by Mark Morris
Varley scoffed. “You know so little.”
“I might not know much,” Hellboy said, “but compared to you I’m the all-time Jeopardy! champion. I’ve been around a long time, saved the world once or twice, and seen a whole lot of tin-pot cults like this one come and go. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s that regular folk and denizens of hell ... well, they just don’t mix. See, you might think you like the idea of ripping this imperfect world apart and starting all over again, or even of being some kinda ruler over chaos, but when it comes right down to it, it just ain’t practical. The big bugaboos down there don’t give a spit about you. You’re just a means to an end for them. Soon as you open the box, they’ll be out of there like an express train, and they’ll mow you down soon as look at you. So my advice is this: pack up, go home, grow some hair. Otherwise — and you mark my words — you’ll be opening up a whole world of hurt. Not for the people out there, but for yourselves. Believe me, I know.”
This was a long speech for Hellboy, and the echoes of his voice rang out around the cavern. Varley looked at him as though he were something curious and strange and new. Then he turned to his acolytes and raised his arms.
“The last of the stolen souls have been accepted by the Infinite,” he cried. “The twelve great Locks of London have been breached, and soon the Eye will open once more, bringing with it a glorious new dominion. Father will turn against son, friend against friend, neighbor against neighbor. We, my children, are the openers of the way. We will walk in the chaos. We will stand at the doorway between the two worlds, and neither shall exist without us. Soon all states, all realities, will be ours to command. We are the key. We shall become all powerful.”
“Yeah,” said Hellboy dryly, cutting in on his words, “that’s what they all say.”
Abe looked almost sad. “You’re an intelligent man, Richard. Don’t you realize how empty those words sound? They’re an enticement, that’s all. They don’t mean anything.”
“Abe’s right,” Liz shouted. “If you know what’s good for you, Richard, stop this now. You’re nothing but a little kid who’s been offered candy by a stranger. The car door’s open and the engine’s running, but you don’t have to get in. There’s still time to turn around and go home.”
Varley spun and looked at each of them, his eyes blank, face expressionless. He fixed on Hellboy, and his lips curled back in a clench-toothed grin.
“When the Eye opens, I’m going to make you my slave,” he said. “You’ll follow me around like a little dog and do exactly as I tell you. These other two are nothing. I’ll leave them here to rot in the darkness.”
Liz glared at him. She was gripped by fury and desperation, but again she tried not to show it. In a clipped voice she said, “That’s not gonna happen, Richard. We’re not gonna let that happen.”
“You have no choice,” Richard said blithely. He turned his back on them and walked unhurriedly towards the lodestone, a couple of his followers moving aside to let him through the wide circle they had formed around it. Directly in front of the stone, a few inches higher than the rock floor, was a circular platform, similar to the ones on which Hellboy, Abe, and Liz were standing. Cassie’s chair had been set down on the platform. As she heard Varley’s footsteps tapping across the stone towards her, she hunched up her shoulders and drew back, like a turtle attempting to retreat into its shell.
Varley came to a halt just in front of Cassie, looking down at her. He stood there for perhaps five seconds, and then slowly he raised his right arm, holding his hand out to his side. Immediately a stocky man stepped forward out of the circle, reaching into his black jacket as he did so. He drew a cleaver from an inner pocket, came forward, and placed it in Varley’s outstretched hand. Then he walked calmly back to rejoin the circle.
The blade of the cleaver flashed yellow in the candlelight. Gritting his teeth, Hellboy began to struggle against his invisible bonds once more, his movements more frantic now, shoulder muscles bulging beneath his duster, the tendons in his neck standing out like cables under his skin.
“Don’t touch her,Varley!” he bellowed.”If you hurt her, I swear I’ll kill you.”
Varley ignored him. Cassie was whimpering again now, sensing that something terrible was about to happen. Savoring the moment, Varley raised the cleaver above his head.
“Accept this final sacrifice!” he bellowed.
“Richard, no!” Liz screamed.
“ Varley!” roared Hellboy.
The cleaver flashed down.
Cassie’s blood sprayed across the stone.
Chapter 16
“No!” howled Hellboy, the word booming around the cavern, chasing echoes of itself. He continued to strain against his bonds, but it was already too late. Though still tethered, Cassie’s body was jerking so violently as the lifeblood jetted out of her that the chair was jumping and scraping on the stone platform. The savage blow from the cleaver had not only slashed open her throat, it had almost severed her head. Blood had erupted from her jugular in an arterial spray, most of it spattering onto the lodestone and running down over the eye symbol. Some of the blood had arced over the acolytes gathered in a circle around the stone, but not one of them had broken rank, not even when blood had rained down on their shaven heads and their shoulders, staining their clothes.
Varley stood facing the stone, his hands raised as if in triumph. Blood was running down the blade and handle of the cleaver, and onto the sleeve of his expensive gray suit, but he didn’t seem to care. Enraptured, he turned and looked into Hellboy’s anguished face, his eyes shining with a fanatical zeal.
“The Eye opens,” he breathed.
“I’m going to kill you,” Hellboy muttered, and the cold intent in his voice made even Abe shiver. “Whatever it takes,Varley, I am going to take you apart piece by piece.”
This time, however, Varley didn’t even seem to hear him. He was in a world of his own. He turned back to his acolytes.
“Prepare yourselves, brothers and sisters,” he cried. “Prepare yourselves to accept the infinite!”
The acolytes leaned forward, as if bowing to him. Hellboy, too, hung his head, though for entirely different reasons. At that moment he felt sickened, wretched, exhausted. He remembered the promise he had made to Cassie just minutes before, how he had told her he would get her out of here. He remembered meeting her that morning, the bloom of life in her cheeks, the flash of intelligence and humor in her green eyes. He remembered how Luigi, owner of the Bagel Palace, had told her that she was beautiful, that she lit up his life like a lantern.
He raised his head, which felt heavy as an anvil, and glanced over his shoulder. Liz looked stricken, her face deathly pale.
“Why didn’t you burn him?” Hellboy said hoarsely. “Why didn’t you roast the bastard?”
Liz’s horrified gaze flickered over to him. She shook her head. Her mouth moved silently for a moment, trying to form words, before she spoke.
“I couldn’t,” she all but sobbed. “I tried, HB, I really did, but ... I just couldn’t. This damn spell ...”
“Look at the lodestone,” said Abe.
Hellboy forced himself to turn back. At first he could see nothing but Cassie’s mutilated body, and then he saw that the eye symbol carved into the stone was beginning to glow with a pearly, iridescent light. Even as he watched, the light grew brighter; it seemed alive somehow, sinuous and snakelike.
Varley laughed and threw the cleaver almost carelessly to one side, not even bothering to look as it skidded across the stone with a metallic clatter. Just as carelessly he dragged Cassie’s chair from the front of the stone and shoved it aside. Hellboy clenched his teeth as the chair toppled over, as her head smashed against the ground. He knew she was dead, that nothing could hurt her now, but the callousness of Varley’s action, the way he treated her as if she were nothing but garbage that was in his way, caused the blood to boil in his veins.
The eye symbol was now almost too bright to loo
k at. The light was radiating outwards, strands of it curling around the chamber, probing and exploring, as if searching for something. It crawled and looped around the acolytes, who shuddered and jerked at its touch. It was as if the multiple light strands were ropes of living electricity, delivering shock after stinging shock.
Hellboy watched as the light slithered over the face of a pretty girl about Cassie’s age. The girl’s eyes were full of pain and her mouth was open in a cry she couldn’t expel. Her body was going into spasm, alternately rigid, then slack. It made him think of a fish in a net, desperate to break free, but barely able to move. He felt no sympathy for her. As far as he was concerned, these people deserved whatever was coming to them. The light prodded at the girl’s eyes, making her gasp in agony, and then it climbed higher, across her forehead, over her scalp.
Finally it found the eye tattoo, and all at once it seemed to come alive. It reminded Hellboy of someone who has been blundering about in a dark room suddenly finding the light switch. It latched onto the tattoo and appeared to be instantly absorbed into it, causing the symbol to blaze as brightly as the one on the lode-stone. At this new violation, the girl’s eyes stretched wide and her mouth opened in a soundless scream. Her body jerked violently, like a puppet.
The rope of light that had clamped itself to the girl’s head now seemed to send out a pulse, a signal. As if a nest of sleepy vipers had suddenly become aware of the potential victims in their midst, the light strands rose up en masse. They hovered for a moment, and then swooped down, striking at the acolytes, clamping themselves to the tattoos on their shaven heads.
The acolytes writhed and twisted, but to no avail. Some managed to scream or whimper or make strangled choking sounds, though most were clearly beyond that, their vocal cords frozen with the excruciating torment they were being forced to endure.
Varley seemed unconcerned by the suffering of his followers. “Accept the infinite, brothers and sisters,” he called, his voice ricocheting around the chamber.
“It’s killing them, you moron,” Hellboy snarled. “Can’t you see that?”
Still Varley ignored him. He stood in front of the lodestone, in a pool of Cassie’s blood, hands extended as if in welcome, smiling slightly. He looked utterly relaxed, more than ready to embrace the power that was causing his followers such distress.
And then, as if at some unspoken command, the tendrils of light suddenly and simultaneously shot inwards, engulfing Varley’s body in a blazing sphere of effulgence. The tendrils were almost as thin and straight as laser beams, though they more closely resembled the spokes of a wheel with Varley at its hub. The self-styled sangoma of the All-Seeing Eye stood with his arms upraised, a man made of fire and light. He was grinning widely, bathing in the radiance.
His triumph did not last long.
Many of his followers were on their knees now, or had simply collapsed altogether, their bodies convulsing. For perhaps fifteen seconds Varley continued to grin as he bathed in the light, his eyes half closed, like someone luxuriating beneath a long, hot shower.
Then Liz said, “Jeez, look at their heads.” But Hellboy had already seen what was happening. The heads of the acolytes were swelling like balloons. Some were even beginning to split, leaking blood and fluid.
Suddenly the skull of a large black woman in a floral-print dress erupted outwards, as if a bomb had gone off in her cranium. Splinters of bone and lumps of brain matter spattered across the floor. The instant it happened the thread of light sprang from the dead woman like a length of released elastic and added itself to the light massing around Varley.
Within seconds more of the acolytes were dead, their brains and skulls simply bursting, unable to withstand the pressure of the energy that was consuming them. Soon the stone floor of the cavern was littered with corpses and awash with blood. Each time an acolyte died, the attendant thread of light snapped away from the lifeless body like a vacating parasite and relocated to the ever-brightening nimbus enveloping Varley.
Indeed, the light surrounding the leader of the All-Seeing Eye had now intensified to such an extent that he had become little more than a vague fiery outline in its center. Even so, Hellboy could see enough to tell that Varley was no longer smiling. Instead his face looked haggard, his mouth yawning open in a silent, agonized scream. His hands were no longer raised, but moving like those of a man underwater, trying to fend off an attack from a voracious marine predator.
“No,” he moaned suddenly, his head thrashing from side to side, and even in that single word Hellboy could hear the terrible strain he was under. “No, I ... control you ... I control ...”
All at once Varley’s body went rigid. His head snapped back, as if he had been punched on the jaw.
“I think it’s showing him who’s boss,” Liz said grimly.
“And I think that now might be a good time to say I told you so,” Hellboy rumbled.
“Far be it from me to sound a note of false hope here, guys,” said Liz, “but I think I can move a little.”
Abe nodded. “Me too. The holding charm is breaking down.”
In front of them, Varley was not merely dying, but diminishing, his body fragmenting as the light picked it apart. He did not scream in pain as he died, or rant in anger, or beg for mercy; neither did he twist or writhe or struggle. Instead he went quietly, seeming simply to let go, to fade away. Hellboy was not sorry that the man who had slaughtered Cassie was dead, but he felt cheated that he himself had had no hand in it.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Abe said.
Hellboy scowled. “Is that so?”
Abe said softly, “If you’d have killed him, Hellboy, you’d never have been able to live with yourself.”
“You must think I’m a better guy than I am,” Hellboy muttered.
Abe shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said simply.
There was hardly anything left of Varley now. He had been reduced to an indistinct core of darkness in the midst of the blazing ball of energy. As the three of them watched, even that was consumed, until there was nothing left but light, which began to swirl and writhe and probe around the cavern once more, restless and without direction.
Hellboy found he was finally able to step down off the stone platform. As the feeling flooded back into his body, he hunched his stiff shoulders and stamped his hoofed feet on the ground.
Liz came up beside him and touched him gently on the arm. “Sorry about Cassie,” she said.
“Yeah,” said Hellboy gruffly “me too.”
“So ... what happens now?”
Hellboy looked at the light swirling around the chamber like a mass of tangled ghosts. “Anyone got a big net?”
“Yeah, I thought this stuff’d be ... I dunno ... more impressive somehow,” said Liz. “I thought it would erupt out of the earth like molten lava or something.”
“I think what we’re seeing here is just a drop in the ocean,” Abe said. “The lodestone is only a tap for the mains. Once the tap has been turned on ...” his voice trailed off.
Liz sighed. “Yeah, I guess I kinda knew that.” She pointed upwards. “The faucets are all up there, right? All those little breaches we saw this afternoon? I guess they’re going to widen, aren’t they?”
Abe nodded.” ‘Fraid so.”
Liz moved towards the lodestone, carefully stepping over the strewn bodies of the acolytes, avoiding the pools of blood and clots of brain matter.
“So how do we turn the tap off?” she asked.
“I don’t know if we can,” said Abe.
As the two of them examined the lodestone, Hellboy stayed where he was, peering up at the still-swirling light suspiciously. He had the feeling it was circling him like a shark, sizing him up. He watched as it coagulated in one area, close to the ceiling. After a moment it extended a tentative tendril in his direction.
“Er ... guys,” he said.
Before he could say anything else, the light swooped down at him. Hellboy swore as it coiled around hi
s body, burning like acid through his physical and mental defenses. He felt it pouring into his mind, overhauling his thoughts. The sheer physical intensity of the assault was so immense that he could easily comprehend how the less-robust bodies of the acolytes had simply ruptured under the pressure.
Even Hellboy was not sure he had ever felt pain quite like this. It was crippling, breath snatching, all encompassing. It was like having steel hooks embedded in his brain, like liquid fire pouring through his veins. It was only sheer force of will that stopped his legs from buckling beneath him, that prevented him from retreating to a tiny, dark place within himself and succumbing instantly. He gritted his teeth and roared and fought back and thought about Cassie, who had died in order that this abomination could be released into the world.
But, hard as he fought, Hellboy knew deep down that it would not be enough. The light was vast and ancient and far more powerful than he was. His only faint chance of defeating it was to attack it at its source — to switch off the tap, as Abe had said.
But how?
Liz floated into his field of vision. Instantly Hellboy felt the impulses and urges of the thing inside him, felt its desire to hurt her, to possess her, to feed on her suffering, to drain her dry.
“Go!” he roared, his voice already roughened by the lights influence. “You and Abe go now, before I... before it makes me ... hurt you ...”
“We’re not leaving you,” Liz said.
“ GO!” Hellboy bellowed at her.
He waved his massive right hand in a gesture of dismissal. Through the cracks and grooves in the red stone he saw the swirling, fiery light pouring out of him. And all at once, as though for a split second he had glimpsed the heart of the light itself, he knew what he had to do.
He lurched up to the lodestone, forcing himself to plant one hoof in front of the other. With each step, he felt the light trying to drag him back, trying to gain mastery over the mental impulses that powered his body.
