Emerald Hell (19 page)

“From you?”

“From God. And you don't remember a whit. I was too late to stop you from murdering your wife. But you were moving off from her and going after the baby in the crib. You don't love Sarah. You nearly murdered her when she was an infant.”

“No. No, that's not true.”

“After you nearly brained me with a hatchet, I crawled through your house. I prayed for your enlightenment. It was all I could do, bleeding near to death on your rug. But you heard me. You let her live.” Lament drew out a knotted piece of rope from his back pocket. “This bring back any memories?”

“Yes. No. What is it?”

“You recollect what happened later that day?”

“No. Yes. I was . . . I was hanged.”

“You know who done it?”

“You did.”

“No, I was a dying child. No, it wasn't me.”

“Bliss Nail did it.”

“He was rushin' over to save his woman and daughter, but no, it wasn't him. He showed up a little while later, and watched you danglin' for a bit. No, wasn't him who done it.”

Jester's eyes widened, staring at the knot. “No.”

“You done it yourself. You lashed the rope around the rafter and kicked off into purgatory. I crawled to you, blinded by my own blood. Bliss Nail was there, watching you swing. He held Sarah to his chest. I'm the one who cut you down. I prayed over you. Bleeding to death, I prayed over you.”

“No.”

“I ministered to you. I wanted to save you.”

“No.”

“And the healin' was strong in me. God wanted it so. Couldn't heal myself, but you . . . for you . . . I tended your body but couldn't do nothin' for your soul. Bliss Nail carried me to his car and got me to Doc Wayburn. And when he went back to that house later on . . . you was gone. You came back. You came back, but you learned nothing from your journey through oblivion.”

“No,” said Jester, a whine working through his awful voice.

“It's not too late. Ask forgiveness.”

“No.”

“It's my fault. I brought you back. My secret heart is that I'd never done it. That I'd left you to swing and sent you on your way. But we all got our sins. You're mine, Jester.”

They all turned then as the Ferris boys walked up to them, bracketing Sarah and the child, their knives hooking the moonlight.

 
CHAPTER 25

—

“Well, here she is,” said Deeter, who pressed his stubbled cheek to Sarah's, “the little miss that caused such a stir.”

Duffy said, “I been a jot nibbled on, but I ain't complain', preacher. Here's your girl. We done what was asked of us, my brother and me.”

Proud of themselves, the Ferris boys leered and drew back, the shotgun aimed loosely in Hellboy's direction.

Lament grinned and Sarah returned the smile. Her movements still held a defiant air, as she lifted the sleeping child and held her closer. Hellboy wondered where it came from, such faith and belief and love in the middle of a hellish day like today. But he already knew the answer. It was the only answer.

“Should you be up and about?” Hellboy asked her.

“When harvest is being brought in, there's women bear their children, then go bring in the sugar cane or tobacco. Or the peanuts. Mrs. Hoopkins wouldn't have let me lay around, I can tell you that for sure.”

Brother Jester moved to Sarah as if to embrace her, “Daughter, I'm here.”

“Begging your pardon, preacher, but you ain't my father. The man who raised me is in the ground. The man who sowed me is Bliss Nail. I don't see what bloom you've got on me at'all.”

“Your mother—”

“The woman who raised me is in the ground. The woman who sowed me is closer to twenty years dead.”

Again that unearthly mewl entered Jester's decimated voice. “Your mother was my wife.”

“Don't see how that makes me any of yer business, reverend,” Sarah said.

“You come two decades and thousands of miles in and out of mountains and valleys for naught, Jester,” Lament said.

“But the child—”

“Is mine,” Sarah said. “Ain't yours. Nothing here is, though you feel you got a right to whoever and whatever you wanna take. You put your black mark on many. You cursed my half-sisters, the six other daughters of Bliss Nail.”

“I did no such thing. His children suffer for his sins, not mine!”

“Who suffers for yours then?”

That seemed to stop Brother Jester for a moment, his eyes puzzled but fierce, as though he'd never stopped to ponder the question before. “I only want my daughter and grandchild.”

“She's not your daughter,” Hellboy said, gearing up and angling to move on the Ferris boys. He could probably handle a shotgun blast, but he had to protect the girl and the baby. He'd have to be fast.

“Of course she is. She was born from my wife. What else could she be, but my daughter?”

“Her father is Bliss Nail.”

“He did nothing but spend a night of lies with a woman not his. His house was too crowded with their voices, that's why he left.” As Jester spoke, he rubbed his hands together as if he wanted to clasp his palms in prayer. “And when he returned, their laughter and voices were gone. He called the Word down on himself.”

Hellboy said, “I've seen some guys in deep denial, but you, pal, you take the whole freakin' cake.”

“I have had wrong done to me!”

“Everyone has. What makes you so special?”

“I am a vessel for the Lord. My enemies called down the whirlwind upon themselves . . . my wife and Bliss Nail. He suffers through his daughters the way I suffer through mine.”

“You don't have a daughter,” Lament said.

“Mock me no more! I only wish to hold my grandchild!”

The Ferris boys tightened their ring around Sarah, their knives very close to her throat now. As Jester moved, Lament dogged his step, closing the space between them.

“You do this!” Jester screamed. “You blind her to the truth. You're jealous and hoard your child!”

“Me?” Lament said, then added casually, “but I'm not the father.”

The grin never left his face but something lurking within him, an inescapable pain, began to bleed out. Hellboy's chin snapped up.

“I was raped,” Sarah said, also speaking with an easygoing manner, but the seething anger was barely contained within her. Her long brown hair flowed in the wind, and the silver edging seemed molten beneath the moon. She pointed to the Ferris boys. “By them two right there. Your minions. Your servants. Your lackeys. They done raped me.”

Jester's face became wreathed in black sparks. “What?”

Duffy scratched his head. “What's that you say? When'd we do that?”

Deeter said, “I'm havin' trouble recallin' that myself.”

Gliding forward, Sarah balled her fist and cracked Duffy in the face. Blood burst and flew from his nostrils.

“Goddamn! You broke my nose, girl!”

“You two morons were drunk on moon. You caught me out at the cemetery, where I was putting flowers on the graves of my parents. You chased me near a mile through the woods.”

“We must've had more than a couple'a jugs iffun we didn't take you out to a wooly patch afterward,” Deeter said, scratching his chin. “We hardly ever let a gal go.”

“Told the sheriff, I did. He dragged them in the next day, hung over, with no memory. They weren't even lyin' when they said they didn't do it, 'cause they couldn't truly recall. And what evidence did I have? A gutter girl with no family, with no man in town, no husband.”

“My daughter?” Jester said, trembling, throwing flames. “You two . . . savaged my daughter?”

Sarah stood her ground, shaking her head. “I'm not your daughter.”

“Yeah,” Deeter said, “She ain't even your kin. Why you makin' such a fuss, preacher? As for savagin', well, we couldn't have done much since we don't remember.”

“I suspect it weren't no fun at'all,” Duffy mused, “otherwise we'd recollect.”

Sorrowfully, Jester said, “You beautiful brothers know nothing of grace.”

“Grace Sagamore of the Sag clan?” Deeter asked. “I known her since she was just a little bitty chile.”

The acrid stink of burning ozone wafted among them, and heat flashes of ball lightning lit the area. Lament drew Sarah to him, covering the baby. Hellboy had been hit by lightning three times in his life and he really didn't want to go through it again. Jester's hands burned once more and his mouth fell open so that the black fire dropped from his tongue. He smiled at Deeter.

Deeter shrieked, “Reverend, no!” He held onto his Bowie knife unsure of what to do with it, who to threaten, who to stab.

“I am not a preacher!” Jester screamed with his mangled voice. “Defame me no longer!”

Now they were into it.

Knowing what was coming next, Hellboy reached out and tried to get a hand on Jester, but it was already too late. The living lightning inside of Jester framed his body for an instant before it began to leap from him. Duffy screamed and turned tail. Deeter tried to follow but just wasn't as quick. He only got four steps away before the rage erupted from the dark preacher in a brilliant flash of consuming
darkness
that swept out and blasted the Ferris boy like a thousand frenzied snakes of fire.

The shotgun in Deeter's hand, pointed down, blew his toe off, the same way he'd blown off his father's toe the day he and his brother had murdered the man. It was his final thought before his brain boiled inside his skull and fell out of his ears.

The blazing, biting power snapped at Hellboy and skittered along his flesh. With his right hand he tried to push Lament and Sarah out of the way, but Lament was gone and Sarah and the kid were already huddled in the recess of a nearby shanty doorway.

“You're wrong to hate so much,” Hellboy said.

Jester spread his arms wide in a welcoming embrace. “
Brother
.”

“I'm not your brother.”

“You're my brother in pain and loneliness, in confusion over intent and purpose. You're broken and cleaved.”

“Somebody's got to do it.”

“You and I are the same.”

“Get stuffed!”

“
You cannot hurt me, brother!
”

“I'm not your brother,” Hellboy told him. He raised his great stone fist that had shattered mountains and abolished behemoths. And, knowing it would do no good if he tried to crush, smash, slug, or bash the rail-thin dead man with it now, he opened his fist and laid his hand against Jester's chest, and felt the childish angels and human weakness within. “And I don't want to hurt you.”

—

After sprinting a couple hundred yards after Duffy Ferris, with his wounds seeping and broken ribs grating together, Lament dove and tackled him in some laurels. They rolled through a patch of wet scrub oak and came up together knee-deep in mire, facing one another in the night that had brightened with star shine.

Duffy held out a cutting blade and said, “I'm'a gonna skin you like a gator.”

“You're gonna take the beatin' of your life, is what you're about to do.”

“I reckon I'll bleed you some first, boy.”

“You'll bleed, all right.”

Duffy Ferris had wrestled gators, killed them, and stripped their heavy skins away. His muscles bulged and he was fast as a striking cottonmouth. He stabbed forward with the knife fully expecting to feel it sliding through flesh.

But there was only empty space. He didn't anticipate Lament being so quick on his feet. Duffy tried again, slashing now and hoping to open up Lament's belly, watch him seep and try to hold his goods in with his hands.

But again, Lament moved too swiftly for him, and Duffy over-extended himself and lost his footing.

He slid in the muck and felt a subtle pressure on his wrist just before hearing a loud snap like a rotted branch breaking. He turned, watched a bright piece of metal fly by, and only hazily noted that it was Mrs. Hoopkins's knife. It landed with a splash in the swamp water while he wondered how the hell he'd dropped it.

Lament stood before him, arms crossed against his chest. Duffy went to throw a fist but an oddly shaped child's arm moved before his eyes. A regular limb bent about halfway in the middle, with the fingers gnarled and wriggling about a bit.

The pain hit a moment later and he realized it was his own arm, busted near in two.

Duffy screamed and howled and thrashed about in the mud. Lament bent to him and said, “We're on gator ground, son, you might want to curb your convulsin' a touch.”

Drawing his busted limb as close to his belly as he could, and holding it there tenderly with his other hand, already going into shock, Duffy quietly, almost with a friendly air, said, “Please, don't kill me, John.”

Lament said, “Duffy Ferris, I stood over you and your brother on many a night while you snored in your moonshine drunks. I watched you sleep while I slapped an ax-handle in my hand, prepared to cave in your skulls. Many a night it was over the years. The world woulda been a better place, all right. But the Lord let me know it wasn't the right path. I don't aim to understand why He let you go on as long as you did, causin' the evil that you have, murderin' and begettin' your other atrocities, but I held true to my faith even when I wanted to scream. I did my best to see that you had your role to play for the greater good. You hear me, son?”

“I hear ya. But what's all this talk for?” Duffy almost started to grin, but thought better of it. “The Lord God Hisself done already told you to let me be.”

“Whatever it was you needed to do, you already done it, 'cause the Almighty . . . well . . . let's just say He ain't so worried about your well-bein' no more.”

“But you cain't just kill me!” Duffy cried.

Lament told him, “You deserve it more than anyone I ever met, more so even than Jester. Blessed by God with them fine features and you never done a lick of good in the world.”

“Gimme a chance to redeem myself, preacher!”

“I'm not a preacher,” Lament said, “and I don't kill. But you got a call to make amends. Like I said, we on gator ground. You've poached these swamps for years, you and your brother and your daddy before you. You've worked for the people that tried to ruin this land. You got a lot to make up for, iffun you're sincere.”

“Oh, I am, I am!”

Duffy started to beg again, but as he perched himself in the muck he felt the cutting blade right under his flank. He snaked his hand down and grabbed the handle with his good hand. “I am, I am!” he repeated, and couldn't contain his snicker as he brought he knife up, preparing to jam it into Lament's throat.

Duffy felt a subtle pressure on his wrist just before hearing another loud snap like another rotted branch breaking. He turned and watched Mrs. Hoopkins's knife fly by.

This time the pain hit quicker. Shrieking, Duffy went down and spun under the water, the agony in his two busted arms driving him nearly out of his head. He came up sputtering and coughing and grunting, but couldn't clear the muck from his throat. He began to croak like a gator.

Lament backed away until he was up on grassland, where he squatted and got out his mouth-harp and twanged a tune. Duffy roared and croaked some more.