by Tim Lebbon
The flashlight picked out several dark openings around the cave. Without exploring further, there was no way of telling where any of them went, but in the middle of the cavern, another breath of air wafted past Hellboy. He closed his eyes and breathed it in, trying to filter out the stink. Water, definitely. He waited for a while and another subtle breath cooled his skin, then another, coming in rhythmic gasps.
Something breathing, he thought, but it did not concern him too much. He knew the smell of the sea well enough. One of these tunnels must lead all the way down through the cliffs to the ocean.
If the fire wolf had entered La Casa Fredda this way, there would surely be signs of its entry. Hellboy could see no scorched, blackened bats; no trail of cauterized bat crap; and the carved tunnel he’d crawled through had not been coated with soot. The tapestry was old and fragile, so dried out by being hung over the crawlspace opening for many centuries that he thought it would probably ignite if he coughed on it. He’d come down here seeking secrets, but all he’d found were forgotten histories. Centuries ago, this had been an escape route from the old Esposito house, and it bore remembering. But right now, there were more important things he could be doing.
Like finding out what that kid had been shouting about Vesuvius.
Franca would be looking for him, no doubt, and he had to figure what to do now. He had to leave the house for a while, that was sure. No good could come of him going against Adamo’s wishes. But that didn’t mean they had to leave Amalfi.
Sighing, Hellboy faced the dark hole in the cave wall again. Tingling inside his head, too high to really hear, the bats’ calls seemed to see him on his way.
He wiped the flashlight, popped it in his mouth, and started crawling.
—
“You scared the hell out of me!” Franca was cowering against the far wall as Hellboy pushed the tapestry aside, and he grinned at her as he climbed from the hole and stood. He stretched, hearing his joints protesting at the way they were being treated.
“Sorry,” he said. “But if you go snooping around subterranean rooms, you’ve gotta expect to see some weird things.”
“I guessed you’d come down here,” she said. “The broken padlock’s a dead giveaway.”
“Yeah, well, I figure Adamo can afford a new one.”
“So he told you to leave?”
“Yep. And to take you with me.” He brushed himself down, not liking the feel of grit on his skin. “Said you weren’t welcome.”
“I’ve known that for years.” She looked around, saw the dust trails on the table, and her eyes grew wide. “The book?”
“It’s gone.” Hellboy shrugged. “Guess the old man really didn’t want me snooping.”
Franca’s shoulders sagged, and she looked around the little room her cousin had described.
“So,” Hellboy said, “I figure we leave the house, go down into Amalfi—”
“Hellboy, we have somewhere else to go.” Franca suddenly seemed motivated again, her eyes wide and scared, but excited as well.
“Where?”
“Can’t you trust me?” she asked.
“Can’t you tell me?”
She pressed her lips together and frowned. “Not straight away. Just in case I dreamed it. I have . . . nightmares. More frequent since Carlotta first contacted me, told me about all this. And if this was a nightmare as well, I’ll feel stupid dragging you all the way there to—”
“All the way where?”
“Pompeii.”
Hellboy nodded, and cogs clicked into place in his mind. “Vesuvius.”
“There’ve been rumblings,” Franca said, but she didn’t seemed as surprised at his perception as he’d have hoped. “Smoke coming from the crater. But it’s not that.”
“So what’s in Pompeii?”
“If I’m right—if it wasn’t a dream—there’s something there you need to see.”
Hellboy brushed more dirt and dust from his skin and coat, then slipped the flashlight back into a belt pocket. “Why not?” he said. “I’m all done here.”
“So what’s down there?” she asked.
“A cave. Bats. Bat crap.” He shrugged, and as Franca turned and he followed her back through the basement rooms, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d missed something vital.
CHAPTER 7
—
Amalfi/Pompeii
—
“He sent someone to follow us,” Franca said. “Five cars back.”
“What are you, some kind of secret agent?”
“No. Just angry. Something killed my cousin. I don’t care that she stepped from the window herself.”
Hellboy took a final drag on his cigarette and flicked it from the window. He’d quit the habit, but this thing was vexing him, and Franca’s pack had been open on the dashboard. Half an hour and three cigarettes later the sea was behind them, and they were heading across the root of the peninsula towards Pompeii.
“Besides, they’re the same men who met us at the airport. And they’re making themselves very visible.”
Hellboy leaned forward slightly and looked in the wing mirror. The car—it was big and black, of course—weaved across the road, crossing the central line when there was nothing coming the other way. They were keeping back, but Franca was right: they weren’t keeping their presence a secret.
He needed to ask Franca what was in Pompeii that she suddenly found so important, but he also respected her wishes. If she had doubts, it was best she lay them to rest herself before revealing them to him. She was very obviously scared. There was grief mixed in with that, too, and Hellboy knew only too well that together they made a poor combination. So he scratched absently at the burns already healing on his stomach and chest, and sat back to watch the scenery drift by.
There were quite a few police cars and army trucks on the road today, and Franca had said it was part of the big evacuation plan. Vesuvius was grumbling, and though the experts said there was no definitive indication that there would be an eruption, the initial stages of the plan were being readied. He could barely imagine the chaos that would ensue were the volcano to blow. Though there was a plan in place to get everyone to safety, he knew people: some would not want to leave. The old ones, the determined, those who had lived in their homes their whole lives, they’d want to stay behind and challenge the might of Vesuvius.
As for the Espositos, Hellboy didn’t know. They were outside the evacuation circle and well away from the lava zone, but a big eruption would fill the air with poisonous gases, ash, and fireballs, maybe even as far as Amalfi.
Volcanoes and the fire wolf. Any connection? The link had seemed obvious to begin with, but for now he put it to one side. For later attention, he marked it in his mind. He’d wait to see what came once they reached Amalfi.
Passing Castellammare di Stabia, their followers seemed to back off. They took an exit from the main road, and Franca seemed to settle in her seat, driving more confidently.
“More than halfway to Naples,” she said. “They must assume we’re making for the airport. They’ll park somewhere, have a big meal, then get back to Amalfi for evening. Might even tell Adamo that they saw us onto a ‘plane.’”
“Clumsy of them,” Hellboy said, doubtful.
“Thugs for hire,” Franca said. “They’re not Espositos. Just some local characters he uses sometimes.”
“So why doesn’t Adamo use people from the family as his heavies?”
“We’re not like that, Hellboy,” Franca said, and it was the first time he’d heard her speak positively of her family in general. It surprised him, but also shamed him a little. He was painting people with a brush of his own choice, where in reality there were different shades and textures to everyone.
“I don’t mean to jump to conclusions,” he said. “But I saw the reaction you got back at the house.”
“Not from everyone. My father might be dead, and my mother . . . distant. But I do still have family. Going back there was . . . well, you
called it brave. But it wasn’t brave. It was painful.”
“And you knew it would be. For me, that’s the definition of bravery.”
“Being hurt?” she asked bitterly
“No. Facing pain for someone else.”
Franca gave a derisive snort, but then lit a cigarette and drove in silence for a couple of miles. Finally, as she turned off the main road and followed signs headed for Pompeii, she asked, “Do you think you can help us?”
“I don’t know,” he said, and the honesty hurt him. So we’re both brave today, he thought. Brave little soldiers. The heat of that fire wolf’s bite haunted him, and he knew for sure that he would feel such a bite again. “Show me what’s in Pompeii. Maybe then I’ll have a better idea.”
An hour later Franca stopped the car in a big, dusty parking lot to the west of Pompeii. Usually, she told him, this place would still be buzzing with tourists at this time of day, but the reason why the whole area was deserted was patently obvious.
In the distance, the shattered peak of Vesuvius breathed fumes at the evening sky. The setting sun caught the rising column of smoke and cast it blood-red. And here and there, in the clouds forming high above, lightning cut stark blue lines in the deepening dusk.
Beautiful, terrible, Vesuvius’s grumbles reached Hellboy through his cloven hooves.
—
With every mile they had drawn closer to Pompeii, so Franca’s fear had grown.
She slammed the car door behind her and heard Hellboy do the same, but she only had eyes for Vesuvius, that constant scar on the world that stood sentry above Pompeii and silhouetted a reminder of what it had done against every dusk, every dawn. Its fury two thousand years before had blasted a cubic mile of mountain into the atmosphere, pulverizing it before dropping it again in showers of rock, dust, and ash. It had destroyed itself to bring destruction to everyone and everything around it. And now, it was breathing again.
She had not been to Pompeii since she had attended an archaeological dig here over a year ago. That first time had unsettled her, but perhaps the fear was now in her blood. She’d been here for its history, not its present, and she had seen and felt how these thousands of people had died: suffocating, burning, crushing, breathing in poisonous gases. Mothers had held their children as they gasped their last, fathers had hugged their wives, and Vesuvius had rocked the ground with its monstrous laughter. Most people blamed the citizens of Pompeii for not heeding the warnings, but Franca knew them as living, breathing people, not those horrific plaster casts of human suffering that tourists so delighted in photographing.
She blamed the volcano.
“Heard a lot about this place,” Hellboy said. “Always wanted to visit.”
“It’s a graveyard,” Franca said, and she felt Hellboy taking in a cautious breath behind her. “Come on. What I need to show you is this way.”
Her skin crawled as she walked, goose bumps rising along her arms and down her sides, reacting to a coolness that was not there. She was not used to this place being swamped with such silence. When she had been here before there had always been tourists; the scraping of their tired feet, their mumbled appreciation of times gone by, their curious comments as they stood outside the dig and peered through empty windows or over worn walls. Now her footsteps echoed from stonework, and the only other sound was the impact of Hellboy’s strange feet.
He sounded . . . more at home. She could not exactly pin down the feeling, but there was something about the way he walked, and his silence sounded contented. He comes from places like this, Franca thought, surprised at the idea, but flowing with it. Old places, graveyards, where the dead whisper and the living never feel at home until it’s their time to depart as well. He’s welcome here, and he welcomes it. She glanced back at Hellboy, and he smiled softly.
“Interesting place,” he said quietly.
“It’s trapped in time,” she said. “I’ll tell you about it.” And as she started to talk, her nervousness bowed down beneath the words. Perhaps it was just the sound of her voice, or the act of concentrating that drove away the feeling of dread. Or maybe it was knowing Pompeii that made it easier to be here.
“The streets are all like this,” she began. “Sunken in the middle for wagons and cattle, raised on the edges for pedestrians. If you look closely in places, you can even see where the wagon wheels have worn ruts in the rock.” She paused at a junction of two roads, looked around the place herself, then smiled. Yes, she knew this Pompeii well. Sharing it with Hellboy would distract her attention from the volcano, its breath, its distant mutterings . . .
“Over here,” she said, jogging along the narrow street to her left. Some of the buildings along here still retained their roofs, and there were a few interesting places to show him on their way to where she was headed. “Look.” She pointed at the bottom of a wall.
“Hmm,” Hellboy said. “Pipes.”
“Two thousand year old lead plumbing, actually.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“Not at all. Water can still flow through it, too. Though you’d end up with lead poisoning, of course.”
“Well,” he said.
“Want to se the brothel?”
“Is it open?” he asked, smiling.
“This way,” Franca said. She led them along the street, then left through the ruin of an old family home. She pointed out some frescoes on the wall, their colors still vivid and extravagant, and it reminded her of where they were going. She tried to shut that out. Just for a few minutes, she thought. That’s all I ask, a few minutes of normality.
She had the sudden, painful certainty that once they reached the half-buried building with the mosaic, normality would be a thing of the past.
After passing several buildings along the next street she paused outside an innocuous structure, the doorway open to the elements. Hellboy stood before her and stared at the darkened doorway. He seemed distracted.
“What is it?” Franca asked.
“Old place,” he said. “It has echoes.”
“I know,” she said. He glanced sharply at her, and she walked inside, not sure that she could explain even if he asked.
It’s like I’ve been here before, she thought. Before that time I was at the dig. Long ago. She wondered if Hellboy felt the same.
She crowded into the small reception area with him and looked around.
“Priapus,” she said, pointing to the waist-high column in the corner.
“Impressive.” He pointed up at the colored pictures above each alcove, the detail still obvious, the colors darkening in the dusk but still patently fresh. “What’s this, Roman porn?”
“It’s a menu,” Franca said. “Lots of people who visited here were sailors, so the prostitutes wouldn’t be able to speak their language. They’d peruse the menu and choose. Each alcove, a different speciality.”
“Wow,” Hellboy said. “Imagine that.” He looked around at the images above each alcove, pausing once or twice.
“This was a whole city dug out of the ashes,” Franca said. “It’s really quite remarkable, and unprecedented. Pompeii was forgotten for almost two thousand years, and it’s been frozen in time.”
“And the people who died, their bodies were mummified by the ash, right?”
“That’s what most people think. Actually, their flesh and organs rotted away, leaving hollows in the hardened ash. When a hollow is discovered, plaster is poured in. When it sets, the ash is carefully moved away, and voila! The sculpture of a real person’s agonized death. Bones, and all.”
“Hmm,” Hellboy said. He took one more look at the menus for sex and pleasure, glanced into an alcove, then stepped outside. Franca followed, not sure whether the big man had been embarrassed or uninterested. For her, his enigma deepened.
He was standing in the street outside, turning his head left and right with his eyes closed. The sun was settling into the western horizon, and its dying glare gave his skin a scarlet hue. He seemed not to notice her presence
for a while, as if he were seeing or listening to something else entirely, and Franca felt far removed from this strange man’s world.
“Hellboy,” she said, “what is it?”
“All old places have old ghosts,” he said. “Here, I can hear one calling to me.”
Franca felt a chill pass down through her body. Her back and neck prickled, her stomach grew cool, and she had never heard anyone say anything quite so terrifying.
“Come on,” he said quietly. “This way.”
“You’re supposed to be following me,” Franca said.
“I’d hazard a guess we’re both aiming for the same place.” Hellboy walked along the street, coat flapping about him as a gentle evening breeze came in from the direction of the sea.
Franca hurried to catch up. She suddenly had a fear of being left behind, alone, here in Pompeii as the sun went down and the volcano announced its presence. There appeared to be no one else here, but the ancient city might still be inhabited, with people who chose to hide themselves away, or ghosts that waited for the silence before showing themselves. Franca wanted to meet neither.
Hellboy stepped over the root of a tumbled wall and she followed. They were in the old bakery, with grain grinders and kilns, and she wanted to tell him all about it. But she could see that his mind was now elsewhere. He walked steadily, but without any sign of being stopped. He reminded her of a dog following a scent, but this dog had its head tilted to one side, listening to something she could not hear.
She tried. She opened herself up to this place, but she was too scared. Pompeii was bad enough, but at her back now rose the shadow of the mountain, and in its base she sensed doom gathering in molten, gaseous fury.
“Close,” Hellboy said after a few minutes. “Just along here.”
“Yes,” Franca said, because they were on the right street, and he was pointing towards the building where she had dug. He seemed to realize what he had done, because he stepped back slightly and waved her forward.
“You brought me here,” he said. “So show me what we came to see.”