by Tim Lebbon
“Then what?”
“Then I’ll have a better idea of what to ask this ghost.”
Something whispered then, like a breeze blowing through the broken doors and walls of the dead city, but Franca knew she heard its voice only in her head.
She let out a strangled cry and turned to run.
—
“Hey,” Hellboy said, sweeping Franca against his chest. She was panting, breathing hard, and he didn’t want her to run out on him now. There was more here than ruins, and this was not a place to be fleeing blind with panic on your heels. “Take it easy, Franca. It’s just an old dead thing.”
“I heard . . . I heard . . .” She sobbed against his chest, drawing the comfort he offered, but still terrified.
He knew this was her first time, and that the next few minutes would change the way she viewed the world forever. She had already seen the fire wolf—an impossible thing—and he’d been impressed with her resilience after it had wounded her. But soon she would hear a voice.
“This will help us,” he said.
“It can’t help Carlotta.”
“No, but you wanted answers.” He stroked her hair, listening, ready to hear what the old thing had to say. But first he had to find it.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” Franca said.
“Show me what you came to show me. It’s important.”
See, the thing whispered in his mind, heed.
“It’s in there,” the girl said. “Through the door, then right, on the wall. An old mosaic, and I think . . . I’m sure . . .”
See! the phantom hissed. Heed!
“You can wait!” Hellboy said, and Franca jumped in his arms. “Hey, not you.” She looked up at him as if he were mad, and who was he to contradict? “Lead the way.”
Franca grabbed his left hand and held on tight. That meant he couldn’t reach for his gun, but he felt no danger here. He’d met things like this before, old dead relics who still had something to say. Mostly they hated being woken and questioned, but this one seemed to have been awake already. Waiting to speak.
In his book, that didn’t bode well.
Franca was shaking, and she was cold, and when she stepped through into the ruined building’s interior and turned to look at the wall, her shock was palpable.
“I was right,” she said.
Hellboy stood beside her and followed her gaze. Really, he should not have been surprised. But the jolt that the image drove through him was real enough.
Its implication, terrible.
He’d seen mosaics like this before, but there was a simplicity to this one that gave it resonance. It showed a version of Vesuvius that no one alive had ever seen: a mountain with a true volcanic peak, not yet destroyed by the tremendous cataclysm that would bury Pompeii. Out of that peak’s smoky mouth rose a shape that Hellboy knew. The fire wolf, imagined here in random shapes of red and orange, its fur created from varying shards of yellow. Its eyes were signified by plain white pebbles, and its mouth was a hole in the wall.
“I knew it,” Franca said. “That’s what we saw, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, that’s it.”
“What does it mean?”
He sighed and scanned the wall for more, but there was nothing else. From the frieze’s rough edges, he guessed this had been a rush job.
“I guess it means we’re in trouble.”
“So now you’re going to—”
“Somewhere close by,” he said. He looked around the half-excavated room, and that voice began niggling inside his skull once again.
Here, here, turn and see, dig down, can’t you see me, can’t you?
“Damn it, lady, you’re already getting on my nerves.” Hellboy knelt in the corner of the room, tapped the ancient ash grown hard as rock, and pounded down with his big right fist. He heard Franca gasp at the impact, and he glanced back once to give her a reassuring smile. She was standing there, looking at him, back at the mosaic, at him again. He wasn’t sure which she found most terrifying.
I don’t have time to talk her through this, he thought. Maybe later, when I know what this old buried thing knows, but not now. He scraped and bashed, crushing rock, breaking the solidified ash through fault lines laid two millennia before. She’ll just have to watch and learn.
He pulled out several chunks of rock, going deeper and scooping out handfuls of dust and sand. All the while that old, reedy voice rustled in his mind, but he tried to cast it aside. Franca seemed not to hear, or, if she did, then she was handling it very well. She’d sensed that first breezy gasp of the dead thing, and then no more. Perhaps hearing it now had something to do with who and what he was.
Hellboy, the voice said. Time had bled it of character; age diminished it. It was impersonal writing in his mind. With these old, mad things it was what they said, not the way they spoke.
“How d’you know my name?” he said.
It’s in the air, in the rock, it said. This place has been expecting you.
“Yeah, right.” He dug deeper, and after another couple of minutes his hand brushed against something twiglike at the bottom of the hole.
Ah, you’ve found me. It’s a long time since I’ve been touched like that.
“Shut up and brace yourself,” Hellboy muttered. He pulled more stone from the ground, then clasped the thing he’d found and tugged. It moved strangely, lifting from the hole in jerky jumps, its stick arms and legs catching on rocks, hair tangled in a mess of rock and ash. For a beat Hellboy thought he could actually smell the disaster; the heat of fire, and the stench of gas like rotting eggs. He dropped it to the ground.
“Oh, God!” Franca said. She stepped back against the wall, unconsciously blocking the fire wolf frieze from view, and stared down at what Hellboy had found. “It’s still there,” she said. “Mummified. But how?”
“Some people aren’t so keen to die,” he said, “and some hang around if they have something to say.”
So much to say, the thing said. But so much of it I’ve forgotten. It took you a long time, Hellboy!
“I asked you how you know my name,” he growled.
You know the likes of me, it said. You question me, but do not step away. Your heart beats true, your mind is unclouded, and I’m no surprise to you. But the likes of me are never quite alone, down there, in the shadows, in the place where the light fades away and the dark starts to bear weight.
“Save me,” Hellboy said, yawning.
And of those myriad spirits that bless me with company, there are some that whisper your name.
“Right. I’m guessing they’re not people I’ve made a good impression on,” he said.
The voice laughed, a terrible, high keening sound that seemed to pierce his ears. Franca winced and drew away, her eyes going wide.
He went to Franca then, holding her wrists and pulling her hands from her ears. “I think maybe you need to hear this,” he said. “If you’re ready, that is.”
“Ready?” She stared at the mess of bones, dried flesh and skin that he’d pulled up out of Pompeii’s history, disbelief evident in her eyes, belief obvious in her voice. “If it’s about my family, being ready doesn’t count. I have a duty.”
“Brave,” Hellboy said.
“I didn’t say I wanted it to hurt.” She frowned. “How can I listen? You’re talking at it like you hear voices, but all I hear is . . .”
“Whispers in the breeze?” he asked.
“Yes. Whispers.” She blinked, and Hellboy saw that she sensed true meaning behind those sounds.
“It’s the language of the subconscious,” he said. “Not real words, just understanding and perception. You’ll just need a little help to hear it.” He started rooting through the pouches on his belt. There was stuff in here he hadn’t seen for years, and things he’d forgotten about; charms and talismans, potions and herbs. And here and there, a weapon.
“I know it’s here somewhere,” he muttered.
“What are you looking for?”
“Something . . . Ah, this might be it.” He pulled out a twisted lock of hair, holding it between two fingers. “Yeah. Huh. An old woman in Ireland gave me this, long time ago. Her husband had died, and every night he came to the room, demanding his conjugal rights. I ran him off. Then I asked if he’d left anything personal to him. Turns out she snipped this off before his funeral.” He handed it to Franca.
“I don’t want it.”
“It’ll help you hear the dead.”
She shuddered, folding her arms tight across her chest. “Yet more reason not to have it.”
He held it, turning his fingers slightly so that the dusky sunlight brought out the hair’s auburn tinge. He hadn’t seen the lock for more than twenty years. Weird. He wondered what else he’d find, should he go rooting around in those pouches. But sometimes it was best not knowing.
“You know, you should be impressed by my memory,” he said. “It’s not usually that good. And if this old thing tells me something today, I might forget it by tomorrow. That’s why I think you should be able to listen.”
Franca reached out.
“Careful, though,” Hellboy said. “If you hear other voices, don’t pay them any attention. And tell me.”
“Oh God,” Franca said, and she fisted her hand around the hair.
—
She closed her eyes, and it was like being in a cave with a hundred people bearing secrets they were desperate to share. Some shouted, but their voices were very far away. Most whispered, and she heard them well.
One of them sounded afraid.
You’re the one I have to tell, that scared voice said, because there’s something about you, a heat, or perhaps a coldness so cold it feels like heat, and I know you’re the right one, you’re the one who can help, can stop it before—
“It?” Hellboy said out loud, and Franca knew she was hearing the correct voice.
I’m listening to a ghost, she thought, staring in amazement at the thing Hellboy had hauled up out of the ground. Its face was hidden beneath the tangled branches of its bent arms and splayed fingers, looking down at the ground beneath it as if eager to feel its rocky embrace again. She could see its skull in places where the scalp had withered and split, the skin on its back was sunk between ribs and across the ridges of its spine, and its legs were pulled up in a fetal position. There was nothing about it that was alive. Yet she heard its voice, and when she closed her eyes she felt a third presence there in that ruin with Hellboy and herself.
The fire demon, the voice said. I came here to send it down, but I failed. Too strong, it was! Too weak, was I!
Hellboy knelt beside the dried corpse and rested his hand on the back of its head. It was almost gentle.
“I can put you to rest,” he said. “But first, I need to know—”
Need to know, Hellboy? You trust me to tell you, even though—
“You just said I was the one you wanted to speak to!”
A long time down here, though, ages buried, waiting, and the scheming a woman like me can do, the deceptions I can plan.
“Did you make the mosaic on the wall?” Franca asked. The ruin fell silent. Hellboy looked up at her, surprised, and the scratchy voice in her mind seemed to hold its breath. Her heart fluttered like a trapped butterfly in her chest, taking her breath away.
Ahh, the voice said.
“Did you?” Franca asked again, emboldened by the silence.
I did. A warning to those who would come after the volcano. I expected weeks, maybe months. Not centuries.
“But we’re here now,” Franca said, and when Hellboy nodded at her, it fortified her against the weirdness of the situation.
So long, the voice whispered, and it chilled Franca’s insides. So long, and still I remember. I was summoned here by those who knew, who had seen the demon escape the mouth of Vesuvius. I was to put it down and send it back. But it was far stronger, and far stranger than I could have imagined. How do you fight fire? How to you hold down something you cannot touch? The monster swept over and through me, fleeing Pompeii and leaving the city to its doom. Vesuvius screamed, many died, and I knew then the best I could do was to warn.
“That was so long ago,” Franca said, trying to ally what the ghostly voice said with what she knew. “And yet we saw the fire wolf yesterday.”
Fire wolf? The spirit recoiled in terror then, a piercing, painful shimmer of utter fear that sent a pulse through the ruin, distorting the evening air like a heat haze and bringing Franca out in such intense goosebumps that she winced at the pain across her skin. Fire wolf, it muttered. An apt name.
“What do you know of it?” Hellboy asked.
It rose from the volcano and fled across the land. The volcano was angered. After that, I know nothing, buried as I was.
“Perhaps it went back,” Hellboy said. “Just comes out now and then.”
It will never return of its own accord, the spirit said. In my brief moments conversing with the demon—the fire wolf—the one thing I learned was its utter terror of where it had been, and its endless determination to escape. The only direction I strove to push it was towards Vesuvius, and that was the only way it would not go.
“Then where has it been all this time?” Franca asked. “And why did it come for Carlotta?”
Peace, the spirit said, rest, oblivion, I crave these things.
“You’ve waited so long to tell someone this, a couple more minutes won’t hurt,” Hellboy said.
Foul beast! Cruel teaser, harsh master, cold demon!
“Hey, lady, that’s the second time I’ve been called—”
“Why was the volcano so angry at its escape?” Franca asked.
Because this is more than a volcano, fool. It’s a resting place of something . . . beyond words. Now honor me! Give me darkness, give me rest! Take me from this world of pain and filth.
“Better stand back,” Hellboy said, picking up the dried corpse.
“But there’s so much more to ask!” Franca said, grasping the lock of hair in her hand. It was strange, hearing the voice inside her head much like her own thoughts, while hers and Hellboy’s voices actually stirred the dust of this place. The spirit was little more than an echo of an echo, yet she was still so strong.
Ask away, girl, the voice said, suddenly quiet and calm once again.
“Oh no you don’t.” Hellboy dropped the corpse back into the hole he’d pulled it from, then held out his open right hand to Franca.
“What would happen if the fire wolf—”
“No!” Hellboy said. “Hand it back, Franca.”
She’s only asking, Hellboy, the voice whispered, soothing and soft. Only giving me her questions, lending me her words.
Franca swayed with a sudden bout of nausea, feeling her stomach clench and her throat constrict.
“Franca!”
She stepped forward and held out her hand, but she could not release the hair. Her fist remained tight.
Such a sweet girl, such a young girl, so full of heat and blood and . . . lust for you, Hellboy. Lust, for you.
Franca blinked and tried letting go. She felt Hellboy’s big fingers prying her own apart, delving into her fist for the lock.
Give me a moment of your time, sweet young girl, the voice said, just a moment to sing you a song of the ages, a poem of the time I’ve spent waiting—
And then Franca heard no more. The voice shed itself to the breeze, echoing between ruins as it had for these past two millennia, haunting the night but touching no one. She leaned against a wall, feeling the mosaic image of the fire wolf scrape against her shoulder as she slid down.
Hellboy dropped the hair back into a belt pouch, then bent over the hole. He looked as if he was still listening.
—
I can help, the old ghost whispered. I know things you don’t. Take me with you.
“Don’t you want to be at rest?” Hellboy muttered.
Waiting for so long, a little while longer won’t hurt. Not if it means finishing what I b
egan so long ago. And you need me, Hellboy . . . do you know how to stop the fire wolf? How it hides? Its link with Vesuvius?
“You’re playing with me.”
The ghost remained silent, but there was restrained laughter in his mind.
And damn it, the old thing was right. He knew nothing about the fire wolf, and she had been down there for two thousand years with nothing to do but think about how it had defeated her.
“Fine,” he said. “But just so we’re clear, you’ll be with me, and me alone. You start screwing around and you go back in the dirt.”
He looked down into the hole, contemplating the awkwardness of lugging around her dusty, withered remains. After a second, he reached down and closed his fist around her right index finger.
“This’ll do,” he said, then snapped the bone. As it cracked he heard a cackle, and bringing the bone back up out of the dark, he knew he had her. The finger would let the spirit stay with him, but she’d be tethered to her grave no matter how far from it he traveled.
“Be good,” he said, but he knew ghosts. They were tricky, and he’d have to be very careful indeed. So he wound the finger bone in a leather thong and dropped it around his neck, tying the knot in a very particular way—a way he had learned from a dying witch doctor in Africa, who had tied his own spilled guts to take with him the demons he had expelled from his three wives—and thereby binding her spirit to silence. He knew it would piss off the ghost, but without that . . . well, she’d been waiting for a long time. She’d have a lot to say. And when he needed to speak to her, the knot would be undone.
—
Lust for you, Hellboy, the lost spirit had said. Franca closed her eyes, seeking to question its truth. She felt no lust for this big, strange American. Curiosity, perhaps. A measure of fear, certainly, and maybe even a slowly growing affection. But lust?
She looked again, and Hellboy stood from his task, tying something onto a leather thong around his neck.
“What’s that?” she asked.
The breeze died down, fading away to silence with a whisper of dust across the ancient ground. It was the dust of a dead city, comprised of bones and ideas of those long-gone. The sense of peace was exquisite.
“Nothing,” Hellboy said, still facing away from her.
