Emerald Hell

Chapter 1

Hellboy came to the crossroads.

He'd been sitting in the back of the pickup for nearly a hundred and sixty miles while the others passed a jug of moonshine around and told their stories. The pickup couldn't do better than forty on the rutted dirt and gravel roads so it took most of the afternoon before they finally passed into Georgia.

Their folksy tales started off light and humorous and full of character, but eventually came around to death and ghosts, as he knew they would. Hellboy said very little but listened intently, especially when they got to talking about Bliss Nail and his six silent daughters. It had the ring of truth to it and he asked a few questions. The answers made him nod. He told them to take him as close by the Nail home as they could get him.

They said they'd drop him at the edge of Enigma, a swamp town that had been ebbing since before Sherman put the flame to Atlanta, but just wouldn't die. They were out of work and looking to hook up with some moon runners down that way anyhow.

The world turned even greener around him when a powerful summer shower came rushing out of the east. The others managed to crowd together into the cab and he sat alone staring into the marshy prairies of emerald cypress. Heavy winds stirred the catclaw briars and underbrush, thick branches parting as if a hidden audience was coming forward to take a peek. The storm rocked the pickup for a few miles but ended quickly.

The truck pulled over and the others piled into the back again. One had a banjo and another a washboard and they began to softly play and sing. Sunlight skimmed off the tupelo trees, casting a fiery green glow against the woven layers of deeper bog shadow. Hellboy dozed for a while listening to their music and thought he heard a baby crying.

A half hour later, they told him they'd reached Enigma and he unloaded. The toothless old man who owned the truck spit out some chaw and asked, "You want a last tap'a lightnin'?"

"No thanks," Hellboy said.

"Son, it don't take but two seconds to see you got yourself a sorrowful accounting. You watch your passage 'round these here swamps. They got a habit of finding their way into your heart. There's bad will in them waters." He pointed south, and Hellboy noticed the old man's fingertips had been chewed away from sixty years of having his hands in the mash barrels. "That direction, no more'n four five mile, and you'll find yourself in the Nail fold. Don't be lettin' any'a their black luck rub off on you none."

Hellboy thanked them all and started south while they turned west and disappeared up a dusty track into the lengthening shadows. When he got to the center of the crossroads he stood poised for a moment waiting to see if anything would come out and make a play for him. According to legend, this was where you came to meet the devil. He checked the brush land and thickening jungle around him, toed the mud, and scanned the sky.

"Anybody got a problem?" he called as the sunset bled out in the distance. "Anyone got anything to say to me?"

When nothing showed up, he continued along the trail.

As darkness set in, the mist drifted off the deep acreage of sugarcane that flattened back to the surrounding slough and mire. Blooming loblolly bushes, palmettos, and thick fields sprouting a type of flower he'd never seen before filled the evening air with an assertive but sweet fragrance.

The Nail family lived in an antediluvian mansion that had been built long before the separation of states. He saw where it had been rebuilt after Civil War strife and he could feel the dense and bloody history in the depths of the house. He glanced up at a row of large windows on the second floor and saw six lovely pale women staring down at him.

An elderly servant with a balding head and thick white pork-chop sideburns answered the door before Hellboy could even knock. That's the way the dead did it, trying to get one step ahead of you. Showing you they were always at the ready, waiting behind glass panes and cracked slats, aware but unwilling to come out when challenged.

The houseman asked him his business at the Nail home and Hellboy said, "I'm not the damn plumber, Jeeves."

It made the old guy draw his chin back and pull a face. His tidy uniform hung off his thin frail frame, the black suit-coat shabby but well brushed, his frayed shirt collar clean and starched. Maybe times weren't so good for the Nail clan either.

The houseman gestured for him to follow and led him down lengthy corridors past Colonial furniture and glass cases containing medals, swords, and antique guns. No photos anywhere. Nothing very modern that he could see. He started getting the feeling he'd been suckered by the spirits again and just imagined the houseman was really a skeleton and the girls upstairs were long murdered.

The home seeped age and sovereignty. The walls were filled with oil paintings going back a century and a half of wars, showing angry-faced little men wearing flashy uniforms and carrying sabers, their lips curled into the smallest of bitter smiles.

The portraits whispered to Hellboy. Chanting in melodic yet hissing voices, really trying to get under his skin. They mentioned a few of his major failures, the towns he'd wrecked, the people he couldn't save. Nearly all the dead seemed to know about such things now, chatting him up around the water coolers of the abyss.

"Shut up," he said as he walked by.

"What's that?" the houseman asked.

"Nothing, Jeeves."

The houseman spun. A pretty dramatic move for an old guy like that. "My name's Waldridge. I been takin' care'a the Nail family since I was still a child of twelve. Same as my daddy and his daddy before him. You might frown on my life, find it worth snickering about-"

"Hey now, wait a minute, buddy-"

"-but I don't let no man, whether he's white or black or red, speak to me with contempt. I don't care how big you are, suh, I promise to knock you down iffun you call me Jeeves again."

"Okay, Waldridge," Hellboy said, "you've straightened me out. Now lead on."

The paintings kept up their chatter but beneath it Hellboy thought he could hear something else. He cocked his head, focusing, and there it was again. The sound of an infant crying.

Withdrawing an Agnus Dei candle from his gris-gris pouch, Hellboy saw the wick immediately sputter and spark to life. He pinched the flame out. The old man in the truck had been right. A lot of black luck ran wild in this house. But that didn't mean much in itself. If enough blood ran inside a place there were usually enough echoes of regret, grief, and pain to call ancient forces and all manner of brazen, gluttonous things out of the mud.

Waldridge crept along the hall, opening huge double doors and then closing them again, the mansion as frayed but clean as the man himself. Ten coats of paint couldn't cover the hard years seaming the walls and floors. The original oil lamps were now friezes, the curtains heavy with lost heritage. They passed a ballroom lined with antlered animal heads.

Hellboy replaced the agnus dei and opened the small compartment on his belt that held a charm he'd received at the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, inscribed with Sumerian phrases etched in silver nitrate. It dangled from a silver chain, which began to slowly twist in his hand. He held the charm to the houseman's shoulder and was a little surprised when the guy didn't scream, go up in smoke, or turn into a giant fly.

"What you doin'?"

"Making sure you're alive," Hellboy said.

"S'pose you coulda asked first. I'm plenty alive and got plenty of years on my back too, but you do that again, suh, and I'll cuff you one."

"You're pretty feisty, Waldridge."

"Didn't your mama ever teach you no manners?"

"No," Hellboy admitted.

"Try to have some in this here home." Weakness threaded the houseman's features, and his teeth were gritted against ache and afflictions, but he stood up for what he believed in and looked ready to go all the way in a fight. Hellboy liked him.

"Okay, pal, settle down, don't get apoplectic. I apologize."

"It's a start on showing some grace."

They stepped into a broad living area that was dark with oak and maple paneling. Still nothing very modern, no televisions or DVD collections or stereo speaker systems. A deep atmosphere of forlorn expectation seemed to hang in the air.

A tremendously wide stairway opened to a landing where colonnades rose on either side abutting the ceiling. He could see the six sisters huddled together at the banister curving down from the second floor, all of them watching him, their hair sprawled over the railing. He waved, but only one of them responded, lifting her hand and daintily flexing her fingers.

"Not you they scared of," Waldridge said. "Don't take it to heart."

"I don't."

"Mr. Nail is right through here."

"Thanks."

Waldridge pulled at an antique door latch, stood aside, and directed Hellboy in with an outstretched arm.

Sitting at the head of the long oak table covered with platters was a hard-featured little bundle of barely contained fierceness.

So this was Bliss Nail. His steel-gray eyes brimmed with resilient strength, a touch of defensive posturing, and perhaps a hint of madness. The kind of nuts you go when you're not exactly sure what wanders your own hallways. Hellboy figured it was to be expected from someone who lived in a house like this, the bones of his people in the floorboards, in the very dust. This man had seen some things, and he'd been left with more than a few scars but was still a scrapper. Here was someone else who wasn't afraid to brawl with the dark.

Bliss Nail glanced up as Hellboy filled the doorway, sat back in his chair, and held a crystal goblet of red wine to his chest. "Now you surely are a fearsome sight, but I reckon you been told that before."

"On occasion."

Dressed in a fancy black suit as if he'd been expecting well-bred, sophisticated company, Bliss Nail still had a forceful enough personality to almost fill the room. Hellboy looked around the enormous table. There were six other dinner places set, but those plates and glasses hadn't been touched.

"Set a spell, son. I'm guessin' I know who you are, but whyn't you tell me why you're here?"

Hellboy said, "I heard you had trouble and might need some help."

Bliss Nail waited for more, but there wasn't anything else to say. Hellboy sat in a chair looking around at the carafes and dishes filled with roasted pig, fish, and vegetables cooked with spices he wasn't familiar with. The open windows let in the pleasant smell of the unknown flowers outside, almost overpowering the aroma of the meal.

"Who'd you hear that from?"

"Does it matter?" Hellboy asked.

"I suppose not. Why you wanna help the likes'a me and mine?"

"It's my job."

"Who in the ass end'a creation got a job like that?"

Sometimes you just couldn't win, Hellboy thought. You could reach out and pull a drowning guy from the rioting ocean and he'd still give you crap for not bringing a towel.

Hellboy shrugged. "I do. You got a problem with that?"

It was the right thing to say, and it broke the mood. Bliss Nail let loose with a booming laugh that, despite himself, Hellboy enjoyed hearing. The comment was sincere.

"You like catfish, son?"

"I don't know," Hellboy told him. "I've never had any."

"What kind'a place you come from that don't ever serve catfish?"

"Connecticut."

Bliss Nail considered this. "That don't hardly sound civilized."

"I suppose it depends."

"On what?"

"On whether you're from Connecticut."

Not exactly true. He had no real home. He'd been born in England and had traveled most of his life, first with the Army and later with the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense. Headquarters was in Connecticut. When he thought of home, that's where he thought of it being, as much as it could be for him.

Bliss Nail called in Waldridge, who placed heaping portions of food on Hellboy's plate, aiming the catfish eyes first toward him.

"Them shards of horn on yer head?" Bliss Nail asked after the houseman had retreated.

"Yeah."

"You got 'em mounted someplace?"

"No."

"Well why not, son? They'd fetch a pretty dollar on the market."

Hellboy didn't want to think about what kind of market there might be for horns, or for his mounted animal head, so he said, "How about if we just let that go for now?"

Nodding, Bliss Nail took another sip of wine. His gaze grew distant as he tried to put his troubles in some proper order. Hellboy knew this was the toughest part, just getting them to find the beginning of their own tales. He himself wouldn't have an easy time of it either.

"You know who I am?" Bliss Nail asked.

"Bliss Nail. I thought we had established that already."

"The name mean anything to you?"

Hellboy stared down at the plates of food in front of him. The fish stared back at him. It had dangling tendrils like whiskers. They were right, this thing really did look like a cat. He wondered about people who could eat this fish and not think about Fluffy meowing and purring in the corner. He thought he'd rather have pancakes. "Not much."

"I'm the first to admit I'm a touch vain, so that hurts me some. What do you know?"

Hellboy held back a sigh and said, "Why don't you just tell me your story?"

Bliss Nail's features folded in on themselves and he seemed ready to cut loose, but at the last moment he reined himself in and let out a brief, cold laugh. "I reckon I will. I have seven girls. Six of them upstairs, ranging in age from thirty to forty, their mama almost three decades underground. Those six ain't spoken a word in near twenty years. Not a whisper, no matter how many specialists, psychiatrists, or ministers looked in on 'em. And there's been more than a few, that's the sweet truth. But tonight-"

Drifting again, Bliss Nail tried to sip more wine but the goblet was empty. He didn't refill it and didn't set it down. He turned to the dark windows, staring outside so intently that Hellboy thought the guy might throw himself through the glass.

So Hellboy cut to the chase and said, "Tonight something changed, right?" His presence alone was generally enough to stir things up. "Tonight you heard them speak."

"That's right," Bliss Nail said. "As soon as the sun set they all come down and ringed 'round the dining table and spoke three names. All together, like they was a choir singin' a hymn. It was powerful eerie and heartliftin' and lovely too, because I been mis-sin' their voices. Their song, sung with their souls. Just those three names. Yours. My enemy's. And that of a young man I don't hardly know, but who's got a reckoning with my family."

"Go on."

"My exquisite girls are cursed. Or better said, I am cursed, and my daughters due to me. Not only don't they speak, but they can't carry children."

Hellboy thought, There it is, the reason I heard the baby crying.

"They're breathtaking women, with kind and gracious hearts. They don't talk but they have a great deal to say. They write letters that put the Psalms to shame. Before the story got about in town, the oldest three had intendeds who doted hand and heel and loved them dearly. But all the men have left now,They've run out because my daughters can't carry on a family name in a family way. It's me that poisons them. They don't deserve this burden. A man wants to put a knife to me, I'll meet him head-on. But to do this to unborn-to never born-children, that's an unholy blight."

"But your seventh daughter?"

"Sarah."

The only one he'd given a name to. "She's had a child?"

"Me and her mama, we wasn't married. My wife was long gone by then. Sarah's mama, she was a fine woman, but-"

Sliding out of his chair, Bliss Nail moved to a liquor cart behind him and poured himself a brandy. He slugged the first tumbler's worth back, then filled it again. He remembered his manners then and gestured at Hellboy, who waved it off.

Reseating himself, Bliss Nail said, "But she was married during our time together. Her husband, he spent long periods on the road. Months and years away from her without a word. When he came home and found her with child, he murdered her with a hatchet."

"Christ."

"Since Sarah didn't take my name, she avoided the plague on me and mine. She was raised by another couple in town, but last year they died too. Natural-like. Because Sarah was raised up out of my shadow, she grew strong and happy and a chatterbox. I deceived the ill will aimed toward me and mine. She's nineteen and pregnant now and about to bear my only grandchild."

Every man had to tell his own story in his own way, but Hell-boy knew Bliss Nail was editing himself, leaving out his own sins. Hellboy thought he could brace him a little, see what he could squeeze loose, but figured in the end it would just hurt the investigation. "Does Sarah know you're her real father?"

"I don't know. We've never spoken to one another. I feared if we did the blight would set upon her."

"Who cursed you and yours? Who bewitched you twenty years ago?"

"A dead man."

Should've seen that one coming, Hellboy thought. "And who might he be?"

"The husband. The man who killed Sarah's mama. He was a preacher, a travelin' minister, famous in these parts and all across the swamps and the deep South. He once had the power of the Word, and anyone who heard him speak could feel it. Some called him a healer though I don't know if he ever made such a claim. But he performed wonders and knew great secrets. They said they saw him with angels. A blessed gospel singer and a staunch man of God."

"Until you fooled around with his wife."

It made Bliss Nail raise his chin, straighten in his seat, and let loose with an agonized warble as if he'd just been punched in the kidneys. He reared like he was going to leave his chair, maybe take a poke at Hellboy. His face went through three shades of purple and finally settled on grape.

Hellboy waited. He heard the girls roaming up the corridor, all rustling of silk and lace. Finally Bliss Nail let out a groan and sank in on himself, visibly deflating. "Like I said, my sins ought to be my hardship alone. He once had another name but the one they all spoke together, though I'd never heard it before, was Brother Jester. Still I knew it was him."

Brother Jester. The name was repeated six times out in the hallway, where the silent bewitched daughters were forced to speak. They wafted past the open doorway like wraiths, too lovely, too thin, and too pale. For a moment he wondered what their letters might be like to read, and imagined bundles of scented pages tied with bows, never mailed and never opened. He fought to contain himself, but his great stone-like hand clenched into a fist at his side. His journey had made him a little maudlin and edgy. He wanted to beat the crap out of something.

"He been gone from Enigma for years," Bliss Nail said. "There was rumors, for a time, that he'd gone insane and was now using his voice to kill. He knew secrets that set brother against brother, that made husbands rise up against their wives and children. But then the rumors stopped and I thought we'd never hear from him again. I reckoned he was dead. But if Brother jester is back in Enigma, I fear for Sarah's safety. He'll extend his curse or cut her down like a field of ripe cane."

Waldridge entered and began to clear the plates. When he got to the untouched catfish in front of Hellboy he made a face. Hellboy didn't mind, he was just glad to have the damn thing stop looking at him.

"There's war in my family's veins," Bliss Nail said. "We all been soldiers right down the line. If I thought it would help, I'd take a Bowie and a Colt.45 and go after him myself. But-"

"But you're smart enough to know that you're the one who somehow gave him his power," Hellboy finished. "You made him what he is."

Bliss Nail's hard features had softened considerably during their talk, and the fierceness had gone out of the man. His steel-gray eyes were no longer steeped with strength, but accommodated only loss and fear. It happened like that when you caught a full jolt of memories that showed you exactly what you were and what you'd once done.

"So where is Sarah? I'll go look after her."

"She's with Mrs. Hoopkins. Out at Mrs. Hoopkins's Home for Unwed Wayward Teenage Mothers & Peanut Farm."

Hellboy wanted to say, You people. You people, Christ.

"When is she due?"

"A matter of days."

"What about the third name your daughters spoke?"

"Sarah's beau, my grandchild's father, I believe. He's a backwoods traveler who wanders the Appalachians the same way Jester did and maybe still does. There's bountiful rumors about him too. They say he's got a touch of magic to him. I don't know if that's true or not, but I take note of such talk. I hear tell he's back in town. His name is John Lament. That's what they said. Lament."

At Lament's name the six nameless daughters spoke and drifted past the door once again, as if this was a ballet that they had rehearsed many times before. Lovely and ethereal, like wisps of white smoke. He found himself wanting to hear their voices through their written words.

"Name your price," Bliss Nail said. "What you want for this aid in my needful hour?You only stumbled upon my ills."

"I did. But that's how these things happen."

"You help and I'm in your debt. You fix the cost and I'll pay it."

"How about the price of a bus ticket to Connecticut?"

Bliss Nail frowned. "That all?"

"I don't much like hitchhiking."

"You have my word."

Hellboy guessed that before this was all over, he'd find out exactly how much that was worth.

"Okay, so how do I get to this peanut farm anyway?"

"Waldridge will drive you," Bliss Nail said, and his silent daughters continued staring, waiting for their otherworldly sentence to be lifted. Their voices to return, the house to be filled with the sound of children. As Hellboy stood and walked from the room, they each came to him, lithe and pallid, eyes ashen and lovely faces stern with pain. They floated past with their silk dresses trailing, and one of the silent daughters, perhaps the one who'd waved to him on the stairway before, who looked too similar to her sisters for him to tell her from the others, pressed a soft hand to his cheek before gliding away with the rest.