Tom Piccirilli: Emerald Hell

Then he proceeded to murder his wife.

She didn't struggle, her hands raised as if to scratch at his eyes. But she never did claw at him, as if too disgusted to touch him now, even if it might save her life. He left the infant in its cradle, willing it to die but unable to reach out and break its neck or use the hatchet. And how he had tried. He'd stared at his hands for minutes, until they turned black and began to spark. But for some reason, despite his rage, he couldn't place his fists in the cradle and do the deed.

After that, his memory became a haze. He remembered awakening once at the end of a noose, his body swaying, laughing to himself because he wasn't dead. Then he felt small hands on him. His next recollection was three days later. He was bent in the road chewing on the headless body of an egret. There were feathers in his mouth, and a group of children stood across from him, whimpering, too frightened to even run.

His once-strong voice, which had brought peace and joy to others, was now filled with ash. It had turned into an awful croak.

For almost twenty years now he'd walked the hollows and ridges and marsh prairies, speaking at church tent revivals, spreading truths, no matter how ugly, as he saw fit. Saving some, damning others, and forcing a great many to their most destructive sin and vice. He felt no remorse because he was only a vessel for God and God's madness.

And now the angels told him to come home again, because his daughter- his very own daughter , for he was the father who had set her course, because he could not kill her in the cradle-was about to give birth. Hallelujah.

These were to be his acolytes and aides: two moonshine-running, gator-skinning, local backwood murderers, as beautiful as Lucifer and just as evil.

They had been pawns of their father, Farrell Ferris, who thirty years ago would beat Jester in the schoolyard every afternoon because Jester would eat lunch alone while reading the Bible. Farrell Ferris, his tormentor, had grown worse with age and moonshine.

The blood on his hands became thicker and redder until he was stained to the elbows. These boys had been fed that malevolence and had flourished on it.

He drew back the rage into himself and released the Ferris boys, who rolled in the mud and wept across the ripped clothes and makeup cases of Marcie Andrews. When they could move again, wincing in pain, they both stood and trembled in the heat, without any idea of what to do next.

"I knew your father," Jester said. "When I was a boy."

"He was the meanest critter this swamp hollow ever done seen," Duffy said.

"'Sides us, a'course," Deeter added.

"You made it last. The killing of him."

Duffy nodded, his mane of golden curls sprawling to his shoulders. "Took a while 'fore him and Mama finally done give up their ghosts. We wasn't very strong then, but we could still wield ax handles. Wouldn't have been much fun watchin' him die quick, now would it?"

"Hell no, where's the joy in that?" Deeter turned to Jester and said,"Last time he made to strike us we got out his own shotgun and blew off the big toe on his foot, then broke his arms some with the ax handles and chased him through the briar till he was so torn up that he looked like… like…" Deeter's hands moved in useless gestures. Try as he might, he could think of nothing that looked as raw as that.

"Like us after one'a his early-morning-to-mid-after no on whippings."

"That's right, like us. And he was hung up in the brambles, caught on a thousand thistles, and we sat down before him with a jug of moon and watched him struggle and bleed to death from the scratches. Was a mighty jubilant sight, it was."

"It was," Duffy said, "a rapturous sight. Yes, it was."

Breathing in their hate and enjoying the heady scent of it, Brother Jester said, "After twenty years of preaching in the mountains and the valleys, I've come home again for a reason. God has set me on this path and finally allowed me to return to its beginning. I have need of you two. God is the master, I am merely the servant. And you are now servants to the servant."

Duffy and Deeter exchanged a panicky glance and nodded, biding their time.

"I lost my skinnin' knife," Duffy' said. "Somewhere in the mud. I feel nekkid without it."

"You want, Reverend, we'll get you full up on some grits and gator meat."

"I don't share food with anyone."

"That much is plenty evident, Preacher!"

Jester smiled in the night,his teeth burning."! eat only what is provided for me dead in the road. And I'm not a preacher anymore. Call me Brother Jester."

"What you come back here to Enigma for? What you gonna do? Why you among us again?"

"I've come for my daughter," Brother Jester said. "Sarah."

Waldridge had a little black hat and a pair of white gloves that he wore whenever he drove the early model Packard town car. Seriously early, maybe a 1936, but kept in excellent repair, glossily waxed, and fine-tuned. Hellboy figured he could understand the guy's feistiness if they made him dress up like this every time he went out to the market for a carton of milk or a pack of cigarettes. The chauffeur uniform somehow matched the Packard, which despite its age still had some real horsepower to it. Hellboy sat in the enormous back seat, which was large enough to fit all six silent sisters, side by side.

"You drive the Nail ladies around much?" Hellboy asked.

"They ain't left the house in years. They used to love piling in back, having picnics down by the waterfalls, chasing butterflies and moths in the honeysuckle fields. Even after they was struck by evil intentions, they enjoyed goin' visitin' around town. They had friends, still had a chance for beaus and maybe even happiness. But that's all gone now. Bad will and corrupt notions have worn away at them. Was a time when Mr. Bliss Nail would ask the gospel singers, travellin' ministries, and faith healers to stop on up at the house, but no one could do nuthin' for them girls."

Waldridge caught Hellboy's eyes in the rearview and asked, "You really think you can help them or Miss Sarah?"

"I'm going to try."

"Tha's all a man can do, I s'pose."

As they crossed the town of Enigma, Hellboy gazed out the window at the quaint stores bordering both sides of a one-stoplight main street. The post office shared space with a bait and tackle shop. A dilapidated set of railroad tracks ran along a pumpkin patch and faded into greater disrepair in the distance. Decades had passed since this line had been used.

Small homes littered the area, almost swallowed by the landscape. Ancient, knobbed trees contorted and writhed in the breeze, the brush alive with some kind of action. He saw eyes glimmering high in the branches and he shifted in his seat.

"Sloths," Waldridge said. "You know about them?"

"Just as a sin."

That got a laugh out of the houseman. "Plenty of that around these parts too. If the corn liquor don't get 'em then their worst ambitions might."

Hellboy saw several trucks and horse-drawn carriages filled with men riding through town, many of the men apparently drunk.

"What are they doing?"

"They comin' in from the day's work."

"Where?"

"Where their daddies and grandaddies toiled in tomfoolery."

Hellboy figured that was the choice way of saying the men were returning from making their moonshine. He watched police cruisers coast by. It was a different way of life down here than the rest of the world.

Farmland and barnyards rolled out into the distant darkness, Enigma itself blurring back into the swamplands. From here the town appeared to be nearly surrounded by the jungles of slough.