In the middle of the destruction was a cross that, Hellboy theorized, had plummeted from the peak of the steeple when that topmost portion of the edifice had tumbled down into the flames that had dissolved its base.
Flakes of gold still adhered to the metal surface, but most had been burned away, revealing gray steel beneath. The cross had landed upside-down, and its head had dug deeply into the rubble, so that the crossbeam was flush with the ashes. It was Saint Peter, wasn't it, Hellboy thought, who had been crucified upside-down.
He got back into his car and finished his journey, driving into the town of Linden, North Carolina, thirty miles from the ashes of what had once been a Golgotha Tabernacle of Our Lord. There were a total of fifteen Golgotha Tabernacles in North and South Carolina, and it was the founder of this small but growing denomination that Hellboy was on his way to visit. He had no doubt that the call would be unpleasant, even though his way had been made straight by the Bureau. He also doubted that Donald Withers, Golgotha Tabernacle's bishop, would feel a widow's mite's worth of compassion for anyone from an organization with the word 'paranormal' in it.
Hellboy was hardly relieved to be proven right. When he arrived at the large but seedy southern gothic mansion that housed the offices of Golgotha Tabernacles, the secretary, a thin, middle-aged woman sitting behind a large wooden desk in the foyer, immediately fell to her knees, buried her face in her hands, and started praying feverishly and nearly incomprehensibly, though Hellboy was able to make out, "fires of Hell,"
and " ... from the demons," before they were joined by the bishop.
Donald Withers was as devoid of meat upon his bones as his secretary, and when he saw Hellboy, his eyebrows arched in alarm. Hellboy tried to smile, but felt as though he were looking into the hollows of a skull. "I didn't mean to startle her," he told Withers in a voice as soft as he could produce. "I'm from the Bureau for
"
"Yes," said Withers in a soft drawl, "I know where you're from, and I know who you are and what you
are. I know that you are the son of Satan."
"Through no fault of my own," Hellboy said gently. "We can't help who our parents are. I do everything I can to fight evil, not abet it. I believe the Bureau sent you my dossier?"
"They did," Withers said. His secretary was on her feet now, but she would not look at Hellboy. "And it's only because of that, that I'm talking to you at all. Come on in." Withers turned and went through the door, and Hellboy followed, feeling larger and far redder than he had in a long time.
There was another man inside Withers' large office, and Hellboy scarcely had time to take in the holy ambience of the room, so seething was the hatred that came washing over him from the man in the chair. The man was even thinner than Withers (Hellboy wondered if fervent religion might be an undiscovered fat burner), and his knuckles gripped the arms of his chair so tightly that his hands appeared skeletal.
"Hellspawn," the man murmured.
"Hellboy," Hellboy corrected. "And you are?"
"This is Pastor Isaac Chambers," Withers answered for the man. "He's the preacher in two of our churches.
The church that just burned down was one of his."
" Is one of mine, you mean," Chambers said. "We'll rebuild, though the fires of hell itself burn us down time and time again." Hellboy considered asking if this had happened to Chambers' church before, then decided the man was simply offering a rhetorical flourish.
"You think that's what it was?" asked Hellboy. "The fires of hell?"
"We don't know what it was," Withers replied. He remained standing, and Hellboy suspected it was because he didn't want to have to ask Hellboy to sit in one of his chairs. Chambers was not as polite.
"Let me tell you what little I know," said Hellboy, "and you can correct me if I'm wrong: There have been a number of church burnings in the area served by your Golgotha Tabernacles. Four of those were African-American churches, and it was obvious that arson was the cause, since gasoline residue was found. But the most recent burnings
of two of your churches
have no simple explanation. The fires seem to have no
central source, and there's no residue of gasoline or any other incendiaries. I believe a witness who was driving by your church, Pastor Chambers, claimed that
"
"Yes, I know," Chambers said impatiently. "He said the whole thing just went up like that!" The finger snap was as loud as a firecracker. "But you can't believe those people! They'd tell you it was the hand of God hisself come down and smote us just because of what we preach!"
"And that is?" asked Hellboy.
"Purity." Withers answered for Chambers again. "It might not be 'politically correct', but it's biblically grounded."
"By purity, you mean racial purity?"
"Of course. We have nothing against the other races
after all, we're all the children of God
but we were
not intended to mix and intermingle. That's a law of nature as well as a law of God."
Hellboy bit back what he wanted to say, and tried to smile. "So do you suspect anyone of these burnings?"
"Of course we do," Chambers said, his hands still clinging to the arms of his chair like two white spiders. "It's technology, that's all
nothing 'paranormal'. It's the government!" The word came out gumment. "They're the only ones got the know-how to burn down a church and not leave any clues as to how they done it!"
"Why would the government want to burn down churches?" Hellboy asked, ready for the next round of paranoia.
" 'Cause they think we burnin' down the colored churches, whatta you think?"
"And are you?"
Withers stiffened, and took command of the conversation. "Surely not. We don't preach violence in the Golgotha Tabernacles, Mr ... uh, sir. Now I'm afraid that I'm going to have to ask you to leave. I agreed to see you only in the hopes that you might have some ideas as to who's been burning our churches, but you don't know any more than we do
less, even."
"That could change if I had your cooperation," Hellboy said.
"Fat chance!" Chambers got to his feet at last. "You're lucky we don't tie you to a tree and burn you, Hellspawn! Send you back to the devil, your daddy!"
"I've renounced the devil and his ways," Hellboy said calmly. "The material you received from the Bureau told you that."
"Ha! 'Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?' Jeremiah 13:23!"
Hellboy shrugged and walked to the door. " 'I'll be seeing you'. Sammy Fain, music, Irving Kahal, lyrics." He walked out.
It was a stupid gesture, he thought. He should have tried to get more out of them. But maybe there wasn't anything more to get. He gave a diabolical grin to the secretary as he walked by her. If she was going to have nightmares about him, might as well make them worth having.
Linden's chief of police eyed him as strangely as most people did, but at least he didn't start quoting scripture.
What he did do was tell Hellboy that these fancy government (again, gumment) bureaus didn't mean a damn thing to him, and you'd have to be from the FBI or state police to get any cooperation. "And I hope you don't mind my adding, son," said the chief as he showed Hellboy the door, "that you'd get along a lot easier around here if you didn't dress up like some goddamn wrestler, or whoever you're supposed to be."
Well, Hellboy thought as he climbed back into his car, that took care of both church and state. The only other lead he had was the witness who had supposedly seen Pastor Chambers' church burst into flame. The man's name was Nathaniel Watson, and Hellboy found his house easily enough. It was located on the main road three miles from the burned church, and when he pulled into the dirt drive, he saw a man sitting on the crude porch of a one-story house badly in need of paint.
The man looked up as Hellboy got out of the car. Watson straightened his shoulders, and his eyes widened for a moment, but then he set his jaw and watched, unmoving, as Hellboy came toward him. "
Who you s'posed to be?" he asked in a surprisingly smooth and mellifluous voice. "You come for my soul, I hate to disappoint you, but you had it a long time ago."
Hellboy held his hands out in front of him in a gesture of peace. "I haven't come for anybody's soul. I've just come to ask you a few questions, if you don't mind."
"You sellin' insurance? You look like you'd be one helluva insurance salesman." The man's dark mouth split in a little grin, and Hellboy couldn't help but chuckle.
He explained who he was, and the man shrugged. "Seen enough devils dressed up like angels 'round here might as well see a good guy dressed up like a devil. What can I do for ya?"
"I'd like to know exactly what it was you saw that night the Golgotha Tabernacle burned down."
"Already tol' the police. Whole thing jes' went ka -voom, right all at once."
"An explosion?"
"Nope. Didn't say ka -boom, said ka -voom. Wasn't no sound of an explosion, just fire. Filled up the whole place smack bang, see it in all the windows at the same time. One second it was dark, the next like somebody jes' filled that place up with fire, glowin' behind every window."
"You were driving by at the time?"
"Yeah. Stopped at a house down the road and called the fire department, then went back to the church to watch. Next thing I know the cops're talkin' to me like I done it, and Ike Chambers is howlin' at them to arrest me for settin' fire to his church. Well, they look in my car and my trunk, and there's nothin' nobody could set a fire with, no gasoline, kerosene, nothin' like that, and I don't smell of it neither. Damn ol' Chief Hanson smelled all round my hands too. Finally let me go."
"Didn't they think it would be odd for the person who set the fire to call it in and then come back?" Hellboy asked.
"Took em a while to come around to that line of reasonin'."
"Did you tell them anything else besides the ... strange nature of the fire?"
"Nope."
"Was anybody else around when you saw it go up? Any other cars?"
Nathaniel Watson paused just a second too long. "Nope."
"You sure about that?"
Watson thought for a moment. "You gonna tell the cops about this?"
"No."
"Then yeah. I saw somebody's car. When the fire started, I was watching it for about a minute, and just as I started to pull away, I saw Jack Mooney's minivan pullin' out from the trees, goin' the other way."
"Jack Mooney?"
"Yeah. Wild-ass guy. Used to be a priest, you can dig that. Live over in Shipoke."
"You didn't tell the police this yourself?"
"Don't like the police. And I especially don't like Ike Chambers and his church. They ain't very Christian for church folks. If Jack Mooney burned down that Golgotha church, then I say God bless Jack Mooney."
"What about the other church burnings in the area? The black churches? You as cavalier about those?"
"What kinda folks you think burning down our churches? Not folks like Jack Mooney, however he mighta done Golgotha. No, it's folks who drive pickup trucks with gun racks and Confederate-flag decals and
'Impeach Who-the-hell-ever' bumper stickers, and go to churches like Golgotha who burn down the black churches
with plenty of gasoline slopped all over, like the redneck dumb-asses they are. Golgotha's a hate church, my man, not a love church.
"But I'll tell you somethin' else
I don't think Jack Mooney had a damn thing to do with that burnin', 'cause I don't know how nothin' human coulda made happen what I saw happen."
"So what was it then?" Hellboy asked.
"Hand of God, my man. Nothin' less than the hand of God."
Jack Mooney lived eight miles from the church that had just burned down. His house was a big two-story with pillars in front, but that didn't mean, Hellboy thought, that the man had money. The once-white paint had nearly peeled off the wood, so that the house appeared as gray as the gathering clouds. There was no minivan in the stone driveway, and no garage in sight, so Hellboy parked among some trees, out of sight of the road, and walked around to the back of the house.
There was a small shed there, and Hellboy searched that first. If people stored incendiaries, they tended to do so in a place separate from where they slept and ate. There was nothing in the shed, however, but some rusted tools and a hand mower.
Hellboy went up to the house, and was surprised to find the door open. He listened, but heard only the ticking of a clock and the low whir of the refrigerator. The boards creaked under his weight, but no one called out, and a quick sweep of the house told him that he was alone.
In nearly every room there was a crucifix on the wall, and at least one bookcase. Most of the books dealt with religion, although there were a few best-selling novels from past years. But Hellboy noticed that some of the books stuck out farther in the case than others, and when he pulled them away, he found other books behind them, uncovering nearly two dozen. Most were in very old bindings. Several were in Latin, and others were in French and German. Only two were in English.
Hellboy recognized nearly all of them by their titles. Some he had read, others he had never seen, but only heard whispers of. Even if the titles had meant nothing to him, the illustrations and diagrams would have given their subject matter away. There were several editions of the Key of Solomon, a Grimoire of Honorius, the original 1575 Basle edition of Arbatel of Magic, and even a German translation of the Al Azif. It seemed that Jack Mooney wasn't as doctrinaire as the crucifixes suggested.
Hellboy had begun to more closely examine the pages of the books in which bookmarks had been placed, when the sound of an approaching engine made him quickly replace the volume he was holding and run to the window. A battered minivan was pulling into the stone driveway at the side of the house, and Hellboy ran out the back door, around the opposite side of the house from the drive, and into the sheltering woods. He had seen enough, however, to convince him that it might be worth his time to shadow Jack Mooney.
He returned to Mooney's place an hour after dusk, and parked his car on the shoulder of the road two hundred yards from Mooney's drive. He listened to a book on tape, the earphone in one ear, the other ear free so that he could hear approaching traffic. He had listened to four cassettes of the unabridged novel before Mooney's minivan pulled onto the road and started driving away from Hellboy and the town of Linden.
Hellboy followed, lights off, able to see well enough by the light of the moon.
He followed Mooney for twenty-five miles over wandering roads. Whatever route the man was taking to his goal was circuitous, as though he suspected that someone might be following, and when the minivan finally stopped, Hellboy thought they might be only five or six miles from where they had started. Mooney pulled his minivan onto the shoulder and Hellboy could see him walking away from the road. Hellboy got out of his car and followed on foot.
When he saw where Mooney was heading, Hellboy was sure he had guessed right. It was a church, a small, white, one-story edifice with a modest peaked steeple. A wooden sign had been driven into the ground near the road, and black metal letters proclaimed that it was the 'Third Golgotha Tabernacle of Our Lord Blossom, N.C.'
In the bright moonlight, Hellboy could see Jack Mooney clearly. The man seemed to be in his mid-fifties, and was of medium height and stocky. The top of his head was bald but for a halo of hair, red in the moonlight.
He was wearing khakis and a light jacket, and his hands were empty. If he was planning on burning the church, it wasn't going to be with gasoline.
As Hellboy watched from the shadows of the lowering trees, Jack Mooney started to walk around the church.
Three times he circled it, counter-clockwise, widdershins, as Hellboy had thought he would. Then he stood before the front door, raised his left arm, and began to make a series of arcane gestures in the air, as though he were drawing pictures with his hand. After a few minutes of this, he started to speak in a language Hellboy didn't understand, but which he thought might
be ancient Aramaic. Whatever it was, it was time to stop things.
"Is it a final word or a final gesture that starts it?" Hellboy said, just over Jack Mooney's shoulder. The big investigator could move very softly when he needed to.
Mooney stiffened, and his gestures ceased. But then his shoulders slowly relaxed, and he looked behind him.
"Well by golly, will you look at that?" he said. "I knew it was only a matter of time before they'd be sending demons after me." There was an ironic smile on his face.
"I'm not a demon," said Hellboy.
"I know who you are," Mooney said. "You don't think I've come to this point in my studies without knowing all about your organization and the people who are in it. Do you ... Hellboy?"
"A fire spell?" Hellboy asked. "That's how you burned the other churches?"
"The other Golgotha Tabernacles," Mooney corrected. "I don't burn African-American churches, my friend. I only burn the devil's churches. It took me a long time to figure out how to do it, but I've got it down pat now."
"What do you mean, the devil's churches?" asked Hellboy, honestly curious. "The Golgotha Tabernacles aren't Satanist churches."
"Aren't they?" Mooney snorted a laugh. "Do you want to see what goes on in the Golgotha Tabernacles?
Would you like me to help you envision what goes on in the twisted hearts and narrow minds and lost souls of this sect? Because I'll be very happy to show you."
"How can you show me?"
"I learned a lot of things both before and since I left the priesthood, Hellboy. I learned that those who seem the most pious are often the most evil, and I learned, most importantly, that there were other ways to fight evil besides being one of Christ's priests. I could do more for Him by becoming one of His warriors."
The phrase revolted Hellboy. He had heard it used too many times to rationalize violence. "You mean like the ones who bomb abortion clinics?"
"No. Those fools use a mask of religion to do evil. I use the old secrets to battle them and their kind. You want to see what goes on in this building, Hellboy?" Mooney stepped up to the front door of the tabernacle and put his hand on the painted wood. Then he held his hand out to Hellboy. "Another secret I've learned in the old books. Take my hand. Hear the walls cry out against the evil that has been perpetrated within them.
Hellboy: Odd Jobs Page 17
