"I did," Lament said.
"Terrific."
It always came down to this. Heading into the place where you knew you shouldn't head.
Lament pointed to an area on the far bank of a small lagoon-like cove that eased away to a slimy shore covered with leaves and dead branches. The turbulent waters bubbled violently with rain. Lizards ran along the weeds as Hellboy brought the boat to a stop and he and Lament slogged to shore, dragging the skiff behind them.
The gray hanging mossbeard flapped and danced in the wind. Lightning skewered the skies. Lament parted the cypress streamers and climbed past the massive trunks. Strangler-fig vines as fat as garden hoses tangled around his legs and he nearly fell over. Thunder pounded. Hellboy reached down and clutched a mighty handful of the fibrous jungle vine in his right fist and tore away great lengths of it.
"You've got my gratitude," Lament said.
"Sure."
They continued on for another fifty yards on a slow incline until Hellboy saw the shack. It was a little larger than Granny Lewt's place but just as ramshackle and desolate.
Lament drew his wet curls out of his eyes and said, "It's Granny Dodd's place."
"She Granny Lewt's sister?"
"So I've always reckoned."
"Well, I'm telling you right now," Hellboy said,"I'm not eating anything, and if she tries to make me or if she's got a big brute of a son who aims to push me around, I'm going to knock somebody through the roof."
"I thank you for lettin' me know your intentions," Lament said. "But Granny Dodd's been dead a few years. Only her granddaughter Megan lives out here. 'Leastways I think so."
The storm kicked up another notch and the wind heaved the trees around, dead branches whirling and flying by, lost in the surrounding titi brush. Wind roared and wailed, alive with purpose. Rain pummelled like the angry hands of children. Lament turned to look at Hellboy "There's evil will in the air." He pointed east. "Sun's still shinin' a mile or two off. Storm's breakin' right on top of us."
"Pretty standard where I go," Hellboy said. "Let's get inside."
They fought their way to the shack, both of them searching the heavy brush and mire for whatever they could see: pregnant girls, gators, walking shadows, who the hell knew what. Thunder shook the hanging willows and tattered beards of moss. Finally Lament got to the door of the shanty and pounded on it with the side of his fist.
A terrified woman's voice responded. "You go on and get away from my place now! I got me the two barrels of this here shotgun pointed right at you belly-high!"
"That you Megan Dodd? It's me, John Lament. You might remember me from some years back, when I used to sing in these parts as a child."
"You gotta be gone from here!"
Okay, Hellboy thought, so here it comes. The reason why this is such a bad spot.
"Why?" Lament asked.
"My man is gone. My husband… he… he gone away. He's been taken from me."
"Taken?" Lament asked. "By who? Who gone and done a thing like that, Megan Dodd?"
"You get on out of the blackwater now, you hear! Go on now!"
"Ain't no need to fear me or my friend here. Fact is, if you want a good belly laugh, feed him some turtle eggs."
"Hey!" Hellboy said. "Don't go starting any rumors."
"Ain't a rumor, it's a fact."
"What you want at my door?" Megan cried.
"I want to know if you've seen my Sarah and some other young ladies come through this way. They left Mrs. Hoopkins's home two days ago and I been trackin' them through the blackwater."
"No," Megan said, and that seemed to be the end of that.
"These are strange hours, and I need to find them."
"If they come this way they likely dead."
Lament froze in the rain and the wind hurtled and broke against his form at the door. He'd been bridling it well so far, but Hellboy could see how worried he was about Sarah and his unborn child. "Why do you say that? Who took your man, Megan?"
"Iffun you don't steer clear you gonna get took by Mama's girlies just as quick!"
"What are these girlies she's talking about?" Hellboy asked.
Lament shrugged. "I never heard tell of them before."
Hellboy could just see it. Roving bands of teenage girls, flaxen-haired and with their blouses knotted at their midriffs, wearing ragged jean shorts, glowering with cornflower blue eyes, running around in the swamp causing all sorts of damage. Men screaming and waving their arms in the air, ruffian girlies smacking them around. He turned up his ragged collar against the rain and scratched between his horns.
"Megan, let me in," Lament implored. "You gotta hold on now, and tell me what you're so afraid of. I felt it in the air, the cold and the cruel. What is it that's happened here since the last time I passed through."
"The Mama growed strong in the woolly patch," Megan whimpered. "I don't dare say she was never there before, 'cause Granny Dodd, she knowed about it, kept the Mama at bay. But when Granny died, her spells grew weak and the swamp gone bad."
Lament tried the latch on the door and found it jammed. The resistance caught him off-guard and he spun in the silt and slime frothing beneath her shack, pitched sideways, and nearly dropped into it. Hellboy caught him and righted him, and their faces burned gold and then white in the flare of another eruption of lightning.
"Don't you come in," Megan Dodd whispered, her face pressed to the slats, the glint off her eyes and wet lips shining through the cracks in the planks.
"Why not?" Lament asked. "If you're afearin' this Mama and her girlies and your man gone missin', seems to me you'd be wan-tin' someone nearby to look out for you."
"It ain't me I'm a'fearin' for. You got to get on 'fore she learns you're here." The panic in her voice took on the tone of hysteria-words clipped with a little girl squeak, as if she were trying to crawl inside herself, or claw her way out.
Hellboy realized the whole wall of the shanty was groaning in protest beneath the heaving wind's onslaught, leaning horribly to one side. The years of rain and Spanish moss bleeding into the wood had rotted it until it was hardly more than tissue. He was afraid the next strong gust might blow the whole place down on the woman's head.
"Stand away," he told Lament, who refused to move aside.
"We can't push our ways in."
"Why not? I mean, it's wet out here. It's really wet out here."
"We can't go in unless we're invited."
"What are you, a vampire?"
"I abide by a code of manners."
"So do I," Hellboy said. "But it's really wet." He stuck out one finger against the knob and gave a little push. The door popped open and there was Megan Dodd, staring at them. She was holding the shotgun but the shells had broken open in her hands and the shot had spilled onto the floor. He could see they were so old they'd rotted in the humidity.
Long, dirty-blonde hair dangling mostly in her face, braided loosely on the left and clipped in tufts with broken pink barrettes on the right, Megan Dodd, granddaughter of another one of these witchy women had dark unforgiving eyes and a sorrowful presence. Who knew how many jars full of weirdo bits and pieces might be around here?
Middle-aged but with an air of inexperience to her, as if she'd been held back from the world and knew nothing beyond a hundred yards of the shanty. Both shoulder-straps had slid down her arms. The catclaw briar scars, sycamore scratches, and welts didn't mar her flesh in the least. Anywhere else she'd have appeared ridiculously child-like, but here it seemed natural, and more than that, perhaps even necessary. A peculiar and powerful musk like a bull gator's pervaded the shack.
She rushed across the wooden floor and hung back against the far wall. "Get away from me, O Lucifer, Son of the Morning!"
Lament moved, grabbed the shotgun out of her hand, and said, "He only looks like Lucifer. But he's a man of principle and his heart is righteous."
"You sure about that?"
"I'm certain. And look close-"
She peered at Hellboy for a moment and said, "Oh, those is Granny Lewt's eyes!"