Emerald Hell

by Tom Piccirilli

  Normally, walking into a head-on confrontation like this would only make Hellboy feel like an idiot, but he just didn’t see any other way of getting on with his day.

  Holding one of the women in his arms, hovering a few inches off the ground, Lament looked back over her shoulder at Hellboy and said, “Be on your toes, son. I mean your tippy-hooves. You feel it?”

  “No.”

  “We’re there.”

  And as they came up out of the scrub and weeds, they were. In a great wet tussock of bramble, chokeberry, lichen-covered oak, and mountainous logjam grew a mammoth tree that wasn’t a tree. You could feel its antagonistic presence the way you could sense a furious man staring at the back of your head.

  There was only a hint of a figure hidden among the reams of bark, branches, and seedling flora. You could just make out the shape of a colossal human being hunkered down in the mud, its limbs folded, hugging its knees to an immense torso. Its eyes were closed but the mouth was partially open and stuffed with flowers.

  It looked to Hellboy like a sleeping woman.

  Mama.

  Why? he wondered. Why were the slumbering giants always the ones who caused such a goddamn ruckus?

  Like waving hair on that massive being’s head, the vines rose from the top of the Mother Tree and writhed in the air, some of the girlies suspended above while others lay in wait inside the enormous being’s crevices and wrinkles. They laid out on the great wooden face sunning themselves, preparing to bloom. Dozens of the marionettes wafted about their mother, who had birthed them and raised them, and was them.

  “Sweet Jesus at his loneliest hour ...” breathed Lament. The ladies that held him, with their mouths red from the taste of his flesh, dropped him gently into the mud and floated off to join the others.

  Hellboy shrugged off the husks still attached to his arms and chest and watched them flit away. “Guess that’s Big Mama.”

  “I reckon so. Can you make out the web around her?”

  Hellboy squinted and thought he saw, thanks to Granny Lewt’s eyes, some kind of burning white filament about the Mother Tree. “That’s a web? What kind of web?”

  “A net of spells, set there by Granny Dodd,l s’pect. She knew enough to try to contain it and keep it from growing too wild. But when she died, the charms floundered. I still wonder if this was an entity she found here a’growin’ or if she nurtured it for her own reasons.”

  “Does it matter?”

  “I suppose not.”

  “I’m going to hit it.”

  Lament turned and looked at him. “Mayhap that’s not the best course.”

  “And mayhap it is,” Hellboy said. “That’s what I do. I hit things and I hit them hard. If they get up I hit them some more. There’s not much finesse, but it usually works.” He tightened his hand into a fist, but that ethereal web glimmered again. “Unless you think you can strengthen the spells? Might give us an edge.”

  Palming away some blood on his neck, Lament shook his head. “Me? I done told you already, I don’t know any magics.”

  “Right, I forgot. The magics know you.”

  “Say it with mistrust if you must, but it’s the truth.”

  “I believe you,” Hellboy said. “I don’t understand it, but I believe you.”

  “Well, son, you’re the one got yourself splinters of saints and all manners of inscribed silver trinkets. Can’t you wield no enchantments?”

  “No.” Hellboy sighed and tried to figure out what the best way to go clobber a big sleeping tree woman might be.

  The wind shifted and Lament covered his nose with his forearm, trying not to gag. Hellboy smelled it too, the narcotic perfume coming on strong. He turned away and got the smelling salts out again. He jammed them tightly to his nostrils and sniffed until tears squirted from his eyes.

  When he spun back, Lament had gone down to one knee and was muttering to himself. “That fragrance again—urging free my dreams—I have dreams, you know, wonderful and plain, my wife on the porch, my child learning to sing—”

  “Here, take the ...”

  “Wondrous, the places Mother takes you—”

  “... smelling salts. Sniff them!”

  Shaking his head to clear it, gritting his teeth and groaning, Lament managed to climb to his feet. “You keep them. I have something else.”

  From his pocket he drew out what looked like dried flowers. Again with the flowers, everywhere down here with the flowers.

  All things being equal he’d rather be at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. Enough with the flowers. And the damn catfish.

  Hellboy remembered Lament reaching for his pocket when they’d first come upon the nest. Lament placed the petals in his mouth and started to chew.

  “What’re those?”

  “Roses. Held out to a woman who died a minute later, then placed on her grave in the sunrise.”

  “How are they supposed to help?”

  “They’ve got power.” He swept back his dirty wet hair, that scar on his scalp even more noticeable than before. It appeared to be much redder now, like a recent branding. “They were strewn on the floor and stained with her blood, so they’re mighty bitter. They’ll keep me focused.”

  Hellboy was going to ask more questions but figured it wasn’t worth it. He just let the guy chow down. Besides, he couldn’t argue with results. Lament’s voice had lost that vacuous quality.

  “So,” Hellboy asked. “Where should I hit it? How do you kill a weed?”

  “You scorch the earth,” Lament said, and right then Mama opened her eyes.

  Chapter 16

  At least it appeared as if the mammoth Mother Tree opened an eye on its great feminine-like face, to now gaze at the intruders. Maybe it was just the shifting of leaves, but it sure looked like a seam in the bark had parted like an eyelid rising. The marionettes crowded around the massive trunk, dangling and waiting with the patience of the dead.

  Lament said, “All right now, give me your lighter.”

  “How do you know I have a lighter? You’re the one who fries turtle eggs.”

  “I only use wooden matches, and they’re the very definition of soggified at the moment, son.” He pointed at Hellboy’s belt. “Looks like you got compartments a’plenty there. Ain’t you got no fire?”

  “I’ve always got fire,” Hellboy said.

  ———

  The girlies started to laugh and Lament turned, anxiety more deeply etched in his features.

  “What is it?” Hellboy asked.

  “The web is snapping loose. I don’t know what’s gonna happen next but it looks like Mama is waking up. We ain’t got much time.”

  Hellboy grunted. They always started waking up right about at this point. The Goliath of Gol. The Baleside Behemoth. They’d be sleeping for millennia and twenty minutes after Hellboy showed up they’d be ail quarrelsome and looking for trouble. It got a little depressing sometimes.

  He reached into his belt and produced his Zippo. Its casing was dented from a couple of high-caliber bullets he’d taken in the chest a long time ago. He kept it mostly for sentimental reasons nowadays but it still worked. At least it had when he’d taken the skiff out and lit the lantern last night, before he’d spent the day fumbling around in all this muck.

  “They say these things never fail. Let’s see.”

  He snapped the Zippo open, sparked it by whipping it across the thigh that hadn’t been mauled. It flamed immediately.

  The girlies lifted on their vines and reeled away, mimicking human voices and making their chatter, waving their hands about their faces.

  “They know to fear it,” Lament said. “I reckon some of them moonshiners held on long enough to throw a burning sprig or two before they gave up the fight.”

  Hellboy grabbed hold for the nearest cluster of branches but the recent rains had wet them down too much. He pulled at the grass, grabbed hold of some of the thatching of briar. He pressed the lighter to it all but couldn’t get anything other than a few puffs
of smoke.

  “The flame won’t take, it’s too wet here.”

  Hanging by their tendrils, the marionettes ceased their human-like activities at the same moment and froze in place. Limbs completely limp, eyes shut. Chins to their chests. At once they were all drawn to the top of the great Mother Tree’s head, and lay flat against the bark, unmoving and forming a canopy of cover.

  The earth began to stir and rumble, and the hummocks and thorny bushes swayed and then surged for the sky, the ground quaking and heaving.

  ———

  “Aw crap, it can walk.”

  “Now that is a damn sight to behold.”

  Replacing the Zippo in his belt, Hellboy snarled, rushed forward, picked up speed, drew back his stone fist, and threw everything he had into punching big ole Mama in the knee. He connected powerfully and shouted,”How ‘bout that!”

  Not nearly enough. His fist barely scarred the bark. Mania had grown strong on the life-blood of so many men over the years.

  It looked down at him. The ancient living eyes blinked at him, and the bellowed air seeped from a hundred knots in the tree, a desperate and vicious hiss of contempt escaping as Mama scowled.

  “You done gone and riled her up somethin’ fierce now!” Lament called.

  “She pissed me off!”

  “I done told you not to hit!”

  “Yeah, well, maybe you were right after all.”

  Lament clucked as if about to castigate a child. Hellboy reached into his belt and found a flashbang grenade shell for his demolished pistol.

  When you threw a punch it was natural, everything else was a pain. They’d told him the gun would fire even underwater. That it was self-cleaning and wouldn’t ever gum up. Well, so much for that.

  He tried to recall if the shell had to be primed. He couldn’t remember. It had been seven or eight years since he’d used the flashbang. Maybe it had been in Istanbul, or Norway. He really should start writing these things down and keeping a little notebook with him.

  “Move off, I’ll draw it away.”

  “You sure about that, son?”

  “Hell no.”

  Mama looked back and forth between Lament and Hellboy and settled on Hellboy. Well, of course. It bent and started coming for him, its anger apparent even without any expression on that vague face. Its hair of women tangled and knotted now as it moved in, reaching with its colossal arms. With the sound of a thousand sighs, it brought a gargantuan fist down.

  Hellboy dodged. He lashed out and struck one of its giant fingers, and with a heartening crash he felt the wood give way and pulp beneath his fist. The huge tree limb acting as Mama’s pinky sheared loose, fell, and stabbed into the soft earth. It teetered for a moment, and then toppled like an oak tree. Maybe it was an oak tree.

  Mania’s eyes bled a strange crimson sap and the eerie wheezing grew even louder. It bent lower, seeking Hellboy out, and prepared to smash at him again.

  He shouted, “Lament, cover your ears and shut your eyes! Turn away!”

  Hellboy drew out the shell, held it in his stone fist, and started to squeeze. He swung his hand into the face of Mama, who stared at him like it knew his name, had always known his name, and that no matter what happened next it would continue coming after him for the rest of his life. Maybe it was true. You could never tell.

  Mama had a mouth after all. A huge cavity opened and out spilled more blood-colored sap and a blizzard of lethal flowers. Then those bones too old and fractured to be used in its luring, female-like bait cascaded around him. The calcium and phosphates of the dead went into feeding the grand vegetation. Nothing was wasted. It sneered at him, and it was the scorn of power, of nature itself. Lament had been right. It really was beautiful in its own way.

  The Mother Tree made to swallow Hellboy. He shoved his fist forward and kept squeezing until finally the grenade detonated.

  Boom.

  The world went white-hot.

  A searing lick of golden-white light spiked and exploded in an insane roaring blast. Hellboy screamed and the concussive force threw him high against Mama’s face. The bark of its forehead bled where he struck it. A ball of wildfire broke inside the Mother Tree’s mouth and soon hurled heaping flame across the girlies lying atop its head.

  Coiling billows of smoke heaved around them. Hellboy managed to peel himself off the great tree, and he fell into the mud.

  Mama tore herself from her own roots and the earth erupted all around. Hellboy’s hand was still on fire and he had to drive it down deep into the wet, black soil to put the flames out. He looked up and watched as the Mother Tree’s head flared, all the vines and girlies catching fire and bursting into flame.

  The mammoth creature turned and opened its mouth as if to scream, but all that came free was the sound of boiling sap and the crackle of burning timber.

  Mama reared, the fiery husks of the flailing marionettes dropping through the dangling cypress like ignited streamers. They ruptured against the earth and all across the jungle. The Mother Tree wept gallons of red bubbling syrup and eventually lurched toward the water, halted in its tracks, began to split apart, and plummeted into pieces.

  ———

  Burning, log-sized chunks of timber rained down. Lament shouted, “This way!” and Hellboy sprinted for cover, the boiling sap splashing across the area. An arcing spatter caught Hellboy across the legs and he groaned and went down. Lament rushed forward, got a hand on Hellboy’s wrist, and tried to pull him along. A huge burning branch smacked Lament across the shoulders and threw him into the mire. Hellboy staggered up and dove after him.

  They both hit the water hard, the fiery husks striking around them. Super-heated skulls and other bones rolled and hissed past, skimming the surface before sinking.

  Unconscious, Lament began to sink into the slime. Hellboy struggled to him, swimming and crawling. The toppling wood caused huge waves to rise in the swamp water, pressing Hellboy back.

  By the time he got to Lament, the hillbilly wasn’t breathing. Hellboy dragged him up onto the shore, avoiding the clumps of burning timber, and began CPR in the mud.

  Thirty seconds later Lament coughed a wad of black muck from his lungs.

  He lay on his back breathing deeply, looked over Hellboy’s shoulder, and said, “Day ain’t even near over yet.”

  Hellboy turned, and that’s when he saw the pumpkin-headed kid and the fishboy staring at him through a partition of smoking reeds.

  Chapter 17

  They had stobbed to the far side of the dark lake and were working their way around inlets too shallow for the pole. It had rained briefly but the black clouds had quickly rushed across the sky as if with great intent. Deeter had his hands on the oars, careful of running atop gator ground and sinkholes. Duffy had just torn off a wad of chaw and was offering it to his brother when Jester let out a cry like a dying loon and both Ferris boys practically jumped out of the boat.

  Jester shot straight up in his seat, standing there with his head thrown back and eyes wide, crying up to the sky the way their ma had when they’d used the ax handles to beat her to death. Ma with her mouth open and hissing all manner of vile words right up to her unholy departure. Brother Jester was now looking the same way with his muscles locked, his top lip skinned back to bare his teeth.

  Deeter’s first thought was that this was their chance to be free of the damn crazy preacher. If the lake had been a little deeper then who knows, maybe he would’ve run forward and cracked Jester across the head with an oar and thrown him from the skiff.

  As things were though, he was much too afraid to make any kind of move except nervously hop from foot to foot, which caused the boat to rock wildly and froth the silt beneath them.

  Duffy knew that his brothers gesturing meant Deeter was hesitating on some kind of stupid thought. He reached out to put a hand on Deeter’s shoulder to calm him some. As he did, an explosion deep in the jungle blew timber and scrub high up across their line of sight. The breeze rose through the cypress and a
ghastly, putrid smell wafted toward them.

  “Lord almighty,” Duffy said, “boiled radishes and cabbage!”

  “You reckon one of them old stills back in the woods done blown up?” Deeter asked.

  “Don’t smell like it none.”

  Jester’s demented howl grew louder. The Ferris boys watched him, unsure of what to do.

  With sparks of energy drifting from Brother Jester’s eyes and mouth and fingertips, and skipping across the blackwater, the preacher floated a few inches out of the skiff. His heels caught on the slats of the seat for a moment and then struck the gunwales as he climbed into the air with his teeth electrified.

  Deeter whispered, “The devil is with us this day. He done paying us a mighty long visit.”

  “Mayhap you’re right,” Duffy said, his head cocked, almost entranced by the scene. “But we always known it was comin’.”

  “I reckon, but it don’t salve my heart none.”

  “Salvin’ hearts is the last thing on the devil’s mind, I s’pect.”

  The strange lightning played havoc across the marsh prairies ahead. The swamp was smoking now. A whitish-gray haze crawled over everything.

  Both Ferris boys covered their noses and mouths, the stink of death heavy in the air. The foggy fumes crept closer and reached across the bow of the skiff. Deeter and Duffy backed into one another and held there unmoving. They’d dumped quite a few old boys in the mud from time to time, but neither had ever smelled anything like this. Meanwhile, Brother Jester just kept hanging there above the boat, looking all prophetized and full of apocalyptic vision.

  “Should we just wait?” Deeter asked. “I’m really hungering.”

  “How can you eat with that hell-broth reek all over the marsh?”

  “I’m a little partial to boiled radishes myself.”

  Brother Jester’s mangled voice came from some endless well inside him. And yet, somehow, it also sounded as though that ruination came from far off in several directions as the preacher began to speak.”lite mother dies without bearing any children. The seeds never taking root, the pollen too strange for the bitter soil. What grace is this? Where is the beauty promised by the land?”