Hellboy: Odd Jobs

Introduction

I am a cartoonist. Most of my storytelling I do with pictures. I can draw a house, if I have reference, and if I do a good job, I can

maybe

convey a sense of place, mood, atmosphere, whatever. Aided by my colorist, Dave, I can show you that it's night or day, winter, summer, or fall. Not bad, but I'm not a 'real'

writer. A 'real' writer does all these things with words alone. That's beyond me. Chris Golden asked me to contribute a story to this book, and all I could come up with was, "On a good day, Hellboy smelled like a dry-roasted peanut." I think it best that I stick to what I do. Leave the 'real' writing to the professionals.

In the following pages, you'll find some stories that have the same feel as the stories in the comics. Others are radically different. Most are somewhere in between. I'm happy with them all. What I hoped for is what I got.

Different takes. Different voices. That's what an anthology is supposed to be.

'The Nuckelavee' was originally something I was going to do as a comic, but I changed my mind. I wrote it up in rough plot form and gave it to Chris Golden. He, being a 'real' writer, turned it into a 'real' story. I want to thank him for that, and for assembling some of today's very best horror writers for this odd little project of ours. I want to thank regular
Hellboy
editor Scott Allie for all his help and patience, and for probably rewriting this introduction into something coherent. Last, a very special thank you to Gahan Wilson for providing that very special something extra.

There you go.

Mike Mignola, Portland, Oregon

Medusa's Revenge

Yvonne Navarro

Because of the danger involved, Hellboy had thought it would be best to work by himself on this case. Now he regretted it.

He didn't need help or research or someone else with supernatural powers at least not yet. What he

wanted was someone to
share
what was spread out before him.

He wanted Anastasia.

Because below was a vista of paradise.

Hellboy had been a lot of places, seen more things and countries and beauty than he could probably ever appreciate, but nothing had ever compared to this. He stood on the highest point in the area, and lush hills covered in knee-length grasses spotted with limestone boulders fell away both in front of and behind him.

Directly below was a cliff that led to the Aegean Sea and water that sparkled like a blanket of diamonds stretched to an impossible horizon edged with barely visible mountains, the farthest end of the universe and beyond where surely the gods of former Grecian glory had stepped off this earth and left behind the puny mortals. More water lapped at the opposite side of the narrow cliff point, while to his right, hundreds of feet below, the tiny, whitewashed houses of fishermen

too many to count

crowded among the rocky nooks

and crannies that eventually led to the boat docks and the sea. A warm, fresh breeze swirled around him, bringing with it the scents of saltwater and sunshine.

But the beauty of this tiny, unnamed island to the east of Tghira was deceptive, and the water that should have carried sound, should have bounced it up to him like a child skipping rocks across the surface of a quiet pond, brought only silence. No one fished on the short coast below, or cooked, or swept the neat sidewalks in front of the shacks crowded together; no dogs barked and chased hissing cats among the stalls of the deserted marketplace. Even the seagulls seemed to have fled, left the village to the ruin of whatever heavy hand of evil had descended upon it. It was just as well that Anastasia was several thousand miles away and tending to the intricacies of her own life. Here, he was certain, she would find only danger.

Hellboy shifted, trying to find a more comfortable spot to stand, one where the tiny pebbles and shells washed up here in the ocean storms didn't embed themselves into the bottoms of his hooves. He scratched at the stubble on his head, enjoying the heat of the sun as he peered down the hillside and tried unsuccessfully to spot movement. He had no doubt that there were still people down there somewhere, but they weren't stupid. Hiding probably, sequestered in their houses with heavy wooden bars thrown across the doors and the windows tightly shuttered, and be damned to the high summer temperatures or the desire for the cooling ocean wind. But wait

There.

Hellboy stood up straighter, straining to see. At first it was only a speck, but the moving object closed the distance rapidly along the upper outskirts of the village, picking its way nimbly among the boulders and grasses. It took Hellboy a minute or so to realize that the thing seemed to have a purpose, and when he figured it out, he was anything but pleased: it was obviously angling toward him, following a path up the side of the cliff that would bring it right to his feet. Of course; he must be like a big, red beacon standing up here.

He might as well have beat on his chest and shouted,
Here I am!
at the top of his lungs.

Another thirty or forty seconds

the object was moving
fast

and Hellboy could finally recognize it for

what it was: a horse.

A
stone
horse.

Hellboy felt no fear, only a sharp and detached sense of interest. Horse lovers worldwide would despise him for it, but he really didn't care about saving the oddity headed toward him with such single-minded purpose. It was surely beyond redemption, its flesh and heart petrified for all time, its thoughts, were he to believe what Dr. Manning had told him in his briefing at the Bureau's Fairfield, Connecticut office, turned solely to destruction.

Another twenty seconds and he could see it in full detail, watch the weird play of muscles moving along the rocky surface of its hide. This was no fire-breathing anomaly

it wasn't breathing at
all,
just moving with a

sort of dead animation that reminded Hellboy of the earliest and crudest of the ancient stop-motion Willis O'Brien movies. The creature's eyes were as lifeless as the ground on which Hellboy stood and about as friendly; only the wide-open mouth portrayed its true intentions, the lips drawn back to reveal the horse's long, square teeth, a full set clearly aiming for a taste of Hellboy flesh.

"Not today," Hellboy rumbled, and planted himself more firmly.

The stone horse closed the last few feet and reared, pawing the air between them with hooves bigger and quite a bit sharper than Hellboy's own. Until he'd met it face to face, Hellboy hadn't registered how huge the horse was; raised on its hind legs, he wasn't thrilled to discover that his head came only to mid-ribcage level at the front of the moving statue.

Great, Hellboy thought. Created by a sculptor who'd liked working big.

He dodged the swipe of one hoof and backskipped as the front of the horse came down, landing heavily right where Hellboy had been standing only a second before. He swung at it and was surprised when he missed made of rock or not, the statue was considerably faster than he expected and it danced out of range with ease. It circled to the left and came back for another try, this time at an eerily soundless charge that put its full body weight into it.

"You call this strategy?" Hellboy asked dryly, just before he threw himself sideways and out of the way. The world turned upside down as he slid and bumped his way a full twenty feet down the hillside before a rocky outcropping stopped his descent with a not-too-pleasant
thud.
There was a tremendous crash and Hellboy craned his neck to see back up the hill as he felt a vibration run through the ground. The horse statue was on its way, and any sense of surefootedness had disappeared: its own weight had gotten the better of it and the thing was rolling end over end

Straight for him.

Hellboy yelped and clawed at the ground, found his balance at the last second, and scrambled sideways across the grass like a clumsy spider. He felt the breeze as the rock creature rumbled past and a shower of stinging, sharp-edged pebbles hit him, more gifts from the unlikely animal assassin. Trying to watch almost cost him his hold and he cussed and found it again, finally steadying himself as he saw the horse somersault a final time and crash against the boulders where the base of the cliff met the shoreline. Rock against rocks and it was all over; the thing's head shattered and the rest of it broke into four or five large pieces. Fascinated, Hellboy saw the pieces quiver for a few seconds, as though they were trying to work themselves back together before they realized a vital part was now forever missing. They stopped as Hellboy stared; from where he lay amid the rocks and grasses, the dust settling around the remains of the horse statue looked like a burial shroud, a final layer of gravel that should have remained undisturbed.

"Great," Hellboy muttered to himself as he found his footing and dusted himself off. "Chased by stone horses in the first quarter hour

what's next?"

And what
was
next? He turned back toward the village and studied it, this time crouching so he wasn't such a target to more of the reanimated objects he knew were prowling the narrow streets and alleyways. He could see movement down there now, but thankfully nothing else, man, beast, or stone, seemed to be headed up the hill toward him; for a nervous few moments he'd wondered if these statues had some kind of telepathic link to one another. For now, though, it looked like he'd be okay on that count.

Too bad Jayson Paras hadn't had the same luck.

Dr. Manning had shown Hellboy a photograph of the amateur archaeologist and pre-doctorate student of ancient mythology. Tall, strong, and young

no more than twenty-eight

with the sort of dark hair and

eyes that women craved set in a rugged face tanned golden brown by the Grecian sun. Hellboy had accepted what he was in this world a long time ago, but sometimes, when he saw a man like that, he couldn't help but wonder what his existence would have been like had he been born under more human circumstances.