Emerald Hell

Chapter 25

"Well, here she is," said Deeter, who pressed his stubbled cheek to Sarah's, "the little miss that caused such a stir."

Duffy said, "I been a jot nibbled on, but I ain't complain', preacher. Here's your girl. We done what was asked of us, my brother and me."

Proud of themselves, the Ferris boys leered and drew back, the shotgun aimed loosely in Hellboy's direction.

Lament grinned and Sarah returned the smile. Her movements still held a defiant air, as she lifted the sleeping child and held her closer. Hellboy wondered where it came from, such faith and belief and love in the middle of a hellish day like today. But he already knew the answer. It was the only answer.

"Should you be up and about?" Hellboy asked her.

"When harvest is being brought in, there's women bear their children, then go bring in the sugar cane or tobacco. Or the peanuts. Mrs. Hoopkins wouldn't have let me lay around, I can tell you that for sure."

Brother Jester moved to Sarah as if to embrace her, "Daughter, I'm here."

"Begging your pardon, preacher, but you ain't my father. The man who raised me is in the ground. The man who sowed me is Bliss Nail. I don't see what bloom you've got on me at'all."

"Your mother-"

"The woman who raised me is in the ground. The woman who sowed me is closer to twenty years dead."

Again that unearthly mewl entered Jester's decimated voice. "Your mother was my wife."

"Don't see how that makes me any of yer business, reverend," Sarah said.

"You come two decades and thousands of miles in and out of mountains and valleys for naught, Jester," Lament said.

"But the child-"

"Is mine," Sarah said."Ain't yours. Nothing here is, though you feel you got a right to whoever and whatever you wanna take. You put your black mark on many. You cursed my half-sisters, the six other daughters of Bliss Nail."

"I did no such thing. His children suffer for his sins, not mine!"

"Who suffers for yours then?"

That seemed to stop Brother Jester for a moment, his eyes puzzled but fierce, as though he'd never stopped to ponder the question before. "I only want my daughter and grandchild."

"She's not your daughter" Hellboy said, gearing up and angling to move on the Ferris boys. He could probably handle a shotgun blast, but he had to protect the girl and the baby. He'd have to be fast.

"Of course she is. She was born from my wife. What else could she be. but my daughter?"

"Her father is Bliss Nail."

"He did nothing but spend a night of lies with a woman not his. His house was too crowded with their voices, that's why he left." As Jester spoke, he rubbed his hands together as if he wanted to clasp his palms in prayer. "And when he returned, their laughter and voices were gone. He called the Word down on himself."

Hellboy said, "I've seen some guys in deep denial, but you, pal, you take the whole freakin' cake."

"I have had wrong done to me!"

"Everyone has. What makes you so special?"

"I am a vessel for the Lord. My enemies called down the whirlwind upon themselves… my wife and Bliss Nail. He suffers through his daughters the way I suffer through mine."

"You don't have a daughter," Lament said.

"Mock me no more! I only wish to hold my grandchild!"

The Ferris boys tightened their ring around Sarah, their knives very close to her throat now. As Jester moved, Lament dogged his step, closing the space between them.

"You do this!" Jester screamed. "You blind her to the truth. You're jealous and hoard your child!"

"Me?" Lament said, then added casually, "but I'm not the father."

The grin never left his face but something lurking within him, an inescapable pain, began to bleed out. Hellboy's chin snapped up.

"I was raped," Sarah said, also speaking with an easygoing manner, but the seething anger was barely contained within her. Her long brown hair flowed in the wind, and the silver edging seemed molten beneath the moon. She pointed to the Ferris boys. "By them two right there. Your minions. Your servants. Your lackeys. They done raped me."

Jester's face became wreathed in black sparks. "What?"

Duffy scratched his head. "What's that you say?When'd we do that?"

Deeter said, "I'm havin' trouble recallin' that myself."

Gliding forward, Sarah balled her fist and cracked Duffy in the face. Blood burst and flew from his nostrils.

"Goddamn!You broke my nose, girl!"

"You two morons were drunk on moon. You caught me out at the cemetery, where I was putting flowers on the graves of my parents. You chased me near a mile through the woods."

"We must've had more than a couple'a jugs iffun we didn't take you out to a woolly patch afterward," Deeter said, scratching his chin. "We hardly ever let a gal go."

"Told the sheriff, I did. He dragged them in the next day, hung over, with no memory. They weren't even lyin' when they said they didn't do it, 'cause they couldn't truly recall. And what evidence did I have? A gutter girl with no family, with no man in town, no husband."

"My daughter?" Jester said, trembling, throwing flames. "You two… savaged my daughter?"

Sarah stood her ground, shaking her head. "I'm not your daughter."

"Yeah," Deeter said, "She ain't even your kin. Why you makin' such a fuss, preacher? As for savagin', well, we couldn't have done much since we don't remember."

"I suspect it weren't no fun at'all," Duffy mused, "otherwise we'd recollect."

Sorrowfully, Jester said, "You beautiful brothers know nothing of grace."

"Grace Sagamore of the Sag clan?" Deeter asked."I known her since she was just a little bitty chile."

The acrid stink of burning ozone wafted among them, and heat flashes of ball lightning lit the area. Lament drew Sarah to him, covering the baby. Hellboy had been hit by lightning three times in his life and he really didn't want to go through it again. Jester's hands burned once more and his mouth fell open so that the black fire dropped from his tongue. He smiled at Deeter.

Deeter shrieked, "Reverend, no!" He held onto his Bowie knife unsure of what to do with it, who to threaten, who to stab.

"I am not a preacher!"Jester screamed with his mangled voice. "Defame me no longer!"

Now they were into it.

Knowing what was coming next, Hellboy reached out and tried to get a hand on Jester, but it was already too late. The living lightning inside of Jester framed his body for an instant before it began to leap from him. Duffy screamed and turned tail. Deeter tried to follow but just wasn't as quick. He only got four steps away before the rage erupted from the dark preacher in a brilliant flash of consuming darkness that swept out and blasted the Ferris boy like a thousand frenzied snakes of fire.

The shotgun in Deeter's hand, pointed down, blew his toe off, the same way he'd blown off his father's toe the day he and his brother had murdered the man. It was his final thought before his brain boiled inside his skull and fell out of his ears.

The blazing, biting power snapped at Hellboy and skittered along his flesh. With his right hand he tried to push Lament and Sarah out of the way, but Lament was gone and Sarah and the kid were already huddled in the recess of a nearby shanty doorway.

"You're wrong to hate so much," Hellboy said.

Jester spread his arms wide in a welcoming embrace. "Broker."

"I'm not your brother."

"You're my brother in pain and loneliness, in confusion over intent and purpose. You're broken and cleaved."

"Somebody's got to do it."

"You and I are the same."

"Get stuffed!"

"You cannot hurt me, brother!"

"I'm not your brother," Hellboy told him. He raised his great stone fist that had shattered mountains and abolished behemoths. And, knowing it would do no good if he tried to crush, smash, slug, or bash the rail-thin dead man with it now, he opened his fist and laid his hand against Jester's chest, and felt the childish angels and human weakness within. "And I don't want to hurt you."

After sprinting a couple hundred yards after Duffy Ferris, with his wounds seeping and broken ribs grating together, Lament dove and tackled him in some laurels. They rolled through a patch of wet scrub oak and came up together knee-deep in mire, facing one another in the night that had brightened with star shine.

Duffy held out a cutting blade and said,"I'm'a gonna skin you like a gator."

"You're gonna take the beatin' of your life, is what you're about to do."

"I reckon I'll bleed you some first, boy."

"You'll bleed, all right."

Duffy Ferris had wrestled gators, killed them, and stripped their heavy skins away. His muscles bulged and he was fast as a striking cottonmouth. He stabbed forward with the knife fully expecting to feel it sliding through flesh.

But there was only empty space. He didn't anticipate Lament being so quick on his feet. Duffy tried again, slashing now and hoping to open up Lament's belly, watch him seep and try to hold his goods in with his hands.

But again, Lament moved too swiftly for him, and Duffy overextended himself and lost his footing.

He slid in the muck and felt a subtle pressure on his wrist just before hearing a loud snap like a rotted branch breaking. He turned, watched a bright piece of metal fly by, and only hazily noted that it was Mrs. Hoopkins's knife. It landed with a splash in the swamp water while he wondered how the hell he'd dropped it.

Lament stood before him, arms crossed against his chest. Duffy went to throw a fist but an oddly shaped child's arm moved before his eyes. A regular limb bent about halfway in the middle, with the fingers gnarled and wriggling about a bit.

The pain hit a moment later and he realized it was his own arm, busted near in two.

Duffy screamed and howled and thrashed about in the mud. Lament bent to him and said, "We're on gator ground, son, you might want to curb your convulsin' a touch."

Drawing his busted limb as close to his belly as he could, and holding it there tenderly with his other hand, already going into shock, Duffy quietly, almost with a friendly air, said, "Please, don't kill me, John."

Lament said, "Duffy Ferris, I stood over you and your brother on many a night while you snored in your moonshine drunks. I watched you sleep while I slapped an ax-handle in my hand, prepared to cave in your skulls. Many a night it was over the years. The world woulda been a better place, all right. But the Lord let me know it wasn't the right path. I don't aim to understand why He let you go on as long as you did, causin' the evil that you have, murderin' and begettin' your other atrocities, but I held true to my faith even when I wanted to scream. I did my best to see that you had your role to play for the greater good. You hear me, son?"

"I hear ya. But what's all this talk for?" Duffy almost started to grin, but thought better of it. "The Lord God Hisself done already told you to let me be."

"Whatever it was you needed to do, you already done it, 'cause the Almighty… well… let's just say He ain't so worried about your well-bein' no more."

"But you cain't just kill me!" Duffy cried.

Lament told him, "You deserve it more than anyone I ever met, more so even than Jester. Blessed by God with them fine features and you never done a lick of good in the -world."

"Gimme a chance to redeem myself, preacher!"

"I'm not a preacher," Lament said, "and I don't kill. But you got a call to make amends. Like I said, we on gator ground. You've poached these swamps for years, you and your brother and your daddy before you. You've worked for the people that tried to ruin this land. You got a lot to make up for, iffun you're sincere."

"Oh, I am, I am!"

Duffy started to beg again, but as he perched himself in the muck he felt the cutting blade right under his flank. He snaked his hand down and grabbed the handle with his good hand. "I am, I am!" he repeated, and couldn't contain his snicker as he brought he knife up, preparing to jam it into Lament's throat.

Duffy felt a subtle pressure on his wrist just before hearing another loud snap like another rotted branch breaking. He turned and watched Mrs. Hoopkins's knife fly by.

This time the pain hit quicker. Shrieking, Duffy went down and spun under the water, the agony in his two busted arms driving him nearly out of his head. He came up sputtering and coughing and grunting, but couldn't clear the muck from his throat. He began to croak like a gator.

Lament backed away until he was up on grassland, where he squatted and got out bis mouth-harp and twanged a tune. Duffy roared and croaked some more.

His own cries called three bulls out from the bog, and one after the other they crawled through the laurels and titi and came down after him. Lament stood his ground and when the gators strayed too close to him, he waved them on toward Duffy, who tried to scramble through the watergrasses and swim away with his two shattered limbs.

Try as he might though, he didn't manage to get very far before the gators set upon him.

They didn't kill him fast. They did what they like to do with their food, dragging it around and pounding it against logs, softening it, taking it down to their mud holes and stuffing it in tussocks of root and bramble, letting it ripen.

When the few straggler bulls came by to raise their heads from the water and stare inland, Lament said, "It's been a rough couple'a days, boys, now don't go makin' it no rougher. You got your supper, so you move on now."

They did, slipping away in one direction while Lament went another.

Hellboy faced Jester, thinking about being the destroyed and the destroyer. He wavered on his feet and saw that Jester was doing the same.

The angels swarmed him, plucking out pieces of him, stinging like wasps. He didn't know if it was going to help. All these years with Jester and they still didn't know anything much about what it meant to stand up and fall down. To love and to hate, to seek out answers in the earthquake and the silence. He was remote and He was not. He was vast and He was not. He was here within both of them and He was. We are. I am. The distance between man and God seemed as wide as ever. Archangels wouldn't be able to close the gap. It was up to man and God to get there on their own. Hellboy figured they'd make it eventually.

Dripping and mud-soaked, Lament appeared at Hellboy's side and tugged at his elbow. Hellboy tried to refocus.

"You all right, son?"

"What?"

"Them shadows been wearin' upon you."

"They have their work to do, same as the rest of us, I guess."

"You got some more fire, son?"

"I've always got fire." Hellboy got out the Zippo and snapped it off his hip again…In the glow, Hellboy saw that Lament held a throbbing black piece of… something.

"What do you have there?" Jester asked, roused from his own thoughts. "What is that?"

"This here?" Lament said. "Recognize it? This is apiece of shadow taken from a dead man. He chopped it off himself." Lament held the coursing piece of darkness in his hand. "Murdered his wife with a hatchet. Then threw it down and cut oft part of his own shadow."

"My…?"

"Makes me wonder… if I give it back, what's gonna happen?"

Jester knew it contained too much of the man he'd once been-the weak and faltering man, the one driven mad, the one denied by Heaven. He backed away a step and moaned because he felt something he had not felt in twenty years. The honest, true, and pure grip of fear.

"You know what I been doing with this portion of shadow right here?" Lament asked. "I been talkin' to it since I was a child. I been tryin' to teach it to follow God's path." He held the piece of darkness out to Hellboy and said, "I can't put it back to him. You gonna have to do it."

"Why?"

"You're stronger than me, and you got more understanding."

The shadow, like a frail animal, made a scrabbling effort to leap from Lament's hand into Hellboy's and failed. It tried again and landed upon him.

I am many things, the man said-the man Brother Jester had been before he'd broken faith. Weak and willful. In need of great love and consumed by fear that the Almighty has turned His back. The power to sing and heal proves me only a vessel, and my faith is in decline. My wife is too often alone. I miss her dearly. I am a man. I merit my own life, one free from God's constant demands. The distance between us grows greater. I love. I need love. I am a son but I wish to be a father. I want a child. My wife and I deserve a child. God forgive me, I stray from His path and seek my own. The man wailed because it was what lonely, distressed men do. The man was lost, in need of a family.

Hellboy leaned forward and spoke to the lost soul with as much conviction as he could muster.

He whispered, "Do your best to go and sin no more." Then drove the shadow against the man's chest as if nailing it to him.

Leaning forward as if listening to a soft voice, Jester cast his own shadow beneath the moon and said, "I'm weak and willful, in need of great love and consumed by fear. God forgive me. Oh God, forgive me what I've done. All that I've done." He let out a keening sob.

The archangels rose and moved from him, from within and without him, their feathered wings unfurled and ready for flight.

Lament put out his hand and closed his eyes, dropped his head back and spoke. He said, "I hear you, children. Your ambition's been honest, and for that we thank you. But the gates of Eden need to stay closed for a little while longer. We'll find our way back to God and Him to us. You done your duty. You get on now."

Black wings, they flew into the night toward the rim of the heavens.

Brother Jester, slave to God's noblest efforts, who had returned to the town of Enigma but found his destiny in a nameless swamp village, who had lived and died, now lived again as an ailing, lonely man. He was thankful for the chance. On his knees, he rocked back and forth and hid his face in shame. "Lord, the things I done, the things I done-"

Lament had nearly passed out on his feet, and Hellboy helped him to stand. "You need to rest."

"These damn ribs."

Sarah and her child moved out of the shanty doorway to join them, and the swamp folk stepped from their homes and watched the proceedings, close by but afraid there was still a reckoning due among these powerful few.

Fishboy Lenny swam up and circled Deeter's corpse.

"Okay," Hellboy said, "so what do we do with Jester now?"

Lament said, "Grounds soaked in miracles. Swamp's full of flung-aside crutches. The lame walked here. The deaf heard the word. The blind saw a vision of God. That has meaning. Worth."

"Despite all the trouble he's caused?" Hellboy asked. He wasn't being dissident, he was simply stating a point. "He murdered his own wife. He almost killed you when you were a kid."

"Not in spite of, just sayin' it's the case. He has his role to play for the greater good."

"How do you know?"

Eyes wide, Lament seemed surprised Hellboy would ask such a question. "Because we all do."

"Oh. So what should be done with him now?"

"I don't reckon I know for sure. What's your feelings?"

A dark preacher, once a good man and then a half-demon, burdened with a knowledge he shouldn't have had, fighting himself and trying to forgive himself, and always failing before the faces of angels. Hellboy-who knew a little about what it was like to be burdened with a dual life-didn't know how this situation should play out.

"Let him find his way back to salvation," Sarah said, pressing her face to the bundle in her arms.

Most of the time when Hellboy was done fighting something, that something lay in a pile of rubble or oozing in the sunlight. He wasn't sure what to do with an enemy who was still walking around at the end.

"Okay, so we let him go."

Lament asked, "You sure about that, son?"

"No. But he's not a dead man anymore. Now he's as full of confusion and regret as anybody. It won't be hard to beat him again, if we have to."

"I s'pect you're right about that."

Hellboy walked over and bent down to Brother Jester, and helped the feeble, starved old man to his feet. He said, "Just remember what I said about sinning, or I'll come back and do more than just knock your hat off next time."

"Thank you," Jester said. He kissed Hellboy's right hand, turned, walked into the merciful gloom of the emerald hell, and was gone except for one last quivering word.

"Brother."