"So you live here alone, now? I mean, except for the servants who ran off?"
"Last of the clan," MacCrimmon agreed, apparently forgetting that he'd told Hellboy that already. "Alone here since my brother died."
With the fat cigar clenched in his teeth, the old man moved to the stone fireplace, the blazing light flickering over his features. There were faded photographs in silver frames on the mantel, and MacCrimmon pulled one of them down and handed it to Hellboy. In the corner, a dusty grandfather clock ticked the seconds by, its pendulum glinting with the light of the fire as it swung back and forth.
In the photograph, two young men flanked a beautiful girl, whose raven hair and fine china features reminded Hellboy of a woman he had once known. He pushed the thought away. The two men were obviously MacCrimmon and his brother. Andrew had grown old now, and though his face was wrinkled and bearded, the eyes staring out of that photograph were the same.
Wild, even then. And Hellboy had to wonder if the man had ever been sane.
He handed the photograph back to the old man. "Who's the girl?"
MacCrimmon set his cigar on the stone mantel, and stared at the photo, a dreamy look relaxing his features for the first time since Hellboy had arrived.
"That'd be Sarah Kirkwall. She was here all that long summer. This photo was taken the day before my brother Robert announced that they were to be engaged." The old man frowned, and rubbed distractedly at his forehead. When he spoke again, his voice was lost and far away. "They lived here, with me, until Robert . . . died. I told Sarah she could stay, that I'd care for her, just as Old William MacCrimmon had taken care of Margaret five hundred years ago. That she could . . . marry me."
The anguish in the old man's voice was horrible to hear, and Hellboy felt the sadness in that old stone dwelling creeping into his bones.
"So, you married?"
The old man shook his head, still staring at the photo. "It was Robert she loved. When he died, she . . . went away. I never did marry. Sarah was the girl for me. There never was anyone else."
MacCrimmon looked even older now, shrunken, staring down at the photograph as though trapped, now, in that other time back when. Hellboy thought again of the warrior on the wall, how it looked almost like a window on another time, and seemed to draw you in. The photograph in the silver frame had the same effect on the old man.
Hellboy scratched the back of his neck, where what hair he had was tied back in a knot. "How did Robert die?"
The frame tumbled from the old man's hands and shattered on the stone in front of the fireplace. Hellboy prepared to catch him, thinking he must be about to collapse, but the old man just stared at his hands, the spot where the frame had been. Slowly, he reached out and took his cigar from the mantel, pulling a long puff.
"Ten years ago, this very night."
He seemed almost calm, until a shudder ran through him and he turned and looked at the grandfather clock. When he spoke again, his voice cracked with a panic he could no longer hide.
"Ten years ago tonight," he repeated. "He died at three minutes past nine."
Hellboy glanced at the clock. It was only a few minutes before nine, half a dozen minutes to go before the dreadful anniversary.
With that edge of panic still in his voice, the old man continued. "He was three days sick, dying, before he went at last. Just as the river was three days, drying up. Now it's almost time. The last trickle will run through the dry bed out there, and he'll come for me."
Minutes ticked by, and Hellboy just watched the old man in silence. The cigar burned in MacCrimmon's hand, but he made no effort to smoke it. Then, abruptly, the old man glanced at the burning weed in his hand, and he narrowed his gaze, as if seeing it for the first time. With a tremor of disgust, he threw the cigar into the fire, which now had begun to burn low. The flames flared up inexplicably, tendrils of fire lashing out at the stone masonry, before dying down again.
The grandfather clock chimed nine.
Andrew MacCrimmon dropped to his knees before Hellboy, tears beginning to slip down his craggy features.
"Save me!" he pleaded.
Hellboy only looked at him dubiously.
The clock continued to chime.
As if he'd been startled by some sudden noise, the old man turned his head and glanced about, eyes wilder than ever, hands on his head as though he might hide himself away.
"Did ye not hear that? It's the doom of the MacCrimmons!"
"It's just the clock."
The old man rushed to one of the wind-rattled windows and threw it open. He leaned out, but Hellboy knew that from that angle, there was no way MacCrimmon could see what he was looking for. The river bed, of course, and that little stone building the man had insisted was built by horrid little fairy creatures.
"Not the clock! Don't you see? It's him. It's it. The stream's gone dry, and it's coming out. Battering down that door. It's coming up the lawn now, coming for me!"
The old man turned from the window and fell again at Hellboy's feet, clutched the bottom of his duster and buried his face in it, whimpering.
Hellboy frowned. "Did you bury your brother in that little building out there?"
"You saw that place," the old man stammered. "There's no way to open it from the outside, but . . . from the inside . . . no. Robert's cremated and his ashes are in a niche at St. Brendan's, where they ought to be. But . . ."
MacCrimmon gripped his jacket even more tightly, his voice barely a whisper. "There, you must hear it. It's coming for me. His ghost has set it free. There! It's broken down the door. Can't you hear it on the stairs?"
Hellboy heard nothing. He looked down at the old man and felt a little sorry for him, though he had a strong suspicion about what had driven him so completely mad.
"You killed him."
The old man wailed. "Robert has loosed the doom of the MacCrimmons on me for murderin' him. I fed him poison and sat by those three days while it killed him. I did it for her, I did it for the girl, and it wasn't ever me that she wanted . . ."
His voice trailed off. He fell quiet, listening. Then the old man jerked, suddenly, as if he'd been pinched.
"It's there now!" he screamed, voice raspy and hoarse. "In the hall, just outside the door. Please, help me. Take me with you. Kill me! Anything. Just don't let that thing take me!"
Despite the old man's mad cries, however, the room was silent save for his blubbering and the ticking of the clock. On the face of that antique timekeeper, the long hand had moved inexorably along so that it was now four or five minutes after nine o'clock. The anniversary of Robert MacCrimmon's death had come and gone.
"Don't have a heart attack or anything," Hellboy said. "Look, I'll show you."
He reached for the door knob, shaking his head ruefully. But just as his fingers touched it, the door came crashing down at him, tearing off its hinges and slamming Hellboy to the floor.
"Jeez!"
As he tried to get out from under the heavy door, a sudden and tremendous weight was put on it from above, pinning him there. Hellboy grunted in pain, struggled to move, and could not. There was a horrid stench like nothing he had ever smelled before: death and rot and fecal matter, blood and sweat and urine, matted horse hair and putrefying fish, and something else, something worse than all of those disgusting odors combined.
Then, without warning, the weight was removed. Something stepped off the door and into the room. Hellboy summoned his strength and his anger, and tossed the shattered door off. He glanced around, and then he saw it, one of the most horrifying monstrosities he had ever laid eyes on. It was like a huge, equine creature that might have been a horse if it had had any skin. Instead, there was only naked purple muscle and white tendons and swollen black veins. Growing out of its back was a human torso, also stripped of skin, with a head that swung about wildly as if there were no bones in its neck. Its huge mouths, both human and horse, gaped open and that stink poured out, almost visible, like breath in winter.
The crea
ture’s long arms snaked out and grabbed hold of old man MacCrimmon, hauling him up onto the back of its horse segment. Hellboy started to roar, started to lunge for it, but a hoof lashed out and cracked against his skull, and he went down hard on the floor of the library, not far from the blazing fire.
By the time he shook off the blow, the creature was gone, the old man's screams echoing through the house and down the hillside. Hellboy rose, ready to give chase, but as the fire flared again, he turned to see that it had changed color. Tendrils of blue flame shot out of the blaze and seemed to touch each of the portraits in turn, ending with that of William MacCrimmon, founder of the clan.
Blue fire seemed to seep into the portrait, becoming paint, becoming one with the history in that window on that past. It truly was a window now, and through it, the old warrior could be seen to be moving, turning to glare into the library with a stern countenance, cold and cruel in judgement. The flames jumped from portrait to portrait, and the painted images of the warrior's descendants were somehow erased from their own frames, to instead appear behind the original, the founder. That portrait seemed to grow, with all of them standing therein, arms crossed before them, glaring down like inquisitors.
Then the portrait burst into flame, and Hellboy heard an enormous crack. The keep, the part of the MacCrimmon homestead that had been built so long ago by the Fuathan, began to fall, collapsing into the remainder of the house. The shelves and books in the library were set alight, but the flame was nearly snuffed out as the walls collapsed, tumbling toward Hellboy.
He ran for one of the huge windows, not daring to look at the burning, living painting, at the ghosts of the clan MacCrimmon, for fear he might be sucked into that collective past. Hellboy crashed out through the window and fell twenty feet to the hillside below. The walls were crumbling in on themselves, but several stones came falling after him, and he rushed to avoid being crushed or buried.
He could hear Andrew MacCrimmon screaming, down the hill, where the river bed was now completely dry. Hooves pounding the grass, Hellboy gave chase. Where the river had run, he saw hoof prints from the beast in the soft, damp earth. As he passed the structure that stood on the river's edge, he saw that the stone door he had found impossible to open, now hung wide. Seconds after he crossed the dry river bed, he heard a kind of explosion, and turned to see that even that stone structure had been part of the chain reaction. It was nothing but rubble now.
The doom of the MacCrimmons had come, all right.
There came another scream. Hellboy glanced up the opposite hill and saw the beast disappearing over its crest, looking like nothing more than a large horse bearing two riders. But the way its raw, skinless form glistened wetly in the moonlight . . . it was no horse.
When he reached the top of the hill, however, neither beast nor man were anywhere in sight. He crouched in the spot he had last seen them, and found a trail. It was relatively easy to track; the beast was so heavy that its hooves left prints in the hardest, dryest ground.
Hellboy followed.
Hours passed, and he made his way across farms and estates, through groves and over hills, finally coming to a town on the north coast, the tang of the ocean in the air, the sound of the tides carrying through the streets. It was after midnight, and most of the residents had long since retired for the evening. In the midst of the town, on a paved road, he lost the trail. Hopelessly, he looked around for someone who might have seen something. After a minute or two, he spotted a portly man slumped in a heavy, old chair on the porch of what appeared to be some kind of mercantile.
"Hey, wake up." Hellboy nudged the portly man with the weight of his stone hand.
The man snorted, blinked his eyes open, and let out a yell of surprise and fear. The odor of whiskey came off him in waves.
"Quiet," Hellboy snapped. "I'm just passing through."
"Thank the Lord for that," the man said in a frightened whisper.
"You see anything strange go through here?"
The man stared at him as if he were insane.
"Anything worse?"
"Depends on your definition of strange, I suppose," the man said. "Two men came through, not long ago. Two men riding the same horse. Only one of them wasn't riding. He was the horse. That's pretty strange."
"You see where it went?"
"Down to the rocks," the man replied. "Down to the sea. And that old one screaming all the way. Wasn’t a surprise, though. I'd scream too, that horse, and the whole thing smelling like a fisherman's toilet."
His voice trailed off and he moaned a bit, and fell back to sleep, or into unconsciousness. The whiskey had claimed him again.
Hellboy scratched his chin and looked along the paved road to the rocks and the ocean beyond. He could hear the waves crashing, and started to walk toward them. At the end of the road, he stopped where the rocks began. There was a cough off to his left, and he turned to see an old woman standing on the front stoop of her home in a robe that was insufficient for the chill ocean breeze.
"It was a Nuckelavee," she told him.
Hellboy looked at her oddly, but she didn't even turn her face to him, instead, staring out at the ocean.
"When I was but a wee girl in the Hebrides, my father told me a story. He was coming home late one night, and a Nuckelavee come up out of the ocean and chased him. He only escaped by jumping over a little stream of fresh water. The monster roared and spit and with one long arm snatched off my father's hat, but he got away clean save for a pair of claw marks to show off to prove the truth of it."
Now she looked straight at Hellboy for the first time.
"He was luckier than that old man tonight. That's certain."
Hellboy nodded and looked out across the waves again. He could see a dark hump in the distance, out on the ocean.
"What's that?"
The old woman hesitated. At length, she spoke, her voice low and haunted. "'Tis the Isle of Malleen. But don't ye think about goin' out there. It's not a place fit for man, nor e'en a thing such as yourself. There's only evil out there, dark and cruel. If that's where the Nuckelavee was headed, no wonder the old man was screaming so."
Hellboy considered her words, staring at the island in the distance.
"I guess maybe he deserved it," he said after a bit. "I'm starting to wonder if maybe all it did was take that old man home. And I think there'll be hell to pay when he gets there."
The wind shifted, then, and for a moment, it seemed as though he could hear a distant scream, high and shrill and inhuman. But then the waves crashed down again on the rocks, and it was gone.
IN THEIR PRESENCE
by Christopher Golden and James A. Moore
Harrington said it was Jacques Cousteau’s fault.
Three years earlier, the explorer had found a wrecked Greek ship and pulled up treasures from the depths of the sea. Harrington said the thing about blaming Cousteau like it was a joke, but Professor Jacoby wasn’t convinced. He’d dealt with men like Harrington before—wealthy men who cultivated an air of sophistication in certain company, but whose only true goal was the acquisition of more wealth. Some of them, again like Harrington, also sought fame.
Jacoby cared little for money or fame unless they could be pressed into service as part of his own true goal, which was the acquisition of knowledge. The professor had made a life out of unraveling mysteries and mapping the unexplored fringes of history and folklore.
Thus, as little as they enjoyed each other’s company, Jacoby and Harrington enjoyed a certain symbiosis, each feeding off the other’s interests and pursuits. Even so, neither had imagined that those pursuits would land them in the middle of the Arctic Ocean aboard a small vessel called the Burleson, with a quiet, weathered, stiff-backed old whaler named John Wilson in the captain’s chair, and a crew of New England sailors whose good humor had been swiftly bleeding out of them as the voyage went on and as the nights grew longer and colder.
Professor Edgar Jacoby and Mr. Samuel Harrington agreed on very little,
and on less with each passing day, but on this single thing they were in accord: neither gave a tinker’s damn about the happiness of the crew. The boat belonged to Harrington, which meant every man from the captain on down was in his employ. They were being paid for their work and their time, and if the voyage bore fruit, they would each reap a share of the eventual rewards. Harrington, of course, would get the lion’s share, but such it had always been and such would it forever be.
“Benson!” a voice shouted. “Gimme a hand here! The boys are up!”
Crewmen thundered across the deck. The shout had come from Doug Trumbull, the first mate, and Jacoby also rushed aft in response. The frigid Arctic wind lashed at him, stinging what little of his skin was exposed, but he felt flushed with the heat of anticipation.
The divers came up fast, dragged onto the deck, their suits rimed with ice. The men came out of the depths with chattering teeth and nearly uncontrollable shakes. The things men would do for the promise of riches were almost as fascinating as the places they would go to find them. Jacoby rushed from man-to-man as they tore off their masks. When he identified the dive master, Toby Hobbs, he hovered.
“Mr. Hobbs!” he called, as the crew got the divers to their feet and started them toward the hatch that led belowdecks.
Toby gave Jacoby a nod, and the professor felt a fresh rush of exultation. He turned toward Benson and Trumbull.
“Raise the net, and be careful about it! Like your mother’s life depends on it!”
Tired of being ordered about by a skinny, aging academic they rightly assumed hadn’t done a day’s real labor in his life, the men exchanged frustrated glances but set about the work. As they began to haul in the net, Harrington appeared on deck, aromatic smoke rising from his pipe and swirling away on the Arctic wind. His eyes gleamed with anticipation, but they were the only sign of his excitement. Harrington puffed his pipe and waited.
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