Emerald Hell

'I'm not a preacher,' Lament said, 'and I don't kill. But you got a call to make amends. Like I said, we on gator ground. You've poached these swamps for years, you and your brother and your daddy before you. You've worked for the people that tried to ruin this land. You got a lot to make up for, iffun you're sincere.'

'Oh, I am, I am!'

Duffy started to beg again, but as he perched himself in the muck he felt the cutting blade right under his flank. He snaked his hand down and grabbed the handle with his good hand. 'I am, I am!' he repeated, and couldn't contain his snicker as he brought he knife up, preparing to jam it into Lament's throat.

Duffy felt a subtle pressure on his wrist just before hearing another loud snap like another rotted branch breaking. He turned and watched Mrs. Hoopkins's knife fly by.

This time the pain hit quicker. Shrieking, Duffy went down and spun under the water, the agony in his two busted arms driving him nearly out of his head. He came up sputtering and coughing and grunting, but couldn't clear the muck from his throat. He began to croak like a gator.

Lament backed away until he was up on grassland, where he squatted and got out bis mouth-harp and twanged a tune. Duffy roared and croaked some more.

His own cries called three bulls out from the bog, and one after the other they crawled through the laurels and titi and came down after him. Lament stood his ground and when the gators strayed too close to him, he waved them on toward Duffy, who tried to scramble through the watergrasses and swim away with his two shattered limbs.

Try as he might though, he didn't manage to get very far before the gators set upon him.

They didn't kill him fast. They did what they like to do with their food, dragging it around and pounding it against logs, softening it, taking it down to their mud holes and stuffing it in tussocks of root and bramble, letting it ripen.

When the few straggler bulls came by to raise their heads from the water and stare inland, Lament said, 'It's been a rough couple'a days, boys, now don't go makin' it no rougher. You got your supper, so you move on now.'

They did, slipping away in one direction while Lament went another.

Hellboy faced Jester, thinking about being the destroyed and the destroyer. He wavered on his feet and saw that Jester was doing the same.

The angels swarmed him, plucking out pieces of him, stinging like wasps. He didn't know if it was going to help. All these years with Jester and they still didn't know anything much about what it meant to stand up and fall down. To love and to hate, to seek out answers in the earthquake and the silence. He was remote and He was not. He was vast and He was not. He was here within both of them and He was. We are. I am. The distance between man and God seemed as wide as ever. Archangels wouldn't be able to close the gap. It was up to man and God to get there on their own. Hellboy figured they'd make it eventually.

Dripping and mud-soaked, Lament appeared at Hellboy's side and tugged at his elbow. Hellboy tried to refocus.

'You all right, son?'

'What?'

'Them shadows been wearin' upon you.'

'They have their work to do, same as the rest of us, I guess.'

'You got some more fire, son?'

'I've always got fire.' Hellboy got out the Zippo and snapped it off his hip again…In the glow, Hellboy saw that Lament held a throbbing black piece of… something.

'What do you have there?' Jester asked, roused from his own thoughts. 'What is that?'

'This here?' Lament said. 'Recognize it? This is apiece of shadow taken from a dead man. He chopped it off himself.' Lament held the coursing piece of darkness in his hand. 'Murdered his wife with a hatchet. Then threw it down and cut oft part of his own shadow.'

'My…?'

'Makes me wonder… if I give it back, what's gonna happen?'

Jester knew it contained too much of the man he'd once been-the weak and faltering man, the one driven mad, the one denied by Heaven. He backed away a step and moaned because he felt something he had not felt in twenty years. The honest, true, and pure grip of fear.

'You know what I been doing with this portion of shadow right here?' Lament asked. 'I been talkin' to it since I was a child. I been tryin' to teach it to follow God's path.' He held the piece of darkness out to Hellboy and said, 'I can't put it back to him. You gonna have to do it.'

'Why?'

'You're stronger than me, and you got more understanding.'

The shadow, like a frail animal, made a scrabbling effort to leap from Lament's hand into Hellboy's and failed. It tried again and landed upon him.

I am many things, the man said-the man Brother Jester had been before he'd broken faith. Weak and willful. In need of great love and consumed by fear that the Almighty has turned His back. The power to sing and heal proves me only a vessel, and my faith is in decline. My wife is too often alone. I miss her dearly. I am a man. I merit my own life, one free from God's constant demands. The distance between us grows greater. I love. I need love. I am a son but I wish to be a father. I want a child. My wife and I deserve a child. God forgive me, I stray from His path and seek my own. The man wailed because it was what lonely, distressed men do. The man was lost, in need of a family.

Hellboy leaned forward and spoke to the lost soul with as much conviction as he could muster.

He whispered, 'Do your best to go and sin no more.' Then drove the shadow against the man's chest as if nailing it to him.

Leaning forward as if listening to a soft voice, Jester cast his own shadow beneath the moon and said, 'I'm weak and willful, in need of great love and consumed by fear. God forgive me. Oh God, forgive me what I've done. All that I've done.' He let out a keening sob.

The archangels rose and moved from him, from within and without him, their feathered wings unfurled and ready for flight.

Lament put out his hand and closed his eyes, dropped his head back and spoke. He said, 'I hear you, children. Your ambition's been honest, and for that we thank you. But the gates of Eden need to stay closed for a little while longer. We'll find our way back to God and Him to us. You done your duty. You get on now.'

Black wings, they flew into the night toward the rim of the heavens.

Brother Jester, slave to God's noblest efforts, who had returned to the town of Enigma but found his destiny in a nameless swamp village, who had lived and died, now lived again as an ailing, lonely man. He was thankful for the chance. On his knees, he rocked back and forth and hid his face in shame. 'Lord, the things I done, the things I done-'

Lament had nearly passed out on his feet, and Hellboy helped him to stand. 'You need to rest.'

'These damn ribs.'

Sarah and her child moved out of the shanty doorway to join them, and the swamp folk stepped from their homes and watched the proceedings, close by but afraid there was still a reckoning due among these powerful few.

Fishboy Lenny swam up and circled Deeter's corpse.

'Okay,' Hellboy said, 'so what do we do with Jester now?'

Lament said, 'Grounds soaked in miracles. Swamp's full of flung-aside crutches. The lame walked here. The deaf heard the word. The blind saw a vision of God. That has meaning. Worth.'

'Despite all the trouble he's caused?' Hellboy asked. He wasn't being dissident, he was simply stating a point. 'He murdered his own wife. He almost killed you when you were a kid.'

'Not in spite of, just sayin' it's the case. He has his role to play for the greater good.'

'How do you know?'

Eyes wide, Lament seemed surprised Hellboy would ask such a question. 'Because we all do.'