods men lay in the watergrass.

  “Them nasty critter-girls still nearby? Lord almighty, when they were on top of me I thought Sarah was among them. Saw her, even felt her ... I could hear her voice deep inside me.” The memory disturbed him and he shook his head to break free of it. “No wonder that crazy crippled ole coot didn’t want us messin’ with his dyin’ comforts. I can understand it now.”

  “They’re plants, grown over the remains of the dead,” Hellboy explained, pointing to the remnants of the girlie whose head he’d crushed. “No, not plants, really ... a single flora life-form that just appears to be many.”

  Lament kneeled and inspected the skeleton beneath the fibrous material. “Gator scratches and chew marks on the bone.” He held the shredded tendril and examined the sap, which was pink from drawing blood from the men. Searching out Hellboy’s eyes he said, “This whole area is a bad spot of swamp, but it’s just as natural as any other. After the girlies have their supper, the gators come and clean the meat from the bones. Then, the plant life comes back and grows over the frame. A natural cycle. One hand washin’ the other. It’s beautiful in its own way.”

  “I’d call it a lot of things but ‘beautiful’ isn’t one of them.”

  “You ain’t from here,” Lament said, moving to the men again. “People from here don’t seem to last long,” Hellboy said. “Granny Lewt near a hundred and sixteen.” Lament stepped over some of the battered female husks. “Iffun these are just the buds ... the leaves ... the sweet meant to lure the prey ... then where’s the trunk of the thing?”

  “Good question.” Hellboy looked at the broken vines and followed them with his eyes as far as he could. Some had risen high over tree limbs and others went under the water, but they all ran into the deep scrub. He pointed. “That’s where they went off, flying and dancing and floating.” He cocked a thumb over his shoulder, pointing in the opposite direction. “So I guess we should go that way.”

  “‘Ceptin’ that’s where we already come from.”

  “I was hoping you weren’t going to tell me that.” Lament continued climbing through the knee-high water and finally reached the nest where the captured men from town lay. One after the other he found them in their rows, dead but grinning, propped up in their little patches of mud.

  “I wonder if their loved ones would he thankful these boys all died so happy.”

  “I’m guessing not,” Hellboy said. “A few of them were still alive a couple minutes ago.”

  They searched among the aisles, checking throats for pulses, turning over bodies mostly face-down in the shallows, but all the men were now lifeless.

  “They been starved and drained,” Lament told him.

  “It wasn’t just that,” Hellboy said. A wave of guilt swept through him. The same way it had in Calcutta, Istanbul, and Beirut when the corpses lay scattered at his hooves. “I think it was the shock too. After the women left them they went into seizures, like addicts going cold turkey. I should’ve thought it through and been more careful.”

  “Not your fault, son. They were already too far gone. Even if any of them had survived this long, they woulda been as insane as that old man we run into, and destined to kill themselves anyways. Don’t take on a burden that ain’t yours to carry.”

  Hellboy wasn’t salved, but he appreciated the words. “You know any of these guys?”

  “No, but I suspect that Megan Dodd’s husband Jorry is among them. The rest must be gator hunters, fur trappers, moonshiners, maybe some marijuana farmers. The mother plant must’ve started pluckin’ at ‘em one at a time at first, and then gathered more and more to it in recent days.”

  The brush rippled with breeze and Hellboy’s shoulders tightened. Hot as it was, he was getting waterlogged and a chill worked through him. He snorted. “You got some really weird grannies around here if that’s what they’re growing back here. I always thought little old ladies liked chrysanthemums and tulips.”

  “I like to think she was fightin’ it, tryin’ to tame it. Granny witches are strong, nurturing women, they try to live in harmony with nature. It’s what gives them their power.”

  “This isn’t natural,” Hellboy said.

  Lament managed a chuckle. “It’s a big odd world, son, or ain’t you noticed?”

  “All right, forget that. We’ve got to get the hell out of here. Where’s the skiff?”

  “Beached on gator ground or sunk most likely. We might have to slog our way out.”

  After all those miles traveled on the water through this emerald hell, the idea of trying to crawl out that same way made his tail twitch. “Is that even possible?”

  “We’ll know soon enough, I reckon. Unless we’re lucky enough to run into
Sarah out here, which is our whole purpose.”

  Hellboy thought it would be pretty damn humiliating to come this far to save three pregnant girls only to have to rely on them to walk him back home again.

  “Come on now, let’s get on our way,” Lament said, and as he took a step away from the bodies and bones, the girlies burst from the tupelo scrub and catclaw brambles again and came hurtling forward. They swept down, diving and dancing.

  “We’ve got to take this fight to them!” Hellboy shouted, preparing to club the women aside.

  “No, that ain’t the way,” Lament told him. The women whirled and reached to hug him. “Do like I do, son. They ain’t gonna stop until they woo us, so let them woo.”

  “Let them woo?”

  “Yes. Have faith.”

  Instead of battling the beautiful feminine husks, Lament moved along with them across the shallows, easing himself one step at a time toward the deep wet scrub, The girls cooed and sighed and watched with black eyes, and Lament resisted while appearing to give in. He laughed with them. It was a sickening sound but it appeased the girlies. Hellboy marched along too, the women hanging onto him, their lips at his neck. He let them woo and they began to bleed him.

  ———

  They tried to make Hellboy dance but he wouldn’t dance. They tried to make him lie down at their knees but he wouldn’t do that either. Lament seemed to be having fun, allowing them to literally sweep him off his feet. They lifted him to the trees and he glided around in the air, entwined by the soft pink arms of moss cultivated over gator-mauled skeletons.

  Hellboy had to give it to him, he was a sharp little hillbilly, playing along like that. The girlies sipped at Laments numerous small wounds but he didn’t show any sign of pain. Instead he laughed like a gigolo and twirled among the fat tupelo leaves. The ladies responded with their tittering breaths from the boles.

  The bizarre procession moved steadily through the jungle getting closer to the lair of the mother beast, whatever it might be. The vines grew taut and drew them in faster like a fisherman reeling in his lines.