A short way inside the cave there was an iron door set into the stone wall, its face engraved with the same sorts of runes. The lock on the door had been shattered and it hung open just slightly.
“Whatever was here was very well hidden,” Professor Aronsson observed. “Someone did not want it to be found.”
“Makes you wonder how it got found,” Hellboy replied.
He swung open the iron door, but, as he suspected, the small vault within was empty.
“I guess I don’t even have to ask if you think this has something to do with the… the body down by the river,” Abe said. “But do you have any idea exactly what the hell’s going on here? How the body got there? Or what was in this cave that was so important?”
Hellboy stared at the runes on the iron door for a long moment. Then he turned to Klar. “Send someone back to the trucks. Get a photographer up here to take pictures of this.”
Klar bristled. “I don’t see what this has to do with—”
“Something started here,” Hellboy said abruptly. “Can’t tell you what it is yet, but trust me on this part. You will want to stop it. I’m guessing you’re going to want help with that. So get me a photographer.”
Klar hesitated, then exchanged words with Aronsson, who replied with a name. Probably a photographer from the university, Hellboy thought, or someone back at the other site. Then Klar glanced at one of his associates, and the other man turned and left the cave to start the long trek back across the snow alone.
Hellboy looked at one of the others. Gustaf, he thought the guy’s name was. “Go with him,” he said. “I don’t have a clue what might be out there.”
The first flicker of fear crossed the men’s faces, and then Gustaf took off after the first man without even glancing at Klar for approval. Hellboy tried not to smile. Then he looked at Abe and Professor Aronsson.
“Now we go to Stockholm.”
“Stockholm?” Abe asked. “The hammer tell you that?”
Hellboy only looked at him. “We’re going to see a guy I used to know.”
“An old friend of yours?” the professor asked.
Hellboy frowned. “No.”
Chapter Four
The brassy, celebratory lilt of jazz horns sounded through the neighborhood surrounding the Storkyrkan. The song ended with a riff of drums and cymbals and then applause echoed from the open doors of the cathedral. Upon the steps of the squat building where she and her elderly father lived, Pernilla Aickman sat and pulled her sweater a bit tighter around her. Though summer, it was chilly this late in the evening. Still, she would not have wanted to miss the concert at the cathedral.
Pernilla did not like the crowd, so she would not actually attend the performance, but if she sat on the steps of their home on Trangsund—little than a stones throw from the royal palace—she could hear every note. Sometimes her father, Edmund, joined her there, but he had been overdoing it of late and was too tired tonight.
The music started again, a sweet, high trilling of horn accompanied by a slow piano melody. In a moment the drums would come in… and there they were. A thin smile blossomed on her lips and she hung her head, dark hair tumbling in waves across her face, and just listened. The music was so sweet it spread a warmth through her that the chill of the night should not have allowed. It spoke to her of ballrooms and chandeliers, dapper men and ladies in beautiful dresses, of a world far, far away from the dusty libraries and remote excavation sites where she spent her life.
Pernilla laughed softly to herself. What else is there? I’m my father’s daughter. And yet there were times when the mysteries of the past seemed dull and dreary to her, and she wondered how to go about investigating the secrets of the present, of modern rather than ancient society.
Perhaps the music does not transport me so far as I would like it to, she thought.
A deep bass guitar reverberated out of the cathedral and the tempo of the music picked up. From where she sat, Pernilla could see just the corner of the cathedral far off up the street. That angle offered no view of the open front doors, but she saw the light that spilled out of them and splashed onto the stairs that led down to the street. She could barely make out the figures of a small crowd standing on the stairs to listen and try to get a peek within. The cathedral was full tonight, the concert attended by locals and tourists alike.
The song ended and another wave of staccato applause rippled through the air. As it subsided, and in the seconds before the piano began to play once more, a new sound insinuated itself into Pernilla’s mind. From off to her left there came a kind of trip-trop sound that made her think of horses. Yet something was off about that sound. It was like hooves on the cobblestones, yes, but the rhythm was wrong.
She turned away from the cathedral to peer along the street in the other direction, trying to find the source of that sound. The music began again in earnest, drawing it out, but Pernilla’s curiosity was piqued. The music danced across the wooden shutters and fat drainpipes on the sides of the buildings. Black metal street-lamps glowed with a golden light that shone down upon the street, creating islands of illumination upon the cobblestones. But the islands were too far apart and traveling from one to the other required passing through long seas of darkness that might hide almost anything.
Even as she stared along that street, a pair of figures came into view as they approached the nearest street-lamp, half a block away. One was small and thin, dressed in shades of gray. He wore a fedora, its brim pulled low enough that the light from the street-lamp could not reach it. The other man was enormous, his long coat swaying around him. For a moment, in the wash of light from above, Pernilla was convinced his skin was actually red, but a moment later the street-lamp was behind them, and she realized that could not be. Of course it couldn’t. It was the cast of the light. He was probably merely possessed of a dark or ruddy complexion.
But she could not tear her eyes from those two figures. Over the music, she could not hear the trip-trop sound of hooves, if it was still there to be heard.
The pair passed from that island of illumination into a sea of darkness, coming nearer to her all the time. But as Pernilla watched, they reached the edge of the light’s influence and were silhouetted by it, backlit as though their bodies were rimmed with a divine aura.
Her breath caught in her throat. Suddenly she could not hear the music anymore. There were ridges on the big man’s head that she had at first taken to be some kind of hat or perhaps large glasses he had pushed up atop his pate. But now a new possibility had occurred to her. And even as it went through her mind, she saw his tail swing out from behind him.
Oh, Lord, no, she thought. All the warmth went out of her. Her hands felt clammy suddenly and her chest hurt as though her heart had swollen and was pressing against it from within.
Pernilla leaped to her feet, stared for one more long moment at the two figures as they became nothing more than wraiths in the dark, approaching her building. From the cathedral came a long, twisting saxophone solo that she felt was almost propelling her now. A foreign taste filled her mouth, metallic and antiseptic, as though she had just come from the dentist. She ran up the few steps to the front door and flung it open.
Once inside, she slammed the door and double locked it, then stood leaning against the thick wood, her breath coming quickly, palms spread out upon its surface. Pernilla opened her mouth and tried to call for her father, but all she managed was the thinnest croaking voice. And then she froze. No, no, don’t call for him. Don’t bring him downstairs. Just stay quiet and maybe they’ll walk on, maybe they’ll go away.
The knock on the door made her yelp and jump back. With a hand over her mouth, she stared in horror as the knock came again, the door shuddering with the power of it.
“Go away!” she cried in Swedish. Then, remembering what her father had told her, she shouted again in English. “Go away, demon! Stay away from here! I’m not going to let you kill my father.”
Hellboy paused with his left h
and only inches from the door, a puzzled expression on his face. Abe could not blame him. It had taken them a while to locate Edmund Aickman’s address. Though Hellboy had not bothered to tell Abe exactly how he knew the old folklorist, the way the young woman on the front steps had fled in terror at the sight of him did not seem a promising start. “Exactly what did you do to these people?” Abe asked.
“What did I… not a damn thing, Abe. And thanks for that vote of confidence.” Hellboy scratched thoughtfully at the small patch of hair on his chin and stared at the door. His right hand was thrust into a trash bag that was tied around his wrist to hide the war hammer that was fused to him. He opened his mouth several times as though he had thought of some response, but long seconds went by and he said nothing.
It was silent within as well, and Abe had a mental picture of the raven-haired woman waiting in breathless terror within. It would have been funny if it wasn’t so sad. Once more he glanced at Hellboy, who shrugged.
“I got nothing. Short of breaking the door down.”
Abe sighed and rapped lightly on the door. There came a tiny yelp from within but no more verbal abuse. “Ma’am, can you hear me?” Nothing. Not a whimper.
“Hi. Good evening. Your English is pretty good, by the way. I’m… my name is Abe and I represent the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense. My friend and I were hoping to speak to Professor Edmund Aickman on a consultation for the Bureau? I gather that’s your father.”
“I’ll die before I’ll let you hurt him!” came the desperate voice from within. Abe was stumped. “Nobody wants to hurt him, Miss Aickman. We found something that—”
“I saw Hellboy out there!”
Hellboy cleared his throat. “Yeah. I’m here. What’s your point?”
“Oh, that tone’s helpful,” Abe chided him softly. The two of them looked tiredly at one another.
“Miss Aickman, here’s the deal. I don’t like your father, but we need his help. I’m not here to hurt anybody. Just tell him I’m here, would you? Tell him we found Mjollnir. He’ll know what I’m—”
There was a clicking as the door was unlocked, and then it was yanked open. Abe took a quick, ragged breath, startled by the woman within. Her dark hair hung across her face, and her wide copper eyes stared at them from beneath that ebony curtain. There was something almost wild about her, and she burned with an intensity that stunned him. It wasn’t necessarily a physical response or even attraction, but a simple awareness that this was a unique individual.
She was not alone. To her left, holding open the door, was a thin, nearly bald man who must have been in his late seventies at least, possibly older. He wore square spectacles that for some reason made Abe think about that old story about the cobbler and the shoemaking elves.
The woman said something in Swedish to Professor Aickman, but the old man just brushed at the air in dismissal. She flinched as though the gesture had hurt her.
“I saw you briefly at Trevor’s funeral,” Aickman said.
Hellboy stood on the stoop and stared at him. “I saw you too.”
“I have wondered many times how much of a grudge you held after our shared… experience with King Void.”
Aickman’s daughter stepped closer to her father, staring at Hellboy as though she expected him to attack at any moment.
“You almost got me killed,” Hellboy acknowledged. “I’m over it. From what I remember, you got the worst of it.”
A smile twitched at the edges of Aickman’s lips. “Eloquent as always.”
“Screw that. You want to see the hammer or not?”
For the first time, the professor’s daughter seemed to relax. Her gaze ticked toward Abe and he smiled. Given the restrictions of his facial musculature, most people found it difficult to tell his emotional state based upon expression, but a small smile flickered across her own features as well before she looked back at Hellboy.
“Have you really found Mjollnir?” she asked, the last word hesitant.
Hellboy raised his right hand, brandishing the trash bag in their direction. “Pretty sure, yeah. But that isn’t all. Something’s brewing and your father’s the expert in this part of the world.”
All eyes were on that bag.
“By all means, then, do come in,” Professor Aickman said. He stepped back from the door, took his right hand off the knob for the first time, and executed a stiff little bow.
Abe stared at Aickman’s right hand. The skin was pale and dry and spotted with age, but in the middle of it there was a hole the size of a half dollar. When the old man let his hand hang at his side, Abe could see the thick gray twill fabric of his pants right through the hole.
“Gentlemen, please allow me to introduce my daughter, Pernilla. She is also an accomplished folklorist and archaeologist in her own right. I fear I have infected her with the loneliness of a life of academia. One day, perhaps, the world will forgive me the crime of stealing her away from whatever other destiny awaited her.”
“Father,” Pernilla chided him, embarrassed.
She was roughly mid-thirties, and the professor probably eighty, and yet he obviously had the capacity to embarrass her the way all parents seemed to. Abe was fascinated by this phenomenon, as he had never, to his knowledge, actually had parents.
“Nice to meet you,” Hellboy said with a nod. But he did not offer to shake her hand. Not with the hammer.
Abe held out a hand to the professor, who shook it with a more powerful grip than might be expected from a man his age. Then he shook hands with Pernilla as well. “Just call me Abe.”
“I apologize if this seems rude, but what are you?” the woman asked, pushing her dark curls back away from her face.
“That’s the hundred thousand dollar question,” Abe replied. “I’ll let you know when I find out.”
An awkward moment passed, there in the foyer, as Pernilla closed the door and Hellboy and Abe moved further into the house. After a moment, Professor Aickman suggested they move to the parlor and led the way deeper into the house. As he walked, Abe focused once more on the hole in the old man’s hand.
“It isn’t polite to stare,” Pernilla Aickman whispered at his side.
Abe looked up at her, stricken with a rush of guilt. “Sorry. It’s just… well, it’s amazing to me that he can still… use it.”
“That’s all right,” Pernilla said warmly, a lopsided grin on her face. “If you can forgive my rudeness, I am certainly willing to forgive yours.”
“It’s a deal.”
The trash bag had been torn away and lay on the floor. Hellboy sat on the sofa, but leaned forward so he could lay Mjollnir on the table in front of him for the Aickmans to examine. Both were nearly speechless as he and Abe told them about the discovery of the corpse to the far north and the lightning. They spoke Swedish to one another in frequent bursts, and then apologized for excluding the others before lapsing into Swedish again.
Hellboy had never seen anybody get so excited over a hunk of metal. And working with the Bureau, he seemed to always be around people who got excited about strange hunks of metal. They moved around the room, grabbing various books, both new and archaic, and conferring again, until the parlor looked as though its furniture and bookshelves had been ransacked by thieves. There were maps and scrolls as well, and a light breeze came from the open windows along with distant jazz to riffle the papers.
“Well, of course it is an extraordinary find,” Professor Aickman said at last, a light in his eyes that made him look far younger than his years. “Perhaps one of the most important and explosive archaeological finds in history. I should like to see the corpse, of course.”
“If you want to go to the university tomorrow, I’m sure Professor Aronsson would be more than happy to give you a look,” Abe told them.
“Amazing,” Pernilla murmured. “It’s simply incredible.”
Professor Aickman paced the room in contemplation. He walked to the bookcase on the far side of the room beside the wide fireplace, stepping
over papers and texts without even glancing down at them.
“I’ll want photos. And we can visit the site to compare notes with the man from the university. We shall have to try to take a sample of the metal, of course. Do an etching of the symbols on the hammer to determine their meaning—”
“It’s Yggdrasil,” Hellboy said, then felt a rush of annoyance and frustration. He had spoken almost without meaning to, the knowledge and the words coming up through him. Not that he wouldn’t have shared that information, but he felt uneasy and even slightly embarrassed by the strange tics in his behavior since he had picked up the hammer.
Aickman froze. He looked around slowly, eyes wide, as if he feared the room had suddenly become haunted. Tentatively he started back across the floor and stumbled over a thick leatherbound volume. Pernilla shot up from her perch by the table and grasped his arm, steadying him. Her father shook her off and stared at Hellboy, then bent over to look at the hammer again.
“Why, yes. Of course it is,” he said, but there was something now in the timbre of his voice that made Hellboy uneasy.
“You all right, Professor?” Abe asked.
The old man only stared at Hellboy again. “How did you know?”
Hellboy shifted on the sofa and sat back, drawing Mjollnir into his lap out of necessity. He did not like its weight there, or the feeling that grew stronger and stronger inside him, that the hammer was somehow listening to them. Not listening, of course, because that was just stupid. But maybe aware.
“I just did,” he replied. “I’ve been having these, I don’t know, daydreams. More like nightmares, though. Seeing things in my head. And I had this urge to check out a spot only a few miles from where they found… the dead guy. We went, and there was a cave there. Someone had taken something out of there that should have been left buried. Pretty sure it’s connected, but I don’t know how. Not yet. We were hoping you could help with that part.”
The Bones of Giants Page 5
