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  Poling more quickly as the skiff bumped up against the knolls and mounds of morass, Hellboy saw an overturned rowboat further along the bank.

  Lament searched the waters. “Nothing else here I can spot. No bodies.”

  Hellboy nodded and saw a blur of black motion at the corner of his eye. He raised his chin and looked up.

  “Hey!” Hellboy said.

  “What is it?”

  “I saw something.”

  “What?”

  He pointed with his stone hand. “A girl.”

  Lament shielded his eyes from the sun and said, “Where? What girl?”

  “A naked girl,” Hellboy told him. “She was covered in flowers, way up in the trees, waving to me. Her eyes entirely black. As midnight.”

  Chapter 11

  Deeter Ferns stobpoled Plume Wallace’s skiff through the morass with great efficiency and poise. His drunken, brutal father hadn’t been good for too damn much, but the man had certainly taught his sons all there was to know about living on the bog.

  “I still don’t see why we had to bring this old boy along,” Duffy said. “He startin’ to stink somethin’ awful. Passed a perfectly good sinkhole back aways where he’d’a been gone forever and not ruinin’ our day. ‘Stead we got a half a gallon’a blood sloshing in the bottom of the boat and evidence a’plenty if we run afoul of the sheriff or anybody else.”

  Brother Jester, seated in the back of the boat, held the corpse up beside him, his arm around Plume Wallace like he was hugging a drunken friend. The dead man’s mouth was parted slightly, an inch of tongue jutting between the rotted stumps of teeth, with its ashen face still showing the frozen leer of a painful death on it, turned to jester’s ear.

  Shadows twined around the corpse’s lips and urged the secrets up from his undeparted soul. They slowly tore free like the deep roots of an old maple.

  “Someone camped right there, at the edge of the basin last night,” Deeter said.

  “It was our enemies,” Jester said. “We’re growing nearer.”

  The long rumbling cry of a bull gator resounded like thunder across the weeds and hummocks, the gator’s musk filling the air. Duffy drew his cutting blade, still crusted with Mrs. Hoopkins’s blood, and cleaned it in the waters of the lake before replacing it in his sheathe. He saw the bull gator’s rutted forehead skimming through the mire in the distance and watched his brother easily divert the skiff to avoid the beast. Duffy checked both the pump shotgun and the double-barrel ten-gauge they’d stolen from Plume Wallace’s cold hand.

  “‘Sides that there weird-lookin’ big red fella, who we aim to fight?”

  Jester said, “An honest young man graced and blessed the way I was once graced and blessed.”

  Duffy waited for more and when no more was forthcoming asked, “That it? That all you gonna tell us?”

  “That’s all there is to tell the likes of you.”

  “Well, I figure a couple’a shell blasts in their gizzards are likely to stop them just fine no matter how weird or God blessed or graceful they be. What you say to that, Preacher?”

  “I’m not a preacher anymore,” Brother Jester told him, his ruined voice sounding even uglier as it snapped and echoed across the basin, imposing itself upon the natural sounds of the swamp. He turned his full attention to the corpse beside him.

  Jester patted Plume Wallace’s back—still wet with blood—running his hand back and forth and gripping a shoulder adamantly, the way a best friend offers condolences to someone lost in bereavement. Even after being shot twice by Deeter, it had taken Plume Wallace almost five minutes to die while crawling in the dirt behind his shack, drawing himself around and around in agonized circles.

  He’d refused to plead or beg or beseech. He’d left the world cursing and reaching for Deeter’s ankle. A man of pride and courage, Jester respected him deeply. Patting the body even harder, Jester felt a profound love for Plume Wallace.

  All the dead had reasons to live, even if they didn’t know those reasons while they were alive. Plume Wallace had a sister he hadn’t seen in over thirteen years because of some fool argument they’d had over an old car radiator. Plume wanted to use the one in their daddy’s junked Ford for his still, and she fought him on it because even a drop of radiator fluid would poison the moon and make him go blind. By God, but he knew how to flush a damn radiator he told her, what’d she think, that he was an eedjit? But she didn’t want him to take the chance. She loved him too much and she worried. So he booted her in the ass and sent her packin’ to go live with their lame Aunt Etta in Waynescross.

  Only the recently dead understood real regret.

  Now more than anything the spirit of Plume Wallace wished he could speak to his sister and beg forgiveness. She was right to have worried—he’d flushed that radiator plenty but when it was time to take the first sip of moon he gave it to his neighbor Earl Groell. Earl Groell was already mostly blind so it didn’t matter much, but it didn’t stop Plume Wallace from throwing the rest of the batch in the swamp and flushing that radiator again.

  Now he sought to send his soul sixty-two miles northwest to the door of his Aunt Etta’s home and pledge his love for his sister, even if she couldn’t hear him. It was a need that consumed him, and the first step toward his shrugging free of his mortal self and finding peace at his entry into the beyond.

  Jester’s shadows held firmly to Plume Wallace’s soul while it struggled to leave the rotting bag of flesh. The tortured expression on the dead face seemed to become even more despairing. “Not yet. Not yet. I have need of you, friend.”

  “What’s he goin’ on about?” Deeter whispered to his brother, and Duffy, the blood in the bottom of the boat rising halfway over his shoes, said, “Just you get us the hell out of these black waters, all right?”

  Speaking quietly into Plume Wallace’s cold ear, Jester told him, “Go on ahead of us. Visit with my true enemy. My shadows can see deeply in most things, but they cannot see him.”

  “I ain’t your huntin’ dog,” the dead man told him. “Do your own damn villainous work, and let me alone. Sweet Jesus is waitin’ on his throne to greet me comin’ up the golden stairway. Ain’t you done enough bad will on me?”

  “You won’t rest a wink in the afterlife until I release you, friend—”

  “Ain’t very friendly-like at’all ...”

  “And I won’t do that until you aid me in my undertaking.”

  The dead were extremely sensitive. The ghost of Plume Wallace, already agitated because it hadn’t found the peace of oblivion yet, grew angry and struggled harder to be free of its body. “That supposed to be funny?That what tickle your ribs,you skinny sumbitch? Mentionin’ undertakin’ to a murdered ole boy never done you no harm?”

  “A poor choice of words,” Jester admitted. “In my crusade to find my daughter and unborn grandchild in these dark waters I seem to have forgotten my manners.”

  Butting a log, the skiff jolted and shook, and the corpse flopped sideways away from Jester as if scrambling toward freedom. “I remember you now,” said Plume Wallace’s spirit. “I sat in on one of your gospel sings when I was no more than twelve, thirteen. You had a voice come straight from on high. You done good for folks, healed my mama’s bunions, cured Daddy of a cyst in his eye. How’d you come to this?”

  Smiling, his sorrow and madness entwined, jester said, “I loved and I trusted.”

  Feathered shadows tugged at Plume Wallace’s soul and Jester’s hand ignited with his fury. He pressed his palm on the corpse’s chest, shoving out the ghost but binding it to him. A thin silver strand no mortal could see connected them, and would until Jester decided to sever it and let Plume leave this world.

  “Go on ahead and seek out my enemy. Find my daughter if you can, and return to me again with whatever you glean.”

  “I ain’t got no choice, so I’ll be back, and hope when I do I find you burnin’ from your own malicious deeds.”

  “I already am,” Jester said.

 
; Chapter 12

  Lament scanned the trees. “I don’t see nothin’.”

  “I’m telling you, she was there,” Hellboy said. “She waved to me.”

  “I ain’t doubtin’ you, son. If you say it’s so, then I believe it.”

  “You don’t sound like you believe it.”

  “Now don’t you go gettin’ all defensive on me.”

  “Christ, I’m not getting defensive!”

  Tupelo, laurel, and titi shook in the breeze, and the swamp went silent except for distant murmurs that sounded like a man whispering sweet-talk to a loved one. Granny Lewt’s ears didn’t tell him it was any kind of a bird or rodent or reptile that only sounded like a man, so maybe it was Megan Dodd’s husband Jorry or somebody else lost out there. He swung the skiff in that direction and came up against a thicket with dead hollowed-out trees jutting everywhere.

  Lament froze and sucked air through his teeth.

  “What is it?” Hellboy asked.

  “Thought I felt somethin’ for a second. Hold on.”

  Cocking an ear, Lament seemed to be listening intently to the wind, his curly hair wafting about his face. Hellboy saw that beneath the white streak was a large, old scar twisting across Lament’s scalp. He thought about what that wound must’ve looked like on an eight-year-old boy and was shocked that Lament had managed to live through Jester’s attack with a hatchet.

  As if speaking quietly to someone nowhere in sight, Lament said into the breeze, “Plume Wallace, that you? This your silver thread?”

  Then he made as if he heard some unheard voice. He frowned, nodded and grunted assent. “Uh yuh, yuh.” Rubbed his beard stubble and listened a bit more.”I’m sorry to hear that, you was a pretty good ole boy, way I remember it. You done all that you could, don’t fret none about that. You got my prayers to help ease your burden. No man should die crawlin’ in the mud. And they stole your shotgun too? Sonsabitches.”

  Hellboy said, “Hey, I’m right here, why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”

  Lament held a hand up and gestured for him to wait. After another minute the hillbilly’s face reddened and he tightened his fists. “Goddamn them Ferris brothers. They such handsome boys they got near everybody beguiled. I shoulda killed them when I had the chance. You tell Mrs. Hoopkins she gonna rest easy, I’ll see to her girls. Bliss Nail owes us all a little somethin’ for settin’ us on this damn course, he got the money to keep her home and peanut farm runnin’. Maybe he can get his own six daughters out helpin’ folks, leadin’ their lives again. I’ll make sure he finds the good Samaritan in himself and becomes a fine and charitable person, you got my word.”

  He faced Hellboy and said, “Jester’s onto us. Got hisself a couple of bad ole boys, too, name’a the Ferris brothers. Killers born and bred, though they’re golden-haired and beautiful to gaze on. They cut down Mrs. Hoopkins a short time after you left last night.”

  “Damn it.”

  “And this morning they stole the skiff from a fella name’a Plume Wallace. Worse than that, Jester’s put his soul in service to learn what he can about us. He ain’t seen Sarah or the girl you spotted in the trees a’drape in flowers, but the dead are sensitive and he knows we comin’ up to a bad area of the blackwater.”

  “Seems that’s all we’ve been doing. Is there a good area in this swamp? I don’t like being chased. I’m the one who does the chasing.”

  But Lament turned away to dialogue with the ghost again. Hellboy checked the cypress and the sycamore and pine trees once more. A naked girl with flowers wreathed around her body wouldn’t have been nearly as unsettling if she hadn’t been forty feet in the air and had eyes black and empty as a shark’s.

  “Let me see if there’s anything I can do,” Lament said to the dead.

  With the poise and fluidity of performing a well-practiced ritual, Lament moved his hands into the proper positioning for casting a spell. Interlaced, with the tips of index fingers together in a this-is-the-steeple fashion, his thumbs pointed over his heart. Hellboy could feel the straining effort of Lament’s will in his perfectly conducted actions.

  Bursts of blue and black sparks crackled in his hands. The hillbilly drew hexagons in the air, followed by a seal of Solomon, pentacles, representations of the Sephiroth and Sephirah angels, and Kabbalistic symbols.

  Hellboy recognized the Rite of Release, which set free bewildered souls that still thought they were alive. But he’d studied for decades reading ancient grimoires and tomes in the finest paranormal libraries of the world. Where could an Appalachian-wandering, mouth-harp-plucking, former-child evangelist, backwoods drifter learn all this?

  Visibly weakened and shaken, Lament wavered and sat heavily in the skiff. “I’m sorry, Plume Wallace. His whipcord is too tight upon your soul. He’s a long row of bad, but liar ain’t among his evils. Iffun he said he’d let you go, he will. I promise to tend your grave least once a year, no man deserves less than that.”

  The breeze rose and shook leaves down on them, and then it fell away and the swamp was silent and still again. For an instant Hellboy thought he saw a reflection of silver in Lament’s eyes like a trail of mercury floating by, and then it was gone.

  He didn’t mind following his instincts and going along blindly with a situation when there was no other way to approach it. But he didn’t like being in the dark when someone else knew a hell of a lot more about things than he did.

  “I’ve had it with you,” he said.”Who taught you that Rite of Release and those other magic practices? Where did you learn them?”

  “I ain’t never learned no such thing,” Lament told him. He pulled the small jug of moonshine from his rucksack and took a sip, screwing his face up at the taste. “They learned me.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Mayhap not, but it’s still the truth.”

  Hellboy took up the pole and pointed it at Lament’s chest. “I want some answers from you, pal.”

  “If I had ‘em to share, then share ‘em I would.”

  “That sounds pretty, but I’m not buying it. I’ve seen a lot of strange things in my time, but you’re starting to make me really antsy.”

  “Well, boy, I done told you that none of this is your burden, and iffun you wanted out, I’d point you the way any time you like.” Lament replaced the jug and took hold of the stobpole with one hand, pointed into the jungle with the other. “That’s how you leave, ‘cept you’ll have to swim and crawl and walk to get out, ‘cause I still have need of this boat. But you’ll make it, I’m sure of that. You ready to be on your way?”

  “I’ll see this thing through to the end,” Hellboy said.

  “Well, you follow your heart as you see fit, son.”

  Hellboy drew in a deep breath, ready to launch into a lecture about the times he’d been betrayed by those he thought were his friends. He jutted his chin and took a step forward when he saw several beautiful naked women wearing flowers draped about their bodies and in their hair, coyly flitting about in the brush.

  “Oh crap.”

  “That about says it.” Lament snatched the pole out of Hellboy’s hand and started stobbing the skiff along fiercely. “Those must be Mania’s girlies, whoever or whatever they be. We need to get on away from here.”

  “Well, yeah,” Hellboy replied, “sure, but—wow, they’re pretty—” And that’s when the boat got caught on the edge of a tussock of briar and bull grass, where a naked old guy lay in the shallow muddy water, giggling insanely to himself.

  ———

  Okay, Hellboy thought, so this place had weird people just everywhere you looked. You couldn’t walk on a road or climb into a boat or get lost in a swamp without tripping over them. Given a choice, he’d rather be glancing around at the nudie cutie-pie girlies than looking at this guy’s wrinkled pale patootie.

  Hellboy leaned over but couldn’t quite reach the geezer. “Ease us in a little closer. You know who he is?”

  Lament shook his head.”No, never met him,
‘leastways not that I recall.”

  The deranged coot crawled through the slough, dragging himself by his arms over the matted roots and silt teeming with white egrets and other life. His legs were thin and twisted, and he was apparently crippled. That would explain the crutch they found. His laughter came from deep in his bony chest. From all about in the brush, girlish titters seemed to echo it.

  Lament worked them around the tussock toward the old man, who was trying to scrabble across the bank of branches on his useless legs.

  “Ma girlie,” he said. “Smellin’ so pretty and so fine. She was here, jest for me, singin’ the way I like. Leave me alone, I say! Go way now, you go on away!”

  “Come on, old-timer,” Hellboy said, lifting the guy into the skiff, “let’s get you out of the water.” The geezer weighed hardly anything. He was undernourished, dehydrated, and exhausted, as if he’d been lying out there doing nothing but smiling obscenely for days. “What’s your name?”

  “Ain’t got one!”

  “You don’t have a name?”

  “Not no more. Please, I never done you no harm. Put me back. Put me back!”

  “We’re going to take you home.”

  “No, I say, no!” the coot cried. His beard was tangled with thorns and he was covered in the jetsam of the bayou. His skin was raw from sunburn and insect bites. Hellboy wrapped him in a blanket and tried to get some of the corn griddle cakes down his throat, but the old man refused to eat.

  Turning away, Hellboy caught a powerful musky perfume on the air.

  “Smell that?” he asked.

  Lament nodded. “Same odor that was in Megan Dodd’s shack.”

  “Cain’t go back no more,” the old man whimpered. “Hep me get on. I needs to get on with my answering.”

  Something bumped against the bottom of the boat, and Hellboy almost lost his footing. Lament tried poling free and said, “We’re stuck on water vine.”

  Staring into the marsh prairies, Hellboy knew a fight was coming with whatever was down there. The waters were thick with silt, snaking roots, and rotting clumps of plant matter. Although the cypress reached astounding heights here, sunlight broke through and lit the black waters, the green mire glowing, alive and hungry and eternally patient. He tightened his hands into fists waiting to slug something.