I had this thought.
Where are the cops?
Unless
they're there. Part of the little party. The crowd looked about twelve strong.
"Richie Tryp scores ... " I said. "Have to give him my regards."
The crowd reached the shore. I could barely make out the girl being pinned to the sand ... just at the water's edge ... when the low keening began, a bizarre moan. A Hawaiian luau this wasn't.
"Now," Kate said.
I nodded.
We got up, the damp sand sticking to our bodies.
"Going to need a nice hot shower when I get home," I said. "Don't you just hate it when the sand gets in all those little cracks and crevices?"
"And you have such ... big crevices."
"I thought you'd never notice ... "
We walked to the crowd at the shore, the moaning rhythmic. I spotted the thin sliver of a waning moon in the sky, like a weird grin, as if planet Earth was really one very amusing place.
Lots of laughs.
Especially here, especially now.
Kate and I picked up the pace. My hand was close to my gun ... not that I was sure I'd need it.
Someone in the group turned and saw us, but the chanting sound went on. They weren't going to let a little Hellboy visit interrupt them.
Kate broke into a run
probably thinking that they might do something quickly to the girl. But I didn't see any weapons glinting in the pale light.
But then, beyond the group, I did see something.
Did you ever see those classic movies in the fifties ... you know, the ones about the gillman? Not bad effects for the time, old Ricou Browning doing a pretty convincing job as the creature.
Beyond the group, I saw something come out of the water.
Now imagine
if you will
that the gillman ... was totally convincing. Imagine that he looked as real as some slimy slug in your typical suburban garden.
Not only that, give him an extra pair of arms and mouth of teeth that would put a great white to shame.
Now imagine that after you see the first one, six more pop their ugly heads out of the water.
Only meters away from the girl.
Abe didn't want this. A little too close to home for him.
How nice of him to pass it on to me.
The sea things trudged towards the girl. Their bodies may have been made for speed in the water, but walking in the shallow surf seemed a tad hard.
I reached the crowd.
I backhanded the first few ... worshippers, and sent them flying like bowling pins. The girl began screaming.
She was looking at me.
"It's okay," I said. "We're here to help."
Then Kate jumped on two of the other beachcombers and the girl was nearly free. But not before I saw the sea things almost at her.
One cultist wouldn't let go of the girl's arm.
I pulled out my gun and fired right at the place his arm joined his shoulder. Suddenly holding the girl didn't seem like such a priority.
"Kate, take her ... get going."
She looked at me. In her eyes, I could see she knew she was leaving me in one very bad situation.
"Get her out of here ... "
Kate nodded, and pulled the girl away.
The sea things opened their mouths in unison.
"What are you boys gonna do ... " I said, "sing?"
And as if in response, they all hissed at me, so loud and long that I could smell their foul breath.
"What the hell have you guys been eating? No ... don't answer that."
I formulated a defense plan. Basically, shoot and bash.
One creature leaped at me, but his footing was lousy and he landed on my shoulder. My stone fist smashed down on his head. I heard a soft, pulpy sound. One down ... five to go.
Another came running, jaws opened wide, like some demented humanoid shark, snapping at the air.
"You wouldn't like the way I taste," I said
and shot him in between two curved incisors.
The shot set him flying back.
But then one landed on my leg and I felt its teeth bite down. Another jumped onto my shoulder, and then a
moment I dreaded
I felt myself being pulled by these things into the water. And despite my size and all my strength, I felt the water on my legs, saw my blood swirling around the milky moon-lit sea water ... deeper, even as I fired at this creature and tried to smash the other.
I knew once they had me in the water, it would be no contest.
Deeper, until I felt them all around me
were there more? And the water at my chin. Then
I tasted the
too-salty water of the Atlantic.
At least the water made the pain better.
The teeth chomping down didn't feel so horrible anymore.
I struggled in the murky water, zero visibility, my arm slowed by the water so even my best attempts to smash the creatures failed. They were all around me.
Then I felt one creature ... ripped off me.
Then another. Now I could grab one and crush one slimy head between my biceps and chest. I didn't hear the satisfying crack ... but I felt it.
I grabbed the creature hanging on me and knocked its jaw straight up so that its mouth was now re-located close to the top of its frog-like skull.
Then I thought ... breathing! Air might be nice. What a good idea.
I shot to the surface.
What had pulled them off me?
A few seconds and then something broke the water.
A familiar face.
Abe.
We treaded water there for a moment.
"I thought this was my case ... I thought ... you were worried?" I hurt all over and I'm sure the blood from
my wound was driving the blue crabs below crazy.
Abe grinned.
"Hey, didn't anyone ever take you fishing, Hellboy?"
I looked at my friend. "What?"
"What do you need when you go fishing ... ?"
Some of the dead sea-things bobbed to the surface. A bunch of them ... all of them? Time would tell.
"Fishing?"
Abe was grinning, looking demented in the rolling surf, the white moonlight hitting his eyes.
Then I flashed on it. And I laughed.
"Right ... " I shook my head. I owed him one for this. "I was the bait."
Now Abe laughed, and he looked around at the bobbing sea-things even now rolling towards the shore. "And look how well you did."
"Yeah," I said, turning, starting to swim back to the shoreline. I saw Kate on the boardwalk, waiting. "Catch of the day, don't you think?"
And Abe laughed again.
Burn, Baby, Burn
Poppy Z. Brite
The girl waits by the side of the road, just past Lolita age but obviously still jail-bait. She wears a pair of ragged denim cutoffs and a grubby white T-shirt bearing the logo of John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band. Her dark hair hangs stick-straight and lank to the middle of her back. July 1976, and she's pretty sure she is somewhere in New Jersey.
When a green VW bus comes along, she sticks out her thumb and watches it roll to a stop. The rear doors swing open; hands help her in. Pot smoke. Young male faces, their tufts of attempted beard and mustache like scattered weeds, barely hiding the zits. King Crimson or some other ponderous art-rock band blaring from a stereo that's probably worth way more than the van itself.
"What's your name, baby?"
"Liz."
"How old are you?"
"Seventeen," she says, adding three years. The boy looks skeptical, but Liz can tell he doesn't really care.
They offer her liquor, which she declines, and pot, which she cautiously tries because it smells so good. The end of the joint glows red as she tokes on it, so smooth, doesn't make her cough at all. She holds the twisted cigarette before her face, focusing her eyes on the small, lurid point of fire.
The driver swivels in his seat, making the van swerve on the road. "Gas, grass, or ass, nobody rides for free."
They all laugh uproariously. Liz feels a hand on her leg, then two more encircling her wrists, not squeezing yet but letting her know they are there. Letting her know she's trapped.
They wish.
Liz hasn't hurt anyone in a long time. The images that come back to her when she does it are too unbearable.
She's been learning to focus her ability, to put her power into things that don't scream and hurt and die when they burn. But she is Elizabeth Anne Sherman from the Kansas side of Kansas City, and she is still a virgin, and she's damned if she is going to lose her cherry getting raped by a bunch of stoned hippies.
Among other things, she is afraid her parents might look down from Heaven and see it happening.
So she lets the heat well up from the place deep inside her, somewhere just below the center of her chest she thinks it is, and it arrows out of her in a thin, pure ray. It's spilling from her eyes, her fingertips, and it doesn't hurt her at all, it feels good
The ratty boys are scrambling away from her, away from the little corona of flames around her. Liz smells scorching hair, knows it isn't her own. She gathers all her strength and reins it in, sucks it in. It has taken the better part of four years, but she can control it now, and she doesn't want to kill these stupid boys.
"Fuck!"
"She musta dropped the fuckin' doob
she's on fire
"
"No, man, it's comin' out her hands! Get the bitch outta here!"
The VW screeches to a halt and Liz hops out before she can be shoved. She stumbles on the shoulder of the road, steadies herself, spins, and manages to shoot them the middle finger before the doors slam shut and the van takes off again.
A hundred yards down the road, she sees it stop again. The back doors open and a blanket is cast out, flaming merrily.
Liz laughs.
It first happened when she was eleven. She'd always hated the ugly ginger-haired boy who lived next door.
Her big brother Steve usually made the kid leave her alone, but on this sunny Saturday afternoon Steve was in his room desperately trying to finish some chemistry project that was due on Monday. Liz was playing with her Matchbox cars in the front yard when the ginger kid showed up. He wasn't smart enough to entertain himself, and when none of his equally nasty friends were around, he got off on tormenting Liz.
He leaned over her, stuck his face right in her face. He seemed all freckles and mean, squinty eyes. "Hey, Lezzy," he sneered. "Betcha think you look pretty with that stupid-looking hairstyle." Liz's mother had fixed her hair in ponytails that morning, crowning them with shiny purple holders that looked like grape-flavored candy.
The kid kicked dirt at her, overturning several of the little cars. "Fuck off," she said.
"Hey, fuck you, bitch! Girls ain't supposed to talk that way so I guess you ain't much of a girl!" He
grabbed one of the ponytails and yanked hard. She felt her pretty hair ornament snap, saw it tumble into the dirt. Fury swelled inside her, pure and hot.
She looked up at the ginger kid, her eyes shimmering with what felt like tears, and he grinned. "Awww, look at the little bay-bee
"
Then flames were coming from his mouth instead of words. He fell to his knees, clawing at his throat. Liz saw the fire take his hair, sizzle his eyes. He was burning and she was glad. He was a ball of flame, spreading to the lawn, the bushes, the house. Her rational mind was gone now; she did not know she was burning her own home and could not have stopped it if she had. She was nothing but a conduit for the beautiful, deadly fire.
The fire raced through the neighborhood, destroying her house, the ginger kid's house, more. Thirty-two people died that day, including Steve and Liz's parents. Firefighters found Liz wandering in the blackened wreckage, filthy with soot but unscathed. No one could figure out how the fire had started, though arson was suspected. No one knew how Liz had survived. She didn't know either. Though it was in her future to make fried calamari of an Elder God, Liz had no idea how great her powers were.
No one around her understood anything at all until the man from the Bureau finally came to visit.
Some nothing town called Plainville, and she's sitting in front of a cold cup of coffee in a diner when the black girl starts talking to her. "You okay, girl? You want one of these doughnuts? You don't have to pay for it
they're day-old."
Liz accepts gratefully. She hasn't eaten anything since sometime yesterday. She's also never actually spoken
to a Negro before. None had lived in the spanking-new Kansas City suburb her parents had chosen so carefully (and which she had lain waste to so easily). A few had gone to her school, but the two races kept themselves separated so completely that desegregation may as well have never happened. And there are none at the Bureau, not yet. She's a little nervous, but after some of the freaks she's met in the last few years, one black girl not much older than her isn't so scary. "Thank you," she says. The doughnut is stale, but Liz doesn't care. She makes it disappear in a matter of seconds, and the girl silently slides another one onto her plate.
"Runaway, huh?"
This isn't the first time she's been out on her own, and she knows how obvious she is, a fourteen-year-old wolfing down free food like some starved stewbum. "Throw-away," she says, though it isn't strictly true.
"That's rough."
Liz doesn't know what to say. She stares at her plate, then looks back up into the girl's friendly face. It's been a while since she saw one.
"My name's Mahogany."
"I'm Liz."
They shake hands. Liz notices that Mahogany's palm is a dusty rose-pink, not brown as she would have expected. The hand is strong, the knuckles slightly swollen.
"You look so tired," Mahogany says. "If you need a place to rest for a few days, I have one."
Liz Sherman's first rule of the road: take what you have to, rides and food and such, but trust no one. "That's okay," she says. "I mean, it's really nice of you, but there's someplace I have to be."
They both know it's a lie, but Mahogany nods, says nothing more until Liz gets up to leave, and then just a soft "You take care, now."
"You too. Thanks."
Liz pushes open the greasy glass door of the diner and sees rain sheeting down. She hates the smell and the feel of rain. She wavers for a moment before realizing that she just can't make herself go back out there yet.
"You said maybe I could stay with you a few days?" she says, turning back to the counter. Mahogany smiles, and Liz feels an upsurge of something she hasn't known in years. It takes her a few moments to realize this feeling is hope.
The man from the Bureau had the kindest, saddest eyes Liz had ever seen. They sat out on the stoop of her current foster residence and he asked a lot of personal questions, including whether she had begun to menstruate yet. (She had, just three weeks before the conflagration that killed her family.) She wouldn't have answered such questions for anyone else, but she felt some undercurrent of empathy with this man, something she couldn't quite identify but couldn't ignore either.
"How's it been for you with the foster families?" he asked.
Liz shrugged. "The Svoradys were weird. They wanted me to act like I was five years old or something.
When some little kids came in, they kicked me out. Then I came here, to the Fletchers'. They were pretty nice
at first, but ... well, you know what happened. I guess that's why you're here."
"The accident."
Liz stared at the floor. "Yeah."
"It wasn't really an accident, was it, Liz?"
She threw herself off the stoop, trembling with anger. "I didn't set the fire! I didn't! I know everybody thinks I did, 'cause I was fighting with Donny right before it happened, but I thought maybe you were di
fferent
"
"I don't think you set the fire."
She stopped raging. "You don't?"
"Not with matches or a lighter. Not in a way that other people can set a fire. And I don't think you meant to do it. And, hey, nobody got hurt, just a little smoke and water damage. But the fire came from you, didn't it, Liz?"
She looked up at him. He didn't seem angry or scared, just certain. "How do you know?" she whispered.
Instead of replying, the man reached into his pocket and pulled out a dollar bill. He held it in the air between them, and she saw something shimmer from his eyes.
The bill began to burn.
They watched the small flames lick at the paper for several seconds before the man let the bill fall to the ground and smothered the fire with his foot.
"I can do it too," he said simply.
A hundred questions rose up in her. "What
how do we
why
"
The man held up his hands in a placating gesture. "Plenty of time for all that and more. But first I have a proposition for you. Liz, what you have is called a 'wild talent'. Instead of being shuttled around to foster homes, would you like to live in a single place, a home, with other people who have wild talents? Would you like to learn more about yours, and how you can control it?"
She didn't have to say yes; the man could read it in her face.
"It's called the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense," he told her.
By the time Mahogany's shift ends, the rain has slackened and the sun is beginning to dry up the puddles on the sidewalk. Mahogany says her house is only a few blocks away. They walk in a companionable silence, having spent most of the afternoon chatting while Mahogany waited on an occasional customer.
The neighborhood looks poor but well kept, the houses painted in pastel colors, no trash in the streets and only a ghostly scrawl of sandblasted graffiti on a wall here and there.
"Two more blocks," Mahogany says. "There's one thing I ought to tell you before we get there."
Liz looks up, guarded, her fragile hope beginning to crumble. This is the part where Mahogany tells her something awful, something about heroin or turning tricks maybe, and Liz will have to turn and walk away from the only person who's been kind to her in weeks. "What?"
Hellboy: Odd Jobs Page 23
