Well, Abe, here I am, writing to you from our hotel room in Dublin.

Y'know by now that we are not coming home according to planned, I think you should know why, it is quite an interesting story, that I think you will enjoy.

Anyway, I have to report about it at some point, so I thought I'd just write the story to you, and then you can edit it to look more official, y'know.

I am thinking a good title would be, "the day the world almost ended"

Dad was going to a conference for a lecture in Dublin, and I decided to accompany him, y'know to make a vacation out of it. The lecture was about poltergeists and other haunting spirits, quite fascinating. Well or so I thought, I don't know how much of it the audience paid attention to, they all seemed to have a hard time not looking at me. Y'know, I get it a lot of times, and I can't blame them, I'm like the guy with the lazy eye, or funny hat, or just weird features, that you see on the bus, you don't want to stare, but you do. With my hooves, stone hand, stump horns, tail and blood red skin, I must be the weirdest guy on a bus that you would ever see. Well, enough about this guy-on-the-bus talk. After the lecture we had some days to use, and dad suggested that I should meet an old friend of his, a man called Ian Brannigan.

Ian lived on a farm a couple of miles outside of Dublin. Dad told me that Ian had been a scientist, and had written a good couple of books about quantum physics, and the big bang theory. Dad and Ian had been friends in college, and dad told that Ian had been a science-wiz, and had daily shared his homegrown theories about the universe to everyone who would listen, the same theories had even formed the idea of a manmade experiment to replicate the moment of creation.

You know me, Abe, I have never been the big thinker. I know my way around supernatural beings and how to deal with them, but quantum physics, that's where I get off. Anyway, I thought it would be interesting to meet the man, and boy was I right.

Dad phoned ahead, and we were off. It was a three hour drive from Dublin, and on the way, something weird happened. Well, to begin with it wasn't weird, it's one of those things you look back at, and think: "there was a message or something." Anyway, looking back at it, I think it was more than a coincidence that the car radio started to play a song called: it's the end of the world as we know it.

I am sure you have heard it Abe.

When we finally arrived at Ian's farm, it was early evening, and the sun was shining its orange-red light over us, but still, it seemed that the farm was completely dark.

There was a house, and a barn that looked like a gentle breeze would be enough to make it collapse on itself. All of the lights were out in the house, and even though the sun was still up, we couldn't see inside. Dad tried to open the door, but it was locked. I asked him to stand back a bit, and so I tried gently forcing the door open with my red stone hand.

But gently has never been my strong side, I am more of an elephant-in-a-china-shop guy. Instead of gently forcing the wood around the lock to its breaking point, I smashed the entire door in. Anyway the door was open, and so we walked in. I could see dad become more and more concerned, from every room we searched. And I understood why, the Ian he had known and told me about, had always been a very neat and tidy man, who couldn't stand filthiness. But from the rooms we saw, I would never have guessed that. It was a pig sty, paper, garbage, dinner plates with leftovers on them, dirty laundry, and layer upon layer of dust. It seemed that Ian Brannigan was not as methodical in his cleaning than he used to be.

The other eerie thing we found, was in what I assume was his study though it was hard to tell from all the mess. Small orbs made of metal rings, were scattered throughout the room, I think there must have been half a dozen, all small orbs made of rings built to move in coordination with each other on pedestals. There were little difference between them, but still, I gathered that they where just models leading up to a final design. The final design stood on a lamp table next to a chair, I walked over and studied it, it had a little round pedestal to stand on, and to house its mechanics, all of the rings stood still within each other, I pressed a button on the pedestal of the mechanism with my left hand finger, and the little orb came to life, the rings twisted and turned, building up speed in a perfect sliding motion.

I heard my dad call my name from the other side of the room, so I turned off the orb, and walked over to him.

He was standing in front of a blackboard with a lot of pages and papers sticking to it, there were red strings connecting the many pieces of paper. I looked at dad, and he looked both puzzled and certain at the same time, as if he knew what the pages on the blackboard meant, but didn't know why.

I asked him what it was.

"Look at this, my son." He said, pointing to one side of the blackboard.

"These pages and notes are from a book, Ian himself wrote and edited about the big bang theory, and these here, opposite the pages and notes, are pages taken from various holy books. Look, here is the Bible, and Koran, and many nature people religions, and all on the same subject; Creation."

At the same moment dad uttered the word, we were ambushed by a loud sound. Instinctively I went into combat position, raising my stone hand like a sledgehammer. But nothing attacked us, there was just the sound of huge metal gears moving in a shrilling metallic whine.

The sound came from outside, more precisely the barn that we had neglected to investigate.

As we came out of the house we saw that the barn was completely lit up from inside, stripes of light were streaming out from every crevice and opening in the woodwork.

We hurried over to the barn, me in the lead, to see what was happening, I thought it was best to be the one who took the first peek inside, just in case something unpredictable happened. As I peered through the opening in the barn door, I was not surprised of what I saw. A giant version of the smaller metal orbs was filling up most of the space in the barn, what space there was left, was occupied by power generators that all hummed, as they fed the giant spinning orb with power through thick cables lying like snakes across the floor.

In the center of the spinning rings was the source of light, a concentrated point of energy, it grew bigger and more powerful from each time the rings made a 360 degrees turn.

At a control panel, at the foot of the machine, stood a man with his back turned, whom I guessed was Ian Braningan.

Dad came up next to me, and his eyes went wide with disbelief and fear. He looked at the machine, then at the man.

"Ian?" he said, with a small voice. The man at the controls turned at the sound of dad's voice, I was surprised that he could even hear it over the whining of the orbs metal gears.

Ian was the same age as dad, his hair and beard was long, his eyes were wild, confused, almost electric, but all together mad. I have seen such looks on many people throughout the years as a bureau agent, and so have you, Abe, we both know what a possessed man looks like.

"Trevor!" Ian said, he jumped across the floor and hugged dad, as if they were at their college reunion.

"Ian, what have you done!?" my dad asked. Ian looked at him with a big smile, showing teeth that by logic should have fallen out of his mouth from decay by now.

"I have the answer, I am going to start it all over, I am going to make a new beginning!" he said, as if it was the most logical and fantastic thing in the world. Dad just looked at him with terror painted across his face, he looked over at me and said; "my boy, you have to stop it, NOW!"

Later on dad told me what it was that Ian was trying to accomplish.

Even in college, Ian had been fascinated by the idea of the universe being created by a huge explosion of energy, later on it turned into a passion, and then into a possession.

Ian wanted to create a big bang, and a new universe, sadly enough that meant that this one would have to go, but Ian had found this even more pleasing. As he explained later to me and my dad, the world we live in is an infested wound that can't be healed, so he decided that a new universe would seem like a better idea.

I don't know if his machine would be capable of doing such a thing, then again, I have seen what mad men can create in their finest moments of insanity.

I crawled on top of the platform on which the orb was resting, I could feel the movement of the gears under my hooves, the moving rings was right in front of me, inches away, I could just reach out, and I would have my arm in the middle of the moving metal.

As I have said earlier, I am an elephant in a china shop, in other words, I am good at breaking stuff, and it was in these kinda moments that my talent for destruction proved to be a gift.

I swung my stone hand at a ring, that was coming from the opposite side, with full force. A thing about homemade judgment day machines is that you need very little brute force to break them apart, and this spinning orb machine was no exception.

One punch and the thing was crumbling, bits and pieces were breaking apart, and falling to the floor, others were being propelled through the air by the machines movement, there was a loud rattle of metal flying everywhere, I jumped with a agility and speed that many wouldn't believe possible for my large size, I reached dad and Ian. Dad trying to pull Ian with him out of the barn, to safety. Ian just stood there with his mouth open and eyes wide as he saw his beautiful orb and, I am guessing, his life work, break into pieces. I can imagine how devastating that would be, but as I picked up Ian with my stone hand to carry him to safety, I saw a smile form on his lips and a spark in his eye.

I turned to see what it was that suddenly had given him such hope, and for a moment my soul was frozen with fear.

Even though the orb was disintegrating as we were running, the center of energy was still going hard, and growing in strength, and for a moment, time itself seemed to stop.

I remember thinking, "this is it, we are all dead, pack your bags, this world is gone!"

But, as you may have noticed, Abe, the world didn't end. I think that I sabotaged the machine just at the right moment to stop it from completing charging up, or maybe the machine would never have worked the way its creator had intended. Anyway, what happened next was that, the energy core, quickly expanded in a bright light, like a small sun, then the whole thing imploded, taking most of the orb with it, leaving only the pedestal, and with a gravitational force many times more powerful than the Earth, squeezing all the metal, screws, bolts, and dust particles into subatomic molecules.

(Dad helped me write the last bit the best way I could describe it, was: "Everything was sucked into the light." And I know that you understand, all this science munbo jumbo better than I, Abe, and you can gather a picture from all of that, I just told you. But try to see it from my view, that is what I saw, the orb, and half the barn roof being sucked in to the light, as then it all just collapsed in on itself.)

The shockwave threw us a few yards forward, but that was it, everything was silent, until Ian started getting back on his feet, and started to ramble.

He screamed at us, how we dared to interrupt his experiment, saying that he would have cleaned the universe of all evil.

At this point I was getting a bit pissed, getting thrown through the air by a massive explosion of energy, happens to do that to me.

So I told Ian, harshly, that he would have been a goner with the rest of us, if his machine had worked.

Ian looked at me, as if I was some sort of lunatic. He then screamed that he already knew that, just as he fell down on his butt and sat there with his arms crossed, staring sulky into the night.

Ian was acting almost like a child, and I had to say sorry for breaking his machine before we could get him into the car. We drove back to Dublin, where dad had him hospitalized, he said that he would stay and make sure that Ian got the help he needed, and I told him that I would stay with him. He replied; "thanks, my son."

So that was the story, Abe. The story about the day the world almost ended.

I told you that it would be an interesting story. As to when we are coming home, I can't say, there are still some things to clear out with Ian, and some papers to look at, I am helping dad the best way I can, moral support.

Y'know, I can't help but think how Ian got that way, from what information I gathered from dad, he was always a reasonable and down to earth guy, who loved science. So how does one go from respectable elderly scientist, to crackpot lunatic?

It's just one of those questions that just keeps on nagging, y'know.

Anyway, hope you're fine, blue guy, and say hi to Liz for me.

See you soon.

Hellboy.

hope you enjoyed this little hellboy story, I am pretty proud of it myself, and I would like to thanks my friend and beta-reader Mr. M. D. Mortensen, who took out of his day to help me with my gramma, thank you.

thanks to my friend peter who came critique, comments and Ideas to make this story great.

thanks to your both.

please red and review.