Hellboy: Odd Jobs (31 page)

"I've seen the stories."

"He thinks
... we
think ... that they're connected. Something's happening at Coney Island. And I wouldn't mind an urban-legend expert coming along. After your next class, of course."

"And I'd be very annoyed if you didn't ask. Besides, I haven't been to Coney Island in ages."

"A Nathans hot dog on me ... "

She laughed.

We wouldn't be laughing for long.

"Christ

it's like a war zone. Do people actually have fun here?"

I looked around at the landscape. Sure there were rides, and games to play, and junk food galore. But everything was a bit ...
off
The stuffed prizes in the booths the plush toys

were unrecognizable, as

though we had beamed down to some alternate planet filled with totally unfamiliar cartoon characters. No Donald or Daffy here. No, but you could get a stuffed Demented Duck if you wanted ... if you could win the game.

We stopped on Surf Avenue right near the Cyclone roller coaster.

"That's supposed to be one great coaster," I said. "Not that I know from personal experience, not that they'd ever let me ride." On cue, a line of cars went screaming above us, the sound echoing down to us. Happy screams, I imagined. The sound of fun.

Was it the danger that provided the thrill? In which case, the riders might be flirting with more danger than they knew.

We passed a carousel.

"That's open all year," I told Kate. "Even in the dead of winter, you can come and try to get some brass rings."

"The operator looks like a happy soul."

The man feeding the rings into a long arm had a haunted expression as though he was operating some infernal machine from the bowels of Dante's hell.

The thumping carousel music filled the car ... then faded, like the rich smells waiting on the wind, the sweet smell of sausage and hot-buttered corn and

of course

Nathan's famous.

"Still the best hot dog," I said.

"They're off my list of edible food. Still, maybe on the way back I'll test fate."

I nodded. What were we looking for here? Some hidden link that would tie the disappearances together, the missing bodies, the drowned bodies. It was purely instinct, but I thought that someone here must know something. This might be a great place for secrets ... but nobody can keep secrets forever.

"Turn here," I told Kate. "All the way down to the end."

To our one lead.

She turned, and the boardwalk was ahead. The sun was going down. Less chance for me to cause a stir, I thought.

But I needn't have worried.

The beach was oddly deserted. Here it was, a warm summer day, sun not quite gone, and there were few people in the water, and fewer still on the beach.

"Strange, hm?"

"Business looks a little slow on the boardwalk, too."

Everything looked open ... just not terribly busy.

"It's the
Jaws
phenomenon," I said. "Something is snatching people around here, and all of a sudden other recreational activities start to look more attractive."

A young man on roller-blades flew by us.

" 'Course, if you're really fast ... maybe you don't get afraid."

"There it is," Kate said, pointing to a small building that sat at the middle of the boardwalk. The building, painted white, glowed a burnished orange in the setting light. Big puffy red letters announced, "The Coney Island Museum of Oddities." It was our one lead from Abe, a good place as any to begin.

"Wonder if it's open ... "

On cue, a thin, weasel-looking man slunked out of the museum, looked left and right he couldn't have

acted more furtive

then he dashed away.

"We're in luck," I said. "Let's hope the oddities don't disappoint."

I walked up to the white door and turned the handle. It didn't open.

"That's ... odd ... " I said. "I could have sworn we just watched someone come out this very door."

I jiggled the handle. Then Kate knocked, rapping hard.

"Hm, maybe it's

," I pushed hard, and when the door didn't budge, I pushed harder. The sound of splintering wood told me that the Museum of Oddities probably had a termite problem.

The interior was dark, musty ...

Kate hung by the doorway.

"I don't like this," she said.

"And I do?"

I took another step in, and she followed. Gradually my eyes adjusted to the light and I saw some of the more obvious specimens in the collection. There, floating in a jar of murky water, was a two-headed baby. It looked real enough, but I doubted that it could be. Otherwise, where were all the two-headed humans? A mummy sarcophagus sat in the corner. The paint looked a tad fresh but then maybe the proprietor

re-touched it.

"Get a load of this," Kate said.

And I turned to see a hand.

"Says here ... that this is the Crawling Hand that strangled the Count Weingrin of Austria ... after he had his romantic rival tortured and put to death."

"Crawling hand ... looks pretty still to me."

Kate read from a card. " 'The Count had his rival's hands and feet cut off and tossed into the Danube. Later that night, this hand crawled out of the river, found its way to the Count's bedroom and strangled him'."

"Oh, it's that famous Crawling Hand."

"Ahhh!"

Kate let the hand fall to the ground.

"What is it?"

"I felt ... something ... "

"Oh give me a break. Just pick it up and

"

She knelt down.

"Hellboy." Her voice was quiet, still. One of those sounds that's inversely proportional to the alarm she felt.

"Yes."

"I

don't see it. Dropped it here, and now

"

"Just stop fooling around ... It has to be right there."

"Stop!"

From the darkness, the musty back rooms of the Museum of Oddities, I heard a voice.

The proprietor, I thought. I turned slowly. I wondered if he'd ever seen anything as odd as me.

"Tell me," he whispered, holding a rifle, "why I shouldn't just shoot you both now. Breaking and entering.

Would be no problem with the police."

Despite the gun sitting inches away, I could have mentioned one reason might be that I could smash him so fast with my hand that he'd go flying out the back of the building.

I heard him wheezing, sniffling.

A member of the coke generation.

I decided to try verbal communication first.

"Just this. We're here ... because we think you might know something. That maybe

," I took a stab at

something. My batting average was anything but perfect, but,

"Maybe you know something, and you're

scared and hey

it might all impact your business."

"You mean my museum?"

I laughed. "You wish. I mean your drug business. You're dealing. Keeping Coney high on whatever they want."

He rubbed his nose.

Kate came close to me. She whispered: "I still couldn't find the damn hand."

I whispered back. "Well, you know those crawling hands. Can't keep them down ... "

"You dropped the crawling hand?" the proprietor said. The tenseness in his voice gave me pause. Maybe bantering about the thing wasn't a good idea.

"I think ... " I said slowly, " ... it sort of ... scurried away ... "

The man's eyes darted about. And in that rather surreal moment, I brought up my right had as fast as I could and smacked the man's gun hand. I had hoped that the pain would make him release the gun. Instead he held tight and pulled the trigger.

"Idiot," I said, and now I slammed a backhand to the side of his head.

He was on the floor, out.

"Good one," Kate said. "He'll be great to question now."

"Oh, we'll just wait," I said. "Give us time to find your lost hand before it finds us."

Richie came to. That was the guy's name, according to the material on his desk the unpaid bills and the

pack of rubber checks he planned on paying then with. Richie Tryp. Sounded like a good name for a fifties crooner. Ladies and gentlemen, Richie Tryp!

Richie sat on the one chair in his office space-cum-garbage dump.

"W-what do you want?" he asked.

The little smash to the head had convinced him that we should make peace, not war. Besides, Kate had his gun.

Kate took the lead.

"You know about all the disappearances, the bodies ... "

"Yeah," I added, "the way Coney just isn't any fun anymore."

Richie nodded.

"We were wondering ... you live here ... maybe ... you know something."

He turned away.

"Don't know a thing."

"Richie," I said. "Richie, Richie, Richie ... you don't want your drug business to go bust, now do you? Who will supply all of Coney's campers?"

"If you know something," Kate said, "for God's sake tell us. What makes you think ... that whatever it is won't get you?"

"Or maybe some of your customers," I said.

No one laughed at my bit of black humor. I turned and looked at the door, still open a crack. Except now the light had faded. The sun was down. Coney at night.

Why did I look back there, I thought. Was it a feeling that something was ... there?

"Tell us what you know," Kate said. "Before this place becomes a ghost town."

Now Richie Tryp looked up, his bloodshot eyes, so sad and haunted.

"I

I don't know ... "

No. There was nothing at the door. Just my nerve endings a little hot-wired. Something was up tonight. And Richie was about to reveal all.

Well, almost all ...

A surprisingly cold breeze blew off the water.

I hummed a bit of a classic song.

I mean, we were, after all, huddled under the splintery boardwalk.

"Enough, Hellboy."

"Just trying to lighten the mood."

The beach was deserted. Nobody as far as we could see in either direction, and nobody on the boardwalk.

"Think Richie screwed us?"

"Doubt it. I don't think he wants me knocking on his door again. Funny, the oddest thing in his museum ... is the proprietor."

A sudden gust. I heard Kate shiver.

"Not exactly a nice summer night on

"

I stopped.

A sound, voices in the distance ... carried by the wind, then blown away.

Kate moved. "Steady," I said. "Let's stay hidden as long a possible."

She moved close. I whispered to her, "Hey, maybe you'll get a new urban legend out of the evening."

"Maybe ... "

The voices grew in volume, excited noises, and then a muffled sound. And finally I saw the group streaming down from the east, from the roller coaster and the aquarium.

"Amazing everyone knows to stay off the beach, eh? The word must be out."

We didn't move. Didn't have to ... since the merry band was making its way to us.

Carrying someone. A girl

I saw her struggling, arms holding tightly to each limb.

"Let's go," Kate said.

I put out my hand out to stop her.

"One more minute. Maybe it's just a clam bake."

The girl's struggles suddenly freed her head, and she screamed, a chilling sound on the empty beach. But someone quickly covered her mouth again.