Hellboy: Odd Jobs Read online

  mythical creatures that came back to life bonded with them

  would not die on their own.

  And so the townsfolk

  those who finally came out of hiding now that the worst was over moved in to

  complete the slaughter.

  The more recent victims of Medusa were returning to flesh as well, but most of them were dead or in the same shape as the ancient ones. Nothing could be done for them, and their fate was the same: faces grim with mourning, the inhabitants of the village exercised their hands at killing, then spread the bodies of old and new side by side.

  The village's menfolk found Jayson Paras, resurrected from stone but still locked and wandering aimlessly in the lower level of the tiny, local museum. Ironically unscathed, the amateur archaeologist insisted he'd been sleeping and that he'd had some kind of nightmare. Everyone thought he was quite mad.

  And all Paras ever talked about, from that day forward, was an image from the dream that he couldn't get out of his head.

  Snakes.

  Jigsaw

  Stephen R. Bissette

  Oh, she loved to touch him, especially when he was asleep in the early morning. Guy had labored through the night shift at one job or another as long as she had known him. He came home as the night faded, quietly shedding his clothes to slide into bed, stirring Francine as he fell into sleep. This was his ritual, their ritual, and it had been so for the five years they had been living together. She was his touchstone, his vacation, his salvation, and they shared their fleeting waking hours and Sundays with no one.

  That was just as she liked it. Though she tolerated his complaints whenever necessary, it gave their time together an urgency she reveled in. They had struck a unique rhythm together, apart from everyone and anyone around them, and his work schedule was instrumental in keeping the world at bay.

  And when Guy slept, it was bliss.

  Her bliss.

  Hers alone, with him.

  His scent always carried his current employment home, like a bee carrying pollen to the hive. Of late, Francine and Guy shared the musk of the hospice where they had met, stealing away from the dusk-to-dawn caverns of the ward. The hospice was their shared workplace, an easy walk from their appartement. Its patients were their surrogate children to care for and commiserate over, its odors theirs to cling to. The scents of their world and their bodies mingled amid the bedclothes like a shared kiss after coffee, tongues heavy with the earthy aftertaste of the waking hours.

  This morning, the familiar tang of his own sweat was tinged with an unfamiliar melange of dust, detergents, and dampness she was becoming accustomed to, the clinging remnants of his janitorial duties at the Faculté de Médecine. It was a commute on the Metro, a weekend addition to his duties at the hospice, but they needed the money, and Guy had welcomed the additional income.

  Though he bemoaned their lack of waking time together because of his work schedule, she secretly savored the dawn hour. As he lay still as a sleeping infant, it was her hour with him, alone, and no one ever disturbed it. It was her anchor and her pleasure, and it reminded her of the morning she'd first fallen for him.

  Sunday mornings let her drink him in at her own pace: softly, slowly, without feeling like a thief stealing glances. She savored the glow that filtered into the bedroom, gradually illuminated his close-cropped bristle of blond hair, the smooth curve of his brow and sculpted slopes of his child-like nose, the softness of his eyelashes, his thin lips, the gentle pulsing of his throat, the rise and fall of his hairless chest. He still looked like a teenage boy.

  The touch of dawn's rays invited her fingers to follow their lead.

  "Chéri ... "

  At times, he would sleep soundly despite her whispers and gentle caress; at times, she would rouse him, and the morning would be theirs. That was wonderful, too

  but when sleep veiled her touch, the hands of the

  clock ceased to move, he remained oblivious to Sunday church bells and the stirring of the Boulevard Richard'lenoir outside, and he was hers.

  Hers, as ever, it seemed.

  And as ever, she wondered what he was dreaming.

  He could barely see the outline of the tall man who plucked his face to pieces. Blood filled his eyes, and try as he might to blink and clear them, it did no good. Without eyelids, the urge to blink only pained him. Part of him didn't care to see, really. He could feel the heat of the blood, taste it in his mouth. How could he help it, now that his lips were gone?

  Despite the chanting and the crying of the infants, he could hear the music of the cutting tools and the insistent slushy whispers of the incisions. There was a metallic sting across his hairline, the furrow of the blade gliding into his brow and deep into his remaining cheek. The cutting seemed endless, though he knew there had to be an end to it soon. How much more could they remove before his skull was picked clean?

  Then he heard the cold clang of a saw, and felt its blade rest against his jaw.

  The chanting faded as if on cue, followed by the inviting gurgle of running water. Its cold bite spilled over and into his wounds, across his flayed rictus grin and between his remaining teeth. He instinctively gulped at it, embraced it with the stump of his tongue, straining his neck to move toward its source until the stream of water lifted and poured into his lidless eyes, washing his vision clear for a moment.

  The tall, gowned man still stood over him, bonesaw in hand, now held ceremoniously aloft.

  The gown was adorned with arcane symbols, their patterns confused by the spots of dark blood and bits of flesh. Among them, though, one stood out: an arc within a square, bisected by a sword.

  There were other figures behind and above him, and the sound of shrieking birds and yowling children, but only the surgeon was visible, methodically disassembling him, skin from muscle, tendon from bone, molar by molar.

  The surgeon leaned in close, and muttered in a low, almost inaudible Teutonic voice:

  "I will tell you of your father ... "

  He bolted awake, slamming the stumps of his horns against the headboard, inadvertently splintering it a second later as his outsized right fist flailed out. The stony knuckles shattered the dried wood like pasteboard.

  His tail lashed out from under the blankets, slamming against the night table, spilling lamp, phone, and note pad across the rug.

  "The BPRD isn't going to keep covering the damage deposit," said the cold man reading in the chair across the room.

  "Jeez," Hellboy whispered, clamping his left hand over his eyes.

  "You all right?" the cold man inquired, glancing up from his book.

  Hellboy touched his face tentatively, savoring the feel of bristle, brow, and the ridge of his pug nose. He shook his head to clear his mind, wincing at the vivid authenticity of the nightmare.

  His tongue slid over his teeth

  all in place

  and lips, blessedly intact. He leaned forward, head still in

  hand, and cleared his throat.

  "Yeah, Abe," he said, "I'm peachy."

  Abraham's gills fluttered as they always did before speaking.

  "Can it," Hellboy muttered, "They're just dreams

  "

  "Of your head being methodically flayed and sectioned."

  As he placed his book in his lap, Abraham's amphibian gaze betrayed none of the concern that resonated in his voice.

  "I'll call the Bureau for you," Abe offered. "Could you make out anything more this time?"

  Hellboy sat up in the bed, dropping his hooves to the floor. He fumbled for the phone, pushing aside the torn lamp shade to retrieve the receiver. He busied himself for a moment tidying up the mess, twisting the bulb of the righted lamp and grunting with pleasure when the light flickered on. Turning his attention to the shattered headboard, he traced the center of impact with a blackened fingernail.

  The silence hung between them, eased only by the wet suction of Abraham's breathing.

  "I still can almost make out the symbols on his robe
," Hellboy whispered. "But there's too much blood obscuring things. They're alchemical in nature, I'm sure. And

  "

  Abe's sticky breath: In. Out.

  Hellboy reached down to pick up the hotel stationery pad. The ornate masthead of the Hotel de la Cathédrale graced the top of each sheet of paper, framed with leering gargoyles.

  Hellboy paused a moment, pen poised at the thatch of hair under his lip, then drew the symbol he recalled from the gown in the dream: an arc, within a square, split by a single sword, point down. The blade was curved, disrupting the crucifixion symbol of most European inverted swords: this was not a cross. He handed it to Abe and walked to the window.

  Outside, the gargoyles of the Notre Dame Cathedral met his gaze.

  "There was something else. He spoke to me this time. German."

  The gargoyles' eyes expressed nothing, just as Abe's lidless glare betrayed nothing.

  "Big promises about ... my father."

  Abe looked away, as if pondering the curtains or the bidet.

  "We're about done with the Cocteau manifestation. Manning said there was something else here in Paris,"

  Abe stated flatly, "but he said nothing about its link to you. You're picking up more and more information, the closer we get to the source."

  "There's nothing psychic about it," Hellboy grumbled. "What a pain in the ass ... "

  "Liz disagrees. So does Manning."

  Hellboy glared at Abe. "And you?"

  That fishy grin, betraying nothing. "Anything else you can recall?"

  Hellboy touched his face again, unconsciously tracing the line of his jaw with his fingers.

  "A bonesaw, the bastard had a bonesaw. Was going to take my jaw off this time."

  "Watch some television," Abe said soothingly. "I'll call the BPRD once you've settled down. I'll scan and fax your drawing over, too."

  Hellboy abandoned the window and moved to the bed. Kicking off the blankets, he leaned back into his pillow, his jaw clenched.

  "Yeah, great, French TV," he muttered. "TF1, FR2, M6, Le Cinque nothing but mindless variétés this time

  of night. The novelty has worn off. You know, I miss the British news programs Liz had us watching last weekend. They had an amusing attitude about the French."

  "Until we wrap up loose ends on the Cocteau visitation, we're stuck here," Abe reminded him. "The locale has intensified your nightmares, too, which has given the Bureau reason to drag their feet a bit longer. Better start learning French, or find some SECAM videos."

  "Ducky. Go soak in the tub, would you?"

  "There's always the music videos I picked up in London," Abe grinned. "This Magnetoscope plays PAL as well as SECAM."

  "Spare me," Hellboy muttered. Reaching for the remote, he punched the play button and resumed watching the SECAM conversions Liz had sent along of the medical channel from the satellite at home. A retinal operation, by the look of things, filmed with clinical detachment. The blessedly English-speaking narrator purred professionally, her explanations lost on Hellboy.

  "Suit yourself," Abe grunted, returning to his book.

  Hellboy packed his pillows against the ruined headboard and leaned back, awash in the cool light of the screen.

  When it was someone else's problem, there was a certain fascination in seeing an eye so neatly breached, a

  perverse pleasure to be savored in the precision of the arc of the cut.

  "I've still one good eye," the old man cackled. "Your petite belle is a saint, so mind your manners about her, Guy."

  "Thomas, I meant no insult." Guy grinned.

  "Don't speak of your chéri that way," Thomas grimaced. "I won't hear of it."

  Guy and Francine each had their favorites among the patients, but Thomas was Guy's only friend among them. The old man was approaching a century in age, but few people offered him the respect his tenacity had earned. Guy was one of the few who seemed undisturbed by the old man's gruff manner, barely coherent speech, and disfigured visage. When he grimaced like this, it emphasized the puckered ridge of scar tissue where his nose had once been.

  "Pardon!" Guy laughed, "Never again!"

  It was rumored that Thomas was the last surviving fossil of the Union des Gueles Cassees, World War I veterans who had lost limbs and faces in the trenches, but Guy had never bothered to ask Thomas. It seemed possible; surely, teenagers had fought there, too, and the hospice bedded many veterans of later wars.

  Thomas never spoke of the war, any war, or the cause of his mutilation, so Guy never inquired. It seemed unimportant.

  Thomas was his own man, and Guy felt a great affinity with him.

  Thomas's voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper.

  "How is the new job going at the Faculté de Médecine?" he asked.

  Guy pulled his chair closer to Thomas's bedside and leaned in to speak softly. Fraternizing so with the patients was discouraged, of course, as death was a frequent visitor to the home. Francine and Guy had been repeatedly warned not to grow too close to any of their wards. They acknowledged the cold logic of the rules, given the high mortality rate, but neither could maintain the aloof stoicism of the older nurses or the callous disregard of their more cynical workmates.

  "Fine, I think," Guy whispered. "I can't tell yet if they're giving me all the shit details as an initiation, or if that's what they hired me for."

  "What did you find last week sweeping up the bibliothèque?" Thomas asked, his finger crooked to urge Guy closer with his reply. "Anything of interest?"

  "Nothing much," Guy whispered back. "A cloth bookmark for Francine. No one will ever miss it. Very ornate, she loves it. But you could hide anything in some of the nooks and crannies of that library."

  Thomas grunted and nodded, though he couldn't hide his disappointment. Guy leaned in closer with the promise of treasure yet to be found.

  "They've got me assigned to the medical archives for the rest of the season. Some rooms haven't been touched in decades, I'm told."

  "Ah!" Thomas grunted with satisfaction. "If you find my arm there, bring it back for me, will you?"

  There was much to despise about the hospice job

  long hours, low pay; bedpans, bedsores, and constant

  illness; accusations and abuse from suspicious relatives or uncaring visitors vainly asserting their regard for discarded lives; the thieving of greedy siblings, adult children, and untrustworthy caregivers; the tenants'

  bottomless sorrow, depression, and despair; the merciless dimming of eyes, hearts, and lives. All there was to love in it were the people like Thomas who somehow retained their dignity and heart amid the remnants of so many dwindling sparks.

  "Go on with you," Thomas croaked. "Steal some dinner with your belle before you head off to your new job.

  Long, long night ahead of you, mon frère."

  Guy squeezed Thomas's lone hand, and bid him adieu. There were others to attend to within the remaining hour, and the long Metro ride to the Faculté ahead of him.

  But between the two, there was a fleeting meal with Francine at the cafe on the corner, right by the Metro Richard'lenoir entrance. He had enough to cover their dinner and his round trip on the Metro.

  Tomorrow, he would have something for Thomas.

  To Abraham, the soft green of the hotel phone looked like a bar of soap perched on the expanse of Hellboy's blazing-red palm.

  When Abe held the phone, it disappeared against his skin, as if he were made of the same wet-looking plastic the same color and contours of the bathroom tub, sink, commode, and the bidet. Having memorized the visage of every Notre Dame gargoyle facing their windows, and unable to leave the room without wrapping himself up like the Invisible Man, Abe had taken to finding small pleasures in the textures of the room itself.

  It was a meditative art lost on his travel partner.

  "Like a fish in a fish bowl," Hellboy had chuckled when Abe had tried to share his observations earlier that morning. "We're gonna kill each other if we stay cooped up in this
shoe box much longer."

  Hellboy's flat, stony hand was cupped around the phone like a monstrous soap dish, enhancing the illusion.

  His normal hand held the phone to his ear, jade within fire, as Elizabeth Sherman drove the final nail into her arguments for them to stay put in Paris another week.

  "Listen, HB, Kate's on her way over to you in a day or two," Liz concluded. "That drawing from your most recent dream kicked up some dust for her, and she believes you're onto something."

  "Pah," he scoffed. Abe recognized the slow sagging of Hellboy's shoulders: they would be staying longer, floundering in the fish bowl.

  "All right. If the Bureau can justify the expense, there must be something to all this. When's Katie arriving?"

  Abe savored the shifting of green on red, emerald plastic on flame-baked skin, as Hellboy shifted the phone to the crook of his neck and struggled with pen and pad to take down Liz's instructions.

  "Yes, I'll have her call you," he growled. "No, we're not far at all from the Palais de Justice, and the prefecture de police is right down the boulevard. Later, Liz."

  He hung up, returning the receiver to its cradle.

  There was an inexplicably delicious completion in the coupling of smooth green on green between the sinewy

  scarlet left and the hammered red right hand. Abe's gaze drifted up to Hellboy's brooding brow.

  "What the hell are you grinning at, fish face?"

  Weary from the day at the hospice and the Metro ride, Guy shuffled his way through the halls of the Faculté de Médecine. He'd already lost his way twice this evening, and hoped he was finally cleaning the right room.

  It was a storage room, of that there could be no doubt. He just hoped it was the correct one. He double-checked the number on the Directeur's note against the faded numbers on the door, and went to work.

  It had perhaps once been used for classes, but the desks and chairs were stacked against the far wall, shrouded in cobwebs and dust. The other two walls were nothing but shelves, piled high with books, boxes, files, dirt-opaqued jars and instruments, and all manner of paraphernalia.