The Mouth on Charming Hill:
Chapter Two
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Southern Virginia
Twenty miles outside Hallisburg.
"Twelve," said Sand from the driver's seat. She turned, checking the road outside her window for signs of any other vehicles, and twisted the steering wheel quickly to bring the truck over.
Liz flipped a page in the book of maps she held, studying the irregular lines of back-roads and tilting her head toward Sand. "It's a few more miles off than that," she replied absently. Turning the map around, she traced one of the roads with her finger and frowned. "Dead end there, too," she sighed.
Sand looked briefly to the younger girl. "Not miles, hon," she corrected; Liz frowned privately at the casual nickname. "Deaths." In what had rapidly proven to be a normal expression for Agent Sand, the woman grinned as she spoke.
"Well, that's not too morbid," Liz said dryly; "is it?"
If anything, Sand's grin widened and took on a purposefully cheeky gleam as she checked the side-door mirrors habitually. "Someone has to say it," she said loftily, and grinned again.
"Great," came Hellboy's deeper voice, deadpanning as he shifted his oversized frame in the back. A flesh of red showed from beneath his overcoat, and he relaxed as much as he could, still visible through the open window partition. "But you're killing me with all this witty conversation. Do me a favor and cut the crap, Sand." It was that particular means of being brusque without being overly rude that Hellboy had – as, too, was the muffled curse he swore at a sudden jolt.
"Sorry," Sand winced, eyes flicking momentarily to the rearview mirror. "Bad roads."
Liz caught his eyes, gave a sympathetic shrug of her shoulders as if to say 'tough luck' or any number of other unhelpful empathies. "Maybe a plane would've been a better idea," she said with a slight smile. "Or a truck you'd actually fit in, H.B."
"No good," said Sand with a bright, almost sarcastic smile. "The nearest airstrip's really not near enough to Hallisburg to justify the expense. 'Sides, Manning's been putting pressure on the budget again. Cheaper and less hassle just to paint a truck and toss us in."
Hellboy snorted, expressing his opinion on the matter of Manning and agency funding, and shifted to resettle his admirable weight, carefully to keep from tilting the truck.
Still fiddling with the map book, turning it about in a wasted attempt to make sense of the entwined lines, Liz pressed a hand absently through her dark hair, rested her fingertips against her scalp. "It's on the map, at least," she finally said, cutting into the temporary quiet. She finished running a hand through her hair, and leaned her head forward as she followed one of the roads with her fingertips.
The maps themselves – in an ordinary, gaudily-colored collection of the fifty states and their contents – had been decorated, heavily, with small, penciled asterisks and color-coded circles around wherever the BPRD had found, and responded to, paranormal activity. Most of the colored circles dotting the Virginia maps, much like the rest of the New England states, were bright green, indicating standard low-level creepers: ghosts, mostly, would be green, as would relatively isolated or small-order demons and beasts. Blue was next most common – small gathering of various unpleasant, but generally easy to contain, creatures, particularly nasty 'pest' swarms – and a spattering of yellows and oranges followed, for heightening threat levels. The telltale warning sign of red – reserved for the worst of cases – was thankfully not present.
What was present, Liz noticed (tipping her head slightly and narrowing her eyes), was a distinct, straggling border of orange circles looped distantly around Hallisburg: small, neighboring towns that unlike their current destination had been visited by the BPRD in the past to handle a serious danger of some level. The farthest was sixty miles from Hallisburg, the nearest ten. Green and blue, circled around landmarks, gas stations, and random stretches of road, connected the oranges into a large and lopsided round shape.
"Poltergeists," she said clearly. She touched a fingertip to one of the orange circles and dragged it to the next as she skimmed the accompanying abbreviations (plgt3-'86, plgt7-'50, plgt9-'82). "All around Hallisburg – there's at least eight towns with past infestations. Big ones, too, since 1950, and ghosts all over the map."
She paused, winced as she heard Hellboy make an amused noise, and folding the map book's spin into a more manageable bundle she leaned to hold it up to the middle of the cab. Sand gave it a perfunctory glance, keeping her attention more on the road and the presence of other drivers; Hellboy, however, shifted again – with care – to better see the map.
"We were here," Liz said, quietly. "'96, in Amneston: two poltergeists…"
"And the thing with the frog," finished Hellboy with a grimace. "That was one hell of a mess, Liz."
She nodded with a small grimace of her own, mouth tightening in reflexive memory. "Thing is, Amneston is thirty-two miles north of Hallisburg, and it's not the only one that's had problems like that here. They're circling Hallisburg; all the towns around it had a poltergeist problem of some sort, and there've been hostile ghosts everywhere between." She waited a moment, and drew the map back to her lap, straightening in her seat.
"Well, crap," he muttered, and there was a sort of metal boom when he resettled himself in the back. "Anyone got any idea what the hell that means?"
"Oversize target?" Sand suggested with a winsome tone. "One giant Virginian bull's-eye, courtesy Hellsburg, yoo-es-ay."
Hellboy snorted, again, and Liz caught his eye, smiling with amusement at him. He looked away, then, to his boot as he propped it back on the crate he had been using as a footrest. Still smiling to herself, she shifted back around just in time to see the faded green exit-sign: Hallisburg --.
"Here we go," she murmured, tightening one hand around the armrest.
"Cheer up," Sand said lightly to the other two. "It can't be worse than that froggy friend of yours."
Liz managed to not shudder.
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Hallisburg, VA
8:32 PM
The town itself was so pointedly mundane that for a second or two Liz was struck with an almost paralyzing sense of sudden longing. She thought, briefly, of what it must be like to live such a small, wonderfully average life, and then shook her head lightly, stepping out of the small bed-n-breakfast's back door. Dusk had rapidly shadowed Hallisburg, giving a normal humid darkness to the thick trees out here, out back; the mosquitoes that had seemed numerous enough in the afternoon were all but swarming now in that same humidity, and she absently swatted a few of the braver ones away from her t-shirt-bared arms. The literal bloodsuckers were a breed of horror all their own.
Sasha Harper's Bed-n-Breakfast was suitably cozy, with just enough empty space for Liz and Sand to each claim a small and inexpensive room. It was probably the best place they could have found to stay in town, close enough to the outskirts of Hallisburg that sneaking out to find Hellboy was as simple as the guise of an evening walk to stretch out tired legs – not that she was not going to use this opportunity to do such anyway.
An unwanted thought – how surprisingly pleasant it was to be in a place where nighttime strolls were not discouraged or considered dangerous, even after recent activities – crossed her mind and she shook her head again. No, not so pleasant; they, after all, were here.
Sighing, she slipped a hand into the left pocket of her slacks, pulled a small white carton from it as she walked the few steps across the low-slung porch. Wood creaked and gave a little beneath her feet, a drawn-out moaning that was cut off when she stepped onto the gravel path. Liz flipped the carton open and knocked a slender cigarette out with a quick jiggle of the carton, lifting and tucking it between her lips. She did no light it – did not care to think on why she would not – and so flipped the carton shut, letting it drop back into her pocket.
She followed the graveled trail for a few minutes in silence, slapping occasionally at the irritation of mosquitoes while she walked quietly along through the thin stretch of shadowing trees. Breathing was humid and unnaturally thick, pressed down upon by the summer's evening heat, and even so she folded her arms across her chest, nearly shivering in spite of that heavy warmth.
Liz had never placed much trust in the idea of personal precognition, unless, of course, it was a skill particular to a person like Abe; the unlit cigarette she did not dare to light was subtle testimony to what she could do, and would not.
That's enough, she chided, tired, and stopped to wait silent and patient in the middle of the wide trail, beneath the twisting branches of old-and-new trees. "We're far enough out, H.B. It's all right if you come out, now." She tightened her fingers in the thin cloth of her shirt, tipping her face up to the pale half-shape of the moon. Waiting, still, in the silver-washed darkness of early night, she knew he was near; he always was, and if she was patient enough to continue waiting he would show. He always does, she thought with a small, oddly sad sort of smile.
It was a little longer – two minutes, maybe three – until she heard the heavy crunching of gravel under a particularly large person, and smiling to herself, muttered, "Right on cue."
"This place is one of the deadest towns I've seen in a couple of years," he said by way of greeting, looming red in his overcoat. "Been listening in on what passes for law enforcement here's yakkin' about, and I'll be damned if this town isn't clammed up enough to make Atlantic seem talky."
He continued walking, broad shoulders snapping off what few twigs and branches hung over the path as he passed, weight bearing down on the gravel, hard, when he stepped. A faint trace of smoke puffed from the cigar he sported out of habit.
"Atlantic?" Liz asked, fairly certain already. She fell into place beside him, a slender figure to the left of his bulkier shape, her own rasping footsteps light compared to and overwhelmed by his. Touching a hand to her mouth, she drew the cigarette away, clasped between two fingers.
Hellboy grinned around the cigar, entirely amused with the nickname. "Abe," he replied, still grinning. "Thought it was better than Triton, but he's not crazy about either one." He ducked under a relatively low-lying branch, one that cleared Liz's dark head by several inches. "Guy just can't take a joke."
Liz chose not to answer, though God knew it wouldn't have been hard; and instead she opted for a more business-oriented conversation piece. "Earlier, when Sand said that bit about twelve deaths? Turns out exactly twelve people have died in Hallisburg every year since 1950 – same year the first poltergeist infestation was reported, in Three Woods, some town west of here."
"Lemme guess," he muttered, nudging a log half-sprawled on the trail with his boot, back into the undergrowth. "It's not just some crazy coincidence, is it?"
She shook her head, black hair gleaming in the moonlight. "The details aren't clear, though – we can't just ask about it, not without drawing more attention to ourselves than we'd want. We did learn there was at least one fatality in that freak storm a few weeks ago; some guy from out of town visiting family." Liz reached out, clutching the left sleeve of his coat momentarily for balance as she stepped over a fallen and gnarled branch.
He glanced at her hand, pale in the moonlight and even paler against the washed brown of his coat, and cleared his throat, fixing his gaze on the trail ahead. She let go of the coat, turning to look hesitantly at the distant glow of the bed-n-breakfast. Now she did shiver, a single involuntary spasm that she tamped down on easily.
"Damn," she said, softly, and he heard.
"Liz," he said as gently as he knew how, "something wrong?"
He knew, of course, and if not he could guess, easily; even now, as strangely cold as she felt looking back at peaceful, unnatural Hallisburg, she also felt a mix of relief and unease at that familiarity they shared.
Damn, she thought, but did not share again.
"No," she answered without smiling. She ducked her head and took a few quick steps forward, from a shadow into sudden, brilliant half-light. Reflexively, agitated, she reached a hand up to the old crucifix at her throat. As she closed her fingers around the smooth, cool metal, she did not hear the soft creaking of a tree near the trail.
She did, however, hear Hellboy's near-cursing shout of her name, and looked up in time to see a large tree's rough side bulging grotesquely towards her. She had one moment of thought – what the hell--? – before it ripped apart before her.
Hellboy was behind Liz in a matter of seconds, hauling her to his chest and lifting his clenched, stone right hand to guard her head from the splintered and jagged wood twisting, whirling at them. The wood did not touch them, instead veering away in suicidal arcs to lodge deeply into the gravel and surrounding trees. A sudden wind had struck up, howling at the intruders with a nonliving fury as it tore at his solid, unmoving bulk. As quickly as it had sprung up, the wind vanished, dwindling swiftly into humid silence.
For a moment they did not move, his fist still held protectively behind her head, her fingers wound tightly enough around the crucifix to turn her knuckles white. He relaxed, slightly, and Liz drew away, both turning to look at the ragged splinters left of the tree, buried like uneven javelins everywhere but for a three foot radius from where they had stood.
She looked, next, to her other hand, the cigarette still clasped in her hand, if noticeably crumpled.
"Jeez," Hellboy said, glancing at the damage. "Something's pissed off."
She took a breath, calming burning nerves and still looking to the cigarette. "I need a light," she said, then, and slipped the cigarette between her lips.
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