by Rick Hautala
“You might want to watch your language with a lady present,” Hellboy said. Then he sucked in a deep breath and belched again, louder.
“Lady?” Tommy said, gawking back and forth like a chicken, looking for grain on the ground. He crossed his arms and puffed out his chest. “I don’t see no lady here. All’s I see is a drunk slut Flatlander and some kinda red-skinned freak who looks like he escaped from the circus.”
Sensing trouble, Kyle quickly stepped over to Tommy and got his attention.
“Chill out,” he said under his breath, “or I’ll have to ask you to leave. Trust me. You don’t want to mess with this guy.”
After catching the scathing look from his older brother, Tommy turned back and continued drinking in silence.
“Ahh, forget about them,” Lorraine said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “They’re just a couple of dip-shit rednecks. Tell me about your friend Red Shirt. How’d he die?”
Covering his mouth with his huge right fist, Hellboy belched again, softly this time, as he settled back in the seat. The booth cushion groaned beneath his weight.
“It’s kind of complicated,” he said.
When he spoke, Lorraine noticed a faraway look in his eye. She glanced at the rain washing down the window beside them and said softly, “I ain’t going anyplace in a hurry.”
“Well,” Hellboy said, “the Finn will be here pretty soon, but I guess I can tell you about it. You see, about a year and a half ago, this town had a problem with a serial killer—a man named Moses McCrory.”
“Moses McCrory,” Lorainne echoed.
“He’d killed something like nine women—some of ‘em young girls, really—before the cops finally ran him down.”
“So he’s in jail?”
One corner of Hellboy’s mouth twitched. “I said ran him down. The police found where he was, then shot and killed him.” He paused to take a single huge gulp of beer. “That’s when the real trouble started.”
Lorraine squinted at him and shook her head. It crossed her mind that this whole evening was beyond strange. Here she was, sitting in a bar in a town she’d never been to and never intended to visit again, talking about a serial killer with a big red guy with a stone fist and bumps that looked like sawed-off horns on his forehead. For all she knew, he could be the serial killer, and he was setting her up as his next victim … luring her in.
But she couldn’t deny that she found him fascinating. She had to hear out more.
“I don’t get it,’ she said. “If they killed him, then that should have ended it unless—Oh, wait a second. I get it.” She snapped her fingers. “He wasn’t the real killer, right?”
“Oh, he was the real killer all right. He strangled his victims with a piece of piano wire that pretty much took their heads off. But shortly after they killed him, more people started dying … only this time, in much more gruesome ways.”
“I know what it was,” Lorraine said, snapping her fingers again and jumping excitedly in her seat. “I saw a show about this on A&E or maybe the History Channel. They had what they call a ‘copycat’ killer, right? Someone who started imitating the first killer.”
Hellboy shook his head and then reached for the pitcher of beer to refill his glass.
“Not exactly. You see, I only get called into things when they get … really weird.”
“And this got really weird?”
Lorraine was feeling suddenly uncomfortable. She shifted in her seat and glanced over at Kyle, slightly reassured by his presence.
Hellboy nodded and then, with a what-the-hell shrug, finished off his beer.
“Once the killings started again, the local police couldn’t handle it,” he said, “so they called in the State C.I.D.”
“C.I.D.?”
“Criminal Investigative Division. They pieced together a few things, like how the victims were killed, and that the killings only happened on rainy nights, but the Staties couldn’t handle it, either. These recent killings were—” He shook his head and sniffed. “Really bad.”
“How so?”
“The victims were all beheaded. That’s how they died. Only this time, the killer strangled them with a length of barbed wire, and he pulled it so tight their heads popped right off.”
“Oh my God,” Lorraine said, covering her mouth with both hands as a slow chill ran through her. She suddenly felt very alone and very vulnerable.
“Uh-huh,” Hellboy said, “and then he stuffed their open necks with straw.”
“Straw?”
“Yeah, and all of the victims were missing some body parts ... arms, legs, internal organs ... different parts from each victim. That’s when they called me, and I brought along my friends—The Finn and Red Shirt.”
“Well then,” Lorraine said, taking a deep breath and slumping back in her seat. For a while, she’d forgotten all about her glass of beer, but now her throat was parched, and she picked it up and took a quick sip. “If you’re waiting for The Finn, like you said, then it must be to honor Red Shirt, who died, right?”
“Kind of a no-brainer,” Hellboy said. “Yeah.”
“Was he an Indian? His name sounds like he was an Indian.”
Hellboy sniffed with laughter as he raised the pitcher above his head, signaling for Kyle that he was ready for a refill.
“You’re a regular Sherlock Holmes, you know that?” Hellboy said. “Yeah, Red Shirt was a Native American and, as it turned out, I needed him to help me figure out what had happened to Moses.”
“Wait a second,” Lorraine said. “I thought you said Moses was shot and killed by the police.”
“He was.”
Hellboy barely acknowledged Kyle when he came over to the table and replaced the empty pitcher with a full one.
“It took us a while to piece it all together, but you see, the cops found Moses in a cornfield when they tracked him down. When they shot and killed him, he was standing beside an old scarecrow that some farmer had left in the field.”
Hellboy paused, and in that brief moment of silence, he eyed the full pitcher of beer. His head was spinning from what he had already had to drink, but he refilled his glass again from the pitcher and took a few gulps. He was replacing his half-empty glass on the table when Tommy spoke up.
“Christ, you see that, Jed? He drinks like a fuckin’ animal! You even taste that?” he shouted to Hellboy.
Hellboy glared at him and shifted forward in his seat as if to get up, but before he did, Kyle stepped over to the two Farrow brothers.
“I’m gonna have to ask you fellas to leave,” he said, his voice low and controlled. “I don’t want no trouble here tonight.”
“I ain’t causin’ no trouble,” Tommy said, his voice winding up to a high pitch. “He’s the one causin’ trouble. Why do you even serve a Goddamned freak like him?”
“All right. That’s it,” Kyle said, scooping away Tommy’s and Jed’s glasses and pointing at the door. “You’ll be welcome here tomorrow night provided you learn yourselves some manners ‘tween now and then.”
“What the fuck?” Jed said. “I didn’t do nothin’. I was just sittin’ here drinkin’ ‘n mindin’ my own business.”
“Go on! Get out! Now!” Kyle said, his voice stern and cold. “The both of yah get home before you get into some trouble that you can’t handle.”
“Oh, I can handle anything that freak’s got to dish out,” Tommy said. His body stiffened as he cast a challenging glance at Hellboy, but Jed prodded his idiot brother to silence with another well-placed jab to the ribs.
Lorraine couldn’t help but smile as she watched the two rednecks make their way to the door, staggering and looking like a couple of schoolboys who had been scolded.
“Have a nice evening, gentlemen,” she called out as Jed swung the door open, and both of them stepped out into the storm.
“Pardon me one minute,” Hellboy said as he shifted out of the booth and stood up. “I have some business to attend to. I’ll be right back.”
&n
bsp; When he stood up, Lorraine was amazed by the size of him, but she tried not to let it show. Smiling, she said, “Well, considering how much beer you’ve put away, it’s no wonder you gotta pee.”
She didn’t bother to turn and watch him walk away. Instead, her eyes shifted to the cooler he’d left behind on the table. She was dying to know what was inside it. This Hellboy, whoever he was, sure was a strange one, so whatever was in that cooler had to be something just as strange as he was.
Lorraine chuckled to herself when she thought how surprised and disappointed she’d be if she opened up the cooler and found a picnic lunch with sandwich, soda, and chips.
But—no. Hellboy had said he hadn’t eaten all day, so it probably wasn’t food in there.
So what can it be?
Leaning across the table, Lorraine sniffed the air. The thick, rotting aroma still lingered, making her gag.
Is there a fish in there? she wondered.
Maybe Hellboy had been fishing up north, and this was his prized catch.
After a quick glance over her shoulder to make sure Hellboy wasn’t coming back from the rest room yet, she reached out for the cooler with one hand. She noticed that her hand was trembling slightly as she touched the still-damp plastic. The barroom was suddenly quiet with anticipation as she ran her fingers down to the latch and slowly began to apply pressure to release it.
“I wouldn’t do that if I was you.”
The voice, speaking so suddenly behind her, made her jump. She jerked back and dropped both hands below the table as she spun around and saw Kyle, watching her from behind the bar.
“Trust me, Lady. Hellboy’s not the kind of guy you want to mess around with.”
As if on cue, the front door of the bar opened, and Hellboy strode back inside. His trench coat was drenched through, and his muddy hooves made loud, wet sounds as he walked back over to the table.
“Why’d you go outside? I thought you had to go to the bathroom?” Lorraine asked, her heart fluttering in her chest.
“Just had to check on something,” Hellboy said simply as he wiped the water from his face. He sat down and took a healthy swallow of beer. He indicated Lorraine’s all but forgotten glass of beer and added, ”Come on. Drink up.”
Lorraine’s throat was so constricted she could barely swallow as she took a tiny sip of her beer. It was going flat, but she didn’t care. After taking a moment or two to collect herself, she said, “So, you were saying ...”
“Ah, yes. Where was I?” Hellboy said.
“You were saying how, when they killed Moses McCrory, he was in a cornfield, standing next to a scarecrow.”
“Yeah—right,” Hellboy said. “Well, you see, in some primitive beliefs, it’s birds—usually crows, but sometimes other birds, like starlings or owls—that usher the spirit of the recently deceased into the afterlife. If that’s true, then—”
Lorraine interrupted him with a snap of her fingers.
“—Then Moses’ spirit wouldn’t have been taken because the scarecrow would have scared away the crows.”
Smiling faintly, Hellboy nodded slowly.
“You got it. It took me a while longer to piece that all together, but you have to remember, we were in the middle of it.”
“So where did Moses’ spirit end up?” Lorraine asked. A terrible chill crept up her back.
“Into the scarecrow, of course,” Hellboy said simply.
Before he could say more and before Lorraine could ask him to explain how that could actually happen, the bar door swung open so hard it slammed against the wall with a resounding bang. Lorraine’s first thought was that the Farrow brothers had returned, maybe with guns or knives to settle their score with Hellboy. She turned around quickly, surprised to see a tall, thin man framed by the doorway.
He was hatless, and the rain had plastered his thinning, blond hair in dark squiggles against his skull. His face was pale, bone white. The dim light in the barroom glanced off his high forehead and the angular planes of his cheekbones, but the rest of his face—especially his eyes and mouth—were shadowed, no matter how the lighting shifted as he looked around. He caught Hellboy’s eye and started over to the table. Without so much as a word, he hooked a chair with his foot, swung it around, and sat down with his elbows resting against the back of the chair.
“I wasn’t sure I had the right place,” the man said in a low, gruff voice, “until I saw those two guys stretched out unconscious in the parking lot.”
“What did you—?” Lorraine started to say, but then she cut herself off when it dawned on her.
Hellboy’s face remained expressionless as he leaned forward and said, “Lorraine, I’d like you to meet The Finn. Finn ... This here’s Lorraine.”
“Pleased to meet you,” The Finn said, but Lorraine couldn’t be sure if he was sincere or not because the light from the bar was behind him, and she still couldn’t see his face clearly as they briefly shook hands. His touch was surprisingly firm and dry.
“I was just telling Lorraine, here, about what happened last year,” Hellboy said.
The Finn made a soft chuffing sound that might have passed for a laugh before saying, “Christ, Hellboy, look at you. You’re drunk on your ass.”
Hellboy slouched back in his seat and seemed for a moment unable to focus his eyes as he shook his head in adamant denial and said, “No. No. I just had a little something to drink with Lorraine, here, while I was waiting for you.”
The Finn leaned forward and ran his hands down the sides of his face.
“What kind of lies has he been telling you?” he asked Lorraine, and in the half-light, she caught the trace of a smile on his thin lips.
“Oh, he’d just gotten to the part where Moses McCrory was shot and killed … when he was standing next to the scarecrow, and that the murders kept happening after he was dead, only they got worse.”
“Uh-huh,” The Finn said, “and did he tell you about the straw?”
“The straw?” Lorraine looked quizzically at Hellboy.
“Right,” The Finn said. “Once the killings started up again, there was always straw around the victims ... straw and rope fiber. It was that, and the fact that the killings only happened on rainy nights, that I was able to piece it all together.”
“You?” Hellboy said with a dry sniff of laughter. “You didn’t put anything together. It was me and Red Shirt who figured out about the pond.”
“Wait a minute you two,” Lorraine said. “You’re confusing me. What’s this about a pond?”
“Okay, okay, I’ll give credit where credit’s due.” Hellboy’s voice was noticeably slurred now. “It was Red Shirt who figured it out. I told you that this new round of killings only happened on rainy nights, right?”
Lorraine nodded. She was more than a little tipsy herself, and it took a bit of effort to follow the conversation.
“Rainy nights,” Hellboy repeated, nodding to himself. “Only on rainy nights. There’d been a killing two nights before, but the weather had cleared, so that afternoon, the three of us went out to the cornfield where Moses’d been killed. I—we hadn’t put it all together yet, and one reason was ‘cause the scarecrow we’d seen in the police crime scene photos was still standing there. But when we got there, I noticed that the scarecrow wasn’t the same one that was in the photos they’d showed us at the police station. So I thought we’d better investigate.”
“Investigate?” The Finn said, barking with laughter. “What the hell are you talking about, ‘investigate?’ You took that cannon of yours and blasted the thing to pieces!”
Hellboy looked at Lorraine with a sheepish shrug.
“Maybe sometimes I act a bit rashly before I have a chance to think things all the way through. But that doesn’t really matter because of what we found. See, the scarecrow wasn’t stuffed with straw, the way scarecrows are supposed to be. It was packed full of body parts.”
“Body parts?” Lorraine said, wincing as her stomach did a sour little flip. “You mean … l
ike—”
“Yeah,” said Hellboy. “Moses was collecting body parts from his victims and stuffing them inside the scarecrow.”
“But you said he was the scarecrow … that his soul entered it the night he was shot.”
“It did. I mean, he was.” Hellboy shook his head as though desperately to clear it so she’d understand better. “But he had started making a new one. See, it hadn’t snowed yet that year, but there had been a frost the night before. It was getting late when we got out to the cornfield. The corn was dead, but the farmer hadn’t cut it back yet, so the stalks were more than head-high. They blocked our view, but I—”
Hellboy gave a sidelong glance at The Finn.
“I mean, Red Shirt noticed footprints leading down to the pond.”
“Actually,” The Finn said, “the footprints led up from the pond and then back down to it. Hellboy and I thought someone—Moses in the shape of the scarecrow, maybe, had walked down to the pond, for some reason, before leaving.”
“But it was Red Shirt—” Hellboy said emphatically as he nailed The Finn with a hard look. “See?” he muttered. “I can give credit when credit’s due. It was Red Shirt who read the tracks correctly, him being an Indian and all. So he determined that the prints coming out of the pond were the older prints, and the ones going back into it were fresher.”
“I—I still don’t get it,” Lorraine said, shaking her head.
“Okay, think of it this way,” Hellboy said, slurring his words. “If you were a scarecrow, what would be your biggest fear?”
Lorraine considered the question for a moment, then said, “Probably falling apart ... unless I needed a brain.”
“Very funny, Dorothy, but—no. That’s not the problem,” Hellboy said impatiently. “You can always stuff more straw into yourself if you’re falling apart. Think about what would be your most dangerous enemy. What can destroy you if you’re made of straw?”
“Well ... fire, of course.”
“Bingo.” Hellboy clapped his hands together. Then, leaning back in the booth, he folded his arms across his chest and nodded with satisfaction. “And, if you were made of straw, you wouldn’t need to breathe, either. Would you?” Lorraine shrugged, still more than a little perplexed. The more Hellboy talked, the less sense he was making. Must be the beer.