Hellboy: Odd Jobs

by Christopher Golden

  "Cut it out!"

  Like they were listening.

  "Well, this just sucks," Hellboy snarled as he took another teeth-rattling blow, this one on his left shoulder and nearly hard enough to make his arm go numb. "Time to rock and roll!"

  He began to fight in earnest.

  His left fist was useless against stone but his right was a fine weapon, manufactured for just this type of situation. He swung and spun, then swung again, over and over as he braced himself with his tail so the impact of his blows wouldn't knock him off his feet

  the last thing he needed was to get buried under

  God-knows-how-much weight if these things fell on him.

  Everything in a circle around him seemed to disintegrate as he battled, rocks and pebbles whizzing through the air and pelting his face and chest. He struck out again, connecting with whatever was in his way, and something exploded before he could see what it was. With a grunt he brought his stone hand up and smacked at another figure; the shoulders of a toga-draped woman crumbled beneath the blow. Hellboy was getting tired of this and angrier by the second; in about a half a minute, he was going to lose his temper and dig something out of his belt that would lay waste to the entire building.

  "Enough."

  A single word, uttered by a voice that sounded like it had come from a throat lined with sandpaper and ground glass, and it all simply ...

  Stopped.

  Hellboy blinked stupidly at the suddenly empty spaces around him, then watched what was left of the stone soldiers back off in that same, eerie silence. The remainder of the mini-army wasn't much; three or four male statues unremarkable except for their extraordinarily handsome physiques, an equal number of female, a few more figures that could have gone either way and which bore attachments that represented creatures from Grecian mythology, including the thick, delicately sculpted body of a headless serpent.

  " Come closer ... Hellboy."

  "Damn," Hellboy grumbled to himself. "I really hate it when they know my name."

  Hellboy obeyed not because the voice commanded it but because he wanted to; keeping his eyes safely focused on the floor was easy because it was a necessity. The place was littered with rocks and stones from the fight

  if he didn't watch where he was walking, he'd likely end up with something stuck in one of his hooves like the lion with the pebble between his paws in that stupid fairy tale. "This is as far as I'm going to go," Hellboy said flatly and stopped at the third pew from the front. "You want to tell me what's going on here?"

  " Isn't it obvious? " the voice hissed. " I've finally been releassssed. "

  The last word was long and drawn out, like the sound the tongue of a snake a very big snake

  might

  make when it flicks out to taste the air.

  "Pardon me for pointing this out," Hellboy retorted. "But last I heard you were missing the bottom part of your mobility."

  "But I am still powerful."

  There was an almost amiable tone to the voice that made Hellboy's eyes narrow with suspicion. He wasn't about to say so, but it only took a quick look around to realize that he had to agree with the power part.

  "Must be hard when you have to depend on someone else for a ride all the time," he said blandly.

  "Perhaps. But there are always those willing to serve."

  Hellboy glanced around, but the faces of the stone statues were just that, cold rock, totally unreadable. Were they watching him

  could they tell he was considering a blind rush on the podium? Through all this, there had been no movement behind it, and Hellboy thought it was a pretty good bet that the shield with Medusas head on it had been stashed back there before the rest of her stone cronies had surged forward to fight him. If he could leap to the podium and bring his stone hand down and over, give it one good blow, the shield and

  presumably the biggest problem this picturesque Grecian village had might be obliterated.

  " What about you, Hellboy? Would you serve?" The voice of Medusa paused, as if contemplating. " The other gods have long gone, and they no longer concern themselves with the puny distresses of mortals. With your special ... talents ... we could rule this pathetic world."

  Hellboy looked again at the figures around him, but he was just as clueless about what was going on in their

  'minds' as he had been before.

  "Me rule something?" He shook his head nonchalantly, hoping that whatever attention span existed in these rock-headed warriors would be drawn by that movement and away from the minute tensing of his massive leg muscles. "Nah, I never was the management type. The only thing I want to do in that respect is

  "Rule you out! "

  Hellboy sprang.

  He rolled into the wooden podium like a bowling ball and it shattered. Too late he realized how distorted sound had been in this closed-up building with its high, peaked roof. His stone fist swiped downward at empty air and then he fell, landing face-first on the floor hard enough to make his eyes water, tiles cool against the always over-warm red skin of his face. Something moved just out of view on his right side and Hellboy rolled and came to his feet in an instinctive fighting stance, leaning forward with his shoulders hunched and his fists up, hooves planted firmly a shoulder's width apart. But the only thing in front of him was the smooth backside of another statue, this one with most of her upper body, including the right half of her head, missing.

  Damn. Where had Medusa's voice been coming from?

  "An unfortunate choice, Hellboy," she said, and then the fragmented statue spun, much faster than Hellboy would have ever expected

  and he was facing the head of Medusa straight on.

  His eyes met hers involuntarily and everything in him locked up and went numb. Out of his peripheral vision he saw the headless snake

  boy, Medusa seemed to like her subjects without that upper appendage, didn't she?

  slide heavily across the floor until it was out of sight somewhere below. The only comforting thing he could come up with was that at least with no head or mouth the damned thing couldn't eat him.

  Whether his body was turning into stone or not, Hellboy could still see, and boy that Medusa woman was one ugly mother. Jutting cheekbones, a bulbous nose and a mouthful of tiny, pointed teeth surrounded by stretched, cracked lips were just a few of her many attributes

  not a babe Hellboy would want to kiss on a

  dare, especially with the bristly tongue that jutted obscenely from between those deadly looking teeth. Her skin was as gray as the one-armed figure that held up her shield, and below a high, misshapen forehead her eyes were the only thing with any color in them: they were a deep red and shot through with flecks of black and yellow, like the gaze of some over-hungry, hellish cat.

  And then, of course, there was her fabled hair.

  Snakes all right, hundreds of them, and all complete with fangs and nasty little triangular heads that writhed and hissed and snapped at everything, including each other. Too bad they didn't just bite the witch that had commandeered them to be her eternal headdress.

  " You could have ruled at my side," Medusa said almost mournfully. Her snakes twisted and hissed louder as she talked, as though competing with their mistress' voice. " But now ... "

  If she'd had a body, Hellboy thought the Medusa would have shaken her head at him in disappointment, as if judging the behavior of a bad little boy. Instead, she stared at him, her eyes filled with malice. " What do you think of my subjects, Hellboy?" she asked, as though he could actually answer. "Not what I would have chosen for myself, but certainly convenient. My original prey, I gazed upon them eons ago and after all this time, they still await my bidding. Too bad they're so damaged."

  The head smiled at him then, and if Hellboy had thought it was ghastly looking before, it was nothing compared to the way that hideous mouth now twisted up in happiness. "But still they serve their purpose, as that fool Paras found out." Medusa laughed, the sound screaming into Hellboy's ears and making him want to
cringe. God, he thought, have these other statues been like this for all these thousands of years able to

  hear and see and think, able to know, but helpless to do anything about it?

  Would the same thing happen to him now?

  " You see," Medusa continued, "Paras thought he was being so intelligent, the way he uncrated me and so diligently kept the packing material between himself and my shield. But when he lifted me from the wooden box, it was in a place where many of my subjects were also stored I believe you call it a museum."

  Medusa chuckled. "He was quite surprised when the stone woman across the room came to life and rushed him. He's still there, you know, waiting for my bidding. He makes a fine statue."

  Wait a minute, Hellboy thought. His gaze cut experimentally to the right, then to the left.

  I can still move my eyes.

  "My body still exists, Hellboy, hidden deep in a cavern on Mt. Idhi in Crete. And you, with your perfect physical body and unstoppable strength, will take me there for my reunion. I need only wait a small measure of time and then reanimate you as I have done with my more ancient subjects. You will find yourself as obedient as they, although, unfortunately, you will lack the more ... interesting ... aspects of your personality."

  Hellboy barely heard her. He was concentrating on his eyes, rolling them around and around enough to make himself dizzy inside whatever weird stone covering had encased him. Made of stone? He wasn't afraid of that he'd always had a part of him that was stone and it still functioned just fine.

  Why shouldn't the rest of him do the same thing?

  The Medusa's voice had taken on a dreamy, singsong quality that did nothing to make it more pleasant, but Hellboy was focusing on himself, on making the tingle he felt when he rolled his eyes spread throughout his face and neck, then on to the rest of his muscles. " Once my head and body are rejoined, I will take my rightful place as the new owner of this world, the only god left who walks among mortals and has the power to rule them. There will be no force on earth that can stop me. I have waited thousands of years for this moment, for retribution against

  "

  Hellboy flexed his arms.

  Whatever Medusa had been about to say died in mid-sentence as her terrible eyes widened. Hellboy grinned, pleased to feel the stretch of his mouth, the warm air in the church as it rushed into his lungs, the movement of his own tongue against the back of his teeth when he spoke.

  "Hi, honey. I'm home! "

  He heard her hiss at him just before he leapt, then the statue that was holding her turned its back to him, protecting the shield and taking the blow that Hellboy had meant for that ancient, ugly face. The entire back of it shattered and it went down, the face and whatever power of mobility it had possessed going with it; out of the corner of one eye Hellboy saw the shield roll awkwardly away and bump against the back wall, then fall face up. He started to go after it and tripped, unused to the quadrupled weight of his new stone body. He was cumbersome and slow, but at least he wasn't as fragile as the rest of Medusa's soldiers; the only thing that seemed to be truly paralyzed

  as petrified as the legends claimed

  was his stone hand.

  Fine. It might be inconvenient, but if it wouldn't move then he'd use it as a battering ram or something.

  Hellboy hauled himself upright, then promptly hit the floor again as something twined around his feet that

  damned, headless snake. He started to bat it aside then realized it was a more formidable foe than he'd assumed; it quickly coiled itself around his tail and both legs, and he found himself fighting to keep it from winding its way up his chest. He might not be lunch for the thing, but Hellboy knew the big snakes the

  boas and pythons

  killed by asphyxiating their prey, squeezing and holding until the trapped creature simply couldn't breathe anymore.

  But he couldn't get his fingers underneath it, couldn't find a hole between the snake and his own stony skin big enough to snag a grip. The other hand was next to useless

  his fingers wouldn't move at all. He

  scrambled around for a few more seconds, then absurdly a line from an old folk song popped into his head

  "If I had a hammer, I'd hammer in the morning ... "

  Hellboy hunched over and began to pound on the snake with jackhammer speed using his stone-dead hand.

  He felt each blow all the way down to his teeth as it vibrated through the beast thrashing around him he

  had to acknowledge that he might not like being all made of stone, but it had certainly increased his power.

  After five more seconds the hold loosened enough for him to think he might be able to continue breathing after all, and the next quarter minute made pieces of the snake fly in all directions, a mini-explosion of crushed stone and gravel.

  He came upright and threw his arms wide, roaring like an oversized gorilla as he met the fresh onslaught of stone-faced warriors that were pouring into the church, drawn, no doubt, by some sort of telepathic command from Medusa. But it was a useless effort for them

  where Medusas power had turned them into a

  mini-army of fighters, it had unwittingly turned Hellboy into an undefeatable one-man machine of destruction. Again and again his double-stoned fist flashed out, dwindling their already reduced numbers.

  Until, finally, it was only him and Medusa's head.

  Certain that more statues were likely to come pouring into the church at any moment, Hellboy bounded over to it, then yanked back instinctively when the hair-snakes contorted wildly and bit at him. For the first time he realized how wrong he'd been in assuming that the shield was also made of stone. It wasn't; instead, he found himself looking at a living head attached to a hand-hammered disc, flesh melded onto a metal circle into which had been carved a thousand glyphs

  no doubt they were ancient Grecian spells geared to

  destroying or continuing to imprison the head. Hellboy could never hope to decipher these markings in time to help himself, and it only took a second to realize he would never be able to break the shield ...

  So he was back to that hammer thing again.

  Ignoring the repulsive knots of snakes, Hellboy bent and hefted the shield. The creatures in Medusas hair attacked him viciously, but their long fangs couldn't penetrate the stone skin in which their mistress's own gaze had sheathed him. In his hands, the metal felt uncomfortably warm, even for Hellboy, and he had to fight the urge to toss it away before his job was done. Instead, he literally began to fight with it, punching and pounding and twisting, turning then trying to tear

  anything that would do some measure of damage to this

  seemingly indestructible piece of godly armor.

  Nothing.

  "Damn it!" Hellboy roared. The head and hair still flailed at him, and this time the snakes had changed their tactics and were going for his eyes, the only part of him that was likely to still be vulnerable. In frustration he flung the shield back to the floor; this time it landed face down and Hellboy let his anger take control. He began to jump on it, up and down and all over again, each time bringing the stone-fortified weight of his not-inconsiderable body down fully in the center like a child stomping on a hated toy.

  Beneath him, Medusa's enraged screams reached a crescendo that made his eardrums ache, but ... did he detect a change in that awful voice, a weakening? And was that a dent he saw growing in the middle of the shield?

  Another mighty pounce, and another, and more still. Somewhere inside his head Hellboy heard a brain-splitting shriek, then the shield gave way beneath him. He dropped to floor level with a grunt and stopped, staring fixedly down at a spiderweb of cracks that began to run along the backside of the armor, threading their way in a spiral pattern until they reached the outside edge. Something dark, wet, and viscous spread from beneath the shield

  gods' blood perhaps, something which ordinary man was never meant to see. As Hellboy gawked, the shield suddenly trembled and the battered, uneven surface of the metal crum
bled, morphing before his eyes until it became stone, Medusa's revenge turned upon herself. Even the black puddle beneath the shield hardened and began to change, lightening until all that remained was a fine powder of stone dust.

  And finally, Medusa's head was silent.

  Hellboy reached tentatively for one edge and flipped it rightside up. It landed against the tiled floor with a clang so out of place inside the quiet church that it made Hellboy look around guiltily to see if he'd disturbed someone. On the floor at his feet, the shield still held the face and head of Medusa, but now it was deadened and veined with chips and holes.

  Still, Hellboy didn't trust it.

  Against the wall was a tall, marble cross. Hellboy bounded over and picked it up, pleased at its substantial weight, then returned to stand over the shield. It was the same as it had been a moment before Maybe.

  Or maybe not. Did he see something malevolent in the dead Medusas eyes as she glared unseeingly up at him?

  Again, maybe.

  But he could take care of that.

  As though he were staking some kind of perverted vampire, Hellboy upended the cross and drove it point-down into the center of Medusa's forehead.

  And the shield shattered into a thousand pieces, and was no more.

  It took nearly three days for the stone skin covering his own to finally slough away.

  During that time, the flesh beneath it itched unmercifully and Hellboy found himself clawing at his body countless times while he waited for the process to complete itself. Each time he started to rant or feel his temper start to go, he would look around at this once-picturesque village in the Greek isles and remind himself that what he endured could, indeed, be worse.

  Much, much worse.

  Because with the destruction of Medusa's head had come the release and resurrection

  of her victims.

  All those reanimated statues were also sloughing away their stone prisons, changing back to flesh bodies which had, either in battle with Hellboy or with the passage of time, lost all or a part of themselves. Returning to life with missing limbs, heads, or huge chunks knocked from parts of their bodies, the ancient figures were incomplete abominations; if they had mouths they screamed in terror and pain but they and the strange,