From an Enchanter Fleeing

Peter Crowther

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O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being, Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead Are driven like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) Ode to the West Wind

It is the fog that comes first. It drifts into the small town of Dawson Corner while everyone is asleep, the entire town tucked up in their beds … dreaming dreams of hope and safety. And normality.

It sneaks down Main Street and around the old oak in front of the town hall; it crouches in the hollows and ditches of the cemetery; and it hides amongst the trees out by the lake.

It snakes along sidewalks, shuffles past storefronts and swirls across picket-fenced lawns cut so fine they look painted. Then it banks against water butt and shingle, fall pipe and boarding, slate and wainscoting, building upon itself like aerosol cream or shaving foam, working its way past downstairs windows and up to bedroom windows, and then guttering and roof tiles until it reaches chimneypots and even the occasional weather vane.

In the beginning, the fog is wispy, like cigarette smoke, but then it thickens … thickens until it becomes almost impenetrable.

That’s when the dead come.

Some of them drift with the fog, ethereal translucent shapes, like kites or bedsheets blown in on the west wind this autumn morning, ten minutes before three a.m. … the graveyard hour, the time when doctors and nursing staff will tell you they have the most deaths, gentle leave-takings, when folks done down by illness or the sheer accumulation of years or even, on occasion, by the medication that’s been prescribed to them, check out for new adventures someplace else.

Others retrieve their corporeal states, lifting once familiar bodies from casket and grave, from mausoleum and undertaker’s parlor. And then they shamble through the thick fog without so much as a single unsure step, slow but determined.

Pieces of these visitors drop soundlessly to pavement and sidewalk, plop onto lawn and porch, slide off of doorknobs and handles …

sometimes leaving mottled residues on previously smooth and polished surfaces.

Here comes one of them now …

Matthew Fisher, a permanent eleven years, three months, and fifteen days old, fresh from the lake where he has hidden these past eight months, tangled up in weeds while the sheriff and a team of distressed relatives and stalwart volunteers combed the countryside where he was last seen, the search party finally deciding that the boy must have fallen into the fast-moving river swollen with the spring thaws and was like as not on his way to the ocean (if he wasn’t there already). But here he was all the time, right here in Dawson Corner, lying at the bottom of the lake. And now he’s come back to town, his face bloated and white, his eye sockets empty and sightless, one ruined sneaker still securely fastened around a foot and ankle that have nevertheless had tiny visitors, hungry visitors. And so it is that, halfway along Green Street, just a couple of houses from his old home, Matthew Fisher’s lower shin bone cracks and splinters, momentarily lurching him to one side. He bends down, snaps the foot completely off and, carrying it like a grisly memento, continues his journey, swaying side to side when the shin-stump connects with the ground  slop, clunk, slop, clunk  until he reaches a familiar picket fence and an even more familiar walkway.

He moves up the walkway toward the house, easing himself up the three steps to the porch and the swing chair, pulling open the screen door with a hand that he absently notices is now reduced to just two fingers  at which point he checks behind him on the path, scanning with those deep black eye sockets, but seeing nothing  and then he thumps his wizened and gray hand on the door frame, once and then again and at last a third time, leaning forward until his face is almost touching the glass door that leads to the kitchen, opening a mouth that is stick-dry and wormy to say to the gowned figure that has just turned on the light and is even now standing barely ten feet away from him, her hands up to her face, and a yellow pool spreading on the floor around her feet. Hi mom… I’m back! but no sounds come. Not from Matthew Fisher, at least.

[IMAGE]

“That heavy?” the man asks, nodding at Hellboy’s right arm, the elbow-to-wrist section of which appears to be encased in a red-colored dynamo or jet-engine fuselage.

“Uh-uh,” comes the response. A sidelong glance takes in the identity tag hanging on a tight-linked chain around his neck: Lucius Jorgensen, the tag’s lettering proclaims.

“And those  ” Jorgensen nods at Hellboy’s head. “Look like goggles 

up on your forehead. What are they?”

“They’re goggles.” Who was this guy? Didn’t he read Life magazine?

Watch TV?

“Yeah? They are goggles?”

“Yeah. I’m a pilot.”

“No kidding. They look like they’re part of your head.”

“Right again. Surgically attached goggles. Stops me losing them.”

The man shakes his head and continues to stare as Hellboy shuffles his overcoat sleeve down a little before folding his arms across his stomach. He only wishes he had a sombrero as well. But things could be worse: the guy hasn’t seen his tail or asked why his face is so red.

Leaning his head to one side, Jorgensen says, “They’re not really goggles are  “

The door opens and Tom Manning enters the office. His manner is brusque, his face expressionless. He nods to the two men seated in front of his desk before taking his seat. Clasping his hands on the inlaid green leather of the desktop, Manning says, “Hellboy” and “Jorgensen,” each time with a nod that is returned. And then he says, “You two know each other?”

Jorgensen turns to Hellboy, smiles and then looks front again, nodding.

Hellboy says, “We’re old friends.”

The Director of the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense grunts and shakes a Marlboro from a pack that looks like he’s been sitting on it. Lighting the twisted cigarette, he says, “You okay, Lou?”

Jorgensen nods, eyes blinking.

“You don’t need to do  “

“I’m okay. Really.”

“Still on the medication?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Helping?”

“The medication helps, yes, sir.”

Another grunt and then, “Okay. Gentlemen, we have a problem.”

Hellboy throws back his coat, watching Manning pull smoke out of the Marlboro and blow rings. It never leaves you, he thinks, that desire to go back to it. “Where this time, boss?” he asks, shaking off the craving.

“Dawson Corner.”

Hellboy looks questioningly at Jorgensen, Jorgensen looks questioningly at Hellboy. They turn back.

“It’s in Maine. Little town about thirty miles in from the coast.

Farming community. Think of a Post cover by Norman Rockwell 

barbershop, bandstand, corner drugstore where you can buy three-scoop lime floats for a nickel. That kind of thing.”

“What’s the problem?” Jorgensen asks.

“Fog.”

Hellboy frowns the question without speaking.

“This fog is different. Some kind of gas, maybe  ” Manning shrugs and blows out a thick plume of smoke. “We don’t know. FBI had some people up there first thing this morning.”

“What happened?” Hellboy asks.

Manning says, “Take a look,” and, pressing a button on his desk, turns to face the large screen on the side wall. As the screen flickers to life, the blinds on the window close up and, just for a moment, the room is plunged into darkness. Hellboy hears Jorgensen breathe in, and then the room bursts into life.

On the screen it’s foggy  thick impenetrable fog. Both traditionally suited men and women and military types  uniforms, thick boots, weapons, shaved heads, chewing gum  stumble around in front of an increasingly unsteady camera wailing and sobbing. Some are wearing masks, with respirator blocks, while others are not. Still more are in the process of ripping their masks from their faces or carrying them.

The camera is clearly hand-held. One of the men, rubbing his hand across his eyes, comes up against the camera, pauses for a few seconds, and then tears off his mask. He pulls the pistol from the holster on his belt and points it at the camera. There are no protestations, just interminable sobbing and crying. He pulls the trigger and blood-specks and pieces of what Hellboy knows is human flesh spatter the man’s face.

The camera falls to the ground but keeps running. Now towering above the camera, the man gives a brief howl to the sky before placing the gun barrel in his mouth  his mask hanging from his wrist  and firing.

He falls forward onto the camera and the screen goes dark.

Almost immediately, the blinds open and Manning presses a button that turns off the screen.

“Thoughts?”

Hellboy shrugs. “Could use some editing.”

“Lou?”

Jorgensen draws in a deep breath and says, “You been back in for the bodies? I mean, I do take it they’re all dead.”

“I think that’s the case. But no, we haven’t been back in.” He nods at the now blank screen. “They were all wearing masks when they went in there.”

“All of them? Seems to me most of them weren’t.”

Manning shakes his head. “Everyone had a mask to begin with.”

“Why’d they remove them?” Hellboy asks.

Manning shrugs. “They just seemed to go  ” He searches for the right word. ”  seemed to go wild. It was okay right at the beginning, but as soon as they were in the thick of that stuff  every man and woman of them; hard-assed combat-ready troops and bright-as-a-button graduates alike  they just tore them right off.”

“And that’s all we have?”

“That’s all, Lou,” Manning says. “It’s your ball  yours and Hellboy’s  if you want to run with it.”

“Hey, excuse me if I’m missing something here,” Hellboy says. “If we go in there to Dawson’s Creek  “

“Corner. It’s Dawson  singular  Corner.”

“Whatever. If we go in there, isn’t the same thing going to happen to us?”

Manning looks across at Jorgensen. Jorgensen turns to face Hellboy and says, “Not if we’re not breathing.”

“Ah, yes,” Hellboy says after a few seconds. “There is that.”

[IMAGE]

Outside of Manning’s office, Hellboy asks Jorgensen, “So what’s the problem?” “We won’t know until we get  “

“No, not with Dawson’s Bend  “

“Corner. Dawson  singular  Corner.”

“Right. Not there. What’s the problem with you?”

“My wife. My children.” They’re walking out of the B.P.R.D.‘s small Manhattan office across from Central Park  otherwise known as “the Staging Post” amongst operatives (“good place to get a fresh horse and take a pee,” as the word has it)  the sunshine glinting from the windows of the buildings up Central Park West and Columbus Circle. Kids are chasing each other around the park entrance, cab drivers are slapping car doors with their hanging left arms, car horns are blarrrt!-ing, skateboarders and roller-bladers are singing along to metal and rap piped into their cerebral cortexes.

Hellboy knows the gist of what’s coming even before it comes; he only needs the fine details to complete the mental picture.

“Boating accident,” Jorgensen says, checking the traffic for a break and making it sound like he’s responding to someone who just asked him for the time. Hey, sure … it’s four-fifteen; and, by the way, my wife and kids are dead.

“I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault,” Jorgensen says with a shrug.

“How many kids?”

“Three. Joey, Candice, and Monty. Eight, five, and almost two. And their mom. Ruth.” He turns to Hellboy. “You getting a cab or walking?”

“Walking.” He waves his arm once. “Cabbies think I’m carrying a bazooka.”

Jorgensen chuckles. “Yeah, sorry about that.”

Hellboy shrugs, says, “About what?”

“The shtick with your arm. And the horns. Plus the heavy tan and  ” He points casually to the back of Hellboy’s voluminous coat. ”  And that,” he adds.

“You already knew all about it, right?”

Jorgensen chuckles and pats Hellboy on the shoulder. “Like I don’t read Life magazine or watch TV, right?” He shakes his head. “I was kidding you.”

Hellboy gives silent thanks for his coloring. “Yeah, I think maybe I get a little too self-conscious,” he says, and then he takes a hold of his tail and stuffs the end into his coat pocket. “Come on, we got a ‘walk.’ We’ll go through the park.”

They stroll across Central Park West  Hellboy ignoring the excited mutterings and wide-eyed stares of recognition he gets as he goes by 

and through the gates. Almost immediately, the sounds of the city start to fade away. After a few minutes, Manhattan is a recent memory of someplace they were but aren’t anymore.

The story comes out steadily but with a degree of determination.

The Jorgensen family was holidaying. Washington State. Out on a boat.

Stranded. Something wrong with the engine. Seas got choppy. Storm broke. Boat capsized. No moon. Just the five of them in the water. His hearing their cries over the sound of the wind and the sea. Frantically flailing one way and then another, swimming  no, not swimming: nothing so civilized in that sea  blind as he followed first one screaming voice and then another. The voices stopped. One by one. And all that was left was the sound of the storm. And of Lucius Jorgensen screaming their names out in the darkness, one after another, time after time after time.

“Jeez, I’m so sorry,” Hellboy says.

“Like I said, not your fault.”

They’re sitting on a bench watching the squirrels.

“They found two of them,” Jorgensen says, in a kind of oh-and-by-the-way manner. “Joey and Candice,” he adds.

Hellboy waits before asking about Jorgensen’s wife and the little boy.

Jorgensen shakes his head.

“The medication do any good?”

Jorgensen gives a little chuckle but doesn’t say anything.

“Not taking anything, huh?”

“They just want to give you anti-depressants. You get hooked on those babies, and it’s night-night for good.”

A big squirrel stops right in front of them, picks something up between its paws, and proceeds to eat. It watches them carefully.

“I asked Manning if I could come back. He said no. But then this came up, and he asked me. Just as well.”

“Yeah? How’s that?”

“If I’d stayed home  ” He pauses and looks around, taking in a deep breath. “Well, there’s nothing to stay home for. Nothing to carry on living for.” He turns to Hellboy. “But I kept putting it off. Figured it was unfair to deprive the Company of my talents.”

Hellboy nods. “And those are?”

“I’ve developed a solution that slows down the respiratory system without affecting consciousness. And when I say ‘slows it down,’ I mean it virtually stops the need to take in air at all. Through the nose, through the mouth… even through the skin. We’re going to be using it in cryogenics but it has certain benefits in everyday use. Such as in combat.”

“The good of weapons of mass destruction.”

Jorgensen nods. “With this stuff, they can throw anything they want to throw at us and it won’t matter … because we won’t be breathing.”

“How long does it last?”

“Couple hours. Three at the outside. We can’t risk any longer.”

“How come?”

“It slows the heart down  and I mean it pretty much stops it without your losing consciousness. But the downside of that  of the fact that the heart isn’t pumping blood  is that you leave it too long, it starts to clot in the veins.”

Hellboy follows another squirrel with his eyes.

“So, that what you think this is? Terrorist attack?”

“In Dawson Corner, Maine?” He shakes his head. “Uh-uh.”

“So what?”

“I have absolutely no idea.”

[IMAGE]

The town is up ahead of them, but they can’t see it. Not an electricity or phone-line pylon, not a roadsign, not a distant rooftop. Nothing.

“Zilch,” says Jorgensen, lowering his infrared binoculars. “Like trying to look inside a bran muffin.”

Right in front of them, stretched across the road, is a wall of fog.

Its sides pulsate and roil but it stays in one place  doesn’t come any nearer to where they’re standing.

The five of them drove over in a stretch limo that you could land planes on: Hellboy, Jorgensen, two marines who didn’t speak anything except militarese, and a driver called Maurice. After a couple of brief exchanges 

You not too hot in that outfit?

Sir, no sir!

Nice weather today, huh?

Sir, yes sir!.

 Hellboy thinks it’s a blessing the marines don’t speak much. Now they’re here, the marines just stare, and Maurice spends his time chewing, shaking his head, and repeating the Savior’s name as though it may help somehow. It doesn’t.

Jorgensen hands a bottle of water and little plastic cup of tablets to Hellboy and then takes a similar dose himself.

“That it?”

Jorgensen nods. “That’s it.”

“What do we do now?”

“We wait.”

“How long?”

“Half hour.”

Hellboy looks up into the spring sky. The clouds are strung out like gossamer across a deep red and violet around the sun. “Sun’s going down,” he says.

“Yep.”

Hellboy frowns. “That not a problem?”

“Why? Past your bedtime?” He chuckles. “We go in any earlier we could end up sucking on our guns.” He nods at Hellboy’s right arm. “Or, in your case, your hand.”

“You ever considered stand-up?”

Jorgensen smiles but doesn’t answer. He lifts a machine out of the back of their jeep and fastens a leather strap around his neck. He looks like a cigarette girl in one of the swanky Manhattan clubs, but Hellboy doesn’t say anything. He just watches the wall of fog shimmering in front of them.

Jorgensen, now wearing some kind of earphones set attached to the tray at his stomach, goes right up to the fog and sticks what looks like a wand into it. He remains like that for several minutes, one hand holding the wand and the other adjusting dials and switches on the tray.

When he comes back, he’s frowning.

“What was that all about?”

Setting the tray in the trunk of the limo, Jorgensen says, “Analyzing the fog.”

Hellboy waits, watches Jorgensen check his watch.

“So?”

“So, it’s not fog.” He looks over at him and breathes in. He puts his hand over his mouth and nose and waits, watching Hellboy. After several minutes, he removes his hand. “I think we’re okay,” he says. “You ready?”

Hellboy shrugs. “I guess so. What was all that about?”

“All what?”

“You holding your breath.”

“I wasn’t holding my breath. There isn’t any to hold.”

“Huh?”

“Don’t you feel anything?”

Hellboy pulls a face. “Like what?”

“Like your mouth being different?”

Hellboy looks at Jorgensen, smacks his lips, and frowns. “Hey,” he says, his face lighting up like a child’s. “It’s working.” He puts his hand over the lower half of his face and mumbles, “I’m not breathing.”

“That’s not strictly true,” Jorgensen says as Hellboy removes his hand from his face and attempts to gulp in air, without success. “If you weren’t breathing at all, you’d die.”

“Bummer.” Hellboy scowls and points at his mouth. “Sad face.”

“Hard to tell the difference.” Jorgensen hands a set of goggles to Hellboy, watches as Hellboy puts them on over his glare.

“Real goggles,” Hellboy says. “You do care.”

Jorgensen ignores him and says, “Your respiratory system has slowed to the slightest fraction of its usual rate  think of hibernation and then multiply it a hundred-fold. You’ll get air but very little spread over long periods.” He pulls a set of goggles over his own head.

“Infrared,” he says. Then he lifts a metal-handled reel of fluorescent yellow cord out of the jeep. He takes the end of the cord and starts attaching it to the jeep’s door handle.

“These to help us see?” Hellboy swings around with the goggles in place.

“They’re to help us see,” Jorgensen says.

“That to stop us getting lost?” Hellboy asks, nodding at the cord.

“That’s to stop us getting lost.”

Hellboy grimaces. “Richest country in the world and we end up walking into oblivion wearing 3D glasses and carrying a length of string stretched out behind us and tied to the doorknob.”

“Sometimes the least technological methods are the most effective.”

“I know some politicians wouldn’t agree.”

Hefting the reel in his right hand, Jorgensen says, “Politics and common sense never were natural bedfellows.”

“Amen to that.”

“Okay,” Jorgensen says, “time-to-go time.” He reaches out a hand. “Hold my hand.”

“Hey,” Hellboy says, taking a single backward step, “don’t I get flowers? Candies?”

“You got the goggles. You’re turning into an expensive date. Just take my hand. We go in there, no telling what’s going to happen. Could end up wandering around there until the pills wear off.”

“Could be messy.”

Jorgensen doesn’t respond. He looks around and takes a step forward, Maurice and the two marines watching.

The yellow cord unravelling alongside them, Jorgensen and Hellboy step cautiously into the fog. Almost immediately, all reference to the outside  the sunshine, the blue sky, the clouds  disappear from sight. All that there is, is the fog  thick as cotton candy.

Hellboy shuffles his grip on Jorgensen’s hand and makes to take a deep breath. Only no air comes in and none goes out. He looks down at his chest and repeats the attempt: no expansion. “I don’t think I’m going to get used to this not breathing,” he says. “I keep wanting to do it but  “

There’s no response from Jorgensen.

“You sure it’s okay?”

“It’s like I said,” Jorgensen says with a sigh. “And don’t forget, you lived that way before you were born.” Hellboy is suddenly aware that Jorgensen’s voice has changed  he has turned to face Hellboy now, saying, “Assuming you were born, of course.”

“A stork brought me.”

“A roc more like.”

They have walked about seventy or eighty feet now, and the fog doesn’t seem quite so thick, although  even with the glasses  they can barely see their own hands in front of their faces.

Suddenly, Hellboy sees a dark shape pass in front of him, hears the sound of shoes on wooden boards for a few moments. Then silence again.

“Hear that?”

Jorgensen grunts.

They move on.

“Hey,” Hellboy says, suddenly remembering. “You never did say … about the fog, I mean.”

“What about it?”

“You said it wasn’t fog. How’d you figure that?”

“I analyzed it. Fog is pretty much just plain water  kind of vaporized into a mist-form, but basically plain water. This stuff is primarily water but it has two other components as well.”

Squinting into the murk, Hellboy says, “What are those?”

“Well, the first one is mucin  that’s a hydrophilic: in other words, it likes water.”

“And the second one?”

“The second one is  or are  phospholipids.”

Hellboy waits for a few seconds and then, when it’s clear that Jorgensen isn’t going to add anything more, says, “You’re losing me here, doc. What’s the significance of these extra two elements?”

“They’re not typically found in fog, in mist, or even in rain.”

“Where are they typically found?”

“In the eye. The mucin is created by the goblet cells of the conjunctiva while the phospholipids are produced by the meibomian glands. And, of course, water is produced by the lacimal glands.”

“I thought you said that was just water?”

“It is. But it’s also present in the eye and in a hundred other places as well. But not the mucin or the phospholipids.”

Hellboy turns to face into the gloom and nods, turning the information over in his head. “You’re telling me that this fog was created by an eye?”

Jorgensen yelps in pain.

“You okay?”

“Yes. I just walked into some kind of  ” He lets go of Hellboy’s hand and waves his hand in front of him until it connects with a clunk.

“It’s a road sign … street sign, something like that.” There’s the sound of a frenzied rubbing of material. “Shit, that hurts.”

“It’ll be fine,” Hellboy says. “So much for the damn glasses.”

“I just wasn’t watching where I was going,” comes the response.

“Gimme your hand.”

Re-connected and now walking on wooden boards alongside storefront windows they can just make out, Hellboy and Jorgensen choose each step very carefully.

“So, it’s all been produced by an eye?”

“Several eyes, but yes … it’s produced by the eye. But only under certain circumstances.”

“Yeah? How come?”

Jorgensen waits for a few seconds before he says, “It’s tears.”

[IMAGE]

After a while the fog seems to weaken. It doesn’t fade away completely, and the intrepid duo still maintain their link, but they can soon make out the shapes of buildings and parked vehicles, fences and trashcans.

And then, something else. Hellboy watches, straining his eyes to see while Jorgensen crouches down by an object at the side of the road.

“There’s two of them,” Jorgensen says. “Both male.”

“Dead?”

“Yep. Well dead.” Jorgensen bends closer until the first shape’s head assumes more detail. That’s when he sees that the entire face has been blown off. He gives thanks at this moment that he cannot smell. Now if only he couldn’t even remember smell, he would be fine. But, alas, he can. He can do only too well.

Is this your son?

Yes …

And this your 

My daughter.

I’m sor 

She was five years old. Her name was 

The man pulls the sheet hack but as he does, Lucius Jorgensen, suddenly feeling very old and frail, notices that one of his daughter’s eyelids looks sunken …as though there’s nothing underneath it.

 Candice, he tells the man. Her name is Candice. He wonders whether he should have used the past tense.

With the sheet back over his daughter, the smell fades away a little.

But only a little.

Have you found my wife? Jorgensen asks. My baby? He considers explaining that he’s talking about two bodies there, not just the one … but he decides against it.

The man shakes his head. Didn’t find nobody el 

“You okay?” Hellboy asks.

Jorgensen stands up. “I’m fine.” He shifts the reel of yellow cord to his left hand and flexes his right. “Nothing we can do for them.”

Hellboy takes a hold of the man’s jacket. “Looks like it’s thinning out a little,” he says. And it’s true. As they start off again along the road  or wherever it is they’re walking  they can make out building shapes, the familiar form of an automobile, and even their own slow-moving reflections walking parallel to them. Hellboy looks up.

“The moon’s up. I’m getting light here.”

They stop to look at the window, neither of them speaking, both of them flexing hands or lifting arms slightly, and finding something in such brief movements that gives cause for optimism … even though they caused them themselves.

And then, from diagonally across the street, a high-pitched squeak cuts through the mist. Hellboy and Jorgensen turn around and squint into the murk where they can just make out a figure standing against a screen door. It’s a woman, they both realize as the mist clears momentarily.

Stepping off from her porch and onto the path that leads to the roadside, the woman smiles dreamily, looking first at Hellboy and then at Jorgensen, her steps a little awkward, stilted, like she’s maybe had a little too much to drink or just woken up. Then she looks back over her shoulder, back at the house, where the mist still swirls around the porch in blustery ribbons of gray and white.

“Ma’am?” Jorgensen says, keeping his voice calm, non-accusatory, non-threatening.

Mindful of his appearance, Hellboy pulls his gabardine coat about himself and attempts to cover his right arm  his Right Hand of Doom 

with his left, and keep his tail under wraps. He’s only partially successful but the woman, while continuing to look from one of their faces to the other, beaming all the time, seems not to notice.

“He came back to me,” she says at last.

And it’s a big Amen to that, Brothers and Sisters, Hellboy adds mentally.

“Ma’am?” Jorgensen says again, this time holding out a hand to the woman, taking a tentative step toward her, reducing the space between them. He pulls the goggles from his face and thrusts them into his pocket, returning the hand to its outstretched position.

Behind the woman, the porch door creaks open, its brittle whine cutting through the mist.

“My Davey,” the woman says. “He came back to me.” And she turns around, wringing her hands together, muttering.

Hellboy peers.

Jorgensen peers.

And then, slowly, falteringly, a young man makes his way down the two steps from the porch to the path before, one foot placed carefully in front of the other.

“Oh, Davey,” the woman says, breathing the words rather than simply speaking them.

The man is little more than a boy, they now see as his face emerges from the swirling cotton candy that surrounds them. He’s decked out in his Sunday best  a black or dark gray suit, white shirt fastened at the neck and crowned with a subtly colored tie (red? Hellboy thinks, looking down at his own hand which appears similar in shade and hue, though he wonders if it’s the glasses). On his feet the boy is sporting sneakers, which seems incongruous with the rest of the outfit. But, around the water and coffee machines of the B.P.R.D., Hellboy has heard all about the constant battle of parenthood.

“Hellboy … “

Jorgensen doesn’t need to say any more. Hellboy has seen it for himself.

Now that the boy  surely no more than fifteen, sixteen years old  is almost upon the woman (presumably his mother), he raises his arms, hands flexed and stretched, fingers yearning for touch. He’s walking very awkwardly now, Hellboy sees, his legs apparently being moved with great difficulty … or pain? Hellboy glances up at the boy’s face and sees no sign of discomfort. But those arms …

Hellboy steps forward, throwing his coat-tails out around him and lifting his right arm.

“Hellboy  “

At the tone of Jorgensen’s voice the woman turns, her smile fading as she sees Hellboy’s arm raised. She turns fully and raises her own hands, palms erect against Hellboy, her eyes glaring wide.

“No,” she shouts, “he means no harm.”

Hellboy glances quickly at the shambling boy now only a few feet away from the woman’s back, arms still outstretched. “Doesn’t look that way to me, lady,” he snarls … but, as he watches the boy, he notices the right side of his head. And then the left. Hellboy frowns.

Responding to the frown, the woman turns and sees what Hellboy sees.

The right side of the boy’s head is blackened and indented; there seems to have been some attempt at covering over the discoloration but it hasn’t been entirely successful. But the left side  a hair-covered flap of skin hanging over what appears to be a large hole, behind which Hellboy glimpses pieces of bone  is far worse.

“The bullet went right through,” the woman says dreamily as she turns back to Hellboy. “But he came back to us from the undertaker’s parlor.

My Davey,” she adds finally. “I think he wants to talk to you.”

Hellboy holds his position as the boy finally reaches the woman and takes hold of either side of her head. He stays like that, as unmoving as a statue, and the woman drops her own arms by her side.

Hellboy takes three steps forward to take him within reaching distance of the woman. He watches her eyes roll backwards. And she opens her mouth.

[IMAGE]

Can mere sound have color? Can it have a smell? Or a texture?

The sound that issues from Wilhemina Pritznuk has all of these things: it carries with it a blackness that is so impenetrable that mere light must attempt to go around it, casting brief reflections that shimmer and die in the mist alongside; it brings an olfactory odor so strong that Jorgensen’s nose begins to bleed, and his eyes run with a yellow matter thick as mustard; and it moves toward and engulfs them with a sheer physicality so strong that it pushes them back, bending ribcage, sternum, and pelvis.

Staggering backwards, Jorgensen covers his ears … then his nose and eyes … and finally, he bends forward, wrong-footing himself so that he falls sideways, curling up, knees to forehead, crotch to mouth, turning his head sideways so that at least one ear is protected.

Hellboy sees that the other one  the one that is unprotected  is bleeding.

We mean you no harm, the sounds say when their swirling is done.

And now the sound is acceptable; the blackness has drained from it and only the fog remains; the pressure is gone from Hellboy’s and Jorgensen’s frames, though the bruising remains; and the smell  either rancid meat or stagnant water  has faded, leaving only the faintest hint of staleness. The vaguest hint of cheap perfume on dirty skin.

Hellboy steadies himself and steps close to the woman.

Groaning, Jorgensen gets to his feet, mopping blood and matter from eye and ear, nose and mouth.

“Who are you?” he asks.

Me or the woman?

Jorgensen says, “Both.”

Her name is Billie Pritznuk. Shes my mother.

“And you are  “

“Davey?” Hellboy finishes.

Yes. I am  or was  David Pritznuk.

“Was? Who are you now.”

Now I’m a shade. On the other side. But I am others, too. All the others.

“Why  Why are you here?” Jorgensen ventures.

To fix the break.

“Break?” Hellboy asks.

And so, through the woman’s drab monotone of possession, the story unfolds.

[IMAGE]

What you must understand is that the other side is a land inside a land.

“Right,” Hellboy intones.

Refusing to acknowledge the sarcastic tone, or simply ignorant of it, the woman / boy continues. The newly dead assemble in the outer area where they wait to be acclimatized to their situation. The voice pauses and then adds, It’s a difficult time.

“I’ll bet,” says Hellboy. He’s pulling my leg, he thinks.

Jorgensen glances at him fiercely.

“Sorry.”

The grief is palpable. Millions upon millions, every day, countless thousands upon countless thousands each hour, hundreds upon hundreds every tiny fraction of a single second… whether old or young, torn from their lives, separated from their families and their friends, coming to terms with death memory 

“Death memory?”

The woman turns to face Jorgensen. Their bodies recall the very moment that everything closes down: the very nanosecond when veins stop pushing through blood and hearts cease to beat. There is a time  the time of leaving  that they are aware, a knife-edge of understanding before they tumble over. That is death memory.

Hellboy hears Jorgensen mutter something, but it’s lost on him as the voice continues.

As I said, the grief is huge  in each case  and there are many, many cases. Try to imagine, the voice says, the world as a whole: try to imagine  step back within your heads and picture the world, all the myriad continents and countries, the hospice bedrooms and hospital emergency rooms, the bombs, the killings, the traffic accidents, the household mistakes, faulty wiring, drownings, suffocations, fires … the cancers, coronaries, and heart attacks … the millions who die and the millions who are born … the endless cycle of death and birth, birth and death.

The comings and the goings. And before the newly dead can pass over completely, they must be cleansed.

“Cleansed? Like some kind of detoxification process?”

Yes, the woman / boy says with what Hellboy thinks might just be a smile.

There is no sadness on the other side and none may take any in with them. For most newcomers, the process might last a day or two; for others, just a few hours; and for an unfortunate few, weeks or even months.

That accumulation of grief  the true, boundless grief of the death memory, built up over millions of years 

“The fog,” Jorgensen mutters.

 yes, as you say, the fog, the voice adds. It is unlike anything that exists on this side. While the death memory is being extinguished from them, these new arrivals will do anything to stop the pain and anguish.

But, of course, there is nothing they can do. They must wait it out.

“Cold turkey,” Hellboy says.

Both the boy and woman nod in unison. And so it flows and eddies and swirls about them, cutting them off from all others, making impossible any relief.

“So the fog  this accumulation of grief  is all around this … this waiting area?” Jorgensen asks.

Yes. The waiting area is a gray zone of exorcised grief impacted upon itself trillion-fold on trillion-fold. It’s deadly to people who are still alive … the embodiment of profound hopelessness and despair…

more than anyone could possibly bear. Well, you’ve seen what happened.

“With the soldiers?”

The woman nods. They did whatever was necessary to stop it. She shrugs.

And now they themselves are adding to it. More expunged grief.

“And it’s leaking out.”

It was leaking out, the voice says directly to Hellboy.

“So what is this?” Hellboy asks. “Are you like the little Dutch kid plugging a hole in the dike with your finger?”

For a few seconds, both Hellboy and Jorgensen think that the woman-host is not going to respond but, at last, she says, Something like that.

Then she lifts an arm and waves it out majestically. And as you can probably see, the leak has been fixed and the fog is dissipating. In a few more hours it will be gone and safe for people to be in here.

Jorgensen says, “But why did you come here?”

It’s not only me. Many of the people who used to live in Dawson Corner are here … at least all those who have relatives and friends still here in the town. Some, who no longer have access to their bodies, came in incorporeal form  ghosts, if you will  while others retrieved bodies from mausoleum crypts, cemetery plots, and, as in my own case, undertaker’s parlor-slabs. The voice pauses for a few seconds and then adds, Needless to say, the bodies they found were not always in the condition they’d left them.

But we had to come. If we hadn’t, then all of our friends and relatives here in town would have succumbed to the fog. We couldn’t allow that.

“So how could you stop them?”

We couldn’t stop them breathing it. What we could do was build up such a colossal weight of good feeling and optimism that it might counteract the effects.

“Sounds a little too ‘new age’ to me,” Hellboy mutters.

The woman sighs and, behind her, just for a second or two, the boy drops his head slightly. No, its decidedly old age, the voice says, the boy having raised his head again. Optimism and faith have long been strong adversaries of resignation, acceptance, and despair. Of course, we haven’t been successful in every case, the voice continues, softer now. But we did what we could. After a pause, it adds, And now I see it’s time to go.

Hellboy looks around him and sees the street is clearing. He can see store windows, an open sidewalk, parked automobiles, telegraph poles, a mailbox. And he can see a group of people … a demonstration of sorts, all standing stock-still in the center of the street, the final wisps of gray twisting around them and dissipating into nothingness.

The people are men and women, boys and girls, young and old …

Living and dead.

“Jesus Christ,” Jorgensen says as he follows Hellboy’s stare.

The boy removes his hands from the woman’s head and steps around her, walking stiltedly across the street to where a gaggle of emaciated pensioners surround two badly disfigured accident victims from a five-vehicle smash-up on the Interstate five miles out of Messane, their hair burned away to stubble and their faces frazzled, one side exposing yellowed teeth and blackened gums; a young man wearing a kaftan, his face milky white, rubs shoulders with a boy of what could be around twelve or fourteen summers  it’s hard for Hellboy to be more precise as the boy’s skin is bloated and pallid, partly eaten away, the eye sockets empty holes … and in his left hand he holds what appears to be a severed foot (this is confirmed when Hellboy sees that the boy is leaning to one side, his left leg ending in a ragged stump); two old women who can’t weigh more than one hundred pounds between them, their hair wispy and fumbled, like steel wool, lean against the window of the hardware store, one of the women holding a small, gray-faced baby who, distinctly un-baby-like, watches the proceedings with a calm far beyond its apparent years. These are the solid ones, the corporeal ones; there are others who look perfectly normal, undamaged and whole, holographic images hanging in the air like clean laundry, shimmering and shifting though there is no wind blowing.

“The dead of Dawson Corner,” the woman says, her voice back to normal.

Hellboy sees, forming behind them on the sidewalk, the town’s living inhabitants, their faces carrying tired smiles, moist eyes.

“Were you aware of what you were saying,” Jorgensen asks, “when  you know  when Davey was holding you?”

The woman nods. “It was as though his voice  that wonderfully moving and familiar voice  were speaking right out of me … right from here  ” She hits her chest once, with a small closed fist. ”  and I understood everything.” She looks around and then squints upward.

Shafts of moonlight are filtering through. She looks back at the two men and says, “Your people will be here soon.”

“Is it safe?”

Jorgensen walks across to the group of corpses and cadavers, wraiths and wisps, shades and specters. “It’s safe,” he says, more a mumble than actual speech. When he reaches the boy  Davey  he holds out a hand.

“Jorgensen!” Hellboy steps forward onto the street, his tail and coat swirling out around him like a whiplash.

“Please …,” Jorgensen says.

Behind them, the woman says, “He can’t speak. He’s fresh from old Mister Swinney’s funeral parlor, filled with sawdust and formaldehyde.

That’s why he had to speak through me.”

With what appears to be a frown  his face creasing and folding like modeling clay, and his mouth opening slowly to form an almost-perfect O

 the boy takes a hold of Jorgensen’s hand.

Hellboy brings up his right arm and makes to spring forward, but the woman’s hand on his shoulder stays him.

“Leave him be,” she says. “Just leave him be. They won’t hurt him.”

Hellboy is not convinced but, seeing no immediate danger, he rests his arm by his side, suddenly feeling its full weight.

Jorgensen shudders, pulls back with a start though he doesn’t break contact with the boy. The boy takes another step forward and places his other hand on the side of Jorgensen’s face. And then he drops both hands, steps back, and, without a word being spoken, he drops to the ground.

Others  the damaged ones or the ones wearing pressed suits and best dresses  follow his example.

Then the shades fade, the storefronts and sidewalk behind them now showing through their midriffs and their legs, increasing in its intensity, until, as one, they disappear like soap bubbles, popping out of existence as though they had never truly been there.

Hellboy wonders if perhaps they never were.

Jorgensen drops his head, and for a few seconds he seems to be about to fall himself. But then he straightens, lifts himself tall, and turns.

As he does so, he looks across the street.

Hellboy turns and stares.

Outside the general store there’s the faintest glimmer on the sidewalk, a disturbance of the air particles, of something bending the fabric of the atmosphere out of shape. Out of nothingness, a shape begins to form, a roiling mass of color and density, shadow and substance.

“Hellboy …”

“I’m watching it,” Hellboy says, “I’m watching it,” and he steps to the side, standing astride the outstretched figure of David Pritznuk, his tail unfurled and swaying side to side.

“Get the people off the street,” Jorgensen says, and he takes a step toward the disturbance.

The “disturbance” is some kind of fracture in the ether, like a holographic transmission that’s not quite connecting. But parts of it are now showing through as Jorgensen walks slowly toward it, showing through and then fading out again, then coming back  different parts of it  and fading again.

Hellboy moves to his left, covering Jorgensen’s side and back, stepping carefully over the prone shapes, some of them on the road itself and others half on and half off the sidewalk.

As Hellboy starts to call out to the townsfolk, two things happen: the first thing is that the “disturbance,” such as it is, finishes coming through and all of the electrical static charge around it subsides, leaving only a woman of about thirty-five, forty. Just before the second thing happens, Hellboy notices that she’s carrying something in her outstretched arms.

The second thing that happens is someone grabs his tail. And that’s when the lights go out in Hellboy’s mind, leaving in their wake a dim but somehow comforting and reassuring glow. He feels himself jerk spasmodically, waving his big right arm weakly across in front of himself  it’s ineffectual because there’s nobody there. As he lurches drunkenly he catches sight of the boy  David whatsisname  propped up on an elbow with the other hand firmly holding onto his tail. He thinks maybe he should do something about that but that’s when the voices come into him.

And then through him.

He opens his mouth to speak, wondering what it is he’s going to say.

Lucius? Oh, baby…

The words taste strange in Hellboy’s mouth … strange and wet, with an underlying saltiness of sea water. He can feel the memory of it on his face, in his mouth, up his nostrils …

Without turning to Hellboy, Jorgensen moves forward, dropping the spool of yellow cord right where he stands. “Ruth?”

I’m here, baby. You’ve been worrying and you shouldn’t. We’re fine.

“‘We’re’?” He looks down at the bundle she’s carrying and sees a small arm shoot upwards, wafting the air before withdrawing.

Come see him, the voice coming out of Hellboy’s mouth says softly. Come say hello to your son.

The tiny head pushes itself forward from the bundle and turns jerkily toward Jorgensen. The face smiles.

“Monty …,” Jorgensen whispers.

Tilting his head to one side  where he sees the outstretched cadaver still holding onto his tail  Hellboy, or whatever powers now operate from within him, whispers. Exactly what he whispers, he doesn’t know … words and phrases, rounded syllables and stuttered consonants, vignettes and extracts, softnesses and affections, breaths and oaths.

Absently, his head, arms, and legs twitching as though he’s plugged into a main electricity supply, Hellboy glances up ahead as the sounds pour from inside of him. There, on the sidewalk of a midnight small-town in Maine, Jorgensen, Ruth, and Monty are re-united. They don’t touch  they can’t touch  but Hellboy sees them look into each other’s eyes. Sees Jorgensen’s hand move out to the bundle in his dead wife’s arms … and softly push right though it, the image swirling like colored smoke where the hand passes.

Then, all at once, the pressure on his tail suddenly subsides and Hellboy falls forward onto the pavement with a dull thud. He lies there for seconds which extend into minutes. When he lifts his head, the street is empty of shades and ghosts and Jorgensen is on his knees 

Hellboy can hear the man sobbing. Alongside Jorgensen, the living townsfolk of Dawson Corner have gathered, their hands on his shuddering shoulders.

They have all lost friends and loved ones this night, Hellboy realizes as he scans the street so strewn with bodies. Either lost them or re-lost them.

“You know,” Hellboy hears one woman say to another, “there’s no sadder sound in the whole world than that of a man crying.”

The other woman nods and then, very carefully, turns to look in Hellboy’s direction.

“What about the other one?” she says.

“He’ll be okay,” comes the response. And then, “Well, as okay as he was when he got here I guess.”

[IMAGE]

On the way back to Manhattan, Jorgensen says, “You okay?” Hellboy nods.

“Okay. Empty. Took it out of me.” He looks at Jorgensen and says, “You?”

Jorgensen nods. “Better now.”

“What did she say  I mean, what did I say? No, forget that. I have no right to ask.”

Jorgensen waves never mind and says, “She just told me to take care of myself.”

“Sound advice.”

Hellboy sees an exit sign coming up on the right, but no sooner has he seen it than it’s behind them. He turns and looks out of the rear window.

“What is it?” Jorgensen asks.

Turning around in his seat, Hellboy addresses the marines up front.

“Either of you guys see that last exit sign?” he says.

“Sir, yes sir!” the driver snaps. For a second, Hellboy is afraid the man will stand sharply to attention and salute right where he’s sitting, causing the stretch limo to jacknife against the traffic.

“What did it say?”

“It said ‘To Arkham,’ sir,” the man says. “Twenty-eight miles, sir.”

Hellboy turns to face Jorgensen and smiles, shaking his head. “I thought it was a myth,” he says softly.

Jorgensen leans toward him and says, “That’s what I thought about you.”

As the limo speeds toward the waiting metropolis of New York City, the sun edges over the horizon and spreads its light westwards.

And yonder shines Aurora’s harbinger; At whose approach, ghosts wandering here and there, Troop home to churchyards.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) A Midsummer Night’s Dream

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