Emerald Hell Read online

  Mrs. Hoopkins sat and said, “Them girls were havin’ dreams, Jebediah.”

  “You keep saying, that, to no disregard,” Hark said, his mouth full. “But you still cain’t tell me what kinda dreams they were.”

  “That Sarah, she’s tryin’ to keep ahead of some kind of evil that’s been chasin’ her in her nightmares. Every night for more than two weeks she’d been wakin’ up in a froze sweat, weepin’ and callin’.”

  “Callin’ on who?”

  “On that John Lament.”

  “That boy? I always liked him when he show up.” Hark sipped some more milk and had a final forkful of pie. “But he ain’t been around in more than a year, has he?”

  “Not that I know,” Mrs. Hoopkins said. “But he’s a drifter, comes and goes as he pleases, and now her dreamin’s caught on with some of the other girls.”

  “Becky Sue and Hortense,” Hellboy said.

  “That’s right. They dreamed their babies would be born ... wrong.”

  “Ill children,” the sheriff put in.

  “Pumpkin-headed or pinheaded.” She turned to Hellboy. “Now and then, well ... sometimes the poison in the ground comes up and gets in the blood, or venom in the blood gets into the ground.”

  Mutants. Probably because of all the contaminated moonshine made out here over the last century, the outbreaks of yellow and scarlet fevers. And more recently due to the toxic waste dumped into the marshes by big corporations. Barrels of hazardous waste, perhaps even radioactive material, brought down in eighteen-wheeler caravans. Who the hell knew what might have been tossed out there to avoid federal regulations and health codes.

  Mrs. Hoopkins said, “You ain’t eatin’, son. Why ain’t you eatin’ my pie?”

  “Sorry, had a big dinner at Bliss Nail’s house.”

  “Nobody in that house can cook the way I can.”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Give it here,” the sheriff said, pulling the plate to him and digging in.

  Another toddler stepped into the kitchen and went for Hellboy’s tail. Mrs. Hoopkins came flying out of her seat and shouted, “Lolly Mae, ain’t you got a boy needs some changin’ and feedin’?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Well then, get him off that big fella’s posterior and get on with it. We all got to pull our weight, and tomorrow gonna be a big day on the farm.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Lolly Mae picked up her son, did a little curtsey, and raced upstairs.

  Flailing her arms, Mrs. Hoopkins said,”These girls got to get them some rest. Those who can got’s to harvest peanuts on the morrow.”

  Hellboy had seen a lot across the world, but he’d never seen anybody work a peanut farm before. He wished he had time to watch such a thing. “I understand.”

  The sheriff finished his other slice of pie, stood, and followed Hellboy to the door. “You wanna wait until morning and I’ll send some men with you.”

  “I can’t wait,” Hellboy said.

  “Then you be safe, son.”

  Mrs. Hoopkins pressed a hand atop his own. “You think you can find them three girls out there in the slough ‘fore any danger befalls them?”

  “I’m going to try.”

  “I got me a bad feeling in these old bones.”

  Hellboy thought, Me too, but said nothing.

  ———

  Tapping at the driver’s window, Hellboy waited while Waldridge snorted awake from his nap. He told the houseman that he was going to go off and look for the bog village.

  “You want I should go with ya?”

  “No, that’s okay. I was just hoping you could point me in the right direction.”

  “You just gonna set off walkin’?”

  “Yeah.” He knew that something would be along to shove and prod him on the way. Ever since he’d been let off in Enigma he’d felt he was being watched.

  “Swamp that way,” Waldridge said, angling his index finger south-east down a dirt track. “They say it’s eight hundred square miles. Heard it on the radio once.”

  Only about 450,000 acres. “That’s not so bad.”

  “You don’t know your way ‘round these black waters.”

  “Do you?”

  Waldridge considered the question. “No man does fully, but it’s better to have someone with ya. In case’a ... well, snakebite ... and to keep an eye out for gators.”

  A tough old feisty dude, all right. Hellboy said, “Thanks anyway. I appreciate the offer, but there’s things I’m better off doing alone.”

  “I s’pect you’re right about that. Hope to meet up with you again soon. If not, you’ll always have my prayers.”

  Hellboy knew what they were worth, but it was nice to hear anyway.

  Chapter 4

  People had been dying out here by the dozens since the beginning of the world, swallowed by the bayou without a ripple. Or found hanging in the cypresses after a week of being lost in the maze of green, tormented by swimming snakes, alligators, and half-pound spiders.

  Tourists came for the gator farms, tent revivals, hootenannies, and jamborees. Hellboy still didn’t know what he’d come for, but he was glad he had a reason now to do the only thing he knew how to do.

  As he walked the empty road he sensed the scrub around him beginning to encroach, the night growing heavier and blacker, reaching for him. He stopped, stood still, and watched as the tree branches whirled and clawed past the moon. The ground shifted, alive, advancing and somehow taking him along with it. In the distance ahead he watched as ... as the distance itself came closer without real movement. The road began to flood, abruptly filling not only with rising water but with cypress, titi, and hard-packed earth. The marsh prairie came alive and rushed forward to meet and surround him.

  Before him now stood a small one-room shack.

  “Now that was a pretty neat trick,” he said. Stepping over, he waited for someone to come out. No one did.

  Hellboy thought, All of that and they’re going to make me knock.

  So he knocked.

  The thin pineboard door of the dilapidated shanty slowly opened, answered by a hulk of a man who managed to tower even over Hellboy. The giant looked back over his shoulder and said, “Mama, Satan hisself is at the door.”

  “Then let him on in, Luther,” an ancient, but oddly powerful voice, called.’”Fore he get up to any mischief out there.”

  “Come on in, O Lucifer, Son of the Morning!”

  Well, Hellboy thought, this is going to be fun.

  Lit from the glow of a blazing fire within, Luther’s eyes burned a strange bronze. He stood nearly seven feet tall and went at least three hundred pounds of hard muscle. His enormous head was crowned by a small tuft of wispy yellow hair. In his left hand he held two dead rabbits, and hooked on his huge pinky was a jug of moonshine.

  “Satan,” Luther said, “don’t stir no strife in this here house.”

  “Luther, if you don’t start any crud with me, I won’t with you. Deal?”

  “I reckon that’s as fair an offer as I’m likely to get from the Devil.”

  “Probably,” Hellboy admitted. “At least today.”

  Luther moved aside and Hellboy stepped in, his upper lip curling in response to the overwhelming stink of cooked meat.

  Tucked into her small wooden wheelchair a crone sat, smoking a corncob pipe. She was missing both legs, her left arm, right eye, and both ears. Long white hair grew in crazed clumps, some braided, some knotted into a pattern he recognized as a Litany Web. Powerful mojo.

  Behind her, against a shack wall abundant with cracks stuffed full of mud and sawgrass, he saw numerous jars filled with amber fluid and dark floating matter. Labeled in a childlike scrawl were: Granny’s Left Thumb, Granny’s Right Big Toe, Granny’s Shinbones, Luther’s Wisdom Teeth, Boysenberry Jam, Granny’s Anterior Margin of Pancreas, Granny’s Celiac Ganglia with the Sympathetic Plexuses of the Abdominal Viscera, Luther’s Kidney Stones, Peaches.

  “I’m Granny Lewt,�
� the woman said.”We got business together, you and me.”

  “We do?”

  “Tha’s right.”

  Drinking his moonshine, the hulking Luther tossed the rabbits onto a broad wooden kitchen table and began to skin them. He was very adept with the thick cutting blade, and Hellboy didn’t want to think about what that might imply, considering the old woman’s current state.

  “Let me hear what’s on your mind, lady.”

  “You showin’ up like this only gonna make bad matters come together that much faster.”

  “Usually does.”

  “Ayup. You put fear into the things that ain’t afraid’a much in this world or the next.” She plucked out her pipe and pointed the end at Hellboy. “Wish there were more like you around.”

  “Be careful saying things like that,” Hellboy said. “You never know who might be listening.”

  In the center of the stone hearth a black pot of stew bubbled. Luther gutted the rabbits, chopped the meat and some vegetables, several of which Hellboy didn’t recognize, and threw it all into the cauldron. Some of the liquid boiled over and splashed the inside of the fireplace. The flames heaved. A heavy draft swept by, moaning and wheezing through the perforated walls and up the chimney.

  “You heard tell’a Brother Jester?” Granny Lewt asked.

  “Yeah, him I heard about already. Can I go now?”

  “Don’t you shrug that one off too lightly.”

  Holding onto the pipe with her remaining two fingers, Granny Lewt snaked her right hand—her only hand—through the air for emphasis. Then she sat back and puffed deeply, enjoying her smoke.

  The old woman said, “He’s out there in Enigma right now. I don’t know his meaning. He’s got power, and he’s sly.”

  “They all are. Don’t worry about me, I’ve been doing this a long time.”

  “I pray tell that’s so. But you don’t know these swamps, and these here black waters is different than anything you ever known before.”

  He’d been in Jerusalem when the Whore of Babylon crept out of the olive trees at the Garden of Gethsemane. He’d fought off goblins and trolls and African tribal demons that possessed snakes sixty feet long. He’d gone head to head with the Japanese Lord of War called Aragami, the fury of wild violence, the God of Battle, slayer of 8,888 men, and Hellboy had trounced him. He hadn’t been so damn tough.

  So Hellboy figured that a little moss and slime, a few thorny patches and a lot of mud, some guy who took his troubles out on a bunch of girls ... well, he could handle it.

  Granny Lewt said, “There’s someone else out there you gotta watch out for.”

  “There always is,” Hellboy sighed. “Would that be this Lament character?”

  As she nodded, Granny’s blanket slid from around her shoulders and he saw the clean edge of scar tissue to her amputated arm. “He got power, that boy, but he been away in the world a long time. He used Co preach the gospel in a golden voice dazzling as the rising sun. But I don’t know which side’a this thing he likely to come down upon. He got a history with the walking darkness, he does.”

  Hellboy wondered why anybody ever tried to give him advice when, in the end, nobody knew a goddamn thing anyway.

  “You know where this village is supposed to be?”

  “Nobody knows except them that’s got to know.”

  “Well, that’s helpful. So, any idea where I should start?”

  “You walk southeast to the bottoms,” Granny said. “Follow the road, bear to the left. You’ll find a skiff and stobpole there.”

  “A what and a what?”

  “A boat and a pole to push it yonder into the sweet blackwater.” Granny Lewt appraised him and said, “For a worldly—for a beyond the worldly—big critter like you, you ain’t so well-versed in our ways.”

  “Lady this place isn’t all that special except it’s a lot greener and more humid than most.” He peered into her withered face, as deep as he figured he could go, and asked, “You think those girls and their babies will be all right?”

  “I pray so, but there ain’t no way to know until it’s their time for the chillun to come out in the world. I tell you this though, that Brother Jester get to whisperin’ at ‘em, or he toss out a shadow upon ‘em, he gonna cuss ‘em fer sure. They be born in some bad way. There’s a thousand years’a half-gnawed bones hidden in them briar patches and under that morass. You go in alone with no guide, you ain’t gonna ever come home again.”

  “You people are starting to freak me out a little,” Hellboy admitted. “How about if you save the creepy speeches for the next guy who comes down the road and just let me get on with it?”

  “I’d tell you to wait until mornin’—a lotta men been lost in that slough at high noon, much less at night—but we both know the minutes is melting away like a slivered candlestick. You gonna need somethin’ to help you on your way.”

  She rooted around in her blankets for a moment and he expected her to come up with a charm or amulet, the way the witches usually did. But instead she just got out a pouch of tobacco and started to clean and refill her pipe with her one hand. Her wrinkled, liver-spotted fingers were still extremely nimble. She tamped the tobacco in, stuck the pipe between her teeth again, lit a match against the underside of her chair, and set to smoking once more. Hellboy waited.

  Granny Lewt wheeled herself to the fire and filled a wooden bowl of stew. It steamed and hissed and popped, and Hellboy wondered how anybody could eat such a meal. He was hungry and started to wonder if he was ever going to get any edible chow this side of the Mason-Dixon line.

  “Here,” she said, “have some supper.”

  “Thanks anyway.”

  “You gotta eat it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You gotta get some into you so’s you can git about in the bog with my eyes and ears.” She placed it on her lap and rutted about for a spoon. Stuck it in the bowl and proffered it to him.

  He blinked at her. “Your eyes and ears?”

  “It’ll help you in your hour of need.”

  “Lady, the only need I’ve got right now is to get the hell out of here.”

  “Listen up now, boy, Granny Lewt been around these parts a lot longer than you. I’s one of the three sisters of the swamp and I’s here to help as much as I can, and help you’s what I’m’a gonna do. We bound, we three sisters. We can only do so much. So let me do what I needs to.”

  “Look, I appreciate the effort, but I’m going now.”

  “You cain’t!”

  Hellboy turned and went for the door, and of course it was gone.

  “Ah nuts to this.” He lifted his fist to pound through the wall and Luther grabbed him by the wrist and held on tightly.

  “Hey! I told you not to start any crap with me!”

  “Granny say you gotta eat!”

  “Backoff, pal!”

  But the massive brute wasn’t about to listen to reason, and he didn’t seem to have the IQ points to figure out not to mess with big red badasses, so Hellboy did his best to shove the lumbering guy away without hurting him.

  But Luther had some real strength to him, beyond anything Hellboy was expecting. Soon he realized he couldn’t hold back, and they really started to brawl.

  “Here,” Granny Lewt said, holding the bowl out to her son. The giant was able to continue fighting even while he reached for the stew, the jug of moonshine still hanging off his pinky. “He ain’t got his mind quite right yet. We got’s to help him.”

  “Iffun you say so, Mama.”

  “He got hisself some misery a’comin’ already. Don’t hurt him none, Luther.”

  “Iffun you say, Mama.”

  Like he didn’t have enough to put up with already, Hellboy had to listen to them talk about him like he wasn’t even in the room.

  Luther moved in quickly, low, growling like an animal now.

  “Last chance here, pal. I spend all my time smashing down things bigger and uglier than me. I’d say I’ve got this
one in hand. I’m warning you.”

  “Mister Satan, jest do what Mama say and I won’t have to hit you no more.”

  You had to give it to him, this backwoods swamp rat certainly was a single-minded true believer.

  Hellboy hauled off and slapped Luther in the head with his stone hand. Luther let out a yelp and almost went down to one knee. Almost. Then he stood to his full height, cocked the jug over his shoulder to his lips, sucked down some moon, wiped his mouth with the same hand, held the bowl out before him, and moved forward again.

  You couldn’t just lie down and let them walk over you Jamming rabbit bits and eyeballs and pancreases down your maw. Sometimes you had to take a stand against even the people who were trying to help.

  Granny continued smoking calmly, watching the fray.

  Hellboy hauled off and threw a roundhouse at the giant Luther, who moved into the blow with incredible speed, allowing himself to be struck. The force of impact made the walls creak and murmur, the names rising much higher in the hearth. The old woman’s wheelchair rolled across the room backward and almost crashed into the wall. She gripped a wheel and spun in circles, cackling and whooping wildly, enjoying herself.

  Shelves rattled savagely, and one jar tipped and rang against another before falling to the floor.

  “You done set free my kidney stones!”Luther cried, and hurled himself at Hellboy once again.

  This was just unbelievable. Hellboy started to buckle and barely managed to stay on his feet. Granny Lewt blew out a stream of smoke and said, “Ya cain’t win because you ain’t fightin’ evil this time. In your heart you know we’s your friends, and what’s got to happen is what’s got to be.”

  “Son of a—!”

  In the midst of his curse, wondering if the old lady was somehow right, Hellboy’s eyes grew wide as Luther slung forward the bowl of stew and slopped it into his mouth. Oh Jesus. You could put up with a lot but really, having an old woman’s eyes and ears and maybe her Celiac Ganglia with the Sympathetic Plexuses of the Abdominal Viscera washing down your throat, it was just too much. His stomach tumbled and he gritted his teeth, about to launch himself at Luther and finish this fiasco, when the giant moved away and began cleaning up the broken shards of glass, collecting his kidney stones.