"What you doin'?"
"Making sure you're alive," Hellboy said.
"S'pose you coulda asked first. I'm plenty alive and got plenty of years on my back too, but you do that again, suh, and I'll cuff you one."
"You're pretty feisty, Waldridge."
"Didn't your mama ever teach you no manners?"
"No," Hellboy admitted.
"Try to have some in this here home." Weakness threaded the houseman's features, and his teeth were gritted against ache and afflictions, but he stood up for what he believed in and looked ready to go all the way in a fight. Hellboy liked him.
"Okay, pal, settle down, don't get apoplectic. I apologize."
"It's a start on showing some grace."
They stepped into a broad living area that was dark with oak and maple paneling. Still nothing very modern, no televisions or DVD collections or stereo speaker systems. A deep atmosphere of forlorn expectation seemed to hang in the air.
A tremendously wide stairway opened to a landing where colonnades rose on either side abutting the ceiling. He could see the six sisters huddled together at the banister curving down from the second floor, all of them watching him, their hair sprawled over the railing. He waved, but only one of them responded, lifting her hand and daintily flexing her fingers.
"Not you they scared of," Waldridge said. "Don't take it to heart."
"I don't."
"Mr. Nail is right through here."
"Thanks."
Waldridge pulled at an antique door latch, stood aside, and directed Hellboy in with an outstretched arm.
Sitting at the head of the long oak table covered with platters was a hard-featured little bundle of barely contained fierceness.
So this was Bliss Nail. His steel-gray eyes brimmed with resilient strength, a touch of defensive posturing, and perhaps a hint of madness. The kind of nuts you go when you're not exactly sure what wanders your own hallways. Hellboy figured it was to be expected from someone who lived in a house like this, the bones of his people in the floorboards, in the very dust. This man had seen some things, and he'd been left with more than a few scars but was still a scrapper. Here was someone else who wasn't afraid to brawl with the dark.
Bliss Nail glanced up as Hellboy filled the doorway, sat back in his chair, and held a crystal goblet of red wine to his chest. "Now you surely are a fearsome sight, but I reckon you been told that before."
"On occasion."
Dressed in a fancy black suit as if he'd been expecting well-bred, sophisticated company, Bliss Nail still had a forceful enough personality to almost fill the room. Hellboy looked around the enormous table. There were six other dinner places set, but those plates and glasses hadn't been touched.
"Set a spell, son. I'm guessin' I know who you are, but whyn't you tell me why you're here?"
Hellboy said, "I heard you had trouble and might need some help."
Bliss Nail waited for more, but there wasn't anything else to say. Hellboy sat in a chair looking around at the carafes and dishes filled with roasted pig, fish, and vegetables cooked with spices he wasn't familiar with. The open windows let in the pleasant smell of the unknown flowers outside, almost overpowering the aroma of the meal.
"Who'd you hear that from?"
"Does it matter?" Hellboy asked.
"I suppose not. Why you wanna help the likes'a me and mine?"
"It's my job."
"Who in the ass end'a creation got a job like that?"
Sometimes you just couldn't win, Hellboy thought. You could reach out and pull a drowning guy from the rioting ocean and he'd still give you crap for not bringing a towel.
Hellboy shrugged. "I do. You got a problem with that?"
It was the right thing to say, and it broke the mood. Bliss Nail let loose with a booming laugh that, despite himself, Hellboy enjoyed hearing. The comment was sincere.
"You like catfish, son?"
"I don't know," Hellboy told him. "I've never had any."
"What kind'a place you come from that don't ever serve catfish?"
"Connecticut."
Bliss Nail considered this. "That don't hardly sound civilized."
"I suppose it depends."
"On what?"
"On whether you're from Connecticut."
Not exactly true. He had no real home. He'd been born in England and had traveled most of his life, first with the Army and later with the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense. Headquarters was in Connecticut. When he thought of home, that's where he thought of it being, as much as it could be for him.
Bliss Nail called in Waldridge, who placed heaping portions of food on Hellboy's plate, aiming the catfish eyes first toward him.
"Them shards of horn on yer head?" Bliss Nail asked after the houseman had retreated.
"Yeah."
"You got 'em mounted someplace?"
"No."
"Well why not, son? They'd fetch a pretty dollar on the market."
Hellboy didn't want to think about what kind of market there might be for horns, or for his mounted animal head, so he said, "How about if we just let that go for now?"
Nodding, Bliss Nail took another sip of wine. His gaze grew distant as he tried to put his troubles in some proper order. Hellboy knew this was the toughest part, just getting them to find the beginning of their own tales. He himself wouldn't have an easy time of it either.
"You know who I am?" Bliss Nail asked.
"Bliss Nail. I thought we had established that already."
"The name mean anything to you?"
Hellboy stared down at the plates of food in front of him. The fish stared back at him. It had dangling tendrils like whiskers. They were right, this thing really did look like a cat. He wondered about people who could eat this fish and not think about Fluffy meowing and purring in the corner. He thought he'd rather have pancakes. "Not much."
"I'm the first to admit I'm a touch vain, so that hurts me some. What do you know?"
Hellboy held back a sigh and said, "Why don't you just tell me your story?"
Bliss Nail's features folded in on themselves and he seemed ready to cut loose, but at the last moment he reined himself in and let out a brief, cold laugh. "I reckon I will. I have seven girls. Six of them upstairs, ranging in age from thirty to forty, their mama almost three decades underground. Those six ain't spoken a word in near twenty years. Not a whisper, no matter how many specialists, psychiatrists, or ministers looked in on 'em. And there's been more than a few, that's the sweet truth. But tonight-"
Drifting again, Bliss Nail tried to sip more wine but the goblet was empty. He didn't refill it and didn't set it down. He turned to the dark windows, staring outside so intently that Hellboy thought the guy might throw himself through the glass.
So Hellboy cut to the chase and said, "Tonight something changed, right?" His presence alone was generally enough to stir things up. "Tonight you heard them speak."
"That's right," Bliss Nail said. "As soon as the sun set they all come down and ringed 'round the dining table and spoke three names. All together, like they was a choir singin' a hymn. It was powerful eerie and heartliftin' and lovely too, because I been mis-sin' their voices. Their song, sung with their souls. Just those three names. Yours. My enemy's. And that of a young man I don't hardly know, but who's got a reckoning with my family."
"Go on."
"My exquisite girls are cursed. Or better said, I am cursed, and my daughters due to me. Not only don't they speak, but they can't carry children."
Hellboy thought, There it is, the reason I heard the baby crying.
"They're breathtaking women, with kind and gracious hearts. They don't talk but they have a great deal to say. They write letters that put the Psalms to shame. Before the story got about in town, the oldest three had intendeds who doted hand and heel and loved them dearly. But all the men have left now,They've run out because my daughters can't carry on a family name in a family way. It's me that poisons them. They don't deserve this burden. A man wants to put a knife to me, I'll meet him head-on. But to do this to unborn-to never born-children, that's an unholy blight."