Hellboy: On Earth as It Is in Hell

by Brian Hodge

  "I don't believe I've ever heard that word spoken in positive terms by the clergy," Abe said.

  "And the reasons for that, the attitudes..." Bellini said. "Would you be the one to see them continue on, unchallenged? You especially, of all beings."

  No secrets here. They knew what Abe Sapien was, all right, or near enough. He may have taken care, on a trip like this, to conceal himself in a high-collared topcoat, under a hat, and behind glasses, but there was only so much normality he could project. Come to a place like this, where so many spent so much time dwelling on higher things--on the Creator of the world and their place in it, convinced they knew the answers to everything that mattered--and you had to wonder what they really thought of their visitors. Of someone as unique as Abe. Or, Hellboy thought, someone like me.

  He figured the reactions split along a pair of likely polarities.

  One: God indeed works in mysterious ways, and must surely love infinite variety.

  The other: A pity it's not four hundred years earlier, when we might have killed these things with impunity and the thanks of a grateful city.

  Bellini spoke of evolution? One look at an unconcealed Abe Sapien left you with the thought that Darwin had definitely been onto something. Abe had been found in the mid-'70s in Washington, D. C., deep in the basements beneath St. Trinian's Hospital. A plumbing crew had broken through a sealed door and happened upon a large room that not only predated anyone's living memory, but had also evaded replication on any known blueprints. Floating inside a tall, circular glass tank tipped back and resting at an angle, its base sunk into stagnant ooze, there he was: a long-slumbering fellow, humanoid in appearance, hairless and sleekly muscled, but with finned forearms and a neck that bristled with gills. The only clue to his origins--and scant evidence at that--was a note, penned by what appeared to have been an ornate Victorian hand and curled like parchment, affixed to a piece of the corroded and broken-down machinery near the tank.

  Icthyo Sapien, it read. April 14 1865.

  The same day President Lincoln had died.

  For an uncommonly intelligent entity thus far denied understanding of where he'd come from, Abraham Sapien was as good a name as any. Although he had on occasion been known to get testy with people who called him a fish-man. Strictly speaking, he was amphibious, as at home on dry land as in water.

  And Hellboy himself? No trench coat could hide his nonconformities either--if anything, it was even more of a lost cause than with Abe--but he wore one anyway. Had to wear something. The clothes make the man, it was said, to which he might have amended that the clothes unmake the demon. No matter what else the rest of the world saw when they looked at him--built like a linebacker, tough skin as red as a lobster, prehensile tail, ground-down stumps where horns should've been, and a huge stonelike right hand that could crush bricks like beer cans--they saw the coat and, well, it just looked so normal it was downright disarming. Sometimes that was all that was needed to work past the prejudice.

  Here, though, at ground zero of the Roman Catholic world, there was a two-millennium legacy of thinking long and hard about abominations and what to do with them. He'd answered their appeal, and maybe they really even needed him. But for some of them--not necessarily in this room, but surely somewhere on the grounds--he knew how he must be regarded, first and foremost: a living, breathing validation of everything they'd devoted their lives to opposing.

  Except for one little problem: How he had ended up on their side.

  Father Ranzi poured himself another coffee. "You understand about the scroll, what it is, yes?"

  "Katie briefed me."

  "You recognize the danger it poses."

  "Contradiction of two thousand years of dogma--yeah, I get the picture."

  "So then you understand why it was...shall we say...targeted."

  "Now that's where I'm having some trouble," Hellboy said. "It doesn't add up. I've seen what happened, and it seems clear to me what did it. But why here, why now? If your tests are right, that scroll's been around for over 1900 years, whether or not it's what it claims to be. The fact that it drew this kind of attention and cost seven lives, that seems to give it some kind of legitimacy...

  "But here's the red flag: For all but the last few decades, it was buried on a high plateau in the middle of a desert. Where it had already survived one inferno. Then it's discovered, it's transported, it's studied, it's stored away--thirty more years of that. And I'm supposed to believe these seraphim are only now taking notice? They had all the time in the world to burn that thing out of existence and no one would've ever known. But they didn't. Until a few nights ago. So no--I don't understand why it was targeted. But I bet somebody down here does."

  The six churchmen exchanged glances, and finally one of them stepped forward from the background. One of the two who'd been smoking earlier, he wore a sober but well-tailored black suit over a charcoal gray turtleneck sweater. He had a tautly lined face and graying hair clipped just a little longer than stubble. Long, slender hands, like the hands of a pianist. Monsignor Burke, Artaud had called him earlier.

  "A few minutes ago, I'm sure the well-fed Archbishop here didn't tell you anything you didn't already know," he said, the only American accent among the six. Upper East Coast, it sounded like. Not New York. Boston, maybe, and he'd spent a lot of time trying to get rid of it. "Something's always seething under the surface of the Vatican. But right now, there are undercurrents of some of the biggest divisions the Church has seen in decades. Now, the Church is slow to change, you know that..."

  Hellboy was eyeing Ranzi's coffee. "Millions of its members like that about it. In a world that's always changing, here's this one anchor in their lives that's resistant to change."

  And temptation got the better of him. He reached toward the thermos with his left hand, the normal one, and made a tipping motion. Ranzi looked as though he didn't dare refuse. Didn't pour, just gave it to him thermos and all. Hellboy guzzled straight from its mouth and nearly swooned. Have to find out where he got this and see if the person wanted a job in the States.

  "Resistance to change isn't an automatic virtue," Burke said. "Forget about the Inquisition, episodes like that. Those are easy criticisms, and just as easy to distance ourselves from, because they were centuries ago. No, let's look at our own lifetime. In Ireland, the Church ran a network of what were called the Magdalene Asylums. Basically, slave labor prisons where families would send young women for perceived moral infractions. Like getting pregnant out of wedlock. Or being too interesting to the boys. Terrible places, physically and morally appalling...the ruin of countless lives. And the last of them wasn't closed until earlier this year."

  "I'm not saying the Church shouldn't change, ever. Just playing the Devil's advocate." Hellboy looked at the other smoker, who looked to be the youngest of the lot, and who'd been hanging back the farthest the whole time and showed no inclination to step any closer. "Hey. You knew I had to sooner or later."

  "If the Church is to survive the coming century as anything more than a folk religion and a museum relic, change is essential. Especially throughout Europe, where people have very long memories of its history of intellectual repression, and still see us as a force for irrationality," the monsignor said. "That's finally being admitted, and in unexpected places, too. Many prominent cardinals. They see what's happening and they know it can't continue. Not everyone is comfortable with the way I choose to put it, but we're rotting from the inside. In America, even non-Catholics can see the obvious...that we're not adequately replacing the priests we lose to retirement and death, and as a result, parishes are being consolidated and churches are closing. Plus we're just now starting to see the tip of another coming iceberg: lawsuits against the Church caused by a few priests who couldn't keep their hands off children, and bishops who were too cowardly to do anything other than shuffle the offenders off to other parishes and hope they'd stop. The only places the Church is really growing right now are Latin America and Africa."

&nb
sp; "And that's not where the money is," Hellboy said.

  Burke looked as though blood had been drawn. But he didn't refute it. "Nobody can say how much longer His Holiness will remain in office. But only a hopeful few can see many more years ahead of him. When that throne is vacant again, and the next conclave is convened to choose a successor, there's a very good chance that the more progressive factions within the Church will prevail. And set the stage for the most comprehensive set of modernizations since John the Twenty-Third called the Second Vatican Council more than thirty years ago."

  Whether the monsignor knew it or not, and there was no reason he should've, it was the right thing to say. Of the five popes who'd held the office during Hellboy's lifetime, John XXIII was the one he'd always wished he could have met. Down to earth, with the easy touch of a parish priest, and downright impish at times--a pope as imagined by the lighter side of Charles Dickens. Somebody had once asked the man how many people worked in the Vatican. About half of them was his answer. You had to love a guy like that.

  "Assuming your side maneuvers into position," Hellboy said, "what then? What's up your sleeve?"

  "Nothing radical. There are certain hot-button issues that we still would never touch, and those should be obvious. But, for starters, more defensible positions on birth control. And permitting priests to marry. There's no reason they shouldn't, other than tradition. It wasn't a mandate until halfway through the Church's existence, and even then it was a power play...more to do with property and potential heirs than moral authority. So let them marry if they wish. There are many more men who would answer the calling to the priesthood if it didn't mean a choice between a flock and a family. God knows it hasn't been the downfall of the Anglicans."

  "How about the ordination of women?" Kate asked. "You've got women who feel the calling too. That hasn't been the downfall of the Anglicans, either."

  "Still under discussion," Burke said, a little too quickly.

  "So far it doesn't seem to call for a fire-from-heaven kind of response. What else is on the agenda?" Hellboy wanted to know. "Anything to do with the Masada Scroll?"

  "We plan on making it public, possibly available for outside study. Not endorsing it, of course, but not refuting it, either...mainly putting it out as a historical relic, much the same as all the additional gospels and other texts that weren't chosen for inclusion in the Bible. If it proves to be another way of expanding the faith, or broadening the permissible concepts of Jesus and enhancing the sense of his humanity, then so much the better."

  "And what happened upstairs the other night," Hellboy said, "you didn't take that as a sign from above to rethink your plans?"

  "No," said a man who, until now, had been content to listen. Father Laurenti, they'd called him. "The attack on the Archives may have come from above...but it was not the work of Heaven."

  Like the monsignor, Laurenti too wore a black suit instead of a cassock, but in contrast, his looked old and worn, mended a few too many times. His olive face had a weary gauntness that came from more than just a sleepless night or two, and his hair was a tall shock of loose, unruly curls, very black.

  "You may think of angels in their work as being dispatched, and they can be," he said. "But these that came for the scroll...they were not dispatched, but summoned. There is a difference. The decree came not from God, I believe, but from somewhere within the Church itself."

  "Who's got that kind of pull?"

  Laurenti shook his head. "Even if I could tell you--or any of us could--I would not. For now, it is enough to recognize that nobody who seeks change can bring it about without making enemies. Even enemies of those they believed to be their brothers. But this is not your struggle. It is ours."

  "Then let me be the first to ask the obvious," Abe said. "What are we doing here?"

  Hellboy had been thinking the same thing. The reasons for the bureau's existence were explicit in its name: Paranormal. Research. Defense. But they already seemed to know what they were up against here, and wanted no help ferreting out the individual or the cabal that had done the summoning.

  "Take the scroll," said Father Artaud, with the quiet desperation of a parent asking someone to whisk his child out of a war zone. "Its value may be inestimable. So take it with you. Please."

  Ranzi nodded. "I understand that you can protect it better than we are able."

  Hellboy glanced over at Kate, ticked his brow upward in question.

  "I told them about the containment facility that the bureau had built for Liz when she was a girl," Kate said. "She hasn't needed it for more than ten years, so it's sitting there idle. But: If it could keep that kind of fire inside, then it should be able to withstand the same kind of fire from the outside, too."

  "And I understand that you will treat this scroll as the important relic it is," Ranzi went on, "and that no matter what may happen here in Rome, your group's neutrality will not be compromised."

  He was right on that count. The BPRD's most overtly political days were in the beginning, when the bureau was founded during World War II, a countermeasure to the Third Reich's attempts to use the occult to turn the tide of battle. Since then, the bureau had largely stayed out of affairs of state. The things they encountered most often neither knew nor respected national boundaries.

  The monsignor took another step forward, like a salesman trying to close a deal. "You came here to investigate an attack, and your reputation precedes you. I know you're very good at what you do, and that if something gets on your bad side, it usually doesn't last long. But I have to question whether or not these particular assailants are something you could ever defeat."

  "Now you're just being insulting."

  "Using your usual approach, then," Burke amended. "But in our case, I don't think that's what's called for. Remove the object of the attack, and you remove the likelihood of further attacks."

  "Attacks here, you mean," Hellboy said. "If I take your scroll home, it's like taking a lightning rod back to the place and people that mean the most to me."

  The shabby Father Laurenti raised a conciliatory hand. "It's true, you may run that risk. But these seraphim, they are not all-knowing. They go where they are sent and do what they are told. As long as this knowledge is kept from those who would control them, then the risks to you may be not so great after all."

  Hellboy gave it a few moments of thought, and finally agreed.

  "A courier run, that's really all we're talking about here," he said. "Point A to Point B...how hard can that be?"

  Chapter 4

  Liz pushed the whistle across the tabletop and let the young man stare at it a few moments, bolstering his nerve with a few deep breaths. Most people, all they'd see would be a silver whistle, the kind you'd find hanging around the neck of any coach worth his jock strap or her sports bra. It was all Liz saw, for that matter.

  But Campbell Holt wasn't most people. Much like Liz wasn't most people. They just weren't like most people in very different ways.

  In a sparely furnished room whose walls still smelled of their fresh coat of cerulean blue paint--the color Campbell found most relaxing--he reached for the whistle as though about to touch a skillet that may or may not have been hot. Resting one finger on it, two fingers...then he had it in his palm...and finally his hand closed around it. He let his eyes drift shut and the magic--or whatever it was--happen.

  "Oh, okay, I know him. This belongs to...Agent Garrett?" Campbell said.

  Liz shrugged. "You tell me."

  His head tipped downward, chin toward chest, as he seemed to fall into the whistle, deeper and deeper, following its curves and filling its hollow.

  "Yeah...definitely Agent Garrett. He coaches his son's peewee football team. He...he's a good coach. No yelling at the kids. I mean, he yells, he just doesn't insult them. Like he knows exactly how tough he can be with each kid and where the line is between motivation and bullying. For each one of them. And he's careful to never cross it."

  Campbell was doing well. Relaxed,
into it, letting it flow, no agitation. Although she wouldn't expect any psychic turbulence to come from anything belonging to Dion Garrett. The man was a career bureau agent--fairly low-level abilities, your basic garden-variety empath, although it gave him awesome people skills--and as devoted a family man as she'd ever known.

  Campbell's brow furrowed. Not deep, and it didn't spread to the rest of his face; just enough to let her know that he'd hit something that made him wince a bit.

  "He wanted to play pro and probably would've. Only...he blew out his knee in college. So that was that. Losing his chance, it still bothers him sometimes when he's watching the boys play. He tries...but he can't stop himself from having all those what-if thoughts."

  "I never knew that about him," Liz said, and maybe shouldn't have, but it was out before she could reconsider. She was supposed to be in charge of this session, all of it; couldn't afford to have Cam thinking she was ignorant about the items she was shoving at him. That she might accidentally give him more than he was ready for.

  "No reason you should've," he said, and didn't appear to hold it against her. "He keeps all that to himself."

  Campbell returned the whistle to the tabletop, pushed it back to her with a nod.

  "That was really good," she said. Next, from the box on the chair at her side, she selected a handbell that had spent decades in the tranquil grasp of a Tibetan Buddhist monk who sometimes came to visit. "Now try this one."

  Psychometry, it was called. The ability to hold an object and see into the life of the person who possessed it. Cam wasn't sure how it worked, and certainly Liz didn't know, any more than she could give a logical explanation of how her own so-called gift worked. Nobody could, really. It was like trying to tell somebody how to balance on a bicycle. His gift, hers...they defied rational explanation, which was just as well, because if they were explainable, then sure as hell somebody somewhere would develop an agenda to engineer them in people lucky enough to have been born normal.