Emerald Hell

by Tom Piccirilli

  “It’s done,” Granny Lewt said. “You got my eyes and ears now. Wonders to behold, swamp songs to hear tell, and a little more protection.”

  “Ugh, Jesus Christ!” Hellboy doubled over, spitting and wiping his mouth with the tail of his overcoat. “You people are goddamn nuts!”

  The door was back. Hellboy tore it open and rushed into the swamp outside, the water and muck almost to his knees, and heard Luther say, “Don’t worry none, Mr. Satan, I ain’t really mad at ya ‘bout my kidney stones. You come on back and we’ll share a jug soon.”

  As Hellboy watched, the shack began retreating into the darkness, the mud and brambles and slimy water drawing away with it, until nothing but dark brush and the distant marsh prairies surrounded him, and he was back on the dirt road.

  Now he had to follow it, see if he could find Sarah and the others out there in the glowing green night.

  He started along and heard a car coming. He turned and the world quickly brightened around him until he was blinded. He threw his hand up in front of his face as high-beam headlights burst against him like white molten metal. Doing better than seventy, a Dodge Charger came bearing down on him like the wrath of Hell.

  Chapter 5

  The Charger roared down on one hell of an ugly sight that had suddenly appeared right there in the middle of the road.

  Duffy Ferris rose up in his seat and let out a gruesome giggle. He couldn’t help himself, murder was all he knew. He smiled broadly and stomped the pedal, aiming the center of the grille for the big red fella right there in front of him. The distance between them was chewed down to almost nothing, the fella’s confused face and really big hand waving into the brights.

  Lunging forward from the back seat, Brother Jester gripped the wheel from Duffy’s hands and viciously tugged it aside. Deeter said, “Hey now, wha—?” as the three of them jounced wildly inside the car.

  The suspension had been reinforced for hauling boxes of moonshine over mud flats and down across the bottoms. Welded iron plating protected the undercarriage as the Charger slid across thick brush on the side of the track. The car veered to the farthest edge of the shoulder and nearly over the rim of a ditch, the rear right tire slewing and strewing gravel. They lost a hubcap and it took Duffy another moment to regain control of the car.

  “Now what’d you go and do a fool thing like that for, Preacher?” he asked. “If we’d run him over you coulda at least ate him.” He sought out the reverend in the rearview, but could see nothing but darkness behind him.

  Jester’s black angels surrounded him, whispering secrets of what had been and what might yet be. They hissed and he hissed, a new element added to his ruined voice. Maybe it was alarm or perhaps even fear. “Striking him would’ve only damaged your car, and I need to set out and find my daughter this night. Keep going.”

  “I ain’t never seen that big ole boy ‘round these parts before.”

  “Must be one of them swamp folk. He look like he drunk a jug or two of bad moon when he was a young’un.”

  Fading into the shadows that were not his own, Jester said,”He is fated to join my enemy and to become my enemy.”

  “Then why don’t we pull over and take care of him?” Deeter asked.

  “It’s not the proper time.”

  “You gonna let us know when it is said proper time?”

  “Oh yes, I surely will.”

  “Well, that’s somethin’ then. Where’s she at? This daughter’a yours.”

  “She’s pregnant and unwed, and alone for the moment.”

  “She ain’t got no man?”

  “She does, but he is not with her. She’s alone.”

  “Mrs. Hoopkins’s Home for Unwed Wayward Teenage Mothers & Peanut Farm,” the Ferris boys said in unison.

  The brothers knew where girls went when they had no family, money, or husband. In fact, they’d sent plenty of girls there themselves, and had a number of children littering the backwoods all over Enigma. Jester’s shadows offered up names and faces that he swept aside with a turn of his head.

  His mind filled with a single searing image—that of his daughter in her cradle, with her dead mother on the floor beside her in a pond of lapping blood.

  “How far are we from this farm?” he asked.

  “We nearly there,” Duffy responded, still a touch angry about losing that hubcap. “You like peanuts?”

  The Ferris boys and the dark preacher stood out on the front porch of Mrs. Hoopkins’s place listening to the occasional sound of a crying child upstairs in the house. Mrs. Hoopkins smiled out her screen door at the Ferris brothers and said, “You handsome fellas here to visit any of your children?”

  “Not right this evening, ma’am,” Duffy told her, giving her a thousand-volt smile. It didn’t quite work on her the way it did teenage girls, but the woman’s stern features visibly softened.

  “Well, what do you boys want here then?”

  “Mrs. Hoopkins,” Deeter said, “this here is Brother Jester, the’ famous minister who’s traveled all around the Appalachians for near two decades spreading the good word. He’s come back to Enigma to visit relations.”

  She peered at Jester for a moment and said,”I know you?”

  “No, dear lady,” he said, because he always spoke the truth, and she did not know him. No one did anymore, perhaps not even himself. The man she’d seen decades ago praising the Almighty in tents out in the cane fields was long gone.

  “Lord above, you had a doctor look down that throat a’yours?”

  “I am beyond curing.”

  “Nothing beyond the healing power of our savior Jesus Christ.”

  Jester smiled, showing yellow shards of teeth. And thinking, Oh but some things are, they are. We who are trapped by the will of God and His greater plans, those of us who are not meant to be healed, but have a more tragic part to play. Like Cain, Judas, and Pilate, like Lucifer and his minions. Creations of a Lord gone mad. Playing out the damning roles given to them. Created by Heaven but with more than a small touch of Hell to them.

  “I smell fresh pie?” Deeter asked.

  “That briarberry?” Duffy said.”Such a sweet aroma, my tongue done gone wet and wagging.”

  Mrs. Hoopkins showed her dentures and primped her pink hair with one hand, feeling the scarf still atop her head and untying it to let large looping curls flop loose like strands of baling wire. “You boys like a slice of pie and some milk?”

  “We sure would,” the Ferris brothers said in unison.

  “You like a slice too, Reverend?”

  “No,”Jester said,”thank you.”

  “You look as if you could use a good home-cooked meal. Let me fix you somethin’.”

  “My spirit is sated, and thus so is my body. My rage sustains me.”

  “Whassat?”

  “He says,” Duffy said, “his faith ‘stains him.”

  “Oh.”

  She got out the pie and set down plates, took a large cutting knife and sliced the Ferris boys two pieces. Turning to the refrigerator, she found there was more than a quart of milk still left. She poured two large glasses of milk and set them before the brothers, enjoying the intensity, the near-savagery with which they ate. She didn’t notice that her cutting blade was no longer on the table.

  Mrs. Hoopkins asked, “So why you gentlemen come visitin’ at this hour? It’s near nine-thirty. My girls and their babies need their sleep. We got harvestin’ on the morrow.”

  “My dear woman,” Brother Jester said. “I have inquiries into the whereabouts of one of the young women in your care. Sarah.”

  Pulling a pink ringlet from out of her eyes, frowning a bit, she began to speak and then curbed herself. She cocked her head and heard the children upstairs, so many of them crying when they’d been soothed and sleeping just minutes ago. After a moment of peering deeply at the preacher she said, “There’s four Sarahs here, which one you got iniquities about?”

  Jester was suddenly startled by the fact that he did not kno
w the name of the family that had raised her. Bliss Nail had hidden her from him. The shadows seemed upset and flowed about inside him, knowing a mistake had been made but unsure of what to do about it. They moved toward the old woman but her strength of mind and resolve seemed to step before them and block their passage to the truth.

  “She is nineteen,” Jester said.

  “There’s three Sarahs here that age.”

  “Then I’ll see all three of them now.”

  “But you won’t, it’s nigh unto nine thirty-five, and in this house we rise early.”

  “I can certainly understand your trepidation, but—”

  “I don’t allow my girls to linger with strangers out here in my kitchen this deep in the night. You got questions, visit during regular hours, just after supper time. We’ll be havin’ fried bluegill and hushpuppies tomorrow, and you’re welcome to share.”

  “Tater hushpuppies!” Deeter said. “Ain’t had them in many a hot summer!”

  Jester glowered at the interruption and faced Mrs. Hoopkins again. “I thank you for that, dear woman, but I beg you to make a special consideration for me, in this case.”

  “And why’m I gonna do that?”

  “The circumstances are exceptional.”

  An infant began to shriek upstairs and Brother Jester’s heart both soared and cracked at the sound. He saw the hatchet covered in blood again, and could feel the rope tightening around his throat. The angel of death embracing his body in its freezing arms. He started to tremble, the power rising within him.

  In an instant, he began to cry black tears, the motes of energy sparking and floating from him. Mrs. Hoopkins nearly fell over in her chair and Duffy reached over and pressed a hand to her back, holding her in place. Jester started to grin, his teeth fiery, and said, “Because if we don’t go outside right this minute and I don’t get the information I want, I’ll have to drag you upstairs and slay all the girls and their children until I find my daughter. Sarah. Who is pregnant and who is nineteen.”

  “Lord have mercy,” Mrs. Hoopkins whimpered.

  “He does,” Brother Jester said, “but not for me, and not for you this night.”

  ———

  Ushered outside, Mrs. Hoopkins spoke quickly but with a quiet innate strength. Even now, with the Ferris boys bracketing her in the yard, the lights of the house seeming so far away, with her death at hand, she stood with bold assurance. The shadows could hear her prayers in the back of her mind. With Brother Jester’s eyes searing into her heart, she showed no fear at all for herself, but only for the girls and children in her care.

  Jester loved the woman as much as he was able, despite what would have to happen next. He wanted to hug her to him and preach words of solace, even kiss her brow. He began petitioning Heaven as he turned away, gesturing for Duffy to put an end to it now.

  In Duffy’s hand, raised high, was her cutting knife, the edge still covered with briarberry and crumbs. She didn’t make a sound as Brother Jester, once again alive with his own death, fell to his knees and began to weep black flame.

  ———

  After they buried Mrs. Hoopkins out in the peanut patch, Deeter asked, “So who is this big ole red boy anyway?”

  “A creature of both light and darkness who chooses not to know himself,” Jester said. “Like me.”

  They would have to go out into the swamps and revisit his past. Not only to regain his daughter, heavy with his grandchild, but also to face his newfound brother-enemy caught in the same web between Heaven, earth, and Hell. Perhaps, Jester thought, they might redeem themselves together.

  He let out a mangled stream of laughter from his ruined throat, filled with sorrow and madness.

  The Ferris boys looked at each other, cruel men with dried blood beneath their fingernails, doing their best not to tremble in the humid darkness, and failing.

  Chapter 6

  Hellboy had to give credit where it was due. The old lady’s eyes seemed to be working just fine.

  He could see pretty clearly in the night and he immediately recognized the lengthy stobpole standing in the skiff even though he’d never seen or used one before. A comforting knowledge and familiarity with the swamp engulfed him, as he walked through the ragged cypress, tupelo, sycamore stumps, and watergrass.

  He spotted a skink in the branches above him. He didn’t know what a skink was. Even now, staring at the thing, he didn’t know what it was. But thanks to Granny Lewt, he knew it was a skink. Weird feeling.

  A lantern hung on an iron brace at the back of the skiff. He reached into his belt and pulled out his Zippo lighter, lit the wick of the oil lamp, and enjoyed the warm glow it cast across the emerald hell.

  He saw a paddle tied into some netting in the aft. He climbed into the skiff and shoved off, using the stobpole to brace and push free from the bottom of the slimy shallows. His movements had a strange grace that wasn’t his own. All things being equal, he’d rather have tried it himself without having to eat that damn stew, but at least Granny Lewt’s spell made this part of the journey easier.

  Darkness somehow came alive with the infinite depths of green, eternal and brooding. He moved in a southeastern course, stobbing through the silent, shadow-strewn slough. The black waters were stagnant and mosquito-heavy, and overhead long vines and thick Spanish moss hung down from branches, fluttering in the slight hot breeze.

  The keel bumped a log half-hidden in the weeds and spooked a limpkin awake. The ungainly bird hopped through the shallows using its stork-like legs to limp through the slime, its bill thick with bugs and snails. Its mouth opened and it let out a bizarre cry that carried through the bog, causing a low moaning caterwaul from nocturnal animals in the trees and tussocks all around. A loon’s shriek tore through the night. Granny’s ears were doing their job too.

  Hellboy continued on, almost enjoying the repetitive motion of stobbing the boat, cutting cleanly through the water. Luna moths and mosquitoes congregated around the lantern, the tinny hum loud in his head.

  It went on like that for hours, until the moon was high overhead. The whole time he was uncertain he was moving in the right direction, or in any direction at all. There were no clues to follow in this place, no signs that anyone had been here over the last ten thousand years. He almost made to shout into the darkness, see if the girls might answer him from the depths of the brush. But who knew what that might arouse.

  The yellow illumination from the lantern lit the right-hand bank as the waterway thinned and he came around a knoll of mud, root, and bramble. He heard something hit the water, flat and heavy. Then there was aggressive action in the shallows for a minute before a lulling silence, and his new ears told him that gators were on the move.

  The canal narrowed to a swollen inlet which led to a far off dead-still lake, the banks rising and falling away into a black morass thick with tupelo, titi, and scrub oak. Billowing cypress towered above, casting a greater green glow across the landscape. Hellboy lifted the stobpole inboard and scanned the area. He saw figures converging on him, the ridged, wide-eyed, flat reptile heads coursing toward him.

  He drew the lantern off its iron hinge and held it up, seeing more gators on the banks scrambling around in the mud on squat, disproportionate legs, hissing and snapping their long jaws. Ducks took off flapping into the dark and cat squirrels chittered up strangler-fig vines. He brought the back of his hand to his nose as a noxious smell assaulted him. The lantern flame flared and singed his fingers. He snapped it back onto its hook. There must be pockets of methane trapped in the bottoms around here.

  Maybe it was time to talk. He said, “Hey now, boys, listen—”

  A powerful thud rocked the skiff and nearly knocked him off his feet. Louder grunting and hissing made him turn and look behind him. The boat spun and drifted into deeper water. He grabbed up the stobpole once more and swept it out to batter the gators away. It splintered in his hands and he thought, Damn stupid move, I needed that thing.

  Now he was stuck with no way
back toward the bank. He tore at the netting and removed the oars, which looked small and ineffectual now. He slotted them in and tried rowing but didn’t get far before he heard claws scrape across the bottom of the skiff. It pitched again, and a huge, powerful tail slammed into the bow, raising waves that splashed against his chest.

  Hellboy had just enough time to say, “Son of a—” before the skiff flipped, hurling him into the brackish, gator-infested waters.

  ———

  The emerald-black depths yawned wide even as other jaws tore at him. Tumbling over, something got hold of his ankle almost daintily and he was yanked down. He swung his fists and connected with thick reptilian scales, but without any leverage he wasn’t doing much good. The gators twisted across his body and snapped at him, their claws shredding his overcoat and ripping at his belly.

  He fought to swallow his shouts and pain, keeping his mouth tightly closed against the cold slimy slough. He got his stone hand up in front of his face and a pair of jaws locked on his wrist, yanking him forward. The tatters of his coat flapped up across his throat and he was jerked in another direction by his hoof, two gators tussling over him and playing tug-of-war for their dinner.

  Granny Lewt was trying to tell him something. Jaws snapped shut on his upper leg and pulled him away from the others. He opened his mouth to let out a drowning warble. He could taste his own blood in the water. The churning froth of sludge erupted into his face and he became completely disoriented again. He hauled off, hammering with his fist, and managed to break the gator’s grip. He lashed out with his tail, connecting with something. Okay, enough of this. He needed air. He tried to swim but wasn’t sure he was heading to the surface. His instincts kept pushing Granny away, and with his brain burning from lack of oxygen he forced himself to settle down enough to hear whatever she needed him to hear.

  Gators drag you down to their mud-holes, roll you under logs, and leave you rotting, sometimes in air pockets, fer days. They liked their meals tender. There were rumors of men who woke up with their feet chewed off, in the black twenty feet down, who had to dig their way back to the water before the bull gators came back to finish their supper.