“We are both similar creatures, you and I,” Jester said.
Hellboy gasped, “Now you’re just ... being ... mean.”
“We were set on our courses long before our births, game pieces of God. Slaves to Heaven and Hell.”
“Go take ... a flying jump, pal.”
“We have walked both paths, the left and the right. We’re closer than you think. Almost brothers.”
Fighting the pain, swallowing back screams, Hellboy tried to kick out, but he couldn’t get any purchase with his hooves.
The mad preacher said, “You are full of sin and that sin gives me strength.”
“Screw you, you son of a—”
The whispering shadows swarmed over Hellboy until they covered him completely, within and without, as he stood in the dim moonlight with shimmers of lightning cracking the heavens. He felt the feathered darkness prying into every crevice of his mind and soul, sweeping back through his life. Reveling in certain memories, almost soothing him during others, and finding his most unbearable moments and pitying him for them. He set his lips and blood ran down his chin and flicked among the winged shades. He could almost see eyes there, peering at him forlornly.
Hellboy tried to raise himself against them, and tore again at jester’s hand on his throat. The frail white fingers dug in with even more furious strength. It would’ve been funny if he wasn’t being throttled.
He kicked out, planted his hooves on Jester’s chest, and finally managed to fling himself away. He landed hard, rolling in the mud, hacking and sucking air. He stood and turned, ready for the next attack.
Except there wasn’t one.
Brother Jester’s arms were thrown open, his head forced back. His mouth grew wide and flaming motes of arcane power drifted from his lips and nostrils. Something nasty was happening but Jester appeared happy about it. He climbed into the air, inch by inch.
Hellboy watched and shook his head and sighed. He had no idea what was happening but it couldn’t be good. Jester laughed although he was clearly in agony, one of those penitents who can do incredible feats because their faith carried them through.
Ma’am McCulver said Jester had performed miracles and brought God to the swamp. So what did this guy believe in now?
“You want to tell me why you’re so interested in this one pregnant girl?” Hellboy shouted at the levitating form. “Just because Bliss Nail and your wife played hanky panky once upon a time? You really think that’s worth all this grief you’ve been causing for twenty years? You know she’s not your daughter. You know we can’t let you take her baby. You’re acting like an idiot.” jester came down fast, still laughing, but his eyes were pin-wheeling. Good, it meant the guy had his weak spot.
“You’ve no right to judge me, demon. Your secret heart is so much worse than mine.”
“Thought you were going to show it to me.”
“I have.”
“So far I just see a trickster playing games.”
“You’re blind to yourself. Which is how you wish it to be. But I’ll give you the boon of sight.”
For some reason Hellboy didn’t like the sound of that. The shadows reared and swarmed forward again, like a crowd of helpful people moving to lend a hand, who only wind up suffocating the person they’re trying to help. He could feel them now, within him again, and he realized they weren’t evil and weren’t truly a part of Jester.
Hellboy sensed they were as immature, unknowing, naive, adventuresome, and curious as the swamp kids.
He realized then that the crying children he’d been hearing for two days were these angels. Perhaps the lost offspring of God. Or perhaps the lost scion of mankind.
He looked at the preacher and said, “Okay, playtime’s over, pal.”
“This has never been a game or joy. It’s duty and blessing.”
Jester stood over him now, his forehead bulging with nubby horns. They grew larger and curved and jutted higher. The old man’s face grew broad and flat. His rail-thin body thickened and turned red until Hellboy faced another version himself, damn near exactly the same except for the eyes.
“I know your true nature.”
“You don’t know squat about me, pal.”
He reached out and grabbed Jester’s horns, the ones that had grown merely to taunt him, he figured. As he’d done with his own, be snapped them off and held them like curved blades, feeling the damnation and power they represented. He hated to admit it but this was a good feeling, a familiar one. He thrust them through Jester’s heart.
“Suck on that,buddy!”he shouted.
But nothing happened.
“We are destroyers,” the dark preacher said, “and we are the destroyed.”
The stone fist swung out again.
And all Hellboy had time to say was, “Oh crap.”
Then he couldn’t say or think of anything because his mind and body were composed of nothing but agony. He hurtled high into the cypresses, and the land where jester had brought God sailed away far beneath him.
The shadow children, the great seraphim, cried and crooned.
———
Clinging to the dark brush, with Duffy’s hand squeezing her arm roughly, the three-eyed girl pointed to Ma’am McCulver’s house and said,”There.The girl you want is inside. She’s just had a baby.”
“What’s that place?” Duffy asked.
“It’s the granny witch’s home.”
“You people and all your hag houses.”
“Looks like Jester’s a granddaddy,” Deeter said. He held up the shotgun, looking for trouble, but didn’t see anybody. “This young’un got himself an extra leg or nose or ear? He got a chin on his forehead? He got a red tail?”
“Its a baby girl,” the three-eyed woman told him,”and no, she’s what the world calls normal.”
“What I’d call normal then too, honeypie.”
“You’re a cruel malignancy.” The woman turned away, as if unable to witness the awful sight of the beautiful Ferris boys. “You’ll die tonight with your brother.”
“Yeah, how so?”
“By your own misdeeds. By the hand of your master.”
“Ain’t got no master, missy,” Deeter told her. “I’m my own man, and don’t you forget it none ‘lest I carve out your liver for you.”
“Aw, forget her ranting,” Duffy said. “She does go on and on, just like Ma if you recall.”
“I do recollect.”
“This one here, she got the brain damage, I s’pect, from that third eye growing out her head. It affects the noggin.”
“Don’t see how it couldn’t.”
The door to Ma’am McCulver’s home, the witchy palace, opened and out came Doc Wayburn, who trundled off across town muttering to himself.
A minute later, out came John Lament, not so full of his usual vim but still looking strong and a touch larger than he should. The Ferris boys ducked down and dragged the girl with them, watching through the brush. In the moonlight Lament’s, white streak burned bright, and so did his eyes, filled with—well, the Ferris brothers couldn’t quite tell what they were filled with. Whether it was joy or fear or a combination of both. Duffy and Deeter had run afoul of John Lament plenty of times over the years, and mostly they wound up with bleeding heads, cracked bones, and bruised egos. They’d been wanting to kill him for a month of blue Sundays, but it never seemed the right time.
“Should I put two shells in his back?” Deeter asked.
“I don’t like his look of conviction. Let Jester handle him too. Makes our night a little less complicated. We’re just here to get the girl and hand her over. Then we steal what we can pocket and get the hell back to Enigma, free of that crazy preacher.”
“No need to play coy,” Deeter said. “Iffun that granny wants trouble we’ll give it to her. Otherwise, we march up and kick in the door, take the girl, and we’re off.”
Thanks to the rain the town was brimming with puddles. They started toward the house but before they’d gotten to the
porch, the door opened. Sarah stepped out holding her newborn daughter wrapped in a yellow Easter blanket.
Behind her came Ma’am McCulver and the pumpkin-headed boy who glowered and tried to look mean but just couldn’t do much. Especially considering his little tuft of hair was swaying so humorously back and forth in the breeze. The boy moved out in front and met the Ferris brothers at the foot of the steps.
“What you want, jughead?” Duffy asked.
The pumpkin-headed boy hauled off and socked Duffy in the face. It was the first punch he’d ever thrown, and he seemed sad and stupefied to have thrown it at all, but at least Duffy let go of the three-eyed woman. Or at least he did so after Fishboy Lenny swam out from a mud puddle and sank his teeth back into Duffy’s ankle.
Duffy yowled, looked down, and saw the godamnedest sight he’d ever seen. There was a kid down there gnawing on his foot, flapping his flipper hands around and keeping afloat in the puddle. Duffy started dancing around but the boy just looked up and his mouth was red in the porch light and his needle-sharp tiny teeth were strung with bits of Duffy’s flesh.
Deeter shouted, “Hellfire!” He aimed the ten-gauge but couldn’t draw a bead with all the sudden activity. The pumpkin-headed kid dove for him, grabbed the barrel of the shotgun, and tried to grapple it loose. Deeter held onto the stock with one hand and pummelled the boy to his knees with the other.
The weirdo fish kid went, “Fweep.”
“This ain’t no gator, girl!”
“No,” the three-eyed woman said, “that’s Lenny.”
“Fweep mwash,” went Fishboy Lenny.
“He done chewed up my foot!”
Deeter said, “I’m gonna have to shotgun him into next Sunday now. Seen that before, did you?”
“No, it was new to me.”
“Reckon you need a fourth eye for that, huh?”
“Enough,” Ma’am McCulver said, stepping into the moonlight, the pale silver illumination embracing and enhancing her beauty. Her presence was both calming and fearsome. Her black hair was a mass of wild curls that rose and reached. Fishboy Lenny tugged at the nearly unconscious pumpkin-headed boy and drew him away through the mud.
Ma’am McCulver scowled, and the wind grew louder and the storm suddenly seemed closer. The Ferris brothers didn’t know what to make of any of this witchy business and simply stood there, wondering who to kill next.
Sarah said, “Please, Ma’am, this is a family argument. It’s my fight and no one else’s. Only I can do anythin’ about it and put a stop to all the fuss.”
“I know you,” Duffy said to Sarah, “least I almost reckon I do. We seen you about.”
“You have,” she told them.
Deeter said, “You’re Sarah, the girl been causin’ us so much trouble.”
“Deeter Ferris,” she said, “you’re one rotten soul, through and through. And how is it I’ve caused you any bother?”
“Well, the bother really started a bit before you was even mentioned, when we were takin’ care of the lady saleswoman in the swamp, but anyways a bother you’ve become all right, thanks to Jester.”
Duffy released the three-eyed woman and grabbed Sarah’s arm instead. Her sleeping baby sighed loudly. He held his cutting blade to Sarah’s cheek, turned to Ma’am McCulver and said, “Now that’s it, no more trouble! You gonna raise a hand to me, you gorgeous piece of love?”
“I won’t. It will do no good.”
“Glad you reckon that. You gonna keep that jughead and fish-head away from us?”
She held out her arm and the pumpkin-headed boy climbed to his feet, stepped close to her, and laid the side of his bleeding face against her chest. Fishboy Lenny swam up and rested against her knee.
“All apostles must face their masters on their own,” Ma’am McCulver said. “You two evil brothers are no different.”
Deeter stared at the granny witch and a crazed leer split his face. “I’ll be back for you, darlin’, and we’ll have ourselves a good ole time, I promise. We’ll have us some catfish and pumpkin pie for snackin’.”
“You’ll be dead within the hour,” the three-eyed girl said.
Deeter looked back at his brother and said, “For swamp folk who know how to kick up a fine hootenanny, these people are startin’ to work on my nerves some!”
“Mine too,” Duffy said. “We’ll burn the whole place down before we leave.” He looked at Sarah and told her, “Come on along, little miss. Your daddy is waitin’ on you.”
Chapter 24
You are many things, the children said, bonded of great love and extreme hatred. Power and resilience. Ego and narrow-minded bias. Threatened and threat. Hopeful and hope. He is remote and He is not. He is vast and He is not. He is here within you and He is not. You are. You are in need of acknowledgment and response. Your questions can neper be answered because He is beyond understanding. You rely on faith. This is the distance between you and Him, you and the Almighty. We seek to bring the world closer. We seek to reopen Eden. We dream of taking down the flaming swords at the gates of the garden. It is our duty and our grace. We are mistaken, we have much to learn. We give thanks for your efforts. We love. He loves. You love. The children wailed because it was what children do. Because they couldn’t understand all they were and all that was around them in the great divine experiment of humanity. They were lost, in need of their father.
———
Hellboy came down like a sputtering V-2 rocket and crashed through another shanty.
This one wasn’t empty. This one had a family in it. A pretty large family packed into a tiny place. A man and a woman, two children, an elderly lady, and an old dude in a rattan wheelchair. Everybody was huddled to one side of the shack holding on to each other. The roof was mostly gone. The little girl was wide-eyed and on the verge of tears. Hellboy’s head was on fire.
He’d landed in the fireplace and the flames lashed at him. The precocious shadows weighed on top of him, still inquisitive, nosy even, tickling the underside of his mind. They were trying desperately to communicate, drilling into his brain.
It wasn’t easy, just letting this kind of thing go on, kids making mudpies in your memories, but he decided not to fight them this time.
He let them take whatever pieces from him they wanted. Whatever memories they needed to sift, drawing up his experiences and holding them before their own interest and attention.
Maybe Jester was right and they were similar creatures. Hellboy thought about being the destroyed and the destroyer. It was the truth that always lay within him that he refused to acknowledge. It was how he lived. He never dealt with what he was. He never thought about it and just did what he was supposed to do.
He didn’t know the shadow children, but they knew him.
“Ain’t your head hurt?” the old lady asked. She bent and peered at him. “Pull it outta the fire. Ain’t you got no sense?”
Hellboy sat up.”Ouch.”
“You ain’t burned much. I got some salve if you need it.” Then she grunted and sucked at her gums. “Well, I did have some. Looks like you done mashed it beyond use.”
“Sorry.”
“Mama,” the little boy said, “it’s the devil.”
“It ain’t the devil, son.”
“It looks like the devil. His skin is red.”
“He just been out in the sun too long, and stickin’ his head in the fire. You hush now, son.”
The girl stared at him, trying not to cry. He wanted to console her. He had no idea how.
Clambering up, he stood and looked around the shack. He’d seen a few miracles in his time and thought this might be one for the books. The room was maybe ten by ten. Six people in it.
Hellboy had missed them all. What were the chances?
He said, “Sorry about the mess.”
“A mess is what you make when you spill the porridge,” the old man said, rolling forward. He couldn’t get far because there was too much smashed lumber about. “This is a whole other matter now.�
��
“Sorry about the whole other matter.”
“It don’t mean nothin’, we’ll fix it and get on by. What’s of greater pertinence is you gettin’ out there and kickin’ them nasty fellas outta our village.”
“You’re right. Consider it done.”
“I’ll consider it done after you finish doin’ it.”
Hellboy marched out the door, tasting blood and glancing once more at the family behind, the children scared but both slightly grinning, the old woman nodding to him once.
When he turned to look outside once more, Brother Jester was stroking black flames from his chin, and Lament was there playing his mouth-harp.
———
Lament stood facing Brother Jester beneath the brightening moonlight, neither of them looking particularly upset or angry. In fact, they appeared rather relaxed. Like two old friends at odds for the moment, after a bitter but brief quarrel, who knew they’d make up soon. Lament kept plucking away, making his strange music.
The rain had stopped. The storm drifted above but the clouds had spun aside leaving a hole almost directly above. Lament had cleaned up and had fresh clothes on, his suspenders tight around his shoulders, his arms crossed against his chest as he held the mouth-harp. It took Hellboy a moment to realize that Lament was actively ignoring Jester.
Hellboy kept his gaze on the dark preacher, getting ready for the next game. He said quietly to Lament,”What are you doing here?”
It took a few seconds for him to finish his song. “Oh, I came to help.”
“Go on back to Sarah. Don’t you want to be there when she gives birth?”
“She’s fine. Had the baby without any fuss and hardly no pain. Fifteen minutes and it was all over and done with. Doc Wayburn did little more than watch the proceedings. Granny McCulver’s medicines are powerful.”
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