Free Emerald Hell by Mike Mignola Page B

knockin’ on the pearly gates by mornin’ and we won’t have to worry about it ’t’all. Sometimes, problems have a way of rightin’ themselves.” He gestured vaguely. “There’s a swamp shanty town yonder. We’ll make for it come sunup.”
    â€œYou know where it is?”
    â€œYou sure are a curious fella, ain’t ya. I know where it is.”
    â€œWhere’s yonder?”
    â€œWell, when we find it we’ll know for sure. Now, lay in on that blanket and let’s get some sleep.”
    Hellboy laid down. He wasn’t sure that he could trust this guy, and said, “I’m not sure I can trust you.”
    But Lament merely turned away from the fire, drew his blanket over his shoulder, and soon was softly snoring.
    It had been a hell of a day all right.
    As Hellboy fell asleep he saw the shadows lengthening, thickening around the campsite, easing toward him to clutch at his clothes and face. They spoke in an infantile and inhuman language that he couldn’t name but could still understand. They told him he would find remorse and pain in the marsh, but he should be true to his own secret heart. He brushed the shadows from his nose as he settled in to dream, hearing the children calling him.

  CHAPTER 8
    â€”
    Jester sat in shadow with the demon’s secrets.
    It had been too late to take a skiff into the swamp, with the moon already beginning to rise, so they’d decided to wait until sunup. The Ferris boys lived in a two-room shack not far from the house where Brother Jester had been raised by his own brutal father, another man corrupted by bitterness, ignorance, and corn liquor. They were terrified that Jester would murder them in their sleep, and they tried to appease him any way they could. They offered him food, wine, and the tramp down the lane, and even their sagging, fetid mattresses although Jester hadn’t slept under a roof in twenty years.
    Jester hadn’t slept in twenty years. His mind periodically wandered away from his body, and the body occasionally rested.
    They gave him a torn blanket spattered with old bloodstains. It was a child’s blanket and featured a cartoon bird character. He folded it and laid it on their sagging back-porch step and sat there looking into the lush vegetation of the woodland that eventually cascaded into the marshes.
    Held within the folds of their black wings, the shadows of angels brought with them the secrets of the sleeping demon, aflame with hellfire. When the shadows dropped the mysteries, puzzles, and contradictions at Jester’s feet, the dark preacher poked through them with the toe of his shoe, struggling but incapable of understanding.
    A Russian who would not die. A loving foster father, a hard man of justice. A once-evil but eventually repentant mother. A prince of Sheol. Enormous unholy beasts with the faces of pigs, frogs, and dogs. Brutish shamblers that burned from the touch of iron or innocence. Griddle cakes. Horseshoes. Holy water and the bones of saints.
    Brother Jester took off his hat, cleaned the brim with his handkerchief, and put it back on.
    Children. Inhuman, horrific in nature, but blessed. Calling to God and those that aid God’s will. And the Holy Spirit giving favor.
    A great tree of life, perhaps the very tree of knowledge still bearing fruit in the garden of Eden, away from mankind’s transgressions.
    Those were only the few images he could easily grasp. A greater number of them were visions and scraps of infernal knowledge that tore into his mind. They went behind his small human brain and settled at the back of his skull where his immortal rage sat perched, waiting to eat.
    There were words and legacies. Anung Un Rama. The Crown of the Apocalypse. A name of destiny shunned and nearly lost so that it no longer held its greatest meaning. This secret somehow reminded him of his own forgotten name.
    The power inside Jester rose up on its own accord,