Emerald Hell

Chapter 6

Hellboy had to give credit where it was due. The old lady's eyes seemed to be working just fine.

He could see pretty clearly in the night and he immediately recognized the lengthy stobpole standing in the skiff even though he'd never seen or used one before. A comforting knowledge and familiarity with the swamp engulfed him, as he walked through the ragged cypress, tupelo, sycamore stumps, and watergrass.

He spotted a skink in the branches above him. He didn't know what a skink was. Even now, staring at the thing, he didn't know what it was. But thanks to Granny Lewt, he knew it was a skink. Weird feeling.

A lantern hung on an iron brace at the back of the skiff. He reached into his belt and pulled out his Zippo lighter, lit the wick of the oil lamp, and enjoyed the warm glow it cast across the emerald hell.

He saw a paddle tied into some netting in the aft. He climbed into the skiff and shoved off, using the stobpole to brace and push free from the bottom of the slimy shallows. His movements had a strange grace that wasn't his own. All things being equal, he'd rather have tried it himself without having to eat that damn stew, but at least Granny Lewt's spell made this part of the journey easier.

Darkness somehow came alive with the infinite depths of green, eternal and brooding. He moved in a southeastern course, stobbing through the silent, shadow-strewn slough. The black waters were stagnant and mosquito-heavy, and overhead long vines and thick Spanish moss hung down from branches, fluttering in the slight hot breeze.

The keel bumped a log half-hidden in the weeds and spooked a limpkin awake. The ungainly bird hopped through the shallows using its stork-like legs to limp through the slime, its bill thick with bugs and snails. Its mouth opened and it let out a bizarre cry that carried through the bog, causing a low moaning caterwaul from nocturnal animals in the trees and tussocks all around. A loon's shriek tore through the night. Granny's ears were doing their job too.

Hellboy continued on, almost enjoying the repetitive motion of stobbing the boat, cutting cleanly through the water. Luna moths and mosquitoes congregated around the lantern, the tinny hum loud in his head.

It went on like that for hours, until the moon was high overhead. The whole time he was uncertain he was moving in the right direction, or in any direction at all. There were no clues to follow in this place, no signs that anyone had been here over the last ten thousand years. He almost made to shout into the darkness, see if the girls might answer him from the depths of the brush. But who knew what that might arouse.

The yellow illumination from the lantern lit the right-hand bank as the waterway thinned and he came around a knoll of mud, root, and bramble. He heard something hit the water, flat and heavy. Then there was aggressive action in the shallows for a minute before a lulling silence, and his new ears told him that gators were on the move.

The canal narrowed to a swollen inlet which led to a far off dead-still lake, the banks rising and falling away into a black morass thick with tupelo, titi, and scrub oak. Billowing cypress towered above, casting a greater green glow across the landscape. Hellboy lifted the stobpole inboard and scanned the area. He saw figures converging on him, the ridged, wide-eyed, flat reptile heads coursing toward him.

He drew the lantern off its iron hinge and held it up, seeing more gators on the banks scrambling around in the mud on squat, disproportionate legs, hissing and snapping their long jaws. Ducks took off flapping into the dark and cat squirrels chittered up strangler-fig vines. He brought the back of his hand to his nose as a noxious smell assaulted him. The lantern flame flared and singed his fingers. He snapped it back onto its hook. There must be pockets of methane trapped in the bottoms around here.

Maybe it was time to talk. He said, "Hey now, boys, listen-"

A powerful thud rocked the skiff and nearly knocked him off his feet. Louder grunting and hissing made him turn and look behind him. The boat spun and drifted into deeper water. He grabbed up the stobpole once more and swept it out to batter the gators away. It splintered in his hands and he thought, Damn stupid move, I needed that thing.

Now he was stuck with no way back toward the bank. He tore at the netting and removed the oars, which looked small and ineffectual now. He slotted them in and tried rowing but didn't get far before he heard claws scrape across the bottom of the skiff. It pitched again, and a huge, powerful tail slammed into the bow, raising waves that splashed against his chest.

Hellboy had just enough time to say, "Son of a-" before the skiff flipped, hurling him into the brackish, gator-infested waters.

The emerald-black depths yawned wide even as other jaws tore at him. Tumbling over, something got hold of his ankle almost daintily and he was yanked down. He swung his fists and connected with thick reptilian scales, but without any leverage he wasn't doing much good. The gators twisted across his body and snapped at him, their claws shredding his overcoat and ripping at his belly.

He fought to swallow his shouts and pain, keeping his mouth tightly closed against the cold slimy slough. He got his stone hand up in front of his face and a pair of jaws locked on his wrist, yanking him forward. The tatters of his coat flapped up across his throat and he was jerked in another direction by his hoof, two gators tussling over him and playing tug-of-war for their dinner.

Granny Lewt was trying to tell him something. Jaws snapped shut on his upper leg and pulled him away from the others. He opened his mouth to let out a drowning warble. He could taste his own blood in the water. The churning froth of sludge erupted into his face and he became completely disoriented again. He hauled off, hammering with his fist, and managed to break the gator's grip. He lashed out with his tail, connecting with something. Okay, enough of this. He needed air. He tried to swim but wasn't sure he was heading to the surface. His instincts kept pushing Granny away, and with his brain burning from lack of oxygen he forced himself to settle down enough to hear whatever she needed him to hear.

Gators drag you down to their mud-holes, roll you under logs, and leave you rotting, sometimes in air pockets, fer days. They liked their meals tender. There were rumors of men who woke up with their feet chewed off, in the black twenty feet down, who had to dig their way back to the water before the bull gators came back to finish their supper.

They were pulling him down to a mostly submerged tussock island, where they could bury him in the roots. He had to move in the opposite direction and get to air. His brain was already getting foggy, his head full of white and red spatters.

Hellboy swung around hard and connected squarely with one of the gators. Felt like it was directly on its snout. He kicked hard then, feeling teeth snap oil in the flesh of his ankle, and let loose with a cry that released the last of his air. A burst of bubbles tickled his forehead, and he knew which way was up.

He broke the surface spitting out Christ knew what, the thick sludge of swamp boiling around him. Oil from the broken lantern burned across the water and gave him a little light.

During the struggle he must've knocked the skiff aside. He saw it was overturned and stuck in a snarl of cypress roots not too far away. He swam for it. Behind him the bull gators had made it to the far bank of the inlet and were nursing their wounds.

Hellboy could touch bottom now but he kept slipping in the slime and flopping over on his face, unable to catch his breath. It was difficult going but he finally managed to shrug out of his ruined overcoat and get a hand on the boat.

Breathing heavily, he grabbed hold and took a step up the bank before he realized there was a hole in the bottom of the skiff. Not huge but big enough that he couldn't fix it. He let out a grunt of frustration and slid off-balance in the muck again. The skiff spun out of his reach, righted itself, and immediately started to sink. He turned away and found he was going under again.

He came up gagging and sucking wind. By the time he got ready to try and climb up from the shallows again, he heard the sharp sounds of hissing nearby.

"Terrific," he said. Two more bull gators were coming straight for him down the silt bank, their eyes shining with silver moonlight.

He thought about going for his gun but the possibility of bigger pockets of methane worried him. Dumb to die out here rolled to the bottom of some mud-hole, but it would be even worse if he blew himself up.

He said,"I'm not good eating, guys. Just go ask your other pals. Why don't you both just-"

The first bull slued forward, opening its jaws wide. Instead of waiting, Hellboy lunged, shifted his weight, and more or less fell directly across its nose. The gator scrambled along up the bank with Hellboy on its back. Good, they were getting to drier, firmer ground. Hellboy rolled off and stood in a crouch. After those hours in the skiff and slipping around in the mire, it was nice to have earth beneath his hooves again. When the bull turned to make another pass he caught hold of its tail and held on. The second gator tried to go for his legs, but Hellboy hauled its brother around, lifted it high, and brought it slamming down on the other's back in a crushing blow of muscle and scale. While they tried to untangle themselves, Hellboy grabbed what was left of his coat, put it back on, and moved further along the narrow shore.

In the distance he saw flame.

The mud bank thinned until he was back in the water. Forced to swim and crawl through the morass, clambering across sandbanks and tussocks of briar, thorn, and barb, he made his way toward the fire.