Hellboy: Odd Jobs (10 page)

"You've come to feed me!" it spat. "Demon ssssssseed

"

Suddenly all that mattered to the creature was gaining some attachment to this new, much more powerful host. This was the key to mastering stronger men, stealing souls, forging armies. It measured its need, the hook, the influence it might command.

A word, just a word, would do it ...

The pulpy lips bared veined gums, bursting with an ivory stubble of new teeth. The purple tongue slid over the enamel white heads, licking away the froth of fresh blood and semen before curving with the word just

a word,
the
word

"Father," it whispered. "I will tell you of your father

"

Without hesitation, Hellboy brought his hoof back and punted the thing across the floor.

As the engorged head spun across the room, the sinewy tendrils dangling from its throat seemed to congeal into extremities: knotted vestigial limbs, a threadlike weave suggesting arms and legs, hair-like fingers and toes.

For a second, it arced gracefully, its minute parody of a body seeking balance like an acrobat; then it hit the wall, and the delicate tapestry evaporated in a splash of snot and blood and bone.

Guy bolted up from his fetal position on the floor and screamed. His eyes were distended, unable to believe this fresh turn of events. For a moment Hellboy hesitated, preparing to take the emaciated boy out with one controlled blow if he tried anything. But Guy was beyond attack; he had lost everything, living like a ferret, sucked dry, and he certainly didn't dare to take on this new monster. It was so terrifying, its skin the color of flame, its right fist so huge, clad in armor that could crush him in an instant.

But the head, its promise

Grunting with satisfaction as Guy stayed clear, Hellboy returned his attention to the head. He strode over to its resting place and stared down at it.

So monstrous an evil; so fragile a vessel.

"Professor Trevor Bruttenholm was my father. All I need to know."

The head was split from crown to the stump of its throat. A dank tar seethed from the uneven network of

fissures, pooling in the broken cup of its lower jaw. Tiny arms and fingers wriggled in the stain spreading beneath.

Still, its streaming eyes drifted to Hellboy's own. Its blackened tongue arched, straining against the fragmented jaw as its torn lips vainly struggled to form the word.

"Had your say, Moro," Hellboy grunted. "Don't care to hear any more."

He brought his hoof down on the pathetic object. At the sound of it, Guy shrieked and slammed his own head against the wall.

Moro leered up at Hellboy, his eyes still brimming with hunger. Moro could feel the cheated heat of centuries-past pyres building within his skull. Even as his skin began to blister and smoke, his essence was seeping into the rug. It could not end this way, his minions and armies forever stilled here, at the threshold of their rebirth. There was still a chance, if he could only find a way to Hellboy brought his hoof down again, and the jig-sawed sections of the head shattered apart, prompting another wail from Guy. Intent on his task, Hellboy ignored the man's cries and pulverized the damned thing, bringing his hoof down time and time again, smashing it into shards that smoked and began to spark.

Still, the pulped orbs simmered in their baking brine, the seared lips stretched like worms on a hot brick.

With every blow, Guy dashed his own skull against the wall.

Something gave inside, and he felt his face go utterly numb. He slammed his head against the mirror Francine's mirror

until it, too, shattered.

His cries stopped after he'd broken his own jaw and his bleeding tongue had nearly swollen the back of his throat closed. He mewed like a kitten instead.

Still, the hoof pounded down.

When he could stand no longer, Guy slammed his face against the iron posts of the bed, the edge of the dresser, until he was on his knees grinding his ruined face against the chair, the bed frame, the floor. He crawled to the scattered remnants of the head and kissed them, though they were now glowering like coals.

As Hellboy's hoof dealt the decisive blow, all that remained of Moro burst into flames.

Groveling amid the shards, stuffing them in his mouth, Guy's hair and skin caught fire. Blind, he couldn't see the red demon as it turned from the detritus on the floor to seize a cistern of water and rush to Guy.

Having rammed his ears against the knob of the bedpost, he couldn't hear the demon as it implored him to stop, though he felt the cooling splash of water.

Softly banging his head against the floor still, he felt strong hands and arms slide beneath him. He felt the weight of his nights lift and drift off as he was cradled and carried by his savior, and for a moment, just a moment, he thought he heard the Sunday morning stirring of the
Boulevard Richard'lenoir
outside his window.

He imagined he heard Francine's voice, felt her touch on his lips, his eyelashes, his brow.

Francine came to call twice a week at the most unusual hours. She looked like an angel, but many feared her nonetheless.

Her nursing credentials were impeccable, so it was said, and the hospice authorities never questioned her presence, whatever the time of night or day. There seemed to be some long-standing attachment between them, and the
Monsieur le Directeur
demonstrated an uncharacteristic reverence in her company. In fact, it seemed she had her own key, given the ease of her comings and goings in the pre- and post-dawn hours, usually calculated to coincide with the shift change.

No surprise, then, that none of those who worked at the home seemed to know anything about her. One shift saw her coming, another saw her going, and she never lingered long enough for either to engage her attention, though she clearly galvanized theirs, like a phantom. She was unfailingly courteous, but she never fraternized with the staff, nor answered even the most tentative queries about herself or the center of her attention.

The rumors circled but never clung. She was a pauper, it was whispered, pouring all she earned into her loved one's care. She was wealthy, it was said, through a recent marriage, and her husband tolerated her eccentricities linked with the invalid home visitations out of Christian regard for her prior affections for one long gone.

No, no, she was widowed, others said, and she came to visit her only surviving family member (who might be either her father or brother, depending on who spoke of the matter).

He was a patient here at the home, the old man they called 'Puzzle'.

Puzzle's identity remained equally cloaked in mystery. His records were sealed and kept under lock and key, as more than one curious staff member had discovered. He never spoke clearly or loudly enough to ascertain any accent or origin, and bore no mark to provide any clue as to who he might have once been.

Old, withered, and emaciated, his scarred visage ruined beyond repair, he steadfastly avoided eye contact, and indeed seemed to harbor a dread of seeing anyone's face or of being seen.

Those who tended him did so reluctantly, respecting his silence and distance while unable to avoid stolen glances at his single eye, his ravaged scalp and tattered brow, his crater of a nose. He screamed at whispers overheard, and sobbed uncontrollably at times for no apparent reason. His bed was bolted to the floor without any clearance beneath, and his terror of what might lurk beneath other beds, tables, chairs, or cabinets was self-evident. He shunned books and shelves, and could not be forced to even pass the door to the hospice's meager
bibliothèque.

Puzzle stared out at the trees in the spring as their buds swelled into leaves, enchanted by the spectacle. He was at his calmest and most childlike behavior throughout the summers, counting on his fingers as he blissfully gazed up at the leaves shimmering in all manner of weather; his daytime attendants vigilantly moved his wheelchair throughout the afternoons so he would never be looking up into the sun, a reasonable concern given the constant intensity of his lone eye's upward gaze.

He was at his absolute worst in the autumn weeks, fretting over the fall colors and weeping pitifully as the leaves that fell outside were raked into piles and burned. He sobbed as he frantically counted his fingers, as if calculating some eternal, unfathomable loss.

Rumors that he was thus because of the Great War and perhaps the last surviving member of
le Union des
Gueules Cassees
seemed unlikely, though he looked nearly a century old. This lent some credence to the belief that Puzzle was father to the mystery woman, though the tale of his barely audible reply to a nurse who had once pressed him on the matter

"I had her as often as I wished, my
chérie."

sparked gossip of

incest, prompting many to give Puzzle and his female visitor an even wider berth.

So, too, did the persistent asides about her arriving with a strange man bundled up like a burn victim and wearing sunglasses in the dead of night, and an unnaturally tall, bearded 'red man' who accompanied them an Indian, perhaps? They had never seen an Indian from America, except in the movies. Could they grow to such size in America? The red giant supposedly had called him 'Jigsaw', and had words with Puzzle that seemed to bring him some comfort.

Francine clearly brought him comfort, too.

His fear of faces and being looked upon evaporated only in her thrall. Like an infant, he gazed upon her as if she alone were his world

the world

and nothing else had or would ever matter.

She tended to him faithfully, and at times her singing could be heard lilting, ever so softly, from his cramped chamber.

"Guy," she whispered, so softly that none but he could hear,
"chéri."

And, oh, she loved to touch him, especially when he was asleep in the very early morning, and the dawn light played upon his face.

This one is to Marj. Special thanks to two excellent friends: Jean-Marc Lofficier, for considerable assistance and inspiration, and John Totleben, for sweeping up and finding the original head. I owe a great debt to the work of David Kunzle, comics' greatest historian, from which I drew all the material on Jean Leger and the Piemont atrocities. Last, but never least:
merci,
Mike, Chris, and Scott.

A Mother Cries at Midnight

Philip Nutman

He stared at me sadly over his steaming cup of coffee and I saw then how the terrible weight of his responsibility had crushed his spirit. Instead of fathering hope and life, instead of saving lives, he had given birth to the most destructive force known to mankind. There had been no irony when, as Fat Man exploded, he had said, "I am become Death, destroyer of worlds." For eight years he had had to deal with that terrible knowledge.

"How are things at the Bureau?" my friend J. Robert Oppenheimer asked, pulling his pipe from his pocket.

"How's Trevor?"

"Quite well. He asked me to send his best," I replied, watching him pack the pipe bowl with a pungent tumble-weed of Balkan Sobrane tobacco.

The waitress suspiciously eyed the back booth in which we sat. Not because of the cloud of thick, sweet smoke now pluming above Robert's head, but I sensed it was my presence that made her uncomfortable.

Even though we were only a few miles outside of Roswell, New Mexico, and since 1947, shortly after I moved away, the locals had grown used to strange sights, and even stranger goings-on, having a large, red creature seated in your diner was certainly unusual. Beneath my duster, I tightened my curled tail lest it slip below the hem. Some women, I had discovered, frequently found the tail to be more than they could handle.

"They've taken away my clearance. I'm persona non grata," he said into his cup. "But I can't be a party to it anymore. They're not going to stop. It's all about bigger and better bombs. And they don't want me as a conscience. My opinions are uncalled for."

His angular features were pinched. You didn't need to be a rocket scientist to see he was in pain.

"But that's not why I asked you to come ... I'm acting as middle man. Do you remember Jamie MacDougal?"