Tom Piccirilli - Emerald Hell

The bizarre procession moved steadily through the jungle getting closer to the lair of the mother beast, whatever it might be. The vines grew taut and drew them in faster like a fisherman reeling in his lines.

Normally, walking into a head-on confrontation like this would only make Hellboy feel like an idiot, but he just didn't see any other way of getting on with his day.

Holding one of the women in his arms, hovering a few inches off the ground, Lament looked back over her shoulder at Hellboy and said, "Be on your toes, son. I mean your tippy-hooves. You feel it?"

"No."

"We're there."

And as they came up out of the scrub and weeds, they were. In a great wet tussock of bramble, chokeberry, lichen-covered oak, and mountainous logjam grew a mammoth tree that wasn't a tree. You could feel its antagonistic presence the way you could sense a furious man staring at the back of your head.

There was only a hint of a figure hidden among the reams of bark, branches, and seedling flora. You could just make out the shape of a colossal human being hunkered down in the mud, its limbs folded, hugging its knees to an immense torso. Its eyes were closed but the mouth was partially open and stuffed with flowers.

It looked to Hellboy like a sleeping woman.

Mama.

Why? he wondered. Why were the slumbering giants always the ones who caused such a goddamn ruckus?

Like waving hair on that massive being's head, the vines rose from the top of the Mother Tree and writhed in the air, some of the girlies suspended above while others lay in wait inside the enormous being's crevices and wrinkles. They laid out on the great wooden face sunning themselves, preparing to bloom. Dozens of the marionettes wafted about their mother, who had birthed them and raised them, and was them.

"Sweet Jesus at his loneliest hour…" breathed Lament. The ladies that held him, with their mouths red from the taste of his flesh, dropped him gently into the mud and floated off to join the others.

Hellboy shrugged off the husks still attached to his arms and chest and watched them flit away. "Guess that's Big Mama."

"I reckon so. Can you make out the web around her?"

Hellboy squinted and thought he saw, thanks to Granny Lewt's eyes, some kind of burning white filament about the Mother Tree. "That's a web? What kind of web?"

"A net of spells, set there by Granny Dodd,l s'pect. She knew enough to try to contain it and keep it from growing too wild. But when she died, the charms floundered. I still wonder if this was an entity she found here a'growin' or if she nurtured it for her own reasons."

"Does it matter?"

"I suppose not."

"I'm going to hit it."

Lament turned and looked at him. "Mayhap that's not the best course."

"And mayhap it is," Hellboy said. "That's what I do. I hit things and I hit them hard. If they get up I hit them some more. There's not much finesse, but it usually works." He tightened his hand into a fist, but that ethereal web glimmered again. "Unless you think you can strengthen the spells? Might give us an edge."

Palming away some blood on his neck, Lament shook his head. "Me? I done told you already, I don't know any magics."

"Right, I forgot. The magics know you."

"Say it with mistrust if you must, but it's the truth."

"I believe you," Hellboy said. "I don't understand it, but I believe you."

"Well, son, you're the one got yourself splinters of saints and all manners of inscribed silver trinkets. Can't you wield no enchantments?"

"No." Hellboy sighed and tried to figure out what the best way to go clobber a big sleeping tree woman might be.

The wind shifted and Lament covered his nose with his forearm, trying not to gag. Hellboy smelled it too, the narcotic perfume coming on strong. He turned away and got the smelling salts out again. He jammed them tightly to his nostrils and sniffed until tears squirted from his eyes.

When he spun back, Lament had gone down to one knee and was muttering to himself. "That fragrance again-urging free my dreams-I have dreams, you know, wonderful and plain, my wife on the porch, my child learning to sing-"

"Here, take the…"

"Wondrous, the places Mother takes you-"

"… smelling salts. Sniff them!"

Shaking his head to clear it, gritting his teeth and groaning, Lament managed to climb to his feet. "You keep them. I have something else."

From his pocket he drew out what looked like dried flowers. Again with the flowers, everywhere down here with the flowers.

All things being equal he'd rather be at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. Enough with the flowers. And the damn catfish.

Hellboy remembered Lament reaching for his pocket when they'd first come upon the nest. Lament placed the petals in his mouth and started to chew.

"What're those?"

"Roses. Held out to a woman who died a minute later, then placed on her grave in the sunrise."

"How are they supposed to help?"

"They've got power." He swept back his dirty wet hair, that scar on his scalp even more noticeable than before. It appeared to be much redder now, like a recent branding. "They were strewn on the floor and stained with her blood, so they're mighty bitter. They'll keep me focused."

Hellboy was going to ask more questions but figured it wasn't worth it. He just let the guy chow down. Besides, he couldn't argue with results. Lament's voice had lost that vacuous quality.

"So," Hellboy asked. "Where should I hit it? How do you kill a weed?"

"You scorch the earth," Lament said, and right then Mama opened her eyes.

At least it appeared as if the mammoth Mother Tree opened an eye on its great feminine-like face, to now gaze at the intruders. Maybe it was just the shifting of leaves, but it sure looked like a seam in the bark had parted like an eyelid rising. The marionettes crowded around the massive trunk, dangling and waiting with the patience of the dead.

Lament said, "All right now, give me your lighter."

"How do you know I have a lighter? You're the one who fries turtle eggs."

"I only use wooden matches, and they're the very definition of soggified at the moment, son." He pointed at Hellboy's belt. "Looks like you got compartments a'plenty there. Ain't you got no fire?"

"I've always got fire," Hellboy said.

The girlies started to laugh and Lament turned, anxiety more deeply etched in his features.

"What is it?" Hellboy asked.

"The web is snapping loose. I don't know what's gonna happen next but it looks like Mama is waking up. We ain't got much time."

Hellboy grunted. They always started waking up right about at this point. The Goliath of Gol. The Baleside Behemoth. They'd be sleeping for millennia and twenty minutes after Hellboy showed up they'd be ail quarrelsome and looking for trouble. It got a little depressing sometimes.

He reached into his belt and produced his Zippo. Its casing was dented from a couple of high-caliber bullets he'd taken in the chest a long time ago. He kept it mostly for sentimental reasons nowadays but it still worked. At least it had when he'd taken the skiff out and lit the lantern last night, before he'd spent the day fumbling around in all this muck.

"They say these things never fail. Let's see."

He snapped the Zippo open, sparked it by whipping it across the thigh that hadn't been mauled. It flamed immediately.

The girlies lifted on their vines and reeled away, mimicking human voices and making their chatter, waving their hands about their faces.

"They know to fear it," Lament said. "I reckon some of them moonshiners held on long enough to throw a burning sprig or two before they gave up the fight."