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  They were pulling him down to a mostly submerged tussock island, where they could bury him in the roots. He had to move in the opposite direction and get to air. His brain was already getting foggy, his head full of white and red spatters.

  Hellboy swung around hard and connected squarely with one of the gators. Felt like it was directly on its snout. He kicked hard then, feeling teeth snap oil in the flesh of his ankle, and let loose with a cry that released the last of his air. A burst of bubbles tickled his forehead, and he knew which way was up.

  He broke the surface spitting out Christ knew what, the thick sludge of swamp boiling around him. Oil from the broken lantern burned across the water and gave him a little light.

  During the struggle he must’ve knocked the skiff aside. He saw it was overturned and stuck in a snarl of cypress roots not too far away. He swam for it. Behind him the bull gators had made it to the far bank of the inlet and were nursing their wounds.

  Hellboy could touch bottom now but he kept slipping in the slime and flopping over on his face, unable to catch his breath. It was difficult going but he finally managed to shrug out of his ruined overcoat and get a hand on the boat.

  Breathing heavily, he grabbed hold and took a step up the bank before he realized there was a hole in the bottom of the skiff. Not huge but big enough that he couldn’t fix it. He let out a grunt of frustration and slid off-balance in the muck again. The skiff spun out of his reach, righted itself, and immediately started to sink. He turned away and found he was going under again.

  He came up gagging and sucking wind. By the time he got ready to try and climb up from the shallows again, he heard the sharp sounds of hissing nearby.

  “Terrific,” he said. Two more bull gators were coming straight for him down the silt bank, their eyes shining with silver moonlight.

  ———

  He thought about going for his gun but the possibility of bigger pockets of methane worried him. Dumb to die out here rolled to the bottom of some mud-hole, but it would be even worse if he blew himself up.

  He said,”I’m not good eating, guys. Just go ask your other pals. Why don’t you both just—”

  The first bull slued forward, opening its jaws wide. Instead of waiting, Hellboy lunged, shifted his weight, and more or less fell directly across its nose. The gator scrambled along up the bank with Hellboy on its back. Good, they were getting to drier, firmer ground. Hellboy rolled off and stood in a crouch. After those hours in the skiff and slipping around in the mire, it was nice to have earth beneath his hooves again. When the bull turned to make another pass he caught hold of its tail and held on. The second gator tried to go for his legs, but Hellboy hauled its brother around, lifted it high, and brought it slamming down on the other’s back in a crushing blow of muscle and scale. While they tried to untangle themselves, Hellboy grabbed what was left of his coat, put it back on, and moved further along the narrow shore.

  In the distance he saw flame.

  The mud bank thinned until he was back in the water. Forced to swim and crawl through the morass, clambering across sandbanks and tussocks of briar, thorn, and barb, he made his way toward the fire.

  Chapter 7

  The dark lake glistened with star shine, the rim of the water a searing white as if slabs of light had been laid end to end around its edge.

  It took him over an hour to reach the camp, and by the time he got there he was exhausted, half-drowned, completely covered in mud and rotting vegetation, and he was sick to his stomach from swallowing so much swamp water. Or maybe it was the old lady’s Celiac Ganglia with the Sympathetic Plexuses of the Abdominal Viscera, but he really didn’t want to think about that.

  A skiff had been beached in white sand, and nearby a young man sat playing a mouth-harp. The guy had a campfire going with something freshly killed cooking on a spit. Thankfully the old lady hadn’t given Hellboy her nose too. He didn’t want to know what it was he was watching sizzle in the flames.

  He figured this had to be John Lament. A deep calm seemed to settle around and within the guy. He was maybe twenty-five, but with a shock of white right up front in his otherwise wavy brown hair. Dressed in jeans, suspenders, and a light white linen shirt rolled up to the middle of his muscular forearms.

  Lament quit his twanging, looked up, and said, “Well son, you look like you’ve had a hell of a time of it out in these black waters.” He drew a blanket from a rucksack. “Dry off and come sit by the fire ‘fore you catch your death.”

  Hellboy nodded his thanks, yanked off his belt and ragged coat, and dried himself, doing his best to clean off the mud. His ankle was chewed up pretty bad and he had deep lacerations across his thigh. He tore off a couple of lengthy strips from his coat and bound his wounds, then put his belt back on.

  Lament offered a small jug. “You want a tap of moon to kill the pain?”

  Might as well make sure he was dealing with the right person. “You’re Lament?”

  “Yessir. John Lament. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

  Lament made as if to shake hands. Hellboy held out his right fist. Lament’s face broke into a wide grin. Hellboy put his hand down.

  As good a time as any to get the ball rolling. Hellboy opened a compartment on his belt and tossed the Dome of the Rock charm, expecting some real action this time. Lament caught it in his left hand, turned the medallion over, and checked the ancient inscription.

  His lips quivered as if he was fighting to frame unfamiliar words. Then he said, ‘”I invoke the protection of the Green One,Tamuz, Aradia, and Anu-Sais. I command evil and death to disperse and the moon to appear in my hand.’”

  That got Hellboy’s notice. He scratched between the stubs of his horns. “You read Sumerian?”

  “No,” Lament told him, “but it speaks to me. You go ‘round throwin’ this thing at every stranger you run across?”

  “Lately,” Hellboy admitted, “it seems that I have.”

  “Not very civilized.”

  Lament threw the charm back and Hellboy pocketed it once again. The old lady had been right. The swamps were like nowhere else he’d ever visited.

  “Listen,” Hellboy said as Lament twanged another tune. “I’ve had a kind of bad day so far. So if you want to rumble let’s do it now and get it out of the way.”

  Lament quit picking at his mouth-harp and looked up. “Rumble?”

  “Fight.”

  “Why we gonna do a foolish thing like that?”

  “I didn’t say we should, I just said if you wanted to I’d oblige you.”

  “Right neighborly that is.” Sitting up, Lament checked the meat on the spit. “You hungry?”

  Hellboy said, “Considering I just drank half the damn swamp, and before that I got a spoonful of a granny witch’s stew jammed down my throat, and before that a big catfish stared at me like he’d scream if I stuck a fork in him, I don’t think I’ll ever be hungry again.”

  That got Lament chuckling. It was an easy, honest laughter. He lifted his chin and squinted at Hellboy. “Yep, now I recognize them eyes. You been suppin’ with Granny Lewt tonight. She’s a right fine lady but her manners could use some polish. She did what she done to help you, so be at ease about the rest of it.” He tapped the meat on the spit with a stick and said, “No worries ‘bout this food right here.”

  “What is it?”

  “Gray squirrel.”

  Hellboy turned aside in disgust. “I think I’ll pass anyway.”

  “Iffun you say.”

  Lament ate the meat directly off the spit, tearing at it with his teeth and occasionally drinking from his jug. He kind of hummed and sang as he ate, fully enjoying his meal. Hellboy watched, a little dismayed. He’d been edgy and waiting for a fight, and the ruckus with the gators hadn’t gotten the tension out of his system yet. The smell of his own drying blood made him anxious, and his tail kept twitching at mosquitoes.

  Stepping up, he loomed over Lament and decided to brace him. “What are you doing out here?”
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br />   Swallowing a bite of food, Lament said, “Same thing as you, I reckon.”

  “You have no idea what I’m about.”

  “That ain’t rightly true, son.”

  “How about if you lay it on the line? You people talk pretty but you take up a lot of air before you actually get around to saying anything much. I’m in a hurry.”

  “Are you?”

  Thinking about the time he’d killed on his way down south, hitching and brooding, alone with his thoughts and his bad mood, Hellboy realized he hadn’t been in a rush to do much of anything. It had been okay to put all the miles behind him, wet in the rain. But now it was different. There were teenage girls lost out there, and he wanted to make certain they were safe before he called it a day.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I am. So how about you answer my question. What are you doing out here?”

  “I did answer. You just ain’t in the mind to hear.”

  Lament finished the meat on the spit and threw the remainder into the fire. He lifted his mouth-harp to his lips and played a bit more, somehow making the song sound pretty. Hellboy wouldn’t have thought it possible, strumming a rubber band and making music.

  When Lament finished he sighed hard enough to fan the fire. “I’m here to save my Sarah from harm, and them other girls swole with children too. Same as you, ain’t that the case? ‘Cept none of this is your burden.”

  “You need help, so I’m here.”

  “Well, if you’re of a like mind and want in with my task and purpose, I could use a friend. You want out, I can point you the way any time you like, Fair ‘nuff?”

  Hellboy decided it was. “Fair enough.” He sat at the fire and looked around, then spotted a rucksack. “I don’t suppose you have a candy bar or a bag of pretzels you could share, now do you?”

  “Caught some catfish earlier, if you want a taste.”

  Hellboy grimaced. “Christ, not with the catfish again.”

  Bull gators roared in the distance, the loons cried into the night. Reflections from a dozen peering eyes made Hellboy turn and turn again. The tension rose within him once more and the muscles in his back tightened. “Shouldn’t we keep going, make sure Sarah and the others are all right out there?”

  Lament said, “There ain’t a critter anywhere in this swamp that can get the drop on her. She been out in these marsh prairies since she was baptized. In fact, it happened right here, on this basin. The holy spirit visitin’ her.”

  “How do you know?”

  “How do you think, son? Because I was there.” He then pointed to a patch of flattened weeds and a few strewn rocks nearby. “They made camp here a day or so ago.”

  “For someone who claims he wants to save those girls, you don’t seem too worried about them.”

  “I am,” Lament said. “But it’s a loser’s game to stumble about in the dark on the blackwater.”

  Hellboy thought, Did he just call me a loser? “Hey, pal—”

  “You already shovin’ your luck just by not already bein’ gator bait. You travel any farther at night and ain’t nobody ever gonna see your princely face again. Like I said, Sarah knows these waters better than damn near anybody in Enigma. The man who raised her wrassled gators out in these parts, and used to head up the swamp tent revivals and the all-night gospel sings.”

  “You’re from here.”

  “I been adrift all over.”

  “But you know Enigma.”

  “I know Enigma.”

  “There’s someone else after her. Sarah and the girls.”

  “Ayup.”

  “You know him?”

  “I know him.”

  “What if that guy doesn’t camp tonight?”

  “Then he’ll probably be knockin’ on the pearly gates by mornin’ and we won’t have to worry about it Vail. Sometimes, problems have a way of rightin’ themselves.” He gestured vaguely. “There’s a swamp shanty town yonder. We’ll make for it come sunup.”

  “You know where it is?”

  “You sure are a curious fella, ain’t ya. I know where it is.”

  “Where’s yonder?”

  “Well, when we find it we’ll know for sure. Now, lay in on that blanket and let’s get some sleep.”

  Hellboy laid down. He wasn’t sure that he could trust this guy, and said, “I’m not sure I can trust you.”

  But Lament merely turned away from the fire, drew his blanket over his shoulder, and soon was softly snoring.

  It had been a hell of a day all right.

  As Hellboy fell asleep he saw the shadows lengthening, thickening around the campsite, easing toward him to clutch at his clothes and face. They spoke in an infantile and inhuman language that he couldn’t name but could still understand. They told him he would find remorse and pain in the marsh, but he should be true to his own secret heart. He brushed the shadows from his nose as he settled in to dream, hearing the children calling him.

  Chapter 8

  Jester sat in shadow with the demon’s secrets.

  It had been too late to take a skiff into the swamp, with the moon already beginning to rise, so they’d decided to wait until sunup. The Ferris boys lived in a two-room shack not far from the house where Brother Jester had been raised by his own brutal father, another man corrupted by bitterness, ignorance, and corn liquor. They were terrified that Jester would murder them in their sleep, and they tried to appease him any way they could. They offered him food, wine, and the tramp down the lane, and even their sagging, fetid mattresses although Jester hadn’t slept under a roof in twenty years.

  Jester hadn’t slept in twenty years. His mind periodically wandered away from his body, and the body occasionally rested.

  They gave him a torn blanket spattered with old bloodstains. It was a child’s blanket and featured a cartoon bird character. He folded it and laid it on their sagging back-porch step and sat there looking into the lush vegetation of the woodland that eventually cascaded into the marshes.

  Held within the folds of their black wings, the shadows of angels brought with them the secrets of the sleeping demon, aflame with hellfire. When the shadows dropped the mysteries, puzzles, and contradictions at Jester”s feet, the dark preacher poked through them with the toe of his shoe, struggling but incapable of understanding.

  A Russian who would not die. A loving foster father, a hard man of justice. A once-evil but eventually repentant mother. A prince of Sheol. Enormous unholy beasts with the faces of pigs, frogs, and dogs. Brutish shamblers that burned from the touch of iron or innocence. Griddle cakes. Horseshoes. Holy water and the bones of saints.

  Brother jester took off his hat, cleaned the brim with his handkerchief, and put it back on.

  Children. Inhuman, horrific in nature, but blessed. Calling to God and those that aid Gods will. And the Holy Spirit giving favor.

  A great tree of life, perhaps the very tree of knowledge still bearing fruit in the garden of Eden, away from mankind’s transgressions.

  Those were only the few images he could easily grasp. A greater number of them were visions and scraps of infernal knowledge that tore into his mind. They went behind his small human brain and settled at the back of his skull where his immortal rage sat perched, waiting to eat.

  There were words and legacies. Anung Un Rama. The Crown of the Apocalypse. A name of destiny shunned and nearly lost so that it no longer held its greatest meaning. This secret somehow reminded him of his own forgotten name.

  The power inside Jester rose up on its own accord, rearing in pain and exhilaration. Sweat burst upon his brow and he began to shudder, his pulse snapping hard in his neck, his heart hammering.

  His hate was the hate of all men who twisted in faith and doubt, incapable of examining themselves too closely. He felt even closer to the demon now, understanding how they were both set on destined courses long before their births. They had become diverted and subjected to the will of others. To the endeavors of men and the testaments of Heaven and Hell. They had walked both paths, even
if neither of them could fully remember who they’d once been.

  Jester’s arms were thrown open, his head pressed back as his mouth widened and the sparking black motes of arcane energy bled from his tongue, nostrils, ears, and eyes. His vertebrae popped and crackled as his spine straightened, and he started to rise into the air. His body hung like the form of Christ broken upon the cross.

  Perhaps this was meant as tribute, perhaps only mockery. He began to laugh in his pain and fury—loving his own agony because it made him recall those who’d sinned against him, and reaffirmed his purpose in this world—until his mad laughter swept across the woodland and he slowly spun in midair above the demon’s mysteries.

  From the center of the churning secrets a great stone hand reached up and caught hold of jester’s ankle.

  The dark preacher screamed in fear. His avenging rage struck down like a lightning bolt, scorching the ground, but the enormous fist would not release him. It began to draw him back to the earth. When he touched soil again, jester dropped to his knees, exhausted, his clothes smoking. He was still grinning, but his eyes spun in terror. He knew more about what waited for him out in the swamp, and what would stand between him and his Sarah.

  He sat on the dead child’s blanket again and gentle fingers plied the worn threads at the shoulder of his frock coat.

  The ghost of his murdered wife—the wife he had murdered—said, “Don’t you let any harm come to my daughter.”

  She spoke in a voice that was somehow her own and yet had become much more since her death. She was filled with a strength and peace and light. The dead did not fret. The dead’s concerns were only for love. She did not bear him any ill will, and she sometimes came to him with that repose and serenity which calmed his rage and the menacing intensity within him. She had power too.

  “I won’t.”

  “Sarah can’t give you what you’re hoping for. Neither can her baby.”