Down in the Flood

Scott Allie

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A little more than ten years back, Hill's Clothing Store had caught

fire. The flames started in the basement, although it was never

determined how. The fire shot up the narrow staircase first into Men's

Clothing, then filled the single-story shopping area and the small

warehouse above. Below, wooden doorways connected the cellars of the

commercial block, and when those basement doors burst, one after

another, the fire worked through downtown. Townies had gathered around,

as closely as they dared. The older ones, having seen the hotel at the

other end of Market Street go down in flames twenty years before,

considered the spectacle familiar. Before the site was cold, they'd

picked through the wreck of the clothing store, scavenging T-shirts and

shoes that weren't too badly damaged. More than one scavenger was

surprised by hidden wells of flame exploding through the ash, but no

one was hurt. The town's history was punctuated by fire — some more

tragic than others. It was even more frequently marked by flood.

In the spring of 1994, the river rose over Market Street, swamping

basements still blackened in places. The same people who had watched

the last fire now surveyed the scene from rowboats and small outboards,

from the roofs of buildings rebuilt between disasters. On the fifth day

of the flood, two high-school boys rented a boat from Foote's Canoe,

located up Ipswich River toward the edge of town. Foote's customers

normally had to turn back upstream above the dam near Market Street. In

the new landscape carved out by floodwaters, not one eyebrow was raised

as the boys went over the dam, which was almost invisible under the

heavy flow pulling them into town.

As they paddled across Estes Street, the boys saw Bill Damon and Joe

Sargent wave from the relocated edge of the river. The men tossed their

spent cigarette butts into the still water and turned back to Bill's

car. They had used up their lunch break watching the river rock a van

whose owner had remembered too late where he'd parked it, after the

water had made it irretrievable.

Derek Lemieux pushed his paddle against the fender of the van, but only

managed to shove his canoe off course, rather than spinning the van as

he'd hoped. The river pooled and the flow eased in the wide open

intersection where Market Street met Pole Alley, in the old

truck-loading dock at the decommissioned Sylvania factory — not a

casualty of the flood, of course, but of big businesses with little use

for small towns. As the river's pull slowed in that flat expanse, the

boys had to put some muscle to work to keep the canoe going. Derek

barely remembered the last flood, back in that time when kindergarten

first pushed him beyond his own neighborhood, out into the town that

would have more to say about his future than he would ever have to say

about the town.

He crouched in the half-inch of water they'd taken into the canoe and

looked into the windows of the flooded restaurant, the posh riverside

Chipper's. The fully stocked kitchen was completely submerged; it would

still be out of business four months after the waters receded. The boys

paddled back into the stronger pull as the river narrowed under Choate

Bridge. Derek ducked low into the boat. The ancient keystone bridge

usually allowed a six-foot clearance, but now its moss-coated underside

pressed in over the highwater with the unexpected stink of low tide.

In the front of the canoe, Derek knew he was supposed to keep paddling

on his right; steering was in Eddie's hands, behind him. But when Derek

had insisted on the front, he hadn't meant to relinquish control. He

heard a groan as he moved his paddle to his left again, followed by a

light splash on the right when Eddie switched to keep them moving

forward. Derek switched sides again just to screw with his friend, and

Eddie's grumble bordered on verbal.

Stricken by how high the waters had stretched across Market Street,

Derek hadn't considered how wide the river would be east of town,

between the bridge and the wharf The stench of the water worsened;

Derek supposed it had something to do with their approach to the

saltwater marshes that separated the town from the sea. The canoe

rounded a sharp bend in the river by the middle school. He squinted at

the wharf in the distance, thought he could recognize his father's

cousin, Michael Michon. Michael backed his brand-new lobster boat into

the water with the pride of the Yankee fisherman, that rare vocation in

which real independence still had a place.

Something caught Derek's eye where a cluster of rocks, usually a

whitewashed convention center for gulls, now barely poked above the

surface of the water. The smell was worse here. Derek squinted, drew a

breath through his mouth to avoid the lowtide stink, and moved his

paddle back to the left of the boat. Eddie grunted, throwing a small

spray from his paddle as he pulled it from the water and slapped it

down on the right side.

"No," Derek said, wiping at the water Eddie had flicked at the back of

his head. "I wanna get over to them rocks."

"Why?"

They neared the river's edge.

"You see that kid over there?" Derek asked.

[IMAGE]

Had the floater been face up, the two boys in the canoe no doubt could

have identified him as twenty-nine-year-old Todd Russell — not that

Todd was particularly well known, but in a swamp-bound old New England

village of eleven thousand, it doesn't take a lot to register in

someone's head. Like the people he'd grown up with, Todd Russell had

swum in the river as a child, even though by his teenage years the

bright brown water had presented plenty of danger if taken in through

the mouth or a fresh cut; boys swam beneath the Choate Bridge wearing

sneakers for stepping on unseen garbage. Todd had swum in the ocean,

against the tide, had even played lifeguard one summer at the daycamp

at the Don Bosco seminary, an excellent opportunity for checking out —

and even once scoring with — the Catholic girls. So the fact that he

washed up drowned with no sign of trauma would have shocked many in the

small town, were he not the third man to be found in such a state since

the flood began. The third man, because none of the four women who'd

gone missing that week had turned up at all. Sheriff Douglas Marsh

scratched his head over this latest round of deaths and disappearances

for another couple days before calling the Bureau for Paranormal

Research and Defense.

[IMAGE]

Abe Sapien waited for nightfall within a van unadorned by agency

insignia, parked by the Christian Science Center at the base of Town

Hill. His latest hand had only turned up a single face card, and he was

in need of a king. For Abe to waste the afternoon hiding behind a game

of solitaire while Liz and Hellboy interviewed people was as stupid as

it was unfair, considering the case involved a river. If the

townspeople — if America at large — could accept a seven-foot-tall,

cloven-hoofed demon on the government payroll, surely they could handle

a fish man. But Abe remained a secret. Hellboy's appearance on the

cover of Life magazine had instantly transformed him from monster to

celebrity, but Professor Bruttenholm had yet to arrange such an

opportunity for Abe.

The sun eased into the hilltops on the other side of downtown. The

drive up from Connecticut in the overheated van had left Abe spacey. Of

course Hellboy and Liz wouldn't mind the heat. Sitting up front, the

two of them had a rolling view to keep them interested. But now,

waiting while they surveiled the town, Abe was positively restless. At

least he had a swim to look forward to.

Knuckles rapped the back of the van five times in a familiar rhythm,

and Abe pushed his cards together into an uneven pile, answering, "Two

bits."

Liz Sherman pulled open the door and grinned, a short cigarette burning

between her lips. "Mayberry's A-okay, Agent Sapien." He eyed her

cigarette, and she muttered, "Oh, sorry." She took the smoke between

two fingers, and her eyes flared yellow so briefly that if Abe didn't

know better, he'd think he'd imagined it. The cigarette sparked like a

magician's flash paper, was gone, leaving a sharp, sweet smell of

tobacco — and of course not a mark on her fingers.

She slipped into the van, opening it only as far as she needed,

guaranteeing that no passerby would catch a glimpse of her partner. Abe

craned his neck as he moved backward in the van, sneaking what little

view he could. Traffic was light at the foot of the hill, and the bar

across the street was well lit, but nearly empty.

"Get anything?" he asked.

"Hellboy's talking to the sheriff. He wanted to give local law

enforcement, such as it is, a heads up about you — so if you see badges

and flashlights tonight, don't be nervous. I spent the afternoon with

those kids who found the latest body, then I hit the library."

"How far back does it go?"

"Libraries still use microfiche, believe it or not. The newspapers had

something from 1943. But they have volunteers at the library who know

everything that's happened in the last hundred and fifty years. A guy

named Doc says there were people disappearing as early as the turn of

the century, and he's pretty sure it goes at least ten years further

back than that. His second cousin, female, disappeared in 1921, body

never recovered. When she died, there was already local lore around the

phenomenon."

"Sea monster?"

"Ghosts. There was a shipwreck on a reef at the far end of the bay back

in 1883. By the twenties, people said the ghosts of the sailors were

gathering brides. That's why the men are found, but not the women. I

looked into the crash, just for the hell of it, and it was a steam ship

with paying passengers — "

"So there were likely as many men as women," Abe realized.

"Also, no one died Still, there've probably been plenty of deaths in

the bay, going further back."

"You think that's it?" Abe said, craning his neck and scratching at the

side of his head. Liz didn't say anything for a minute. Abe recognized

the look.

"Do I think it's ghosts?" she said, running a hand through her red hair

as if to distract them both. "Maybe, but..." A dull knock came at the

van door.

Liz held Abe's eyes for a moment. Without looking away from her he said

simply, "What?"

"Pizza's getting cold."

"Not a problem." Liz smiled, and the air stirred. She opened the door

and reached for the two square cardboard boxes Hellboy held balanced

atop his giant right hand.

[IMAGE]

An all-ages curfew was in effect, enforced mainly by the locals' fear

of the river, so Abe didn't bother with his overcoat and fake-beard

ensemble, when, fifteen minutes later, the sun and the pizza had both

disappeared. "Perhaps the disguise does call some attention,"

Bruttenholm had admitted, "but it's so very absurd, no one would

suspect it was designed to conceal anything as significant as you."

Wearing nothing but shorts and sneakers — the recommended attire of the

teens who still braved the Ipswich River — Abe walked with his partners

to the old Choate Bridge.

A car drove by. If the driver noticed the trio standing just outside

the reach of the streetlight, she was probably too distracted by

Hellboy's tail bobbing above the curb to notice his partner, green skin

dimmed in the blue light of the moon and stars.

Abe threw a leg over the side of the bridge, straddling the rotted wood

edge of the wall. No river was clean where it ran through the middle of

a town, even a town as small as this, but he found it inviting

nonetheless.

Hellboy said, "Shouldn't you wait half an hour after eating?"

Liz ignored him. "Me and H.B.'ll be walking along the river to make

sure no locals fall in. I found a place where we could sneak you into

the water in daylight without anyone seeing. If you can't see anything

tonight, I mean."

"Do you smell that, Liz?" Abe asked, gesturing over the bridge. "It's

always dark under water like this."

"Right. If you find any of the women ...," Liz began, but if she had

anything to add, she forgot it.

Abe Sapien made hardly a splash as he went under.

The current was strong near the surface, but a reluctant hitch in the

flow told him that the flood would soon end. A couple of otters,

perfectly silhouetted by the bridge's streetlight, slipped over his

head, and he copied their sideways spiralling motion. Normally the

water would only be a few feet deep here, but the flood provided Abe

plenty of space to move around. Skimming the bottom he found the usual

refuse — cans and bottles, a shoe, a crate the color of which was now

indistinct. The trash thinned away from the bridge, and he found only

the occasional scrap of metal, obscured and eaten through by rust, the

last bits of abandoned boats whose wooden hulls had long since

dissolved.

Despite the trash, the pollution, despite the stench that had nearly

made Derek Lemieux turn back upstream a few days earlier, the river

welcomed Abe. Just as the night takes the sharp edge off the world, the

open water relaxed him, concealed him from the eyes of strangers. The

burden of his secret existence — even the weight of his own lean build

— finally rolled out of his shoulders, his upper back. The rhythm of

the river beat in his veins. He reversed direction, flipping backward,

his head slipping between his feet, and pounded against the river up

toward the dam.

[IMAGE]

Liz Sherman laughed out loud when Hellboy said, "This town reminds me

of Ireland — old and dark."

They walked through the outfield of a baseball diamond which was

normally not so close to the water's edge. Ahead the river bent sharply

around the field, so that a small section of open grass was surrounded

by water on three sides. This was a place where young lovers would

pause and consider one another while listening to the rushing tide. Liz

knew just enough about teen romance to know that it was too early in

the year for any of that, with too much of a chill on the breeze for

most girls, even were it not for the threat of the drowned and missing.

"That's funny," Liz said. "When Bruttenholm got the report, he said,

'Ipswich. That's a dark town.' Did he say that to you?"

"Nope."

"This sort of place freaks me out. The second I walked into that

library, they all knew I was an out-of-towner."

"Yeah," Hellboy chuckled in a rolling baritone, "I got a little of that

when I popped into the pizza joint." Liz rolled her eyes, more at

herself than her partner. "No place reminds me of where I come from,"

he said.

"I don't think I'm ready to go where you're from," she said, not

realizing until the words were gone that Hellboy had meant the military

base in New Mexico,

nothing more alien than that. His mind went to the devil much less

often than hers, especially when those thoughts were focused inward.

"Have you noticed a change in Abe?" she said; she didn't think of it as

changing the subject.

"How do you mean?"

"I slipped the other day when we were watching you interview that

seance medium with the wooden leg. I said she seemed kind of

uncomfortable. Abe just made this real casual gesture — he still had

the disguise on, and he tilted his head down and looked over his

glasses and said, 'Well, Hellboy is rather tall.' His gesture just kind

of struck me. I said, Abe, you're acting more human all the time.' "

"Ouch."

"Yeah. But he has to know it wasn't an insult, right? I mean, half the

time I don't think of myself as all that human."

"The other half you wish you weren't."

"Right. That said, I've known the guy all my adult life, and he does

seem like more of a ... well, more of a guy lately."

Hellboy had stopped a few paces back. Liz turned toward him now. "Hey,"

she said, "what are you looking at?"

[IMAGE]

The water pushed harder as Abe neared the dam, until finally he was

under its direct pressure. He surfaced, held the granite wall that

lined the north side of the river. It had receded a bit, so that the

dam was doing its job again. Foam rose in the white rushing spill. On

the far side, a gray colonial mansion stood just feet from the water's

edge. They'd be having a hell of a time in their basement this week.

Someone stood in a second-floor window looking out, but the darkness

protected Abe from their sight, even under the winking light of the

quarter moon. Downstream, the river calmed, a black ribbon

uninterrupted in its retreat while foam collected along the edges. Abe

let go of the granite border, waved unseen to the man in the window,

and let himself be swept seaward. He slipped under the Choate Bridge,

coasting on his back. That was when he noticed the gathering clouds.

The night grew darker as the narrow curve of moon was hidden. Stars lit

up the silvered edge of approaching clouds, then vanished behind them.

The chill running through Abe's spine had little to do with the

temperature, but much to do with the water. He righted himself, kicked

his feet to put his head above water. As always, the first hint of

trouble made him assume a bearing better suited for land than sea, more

man than fish. It wasn't always a bad instinct. He didn't have much

time to consider this, however; he swam as hard as he could in the

direction of the blue lights over the baseball field.

He left the river at the sharp bend. He'd lost sight of the lights at

the water's edge, climbing the few feet of steep incline above the

rising water. The two blue pinpricks hovering ten feet above the ground

made him think of corpse candles, those clusters of light along the

English coast that appear where sailors drown. He'd seen corpse candles

up close, though, and these lights were different. They moved over the

ground, toward the water which flowed fast around the corner of the

field. Hellboy and Liz were following them.

Abe stumbled a moment as he found his land legs. He called, but they

didn't respond, didn't slow, and the warning chill made his gills

flare. He ran between Hellboy and Liz, turned to face them, raising his

hands to stop them, but the phosphorescent blue glow of their eyes, so

close to that of the lights overhead, surprised him enough that he let

them step around him.

Across the field another light caught his eye, and the distant blue

glow cast a halo in the rising mist. With a head full of unanswered

questions, Abe knew this much: the lights were leading people into the

water, taking the women elsewhere and discarding the men. He didn't

wait to identify the gender of the person on the other side of the

field, as his two friends reached the river.

Liz fell on her knees at the water's edge, looking up at the

enthralling light, her eyes more than reflecting that unnatural blue.

Hellboy hunched over, wading out into the river. Abe dove between the

two into the fast-moving though shallow water. The river's pull toward

the ocean was not so comforting now, with his entranced friends drawn

into it, out of his reach. He turned and leapt at Hellboy, hooking both

arms around the giant red hand. Hellboy's short legs and enormous torso

made him easy to knock over in the water, and Abe spun him around,

though the effort brought the fish man splashing down on his side.

Hellboy had lost sight of the two blue lights, and scanned the clouds

absently for them, his wide mouth open, upper teeth exposed in an

expression fit for a cartoon mule. From the corner of his eye, Abe

caught three blue lights lining up overhead, an azure belt for Orion.

Something fell into the water near Liz.

It was two locals who'd been crossing the field, their eyes glazed over

in ethereal blue: an unremarkable man thick around the middle and the

neck, and a girl who looked either much younger, or just forever

underfed. They must have ignored both the all-ages curfew and their

dead and missing fellow townies. Now the man sat in the water by Liz,

gazing vacantly at the lights overhead. The girl, hair that some would

describe as dishwater blond dripping in stringy plaits across her

glowing eyes, crawled on all fours off to the right, well out of Abe's

reach. Liz got to her feet, and took a decisive step toward Abe before

stumbling again in the tide. She was close enough to the man that Abe

thought he could get an arm around each of them, but it would mean

letting go of Hellboy, possibly losing the girl. He barely hesitated.

One arm caught Liz around the middle, knocking her down. The other

looped around the man's neck and shoulder in a rough approximation of a

lifeguard's hold. As Abe struggled to get his footing, Liz slid out of

his grasp, water splashing over her head as she tumbled a few feet

closer to the sea. Just beyond her, Hellboy slipped in past his waist.

Out in the middle of the river, five silhouettes, man-shaped but

certainly not men, stared back at Abe with glassy blue eyes. Eyes like

fish, like frogs. The water stopped its flow for a moment, then pressed

on.

"Liz!" he cried, as she slipped toward the things in the water. He

lashed out with his free arm, found her long red hair, and jerked her

head back. Her eyes popped open in blue circles, flashing quickly to

brilliant yellow. The riverside lit up with flame unlike any even this

town had seen before, bursting from this thin girl. Abe felt water

evaporate on his face — he lost his grip, but she was saved already.

The things behind Hellboy were illuminated by a yellow diamond of flame

shooting up around Liz, backlighting her in stark silhouette. The

things from the river slipped back underneath. Liz fell toward Abe, and

he saw her pale brown eyes, the eyes of a woman in her right mind,

though perhaps a little bewildered by her own power. "Hold him," Abe

said, pushing her at the enthralled townie, and diving after Hellboy.

Water splashed over red forehead stumps. The young local woman or girl

fell headfirst, arms at her side, into the undertow.

Beneath the surface the scene was both calmer and darker. Hellboy's

black shape glided across the rocky bottom, seaward, the right hand

kicking up puffs of riverbed. The girl's hair swam around her head in a

colorless cloud. They were too far from one another for Abe to grab at

once, so he planted his feet on the rocks and launched himself at the

girl, slipping an arm gently across her breasts. He turned toward

Hellboy, whose blue eyes still glowed underwater. Another figure

slipped up between them, swift as an eel, a sudden, unmoving reef in

the rushing water. Those blue eyes. Insane syllables, weird sounds that

couldn't have come from a human mouth, vibrated in the water, pierced

Abe's mind and made the girl in his arms cry out in a silent burst of

air. No sooner did Abe realize the thing in the river was speaking to

him than it disappeared.

Hellboy was also gone.

[IMAGE]

Just after dawn Sheriff Douglas Marsh, his brother Barney in tow,

knocked three times sharply on the back of the van parked by the

Christian Science Center. The door flew open, the red-headed girl

popping out with the word, "Hellboy?!"

and spilling her steaming cup of coffee. Another person huddled in the

shadowed seatbacks at the far end of the van, holding a nylon coat up

to conceal himself. The folds of fabric rendered the yellow initials on

the back of the jacket unreadable. Barney Marsh took a quick step back

at the sight of the long bare legs — not the girl's — that stretched

across the floor of the van. Translucent flaps of skin, the pale green

of moss, ran up the backs of the calves, seams in shimmering silk

stockings. The arms holding up the jacket were covered in a black

sweatshirt, but something shifted underneath the covering, first to one

side, then back, and Barney somehow knew what it was. Fins.

"Ma'am ...," Sheriff Marsh said, " ... and, um ..."

"His name's Abraham," she said. The coat came down from the large round

eyes. The girl grinned at the fish man when she said, "He's a doctor."

In fact, both smirked, as though they might be sharing an old joke.

"Sir, then," the Sheriff said, and frowned. "You're missing the red

one, that right?"

[IMAGE]

They left the van at the foot of Town Hill and took the squad car to

Labor-in-Vain Road, parking in the middle of the street in front of

Orville Giddings's house. The soft shoulders on either side were

already bumper to bumper with old cars and pristine SUVs. Gid waited

for them by his mailbox. He ran a hand through his long hair, still

black though the man was well past the age of retirement. Doris

Hopping, bible clutched to her chest, came around the side of Gid's

house from the backyard, weeping, and piled into her Volvo, apparently

unconcerned that the sheriff had left her no way out of the dead-end

road.

Gid rolled his eyes in greeting, said to the sheriff, "Crowd's

gathering," and pointed around the side of the house.

Liz and Abe followed the sheriff; Barney stayed back, sharing no more

than a deep sigh with the old townie until after his brother, the girl,

and the freak rounded the side of the rundown colonial. It was Gid who

broke the relative silence of the morning.

"You should see the one in my backyard."

"Who'd have thought, in our little town?" Barney said.

"Your town? You're not from here."

"I was born here same as you, Gid."

"Eh, your parents are from Peabody. Just 'cause a cat has kittens in an

oven it don't make them biscuits."

Barney Marsh ran the toe of his boot through a mud puddle. "The girl

doesn't look so bad," he said to the ground, and walked back to the

cruiser, sparing a pitying glance toward Mrs. Hopping.

Gid had gone into his backyard and down to the highwater to spend a few

hours fishing before his wife, a late riser, cooked breakfast. Ruth was

well entrenched in the local gossip loop, had in fact been in the

library when the red-haired girl started asking questions. But Gid

didn't have much to say to Ruth after dark anymore. He hadn't heard

about the red man who'd come to town to take care of the flood, so he'd

been more than surprised to find him face down in the rocks not too far

from where Todd Russell had washed up two days prior. Gid had heard of

Hellboy years ago, but as their paths had not yet crossed, his first

thoughts were not of a rescuer when he spotted the tail and hooves

poking up from the rocks, with the tell-tale horn stubs and right-hand

anchor down in the water. Instead of a morning spent fishing, Gid had

turned his back on the river and run to the telephone, debating a

moment over whether to call the nearby Reverend John Hooker, or the

more remote police station. It was the good Reverend Hooker himself who

convinced Gid to call the cops.

[IMAGE]

Liz Sherman pushed through the crowd of about twenty locals gathered at

the river's edge, and kneeled in the water where Hellboy lay,

unconscious and for all appearances drowned. Abe followed reluctantly,

pushed along by the sheriff. The wharf across the way was also full of

onlookers, fishermen delaying their work for the chance to see

something even more interesting than a sleeping demon. A dinghy slipped

across the river, one man rowing and another standing, barely

maintaining his balance. The man on his feet had a Super-8 camera

trained on Hellboy. When Abe saw the camera he spoke Liz's name, and

the man in the boat shifted his attention from Hellboy to the less

famous and perhaps more film-worthy agent. Abe bent down to touch Liz's

shoulder, said, "Maybe I should go back to the officer's car."

"Bruttenholm wouldn't send you out if he didn't plan on you being seen

eventually," she whispered. "What better place to start? You probably

saved this town."

She rapped on the back of Hellboy's skull with the knuckles of her left

hand. Abe steadied her when she jumped, nearly as much as the sheriff

jumped, as Hellboy jerked awake. She stroked the back of his head

gently, turning to grin at the cameraman who'd leapt even higher than

the others. The camera had hit the edge of the boat and fell inside,

but the lens cracked off and disappeared into the lessening flood.

"Jesus, what time is it ...?" Hellboy said.

"Six twenty-nine," Liz said as Gid and his wife, whose hair was as wild

as Professor Bruttenholm's just out of bed, parted the crowd. Ruth

Giddings smiled down at her visitors. "This fine gentleman," Liz

gestured to Gid, "complained that you were scaring away his fish."

"Nah, that was Abe, last night. Hey, wait a minute — you guys waited

till now before looking for me?"

"You're as likely to drown as I am," Abe said, his attention split

between the gawking teenage boy on his right and the boat coming near

them, the man searching his styrofoam cooler for another lens. "Anyway,

we did look for you."

"For a while." Liz lit her first smoke of the morning, an extra

flourish in her burning fingertips to keep the locals interested —

although it probably wasn't enough to play to the cheap seats across

the river.

"Nice," Hellboy said, scanning the audience. He pushed himself up into

a sitting position on the racks, letting his feet trail in the water.

"Where'd you get that?" said Abe, indicating the pale blue stone

hanging around Hellboy's neck, wound in fishing line and smooth and

translucent as glass. The stone lay cold against Hellboy's broad chest.

There was long grass caught in the line as well, and a rusted fishing

hook had found purchase in Hellboy's skin — if the tiny wound had bled

at all, it did not now. He touched it with his right hand, and the

stone or glass shattered silently on contact, blew off his chest in the

morning breeze.

Abe Sapien laughed.

"I barely touched it," Hellboy grunted.

"I think it had a letter on it, some kind of symbol," Liz said,

flicking ash in the water, then catching herself. "Oh, sorry," she said

to Abe.

"Eh, what's the difference?" he said.

Hellboy rose to his hooves and hopped from the rocks onto Gid's back

lawn, nearly sending the old married couple running to their door, the

rest of the locals straight to Reverend Hooker. Most managed to collect

themselves, if only out of embarrassment for the burst of laughter

they'd inspired on the wharf side of the river. The men in the rowboat

had just touched the grass themselves, and the one in front overcame

his lack of coordination and dragged the boat ashore.

"Did you get a good look at those things?" Liz asked Hellboy.

"Nah. Water was pretty dark, I was kind of foggy the whole time. Last

thing I remember before conking out was what that one guy said to Abe."

A few of the townies turned their eyes on Abe; others muttered his name

to one another beneath their breath. He rolled his shoulders, shrugging

the comment off. "What makes you think it was talking to me?"

Hellboy pulled the last of the fishing line from around his throat, and

realized that the thing in the river had spoken in a language no human

— not even Abe, apparently — could understand. He shrugged. It had been

clear enough to his ears. These things usually were.

"Well, he had his back to me, and he said he was sorry. Something like,

'We've taken our mates from this town for ages. We didn't realize they

belonged to you now.' "

Hellboy shrugged. "That was the basic gist of it, at least."

No one said a word. The locals simply turned to Abe Sapien with

expressions ranging from quizzical to accusatory, and not without a

little fear. The burden that had finally rolled out of his shoulders,

his upper back, returned with full force under their eyes.