Hellboy: Odd Jobs (8 page)

"Yes. Ragna Rok."

Hellboy flinched for the first time. "Great. Another kraut spook squad."

"No.
The
spook squad. World War II, Pre-Ragna Rok, our old circle of friends in the service of der Fuehrer: Klaus Werner Von Krupt, Kurtz, Haupstein

and two others who never made the cut to the big time. They

believed Moro's head was an arcane artifact of great power."

"Huh. More kraut head cheese, like Von Klempt."

"Two contemporary scholars claim the Third Reich sought and found the sections of the transmuted head during the Occupation. Reportedly, Von Krupt and company converged here in Paris to collect the pieces, intent on reassembling it when the French Resistance inadvertently broke up the operation."

"Hmph," Hellboy grunted. "Probably had no idea what kind of party they crashed. Probably for the better."

Kate shut off the slide projector, shook her head, and closed her eyes, tired of talking. "There are no further records to work from yet, but I've only begun to check the local
bibliothèques.
But your dreams suggest

"

"What?" Hellboy grumbled. "We've still seen no manifestation outside of my nightmares. Nothing to put our hands on."

"Seems fair to assume something is still here," Abe concluded.

Hellboy tapped his finger to his temple. "Or here."

The head spoke to him even in his sleep now. Gone were the dreams of dissection, babies howling, and blood; the head was bathed in an ethereal light, as if it were the vision at Fatima. It spoke slowly, eloquently, of all that Guy would have and do. And as it spoke, he felt a deepening calm wash over him.

He would have no more need of money, of mortal love, of flesh. Gone forever was hunger, pain, want, work.

As he listened, he heard the new truth; as he watched, its lips spoke the words, but they began to form other thoughts, other things.

Though his sleep had been restless, Guy had not touched her all morning. As Francine leaned over him tenderly and brought her hand up to his chest, he flinched. Taken aback, she rolled away from him, and slowly pulled the sheets up, careful not to wake him.

The white gauze bandages were wrapped double-layer around his chest and back. There was no tape at the back, as a doctor would do it. The wrap was uneven, favoring his right side. She could smell no disinfectant, none of the odors of a doctor's office. What had he done to himself? She felt hot tears build and spill from the corners of her eyes, slipping down into her pillow. She brought her hand to her mouth to suppress a sob, and Guy stirred and rolled over onto his back.

As she saw the blood stains, soaking into the gauze from beneath, she bit her hand.

Outside, the Sunday morning stirrings of
Boulevard Richard'lenoir
began.

He woke and left without comment. The more she had pressed him about his injuries, the more sullen and withdrawn he had become. He lied about having seen a doctor, claiming the
Faculté
doctor on duty for the night shift was drunk and had done a poor job of bandaging him up. When she asked the doctor's name, he pulled a clean pair of pants from the armoire drawers, put them on, and dashed out of the
appartement
without another word.

Francine sat at the edge of the bed

their bed

and fought back the tears. She busied herself with making

the bed, gathering their clothes for the laundry

anything

to keep the tears at bay, though the ache inside

grew more and more unbearable.

His clothes stank of the
Faculté
labs. They smelled old, dry, dead. It smelled like Thomas had that morning that they'd found him, so still in his bed. Guy had smelled like that, too, ever since that night. The tears spilled anew.

She folded his work shirt over her arm. As she picked up his work pants off the floor, something drifted from his pocket and settled onto the carpet.

A leaf, neatly folded.

She picked up the leaf and turned it over curiously. It was creased and folded like a franc note, and even felt like one. Francine sat back down on the edge of the bed and set Guy's work pants in her lap. His pockets were bulging; she had to empty them to do the wash anyway.

She gingerly reached into each pocket and pulled out leaf after leaf, carefully folded. She set them down beside her on the bed, and fought the urge to count them.

"I found them this morning on the boulevard," Guy explained. "I've been finding them all week, every night."

Startled, she jumped, dropping his pants and shirt to the floor. When had he come in?

"They were everywhere on the boulevard," Guy stammered, "a-and I made sure they belonged to no one.

They're mine. Ours."

She couldn't bear to look at him. Her own shame at being caught mingled with her confusion and growing dread.

"They're ours. I thought I could treat us to dinner tonight, before my shift begins," he continued.

Her eyes drifted to the floor

anywhere to avoid looking at his face, his imploring eyes

and settled on his

shirt pocket. Five or six carefully folded leaves jutted up from the pocket.

He had his hand out now, with another leaf on his palm.

"See, there are still a few outside," Guy exclaimed. "I just found another, as I was going. I brought it back for you."

She absentmindedly plucked it from his hand, like the gift it was meant to be, and placed it on the bed with the others. And she began to laugh.

Now she understood: it was a joke, to make up for their moods. She began to laugh, looking to his eyes for the shared twinkle, and the laugh caught in her throat when she saw the pain and rage on his reddened face.

His words came like a torrent, slapping her time and again.

And then he was gone, leaving her alone once more.

He had hidden the head in the library. With the new attention being given to the archives since he had begun

the cleanup, he was terrified someone would find his treasure, his savior. That someone would take it from him.

There were so many places to hide things in the library. Places only he went.

He unwrapped it lovingly. No more rags: he had wrapped it in one of his own shirts, his white shirt, his Sunday shirt.

As always, the eyes lolled in his direction, the mouth gaped like a fish gasping out of water. It spoke to him, showered him with promises, with predictions, with kisses. It suckled at his breast thankfully, he could feel

nothing any longer

but today it wriggled like an unhappy infant.

Guy pulled it away from his withered nipple. The skin was forever raw, but it bled no longer. The head smacked its lips, and looked up at Guy with hunger.

It spoke to him, slowly. At first, its words sickened him, he began to feel the way he had that first night. But the drone of its words, its wisdom, centered him anew, and Guy complied with its wishes. He took off his shirt and unbuttoned his trousers.

Again, it began to suckle. He guided it slowly down, down, lower ...

The head glowered at him, and began to rise. And as it rose, the babies howled and the crows shrieked and the sky darkened. The head rose from a lake of unborn children, barely formed fetal shapes that writhed like maggots in the dirt.

From beneath the head's ragged, abbreviated throat, veins and nerves extended themselves with startling speed. They spiralled around one another like string, intertwining and swelling into rope-like limbs. The ridged protrusion of the esophagus distended itself at the center of this tapestry of extremities, thrusting down like some obscene caterpillar until the webbing of nerves, veins, and soft cartilage orchestrated itself into two arms and two legs jutting from the virgin trunk of the body.

As he managed to back away from the looming growth, one of the tendrils rippled out from the fetal torso and seized him. He struggled, but already the veins had swollen into powerful talons, digging into his red flesh. He raised his right hand to smash the grip, but another tendril entangled that arm, and another had his left.

Behind the lattice work of coalescing limbs, he could see a line of sprouts erupting from the ground. They, too, grew heads and limbs, bristling with armor, and they began to march The ringing of the phone mercifully cut the nightmare procession off. Hellboy fumbled for the receiver and dragged it to his pillow.

"Yeah?"

He could hear Abe stirring in the bed across from him.

"Call to Search Team One from the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense in Fairfield

"

"Yeah, yeah, put them on," Hellboy stammered impatiently.

Elizabeth Shermans voice changed his mood. "HB, you all right?"

"Since it's you, Liz, I'm fine. Why the wake-up call?"

"Kate couldn't reach you earlier, contacted us with some new information on an old university not far from you, the
Faculté de Médecine.
Could you meet her there tomorrow?"

Hellboy fumbled for the pen and reached for the light. Abe groaned as he turned it on and buried his head in the sheets. Tough having no eyelids at this time of morning. Hellboy scrawled down the specs, underlining the time and street address.

"Right, the Latin Quarter. Got it. Thanks, baby."

"HB, you all right? Manning wants to know if you need any assistance

"

"Just more bad dreams, Liz. Still nothing physical. It'll be over soon." He dropped his voice as he clicked off the light and leaned back against his pillow and the shattered headboard.

"This isn't Cavendish Hall. In. Out. No one gets hurt, right?"

At the mention of Cavendish Hall, Abe pulled the sheets down and turned to look at Hellboy.

Abe kept his gaze fixed on his partner long after the call had concluded, and the steady heaving of his rusty barrel chest had slowed into the even rise and fall of slumber.

Francine waited until she saw Guy shuffle down the stairs at the Metro
Richard'lenoir.
He was on his way back to the
Faculté;
she had time, finally, to visit the
appartement
one more time and get her things out of there.

Sobbing, she timidly used her key, climbed the stairs, and entered what had been until a week ago her their

home.

The stench was terrible. It was the same odor that had clung to him that night that Thomas had died, magnified one hundredfold. She choked and rushed to the cistern to wet her handkerchief. She held the damp cloth to her nose, taking shallow breaths.

She went to the closets, pulling out her travel bags. When she turned to the armoire, her heart sank to see her clothes and belongings already out of the drawers, rudely piled atop it.

Did he want her gone so badly?

The tears were streaming down her cheeks as she took the wet handkerchief away from her nostrils. The stink was overwhelming, but this was worse. Sobs racked her body as she struggled to refold her clothing. As she did so, she realized all of Guy's clothing was scattered here, too, and more of it was strewn on the floor and crammed behind the armoire.

Regaining her composure, she gingerly slid what was hers into the travel bags, pausing to slide open the top drawer and check if she had everything. She gasped and drew back.

The drawer was filled with leaves, precisely arranged and stacked like banknotes.

Shivering, she closed her bags and rushed out into the darkness.