The Ice Wolves

by Mark Chadbourn

  “Yeah, well, you have feelings. A conscience,” he muttered sourly.

  “You really think your father’s that bad?”

  Brad didn’t reply.

  The lamplight fell on a portrait in oils of a hollow-cheeked man with the saddest eyes any of them had ever seen. He was tall and thin, in a dark suit, with brown, curly hair receding severely, and a drooping moustache. At the bottom of the gilt frame was a plaque bearing the name Abraham Grant.

  “So that’s what he looked like,” Hellboy said.

  “I was expecting someone a little more severe,” Lisa said. “Those eyes . . . I feel so sorry for him. I wonder what it was that made him so miserable.” Once again, she thought of the words of the monkey, of things frozen inside.

  “Appearances can be deceptive,” Brad said. “He might be sad because he destroyed so many lives.”

  They continued on their circuitous route through the jumble until Hellboy held the lantern high to reveal a door hidden behind peeling, faded wallpaper. A ragged black line revealed where it had been opened recently by William. Tearing off some more paper, Hellboy uncovered another black circle scorched into the wood.

  Another warning, Hellboy thought.

  “Just like the one upstairs,” he said. “Looks like we’re going in the right direction.”

  The door had been warped by the damp and was hard to open, the hinges protesting, the bottom dragging on the stone flags. More stone steps plunged into the dark.

  “All set?” he asked.

  “Not really,” Lisa replied, uneasily. “But I’d rather be on the move than stuck in one place waiting for something to sneak up on me.”

  “Yeah, run straight into it—that’s better,” Brad said.

  “Funny man.”

  Hellboy led the way once more, but when they reached the next level he came to a sharp halt in the doorway. His body language unnerved Brad and Lisa.

  “What is it?” Brad hissed.

  “Well, this is weird.” Hellboy stepped fully into the subcellar so they could both see. Except it wasn’t a subcellar—it was the kitchen, the same old, scarred table, deep sink, and old-fashioned taps, the same range on one wall.

  “But . . . but we came down,” Lisa stressed.

  Baffled, Brad walked into the center of the room and looked around, eventually lighting on the windows. They appeared to look out on an endless night, but as he investigated he saw black shutters had been fastened on the other side.

  “An exact copy of the kitchen upstairs,” Hellboy mused.

  “As above, so below,” Lisa said. “You’re right, this is very weird.”

  Cautiously, they explored, moving into the drawing room with the glass cases with stuffed animals—Lisa noted the one that had been empty upstairs now contained a stuffed monkey—and then into the library, the sitting room, and the hall. Hellboy marveled at the accurate reflection and tried to make sense of what it all meant. All the furniture was the same, the only difference that the shelves, desks, and tables were filled with occult objects. And in the hall, the stairs went down to a replica of the first floor with bedrooms and nursery, and then down again to a second-floor copy, and again. It ended in the attic room, the row of windows all black.

  “Now that’s different,” Hellboy said thoughtfully. Along the wall, opposite the windows, there were only four portraits, with a space in the middle where the painting of Abraham’s daughter hung in the true attic room.

  “Why is this part of the house a copy?” Lisa asked.

  “Old Abraham Grant went out of his way to get this place built like this,” Hellboy said. “There’s gotta be a good reason.”

  “Imagine the lengths he must have gone to keep it secret,” Brad said, amazed. “Just think, at that time, if some local lunatic was building a house that was exactly the same belowground as above, it would have been the talk of all Boston. It would be one of the big myths of America now, like the Winchester House.”

  Hellboy rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Old Abe liked his mysteries. I’m going to have to think about this one.”

  “Maybe he was just crazy,” Brad suggested. “How much would all this have cost?”

  “Right. If you spent major cash on something like this, you wouldn’t keep it hidden away. There’s gotta be an explanation,” Hellboy said. “Come on—I want to check out some of those artifacts.”

  They retraced their steps through the still, dark, upside-down house. Occasionally, they would hear bangs or creaks coming from behind closed doors along the route, but whenever they investigated there was no sign of what caused the sounds. In the nursery, they heard a clear, human sigh that made the blood drain from Brad’s face.

  “The spirits are restless,” Hellboy said. “Get the feeling they don’t like us exploring down here?”

  In the sitting room, Hellboy moved slowly along the artifacts tucked away in a muddle on every free space, as if they were cheap bric-a-brac, or long-forgotten family heirlooms. A silvery coating of dust lay over everything, and some were festooned with generations of cobwebs.

  “Wow. I’ve heard Kate talk about some of these things,” he said.

  “You know what they are?” Lisa asked.

  “Yeah, some of them. They’ve been missing for generations, and here’s why. Take this one.” Hellboy indicated a pentagram constructed from human finger bones fastened together with gold wire. “It’s the Ossium Hex. Back in the Middle Ages, it was the most powerful curse generator in the world. Wars were fought over it—”

  “I don’t remember that in the history books,” Lisa said.

  “I’m talking about real history, not the stuff everybody gets to find out about. The Ossium Hex is supposed to have caused the Bubonic Plague. Y’know, the Black Death? Killed seventy-five million people or so? There are some people around today who’ve spent all their lives searching for the Ossium Hex.”

  “So, essentially, it’s a weapon,” Brad said. “Maybe it’s best that it’s locked away here.”

  “Except nothing stays locked away forever,” Hellboy replied.

  While Lisa investigated the items on the mantelpiece, Hellboy moved to another item, an ebony mask with silver and gold inlays. “Is this . . . ? Yeah! The Mask of Din al-Alamein. Wear this and you can control any person you look at. They say that’s how Lucrezia Borgia rose to power. Again, all the occult guys have been searching for this for generations. The latest rumor was that it had been destroyed during World War Two.”

  “What about the rest of this stuff?” Lisa asked.

  Hellboy shrugged. “Not a clue. Some things stick in my head, but I’ve never been great with the homework.”

  “Why would Abraham go to all the trouble and expense of bringing these things here?” Brad asked. “Power?”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Hellboy said. “If he wanted power he’d have used them, not locked them away underground. No, he had some other reason.”

  “Maybe he was an altruist. Trying to make the world safe,” Lisa suggested.

  “Then why didn’t he just destroy them?” Hellboy said.

  Lisa’s cry was a shock in the still atmosphere. What had appeared to be an ornament, a spider carved from a block of ebony as big as the palm of her hand, now scurried up her arm. Frantically, she tried to knock it off, but it moved too fast, over her shoulder, to her neck, where it paused briefly before sinking twin fangs into Lisa’s pale flesh. A second later it fell to the floor, inanimate once again.

  “Oh,” Lisa said in a daze, her hand going to her neck. Her eyes rolled up so only the whites were visible, and then she swooned.

  “Holy spit!” Hellboy ran to catch Lisa and laid her out on the Arabian rug.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Brad said, panicking. “Is she okay?”

  “It bit her.” Hellboy quickly examined the bite, which had flared into two red holes from which black tracings were beginning to radiate.

  “What’s happening to her?”

  “I don’t know!”


  Brad pressed two fingers against her wrist. “Pulse is thready. Her breathing’s getting shallow. Do something!”

  “Any suggestions? Find that spider. Maybe it’s got a rule book attached.” Hellboy could see Lisa was deteriorating rapidly. Whatever had got into her was spreading quickly.

  As Brad searched the floor where the spider fell, a gigantic shadow loomed over him. “H-Hellboy?” he said tentatively.

  “Ah! Jeez!” Hellboy leapt to his feet as a giant blue-black spider towered over him, razor-sharp teeth glinting in the lamplight. Furniture cracked and flew as it shifted its bulk with alarming speed to drive Hellboy into a corner. “Could have sworn it was smaller last time.”

  Brad was trapped on the far side of the room. Snatching up a piece of shattered chair, he attempted to ram it into the spider’s underside, but it caught him a glancing blow with one of its legs. He crashed into a bookcase, dazed.

  “I hate spiders,” Hellboy spat. “Least you haven’t got much room to maneuver.”

  The spider lunged at him. Gobs of gelatinous liquid flew from its mouth and sizzled where they struck the wall.

  “Holy crap!” Ducking the snapping mouth, Hellboy attacked the spider with his fists. Its body was steely, each hammer blow ringing like a tolling bell.

  Staggering to his feet, Brad called, “The artifacts? Can we use any of them?”

  “No way. Unless you know what you’re doing, they’re just as likely to blow you into little pieces.”

  Brute force drove the spider back, but it was fast and slippery, avoiding Hellboy’s blows with a sudden sideways skitter and then attacking ferociously. The maw snapped shut on Hellboy’s upper arm as the spider drove him back and then up to pin him against the wall. Hellboy cursed loudly as the acid began to eat into his skin.

  Flinging himself onto the spider’s back, Brad drove a shard of wood against the body, but it shattered into splinters. “What’s it made of?” he yelled with frustration.

  “Damn thing’s trying to digest me alive,” Hellboy said through the stink of the acid consuming his flesh. “No time for makin’ nice.”

  He hammered his fist into the spider’s multifaceted eye. The orb burst as his hand went deep into the socket and through to the core of its head. A high-pitched screeching like metal on metal tore from its mouth as it flailed frantically, flinging Hellboy back and forth until its fangs released and he crashed against the wall.

  As he hauled himself up from a shower of plaster, the screeching came to a sudden halt.

  Brad stood in the center of the room, looking round blankly. The spider was gone. “What just happened?” he said.

  Hellboy indicated the carved ebony spider lying on the floor near Brad’s feet. “It decided it was time to retreat.” He pounded one boot onto the carving, and when he removed his foot there was only a smear of dust. “That’s how you deal with spiders,” he said.

  “Lisa!” Brad called.

  Hellboy whirled to see Lisa was gone, the door to the hall now hanging ajar. Reclaiming the lamp, they dashed into the echoing hallway and paused at the top of the stairs leading down to the upper levels.

  “She wasn’t in any fit state to walk,” Brad said.

  “She is with the ghosts now.” The voice was hollow and insubstantial, hanging in the air like a cold breeze.

  “What the hell was that?” Brad shouted. “One of those entities?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine. This house is like a zoo for weird shit.”

  Brad started to shake, but caught himself. “Jesus,” he whispered.

  “Who’s there?” Hellboy called out as he sprayed the lamplight around, but the hall was empty and there was no response to his question. “Looks like we go down,” he said.

  Plunging into the dark depths of the house, they paused on each level, listening intently for any sound of Lisa, throwing open doors to inspect empty, dusty rooms, but the house was as still as when they first ventured into it.

  Brad was growing increasingly desperate. “Where is she?”

  “Here somewhere. The ghosts are quiet now. They want us to go.”

  “So they can be alone with her,” Brad added bleakly.

  On the final floor before they reached the attic room, Brad finally snapped. “She can’t just have disappeared!”

  “You’re right.”

  “She was sick. She might be dying.”

  “Brad, you need to calm down. She’s a tough kid.”

  “You don’t understand. She saved my life in Iraq. She saved it more than once.” He ran frantic fingers through his hair. “I came out of there with posttraumatic stress disorder. Lisa’s the only one helping me hold it all together.”

  Hellboy grabbed Brad by the shoulders to calm him. “It’s the atmosphere down here—it’s making you worse. Ghosts give off some kind of negative energy. They suck your spirits, turn your thoughts against themselves. They’re bad-luck generators. Stay focused and we’ll get Lisa out of here.”

  “Okay, okay.” Steadying himself against a wall, Brad took a deep breath. A moment later, he paused, puzzled.

  “What is it?”

  “Vibrations. In the wall.”

  Pressing his cheek against the damp plaster, Hellboy felt the subtle sensation. He traced it down the wall to the floorboards.

  “Rats?” Brad asked.

  “Or not.”

  Resting one hand on the boards, Hellboy gave one final evaluation of the vibrations, then punched hard with his stone fist. The wood shattered, leaving a ragged hole from which cold air blew.

  “The space between the floor and ceiling?” Brad kneeled down and tested the depth with his hand. “About eight inches.”

  “More than enough.”

  “I can’t see anything in there. Too dark.” Brad held his ear above the hole. “Nothing moving.”

  “Not now that we’ve disturbed them.” Hellboy wrenched up a floorboard and dropped the lamp into the space before pressing his head into the gap.

  “See anything?” Brad glanced up and down the empty landing, his flesh prickling. The sensation of eyes upon him was overpowering.

  “Nothing that way.” Hellboy turned his head. “No. Nothing . . .

  wait.” He shifted the lantern so the illumination spread further under the floorboards.

  A few feet along the space, he could make out the soles of Lisa’s boots. In the gloom beyond, he glimpsed the whites of her fearful eyes as she strained her head toward him. A gray hand was clasped across her mouth, stifling any sound she might make. Other hands were entwined in her hair and gripping her shoulders, ready to drag her further into the dark. And just beyond, Hellboy could make out pinpricks of sickly yellow light: hateful eyes turned toward him.

  In that hanging moment, Hellboy recognized the depth of the predatory nature of the entities that had been drawn to the house. They were hungry for life—and now they had Lisa.

  “Is she there?” Brad asked urgently.

  Suddenly the things began to drag Lisa away as quickly as they could. She fought furiously, kicking and scraping her heels on the wood, muffled cries resonating along the space.

  “What’s happening to her?” Brad shouted.

  Jumping up, Hellboy tore up floorboard after floorboard as he raced along the corridor, the crawling things always just ahead of him. In the cloud of shattered wood and flying nails, he drew his gun and fired one shot several feet ahead. The floorboards blasted apart. Leaping midrun, Hellboy crashed into the space he had created, directly in the path of the crawling things. He wrenched up the nearest boards to reveal Lisa, on her back, terrified. Whatever had tried to take her was already disappearing: the tips of gray fingers melted through the floor until they were gone.

  Brad choked back a cry of relief. “Thank God,” he whispered. “I thought . . . ” The words died in his throat and he concentrated on helping Hellboy draw Lisa out of the tight space. His fear that he might have lost her had brought a new tenderness to him. Hellboy noticed his
hand brush Lisa’s cheek, stroke her hair in relief.

  For a second, she sucked in deep lungfuls of air, her eyes frozen wide as the memory of her ordeal played out across her mind, and then, gradually, she calmed.

  “Thank heaven you came,” she gasped.

  “We weren’t going to leave you down here,” Brad said gently. He cupped an arm around her shoulders and she fell into him.

  Hellboy searched the space under the floorboards, but there was no sign of whatever had been there. It had been close; he wondered if Lisa knew how lucky she had been.

  “What happened?” Hellboy asked.

  “I don’t know. I remember picking up the spider in the sitting room . . . and the next thing I knew I was looking at the lamp and your head behind it.” She shuddered as she recalled the sensation of the gray fingers upon her. “In Iraq, there were times when I was terrified for my life, but nothing like that. The enemy out in the desert . . . in the end, despite the things they did, they were just people. That was real evil.” She stared uneasily at the hole in the boards. “I never believed in it before,” she said quietly. “Now the whole world looks different.”

  Hellboy gave her shoulder a comforting squeeze, and she responded with a weak smile.

  Brad examined the skin around her neck closely. “The bite’s gone. Looks like whatever toxin the spider pumped into her disappeared when you crushed it.”

  “Mindless force. Always the best medicine.” Hellboy helped Lisa to her feet. “Come on. Let’s get you back upstairs.”

  Lisa began to protest, but Brad simply swung her up into his arms. “Now you’re just going to put your back out,” she said weakly, but behind the feeble attempt at humor Hellboy sensed a deep affection, of which they were only just becoming aware.

  As they moved back up through the levels, the house behind them once again came alive with distant creaks, the thud of dropped objects, and the faint moan of air passing through a small gap. All of them could have been taken for the mundane sounds of a cold house at night, but Hellboy knew the truth.

  “You think they’re going to try to stop us leaving?” Brad asked quietly.