Emerald Hell

Chapter 18

The ill children led Hellboy and Lament through the scrub, hopefully toward the swamp village. The pumpkin-headed kid, the kid with eyes like an insect, the beautiful girl without bones in her legs who rode on Lament's shoulders, the dwarf with the big feet, the really weird conjoined twins who had two legs, two arms, and two heads, and Fishboy Lenny.

It made for a heck of a troupe, all of them moving through the marshy woodland together like some bizarre grade-school field trip. The oddest part of the whole situation was perhaps how familiar and natural this course felt to Hellboy, as if it had always been meant for him to be here.

Despite their appearance the children acted like you'd expect any happy children to behave. They chased each other through the cabbage palms and slough, their laughter echoing across the green. They bumped their heads and scuffed their knees and cried, then shake it off and forget about it.

They were so used to the semi-solid, soft ground that they hardly threw any mud as they went by. They moved with ease through the runty bay bushes and matted catclaw thickets. They slithered and hopped, bounded and rollicked, and kept up a steady stream of patter in what sounded like a half-dozen different languages. Granny Lewt's ears weren't helping him at all with understanding any of them, and he was wondering if the magic might be wearing off a little by now.

Luckily Fishboy Lenny didn't happen to look like a catfish. Hellboy was thankful for small graces, thinking, Jesus, no more catfish for the time being, all right? The kid just looked like your average fish, with flippers instead of hands, two slashes of nostrils where a nose ought to be, and a mouth that was hardly more than a small hole through which he made lots of happy noises. The boy also had vestigial gills just under his shrunken ears.

Fishboy Lenny's name was the only one he'd managed to catch, although all the kids had introduced themselves. But Lenny, he just swept up through the mud and said,"Fweep mwah fsshhh. Lenny." So there it was.

Every now and again one of the kids would turn back to Hell-boy and playfully grab his hand, trying to get him to move along a little faster.

But he didn't feel all that hot to trot at the moment and Lament looked even worse. The hillbilly's hair was singed, his wounds still bled a bit, and he had welts across his face and burns on his arms and hands. None of it slowed him up much though, and he pulled out his mouth-harp and started to play a tune.

The girl on Lament's shoulders knew the song and began to sing, keeping time by tapping at his chest with her soft unformed feet. Soon the rest of the children joined in on the liking melody. Hellboy didn't understand the words at all.

When Lament finished and put his mouth-harp back in his pocket, the girl gestured to be let down. Hellboy lifted her off Lament's back and put her on the ground, where she swung herself along wriggling and using her arms as crutches. Soon the pumpkin-headed kid and the kid with insectoid eyes each gripped one of her hands and carried her between them.

Lament stopped and threw a shoulder against a hurrah bush, breathing sharply. Hellboy asked him, "You need a rest?"

"I could use hot meal," Lament said, "a bubblebath, a lengthy foot massage, a long drink of moon, some dry long Johns, and a warm downy bed, but even without them kind privileges I s'pect I'll survive." He turned and smiled. "How you holdin' up, son? Wishin' you'd never had no truck with us southern folk?"

"I've had a lot of truck with southern folk before," Hellboy told him,"but none of that trucking ever turned out quite like this."

"Make your memoirs interesting though."

They trudged on. They'd already walked at least a couple of miles, and Hellboy kept wondering about the kids' parents, if they'd be worried. They had to be, right? If all the noise and fire and smoke hadn't drawn them out to the Mother Tree, there still would've been a chance they'd wound up on gator ground or in some other kind of trouble. Lost in the woods, attacked by wolves, bitten by snakes. He mulled and started to brood a touch.

Lament picked up on it right away. "What's the matter with you?"

"What are they doing out so far from home?"

"What do you mean? This is home. They were just playin'."

"What were they doing out there by the flats?"

"They heard tell that some swamp men got drawn away from their homes and decided to take a looksee for themselves. No child can resist a good mystery."

"They could've been hurt."

Nodding, Lament said, "Coulda been killed. No different than a city child walkin' home from school, I reckon."

"I'm not so sure about that."

But of course he was. He'd been in the Syrian desert with kids only a little older than these who'd been his contacts and guides. He'd seen children playing in bombed out cars in Beirut. He'd once visited a monastery in China and met with a ten-year-old Buddhist abbot whose only purpose in life, along with his brotherhood, was to recite one hundred million prayers to hold back the undoing of all creation. He'd met a lot of kids who had been put into the thick of things.

"What's really on your mind, son?" Lament asked.

Good question. Hellboy glanced at the kids and could almost see how it would be if they ever decided to leave their swamp village. The prejudices they'd face. The pain of not fitting in. Even if you didn't want to fit in, even if nobody else needed you to fit in with them. The kids were oblivious now, but they wouldn't always be. It struck him deep, knowing what it would be like for them eventually.

Hellboy hissed something and Lament said, "What's that?"

"How's this happen?" Hellboy repeated. "How does something like this happen?"

"How's what happen?" This.

With a little heat in his voice, Lament said, "You think you got the bloom on strange births?"

"I didn't say that."

"No, you didn't. The Lord don't differentiate between the unsightly and the adorable. We're all born under Heaven. We're all God's children, every one of us, you never heard that before?"

"I've heard it," Hellboy said, his hooves sinking deep in the muck, and thinking Lament might just be a little on the stupid side after all. "Never figured it applied to me."

"Oh, you're just feelin' a touch of melancholia. That's natural enough after the day we've had, for a man far from home. The world is full of odd beauty. I already done told you that, iffun you recall. No different here than anywhere." They marched along and, after a while, Lament went on. "I'm sorry son, I shouldn't have snapped at you like that. How's this happen? You can have your pick of answers. There's plenty of them. Maybe none are true or maybe all of 'em are."

"I wasn't really asking. It was rhetorical. I know about mutations."

Lament's face hardened. "Maybe you only think you do. Got your mind set on poisoned moonshine and improperly buried bodies during epidemics, don't ya? Or we can talk about all the toxic waste dumping going on. I seen them chemical polluters myself, throwing in barrel after barrel. I fought 'em off with fists and a good hunk'a chicory. Men from the town kept a watchful eye for a year or two, and sent some of them boys runnin' with their keesters full of buckshot. But I don't know that it ever stopped them. There's too much money to be saved dumpin' into these depths. Corporations aren't always righteous. Nor the government."

Hellboy, who'd been a part of the government practically since he was born, said nothing.

"And the granny watches," Lament went on, "they say there's ancient forces in the blackwater, and you and I know that's true. Whether said evils reach into the blood of men and women to affect the children or not, I guess everyone has their own say about that."

Putting it like that, Hellboy wondered exactly how it was that all these people weren't on the verge of mutation or cancerous illness or zombification.

"The real question is, why you askin' the question at'all?"

"I don't know."

"Yeah, you do. You thinkin' about family."

"I don't think about family. Ever."

"Iffun you say."

Far ahead, the pumpkin-headed boy turned and rushed back, excitedly chattering to Hellboy although Hellboy couldn't understand him. Lament would have to translate.

"Enoch says we're almost there."

"That's his name? Enoch?"

"It's biblical."

"I know it's biblical. How is it you can speak their languages?"

"They just speakin' English, as well as they can manage it."

Fishboy Lenny went,"Fweep mwash. Wooph."

Hellboy said, "I can't understand a word of it."

"Neither can I."

"You don't know the language, the language knows you." Lament let out a smile. "That's right, son. Now we're confabulatin'."

An ugly thought struck Hellboy and he stopped short. "Hey, these swamp people, they're not luring these teenage girls here with their babies to try to bring new blood to the people, are they?"

"Why'd they want to go and do that?"

"To clean up the gene pool."

Lament frowned, scratched at the scabbing wound on his neck, and looked at Hellboy for a long time. Enoch stepped up, leaned toward Lament's ear, and let loose with a stream of quiet gibberish. Lament listened and nodded, and finally went, "Oh, now I see. Thank ya."

"What was that about?" Hellboy asked.

"Oh, he was just explainin' to me what it was you meant." Lament blinked at Hellboy. "You got yourself a complex mind, son, you truly have. The answer is no, the babies ain't here for no genetic purposes."

"Well, good."

The kids climbed over a sycamore log in the brush upsetting bitterns, limpkins, and squawk herons. There was a quick flutter of many wings and a rush through the leaves. The land gave way to more solid soil littered with clumps of palmettos, oak, and palm trees.

"You sure this is the right way?" Hellboy asked.

"I've never lost myself quite this badly before. So no, I ain't sure of much at the moment. But the children, they know. So long as we follow, we'll get to the village soon enough."

"I still don't get why Sarah came all this way. What's so safe about this place?"

"Prayers and will have power. This was once a shanty town where the swamp folk held their all-night sings. A lot of healin' and good will and faith and miracles took place on this ground. Suppose it's about as holy a spot as you're likely to find anywhere near Enigma."

"And yet it's where all these poor people live now. The ground hasn't done much to make them well."

"Depends on whether you think they're sick, I reckon. Do you?"

"I didn't say that-"

"It's all right, son, I know what your intent was. You just need to understand that what some folks might call freaks, others consider blessed."

"I think I understand that pretty damn well."

"See that then? Already you better off than a whole slew of ignorant dullards."

"That makes me feel a lot better."

"Good. Always glad to help a friend."

It began to rain lightly and the kids all let out whoops of joy. Hellboy didn't quite get it, but he liked that they were so full of energy and elation. He hoped they stayed here in their little corner of the planet, where they might count on one another and their people to get them through. The rest of the world would try to steal that laughter from them.

Passing beneath a sharp palmetto frond he felt something cold brush against his cheek. He looked up and a huge snake was hanging uncoiled from the leaves, its mouth open.

Hellboy shoved Lament aside."Watch it… a snake!" He brought his stone hand up and caught the snake just as it was prepared to leap.

Lament said, "It's only a timber rattler."

"Only a rattler?"

"At least it ain't a cottonwood mocassin. Just don't let it bite you. Go on and let it get about on its way."

"Oh." Hellboy opened his fist. The rattler wasn't about to ever get about on its way again.

"I don't think you needed to squeeze it quite so hard, son," Lament told him.

"Guess I overreacted a bit."

The kid with the insectoid eyes came running over and asked Hellboy in perfectly nuanced English, "Are you plannin' to keep it?"

"I hadn't thought about it."

"May I have it, please?"

"You want a crushed dead snake, kid?"

The boy nodded enthusiastically. "Yes, please."

Shrugging, Hellboy figured, All right, whatever. He handed the timber rattler to the kid, who grinned, and the snake was reflected and refracted about a billion times in his eyes. The boy ran off to rejoin the others ahead.

A few years back Hellboy had run into a cult of Nyarlothepian sorcerers down in Paraguay who used boiling baths of serpent venom to call up long-slumbering demigods. Now he couldn't even go to the reptile cages at the Bronx zoo without thinking about bad juju.

"What's he want with the snake?" Hellboy asked, wiping his hand clean on a thatch of fronds.

Lament said, "Well, it ain't for no damn genetic purposes, if you still got that on your mind. Why else would he want it? It's 'cause he's hungry."

"He's going to eat it?"

"Probably bringin' it back to his ma so she can fricassee it and feed it to the whole family. They make for good eatin', especially with fried rice."

"Jesus Christ."

"Can't exactly order in prime rib and chicken cacciatore out this far in the bogland. Can't order it in town neither, but that's another matter altogether. Folks here live on snake and lizard, gator meat, wild goat, hog, duck, squirrel, and fish, mostly."

For years Hellboy had been so busy fighting the infernal orders, the angry dead, the towering trolls, ogres, and dragons that he sometimes forgot there were simpler issues abounding. Like sick kids without bread. He had to stay hooked in to the world. It was easy to get too caught up in paranormal events and forget about the orphans.

Hellboy heard music in the distance. The children grew excited and rushed along faster toward the sound, Hellboy reached down and lifted Fishboy Lenny, hoping to put the kid up on his shoulder the way Lament had carried the girl, but the little fishy guy just slipped out of Hellboy's grasp and squirmed away.

So much for that.

Lament said, "Well, I think we're nearly there. Lord help us if Sarah and the girls ain't. I'm not sure where to search next."

"We'll find them, don't worry. You've been to this village before. What's it like?"

"They were glorious times. I was a young'n and still sang the gospel. Used to have all-night sings out this way. People'd come in from as far as three hundred miles to listen and bear witness."

"Listen to you and Jester."

His eyes clouding, Lament nodded. "Wasn't much of a town at the time, nor populated by so many people with special consideration under the Lord. But it was here." He watched the girl with no bones in her legs slither along in the cabbage leaves. "I seen my share of one-of-a-kind peoples in my travels, same as you have. Some good, some not so good. The more different we are from one another, the more the same I discover us to be. Sharing problems and fears and endeavors. Not any one of us is so strange as to not have the same hopes and heartaches, not even you, I reckon."

"How about Jester?"

"He's not all that different from the rest of us neither," Lament said, brushing his wet hair from his face. "Except he's dead and won't lay down."

"That could be considered a pretty big difference."

"I'm not so sure."

The pumpkin-headed kid let out a holler. Fishboy Lenny returned to Hellboy and went,"Fweep," and then scurried off again. Breaking clear of the brush now Hellboy saw clusters of paintless cabins and crescent rows of dark shanties lining the slopes of slough, vine-draped and overgrown with hanging orchids. The music grew louder. Fiddles, banjos, washboards, and squeezeboxes wheezed and rattled and twanged out.

It was a hell of a racket, and yet just as with Lament's tunes, Hellboy felt himself willing to go with it. A couple of screen doors clattered in the hot breeze. He thought they must've been having one of their swamp weddings or revivals out in the bog, despite the rain. Or maybe not. Maybe they were just enjoying life.