Folie A Deux

Nancy Holder

1967, Yokosuka Naval Base, Yokosuka, Japan. It was monsoon season. In Japan, the rain was like a steady stream of water escaping from an overhead boiler pipe. Vietnam, it was said, was raining blood, there was so much killing. The blood on the jungle floor made you slip and slide, and if you fell face down, you drowned in it. Rice was coming up pink, because the paddies were saturated with blood. As Hellboy strode through the hospital grounds, men in blue pajamas, blue-and-white-striped summer bathrobes, and rubber thongs of various colors turned to stare at him. He was used to it: His skin was crimson and cracked, as if someone had peeled the outer layers away, the new skin cross-hatched with blood vessels. He had no feet; but while some of the men who stared at him, slack jawed, were double amputees, Hellboy's legs ended in hooves. From beneath his trench coat, his tail alternately curled and bobbed against the tarmac. Hellboy was a double amputee in his own right — however, it was his thick, enormous horns that had been sheared off.

His right hand was made of stone, or of something like stone. Still, it was something to stare at in revolted fascination. Which these men did; these men who had been mutilated and deformed.

Not by design, as Hellboy had been, but by war.

It was 1967, and the conflict in Vietnam was raging. Yokosuka was one of the hospitals that received the US military war wounded.

Physically wounded, and psychically wounded; despite the best efforts of the field hospitals to maintain a workable system of triage, dozens, if not hundreds, of the men sent to Yokosuka to be put back together were beyond repair.

Some of the faces that stared at him as he walked past the hospital incinerator — a small, dark tower that reeked of cooking meat — were definitely beyond repair. Eyes missing, noses, jaws, the spark of life missing. There were men in wheelchairs and men on crutches and men walking along very slowly in the extreme humidity, shuffling in their rubber sandals like mummies from a horror film.

War, what is it good for?

Absolutely ... nothin'.

Only, Hellboy didn't believe that. There were causes worth going to hell for, and back. And if he wasn't so goddamned indestructible, he'd have been in one of those wheelchairs — or in the incinerator, in pieces — long ago.

But that was as far as philosophy took him. He was here on assignment from the Bureau. He planned to carry out his mission and get the hell out of Japan. The humidity was miserable.

The atmosphere, worse.

The MPs were edgy today. Though alerted — warned — of Hellboy's visit, briefed and debriefed about his appearance, the guards had tightened their grips on their M-16s when he had been escorted onto the base. To make matters worse, the Japanese Communist Party was holding a demonstration later in the day; soon the streets outside the insular world of the base would be congested with men, women, and children who were being paid 360 yen — one US dollar — plus lunch, to scream, "Yankee, go home!"

As Hellboy neared the door to A-22, the lockup ward, he caught the movement of an armed Marine — an MP — the man's hand slipping toward the side-arm in his holster. Hellboy looked at him — simply looked — and the man paled and dropped his hand to his side. He gave Hellboy a nod of his head, as if to grant him permission to proceed.

Not that Hellboy needed any.

The office of the Chief of Psychiatry was just inside the door, giving the doctor immediate access to the inmates. Hellboy was surprised: in his experience, shrinks usually sealed themselves away, and it was the patients who came to them.

A corpsman looked up from a desk in the outer office and executed a shocked double take. Then he rose, sharply saluted, and said, "Mr. Boy, sir. Capt. Broderman's expecting you."

Hellboy said nothing. The corpsman — who couldn't have been older than twenty-two, and that was being generous — crossed the room and rapped on a door.

"Yes." The voice was gentle.

"Dr. Broderman, Mr. Boy is here."

There was a chuckle. "Please ask him to come in."

Hellboy crossed the office, his hooves making noise on the government-issue tile floor. The hospital had been taken over after the defeat of Japan in 1945, and he had no idea when it had been built. It felt old.

Today, Hellboy felt old.

Back at BPRD headquarters, Dr. Tom Manning had briefed Hellboy on his assignment. As a result, Dr. Broderman was precisely what he'd been expecting. Tall, rugged, with precise military bearing. Not your most compassionate psychiatrist, according to his dossier.

"Hellboy," the good doctor said, rising from behind his desk.

Hellboy inclined his head. "Capt. Broderman."

"Thanks for coming. I appreciate it." He gestured for Hellboy to be seated while he looked past his shoulder at the corpsman. "Coffee for two. Both black."

So. Broderman had been briefed on him, too.

"Yes, sir," the corpsman said, and withdrew, shutting the door behind himself.

As soon as the knob stopped turning, the mask came off. Broderman slumped and wiped his hand over his face. He seemed to age twenty years in fewer seconds.

"Christ," he said. "Do you drink?"

Hellboy shrugged. "Sure."

Broderman pulled open a drawer and pulled out a bottle of Scotch. Also, two glasses. He poured a couple of shots and passed one to Hellboy. They both slugged it back.

Broderman leaned and folded his hand over his chest. "I don't know what you read about me, but most of the information you have is obsolete."

"Your job is to weed out the nutcases," Hellboy said.

Broderman sighed. "Kids shot all to hell. Legs riddled with shrapnel. Faces that look like melted wax. A lot of them are farm kids. A lot of them are ... kids." His voice was strained and hushed.

"And yes, it is my official duty to decide which of them is sane enough to stay in the service, get patched back together, and sent back to fight. And which of them is too crazy to trust with a weapon. Who's honestly shell-shocked and traumatized, and who's trying to fake me out so he can escape back to the world."

He sounded disgusted. He raised the bottle with a question mark on his face and Hellboy nodded. Men you drank with told you more than men you embarrassed by refusing their booze.

"I've got two cases. Clancy and Grant. They don't know each other. They've never met, from what I can tell. But they're both on A-22, and they're both telling me the same story."

He opened a brown cardboard chart. " 'A hideous demon burst out of the sea and killed all my buddies'."

He closed that one, laid it aside, and opened another. " 'A monster tore out of the jungle and massacred everyone except me'."

"Do you think they fragged their own men?"

The psychiatrist shrugged. "No bodies were ever found. No trace of a struggle, or combat. Just ... no soldiers. Except one lone survivor. Or so they both claim."

Hellboy took that in. He said, "So I'm here."

"So you're here." Broderman wiped his face. The air conditioner was rattling in the window, but the room was stifling. "It's so hot in the officers' mess that the butter melts on your plate," he said.

He closed the file. "Of course, in Vietnam, no one's eating butter."

There was a knock on the door. It was the corpsman, with the coffee. Broderman said to him, "Bring Clancy in first."

Hellboy picked up his coffee cup with his left hand. Anything that didn't need smashing or maiming, he did with his left. His right hand — the stone one — was for everything else.

Death, mostly.

In silence, the two men sat, each with his thoughts. Hellboy figured Broderman was thinking about the Scotch.

He himself was thinking that it was too hot to be drinking coffee.

After about ten minutes, there was a jingle and a shuffle in the hallway. Broderman looked up. Hellboy kept trying to read the opened medical chart upside down. It contained the records of Clancy, Paul R. There was his social security number, and there his date of birth.

He was nineteen.

"Paul," Dr. Broderman said. Hellboy was surprised by the warmth in his voice. Professional, or genuine? "This is Hellboy, Paul. Remember?"

"Y-yes," Clancy stuttered.

Hellboy turned. A kid. Pale blond hair, nearly colorless blue eyes. There was a scar running from his temple across his nose to the opposite earlobe. His legs were chained. He was cuffed.

Hellboy looked at Dr. Broderman and said, "I want to take him to get a Coke. Just him and me."

Broderman thought a moment. Hellboy gazed at him.

The doctor made his decision. "Spec-4 Clancy, do I have your word you'll cooperate with this civilian?"

"Yes, sir," Clancy said. There were tears in his eyes. His mouth trembled.

Hellboy stood.

"There's a small room off the ward," Broderman said. "My corpsman will show you."

The corpsman's name was Shiflett. Hellboy saw it on his name tag.

Got shipped out to Vietnam a few weeks later.

No one ever saw him again.

But for now, he was alive, and he escorted Hellboy and Clancy out of the office and onto the ward. What struck Hellboy was the silence. Maybe because of him being there, but maybe not.

They went into the little room. There were a couple of gray overstuffed chairs, and Clancy sank into one of them. Tears slid down his face.

Shiflett left.

As soon as they were alone, Hellboy said, "I'm one of the good guys."

"It's not you," Clancy whispered. "I was stationed in Qui Nhon. It's a port city. On the South China Sea. Supply ships come in. The stuff gets unloaded, and then we convoy the supplies to the troops inland. There are only two roads into and out of town. Easy for the bad guys to attack our convoys. Impossible for us to sneak past them. Like a turkey shoot."

"They've got Fanta in this machine," Hellboy said. "Grape or orange. Root beer. That's it."

"Fanta grape, please," Clancy said. He let out a harsh sob, which he immediately stifled. "On the ward, we get soda if we're quiet."

Hellboy put in some coins and pressed the buttons with his left hand. The first bottle clattered down the chute. He pulled it out and used the built-in bottle opener. Got the same for himself.

Guys you drank the same stuff with usually told you more than guys you didn't.

Hellboy handed the soda to the inmate. Clancy took a swig. He leaned his head on the back of the chair and the tears flowed like a river.

"It's not a big city," he said. "The tallest building's probably eight stories. The people smell weird. Not bad. It's all the fish they eat. The hookers tell all the guys that we smell different. It's our diet. They wear baggy black pants, even the hookers."

"What happened?" Hellboy asked him.

"People make houses out of crushed beer cans. It smells bad. The sewers are open. There's this beach — "

"What happened?"

Clancy wrapped both hands around the bottle of Fanta. "Do you know," he asked shrilly, "that in the incinerator they burn up all the pieces they cut off us?"

Hellboy remained silent.

"It came up out of the sea!" Clancy shouted. "It came up and it ate them! It ate them!"

He threw his bottle against the wall. It shattered. Grape soda flew everywhere.

Two corpsmen rushed in with a strait jacket and a hypo. Clancy shrieked and struggled. Nothing he screamed made any sense.

But the screaming made sense.

Hellboy had to give him that.

Hellboy was escorted back to Broderman's office. The doctor wasn't there, and Hellboy spent the time reading both the patients' accounts in their charts. Which may or may not have been Broderman's intention.

When the man came back in, he said, "We had to sedate Clancy. Grant too. He became uncontrollable when he realized we wanted him to tell you about what happened. If you want to wait a while, he'll come around. I'll sit in." He looked tired and frustrated. "I should have done that with Clancy."

Hellboy shook his head. "I've got a plane to catch."

Two weeks later:

The jungle reeked of death.

Layers of rotting foliage covered decomposition far more repellent, like an American flag on a coffin at Arlington. The government was shipping home boxes of teeth, because that was all the jungle left behind.

It ate the dead.

So maybe those guys weren't so crazy after all.

Maybe they were fit for duty.

Hellboy grunted at the gross stupidity of his mission — two weeks and counting, with nothing to show for it, not even jungle rot — and slogged through the soaking wet undergrowth. The trees dripped with moisture. Insects by the hundreds tried to penetrate his skin, to no avail.

There were some advantages to being inhuman.

He crushed vines and other things as his hooves struggled for purchase in the slimy, congealed earth. He couldn't imagine a worse arena for battle. The heat and the mud, the insects, and the terror of men who can't see the forest for the destruction.

About an hour later, he came to a clearing.

A man-made clearing.

It had been a village. Now it was a patch of charred ruins and bodies. A woman in traditional dress had obviously been shot in the back. Another, half-clothed, in the head. Men. Children.

Violent death was everywhere.

It had been a massacre.

Not the first he had seen in two weeks, and he was certain it wasn't the last.

In a perimeter around the village, Hellboy found American weapons on the burn site. That didn't signify much; the South Vietnamese troops — the ARVNs — were supplied by the US, and with better stuff than the Americans carried — M-16s to the Army's Brownings. The North Vietnamese were also well equipped, also with American material, lifted from convoys and on the black market.

But here, there were no bodies. No sign of soldiers.

That was new.

Maybe this whole deal wasn't so stupid after all.

Hellboy continued to survey the area as the sun set. It was as hot at dusk as it had been at noon.

He barely noticed.

He didn't care.

In the dark, he sat, listening to the creeping through the bushes. It was human, of that he was certain. Also, alone.

It was sneaking toward the village ruins. All he had to do was wait, and it would come to him.

Someone began whispering. In Vietnamese.

Hellboy waited.

Five minutes later, the moon glowed down on an old man in a white shirt and black trousers. He was stooped with age, and he was weeping. Hellboy remained in the thick, moist shadows, observing. The man fell to his knees and covered his face. Hellboy thought of Spec-4 Paul R. Clancy, back in Japan.

Then suddenly, as if he had fallen asleep, Hellboy became aware of advancing footfalls from dozens of pairs of boots. Rifles clacked. A radio crackled.

"Stay where you are! Arrete!" shouted an American voice. Hellboy assumed it was the platoon's sergeant — unless these troops actually took orders from their Officer in Charge.

The old man looked stricken. He raised his arms and murmured, "S'il vous plaites, messieurs." The French had occupied Vietnam before the Americans had come in. French was still the language of choice among the older educated locals.

"Let's shoot 'im, Sarge," one of the soldiers said. "We'll have to drag him all the way back to base to interrogate him."

"Everything's burned," another voice said. "Look. The people were burned."

"Where are our guys?"

"Napalm?"

"That would still leave something. You know that."

A few of the soldiers chuckled.

"The old guy's got nice ears," someone drawled. "If we kill him, I got dibs."

The old man continued to plead. No one was listening to him.

No one but Hellboy, who caught it the moment the old man switched from French to some other language, something that was not Vietnamese, was not Asian, was not anything spoken anywhere.

Once a Baptist preacher had tried to kill him, because he claimed Hellboy could hear 'the voice of evil'. It was true that on occasion, Hellboy understood languages no one else could decipher.

This was one of those occasions.

While the soldiers theorized about what had happened to the village and the troops, Hellboy heard every word the old man uttered as if it were in heavily accented English:

"I call you, Xin Loi.

Xin Loi, which is what they say when they kill our women.

When they rape our school girls.

When they dismember our sons and grandfathers.

I call you, avenging demon!"

A hot, wet wind rolled through the forest undergrowth. It was like being slapped with a boiled towel. The soldiers felt it through their cammies. They turned on their heels, spooked, startled. A few aimed into the darkness.

"Hold your fire!" the sergeant shouted. "Damn it, what if there's Cong out there?"

"Xin Loi!" the old man keened. "Xin Loi!"

"What's he going on about?" someone demanded.

"Nothing. Let's shoot him and move out." There was fear in the voice.

The forest shook.

The earth trembled.

Hellboy watched the old man, who was sobbing. He cried, "Xin Loi! Allez-y!"

And the sky turned red.

From one side of the horizon to the other, it blazed scarlet. It was searingly hot; the winds blew; the old man covered his face as the crimson glow made his skin translucent and lit up his bones.

Hellboy remained hidden.

Remained silent.

"What the hell?" one of the soldiers cried. "Look at the sky!"

Above the horizon, where there should have been stars and black night sky, an immense shape rose up. It was vaguely humanoid, but its features were hideously contorted. Horns sprouted from its head. Its eyes were glowing red slits, and its mouth a cavernous bad dream of fangs and flame.

It threw its long, taloned arms over its head and raised its face to the sky.

The soldiers were shouting, scrambling, tumbling over one another to get the hell out of there. A small, dark man went down; a heavier man ran right over him in his haste to escape.

The demon shrieked. Lightning crashed around it. Clouds gathered.

It began to rain.

To rain blood.

Heavy, thick droplets of pungent blood, which sizzled and burned where they landed. As Hellboy watched, three soldiers burst into flame. Staggering, the living columns of fire collided, fell, tried to pick themselves up.

The demon lowered one hand, and picked the fiery bundle up. As the men burned and died, it popped them into its mouth.

It wasn't raining after all. Far from it.

The demon was crying.

The blood was its teardrops.

It kept sobbing; the soldiers kept burning and dying.

The old man chanted, urging the demon to kill all their enemies, to destroy them utterly.

Then Hellboy stepped from the shadows.

"Bon soir," he said. Good evening.

The old man stared at him. He fell to his knees and said in French — which Hellboy understood — "We are lost. The Americans have a demon, too."

Hellboy raised a hand and said in French, "Stop this, grandfather. Now."

"I?" The old man looked shocked. "Why should I?"

Hellboy had no answer.

"We destroy both sides," he informed Hellboy. "All we want is peace, my avenging angel and I. That is all. We kill the killers. That is all."

"And these villagers?" Hellboy asked.

He shook his head. "Your people did that. We came after."

"Stop," Hellboy said again.

But the old man shouted to the demon, and the demon opened its mouth to rain fire down on Hellboy.

Hellboy successfully dodged the gout of flame. Then, as the demon grabbed for him, Hellboy swung his right, stone fist like a pile driver into the demon's forearm. The creature howled in fury and pain. Hellboy was relieved. He'd thought the thing was more like a ghost, something he might not be able to fight.

But now, knowing he could harm it, he lunged for its hands and arms, smashing both fists into its strangely pliant flesh. While it reared back up into the sky, he felt in all the pouches of his belt. There were talismans and wards against evil in all of Hellboy's pockets, but he couldn't fathom how to use them against this thing. A grenade? Possibly.

Browning? Not hardly.

Then it was grabbing at him, tears flowing freely. As the droplets hit the earth, they sizzled and burned, exactly like napalm.

Through his own tears, the old man smiled fiercely.

"Xin Loi will kill all of you!" he shouted. "And our country will rise from the ashes without soldiers!"

"Wrong, old man," Hellboy said. "Your guy's going down."

The demon came in for another round, grabbing at Hellboy as if to hold him still and burn him to cinders, like a hot dog on a coat hanger at a camp-fire. The fire flared across Hellboy's back, but he arched, hard, and spared himself.

Then he doubled into a ball, yanking the demon's arms with him, and threw an uppercut beneath his left forearm with his huge stone hand.

The demon wailed again. But although it was in pain, it appeared to be unhurt.

"You see?" the old man exulted. "You cannot kill Xin Loi. And I will create more. An army of them! My country will be free of you all! There will be no more fighting."

"And very few people," Hellboy drawled.

The sorcerer's eyes gleamed as tears slid down his cheeks. "Our women are fertile."

And it was the way he said it — as if individual lives didn't matter; and all that mattered was ending the war — that chilled Hellboy to the bone.

He thought of American generals, and admirals, and shrinks, and guys walking around like zombies.

He darted forward before the old man realized what was happening, and broke his neck. For a second, the man registered shock. Then rage. And finally, the most intense grief Hellboy had ever seen.

With a shriek, the demon blew fire over the jungle. Within seconds, the dense foliage was fully ablaze. Hidden inside it, men began to scream. Some in Vietnamese, some in French, and some in English. The forest was crawling with dying men from both sides. All sides.

Then the demon soared straight up into the burning sky, screaming like a bomb, shooting as fast as a grenade launcher, shrieking and babbling and sobbing.

Amid the crackling, Hellboy stood, a lone survivor.

The night blackened.

Ash mixed with blood and earth, and covered the body of the dead old sorcerer.

Dawn finally came.

The jungle was hotter than the firestorm.

It was hot as hell.

Two weeks later, Hellboy sat in Broderman's office. Only, Broderman was gone. He had resigned his commission and gone back to the States.

Larousse — a French name — the new Chief of Psychiatry, was an officious little man. He folded his hands on top of his spotless desk and said, "I really don't understand what this is about."

"Clancy and Grant," Hellboy said. "On the lockup ward."

"Oh." The man sat back. "Clancy returned to duty last week."

"In Vietnam," Hellboy said flatly.

"In Vietnam," the doctor confirmed.

"Grant."

"Grant." He sighed. "He told Dr. Broderman he massacred his entire platoon. Then he found a way to commit suicide."

Or was helped, Hellboy thought. They did it with guys like that.

He stood.

He went out onto the ward. In a bed against the wall, a young man — a very young man — was rocking and sobbing.

"Somebody's gotta stop this madness," he said.

Hellboy grunted. "Yeah."

Then he left.