Prologue in pulp
It was a long train and swift and dark as the inside of a dead man's gut. Its smoke stack chugged out dark wafts of choo-choo exhaust that climbed up high and momentarily bagged the full moon, stunk up the sky until the thin desert air smelled like something rotten and pissed on.
It ran not only between and around cacti and little rises of sand, it ran right smack dab through them, but didn't move them, didn't change them. Went through them as if the train were smoke, churning up clouds of dust.
Since its appearance, the moon had stayed the same, had not changed a bit; it was forever full and forever bright and it kept the same position in the sky. The train ran on invisible rails. The smoke from the stack broke up in patches, fluttered about like agitated birds of prey.
The desert town of Cold Shepherd lay cool and silent in the late of night. It was dark except for a few store lights. It was a little town and not very populated, most of the people middle-aged or old, a smattering of kids and infants, so after midnight there was very little activity. Everyone was tucked away in their beds by that time. Come early morning, many would drive into the city some twenty-five miles away to do their jobs or shopping. Old men would play dominoes down at the Community Hall, smoking and cussing and telling lies of youthful prowess. Old women would gather for a furious game of bridge and gossip; false teeth would clatter and the air would smell of too much perfume. There would be no school as it was the dead of summer, and the kids would be bored by midday, having played out video games and watched DVDs until they could quote the lines in all the movies. Mothers would be worn out with crying babies. Dogs and cats would lie about in any available shade.
So they slept, the next day looming, and then came the sound, from a distance and odd at first. No more noise than a rat straining to shit, and then there was a bit of clatter and rattle, like a drunk pot-and-pan salesman falling downstairs.
It was loud enough that lights went on and people came out of their houses, walked into the street for a look. In the distance they saw a perfectly round glow of gold the size of a thumb tip coming toward them beneath the higher glow of the harvest moon. The round glow kept coming on and on, faster and faster, becoming larger, and then they saw it was the light of a train, and then they could see the train, its cow catcher at the forefront, greasy smoke stack coughing up char-colored smoke; the stench was close now and worse than rotten and pissed on; it smelled like a butcher shop where the meat had hung too long.
As the machine heaved to a stop in the center of town, scattering people in pajamas and robes, it could clearly be seen that the train was right out of an old Western movie, something ripe for Jesse James to rob. There were boxcars, but they none of them appeared to be passenger cars — no windows. When it stopped there was the sound of the big hot engine cooling in the night air, the metal heaved and squealed like a soul caught up in barb wire, the box cars trembled as if cold, and the smoke stack coughed one last time and a huge puff of shadow swelled out and stuck in the stack for a moment, then broke loose with an uncorking sound, took to the sky and broke apart and made a batch of bats that flew up until the night absorbed them.
The people, stunned as if they had been whacked with a mallet, just stood there, staring, not even speaking, and then someone said, "Look at that," and pointed toward the sky. People looked, saw the smoke bats were coming back, and they were swelling in size until they were no longer bats but smoke dragons. They could see through the dragons in spots, hints of moonlight here and there. The dragons dropped down out of the sky. Their beating wings and twisting tails caused the dirt to spin on the street in tiny dust devils. The glass in window panes rattled like dry old bones.
People panicked. Old men and women hobbled on canes and walkers, and younger men and women broke and ran. Others scooped up their children, or encouraged them to run. They made for their homes.
No one made it. Not even the dogs and cats.
The smoke dragons were quick, and when they came down they scooped the people and animals up like hawks grabbing mice, scooped them up in their smoky talons which were solid as steel, and darted for the train.
The side door on the train flung open with a sound like a cough, and just before the shadow dragons carried the people inside, the victims got a whiff of the train's interior. It was enough to make the eyes water, the nose fill up, and the head go stone-cold drunk. It was a stench beyond the exterior butcher shop smell; it was a stench like all the dead things that ever were or ever would be, all the vomit, excrement, and foul odors of decaying man and animal, fruit and vegetable, composting in the heat of hell.
The shadow dragons darted into the train. The door slammed loudly shut, tight as a miser's wallet. The train cranked up with a chug, and another, another, and then it was moving again, down the street, right through a house without so much as breaking a board, leaving behind ectoplasmic cobwebs and drips of goo.
The train pumped on across the back end of the town, on out into the desert again, picked up speed. It began to look like an elongated shadow, and then there were only streaks of blackness, like some kind of poisonous infection running the length of a wound. The streaks joined with the natural shadows of the desert and were soon one with the night. There was only a hint of its stench left behind to mark its passing.
Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense
New Mexico field office
Hallway security cam
Its not a good picture. It vibrates a little, goes scratchy (got to get that fixed, everyone thinks, but so far no one's fixed anything.)
Cam shows a tall man with a shaved head and a goose-step walk. He wears a black suit underneath a black leather raincoat, has on shiny black shoes, has the face of a man afraid to laugh. His eyes look like a couple of cigarette burns. With him is a woman, Kate Corrigan, folklore expert. She has to walk fast to keep up.
A large room
Hellboy, sitting in a chair, watches the security cam on the wall, says, "Now what?"
A light glows red above the door, and then the door opens, and Now What enters the room. The tall man and Kate. Kate, she looks okay today, like maybe she got some sleep, but she's all business, Hellboy can tell that. She's got that look, rested or not.
He takes hold of his tail and pulls it in an unconscious gesture, maybe hoping it will come off. Sawing off his horns worked out. The nubs looked pretty cool, like goggles. Maybe a nip of the tail and he'd look more presentable. Of course, there was his right arm, about the size of a cannon and not exactly the most dexterous of limbs. Had a lot of bad mojo about it, Right Hand of Doom and all that, formerly owned by someone else, real heavy, good to hit with, but not exactly the best hand for picking your nose. So, no matter what he did, unless he was willing to have a lot of amputation and one hell of a makeover and wear funny hats, he was always going to look like a big red guy with a tail.
When they come into the room, Hellboy doesn't leave his chair. He's too tired for that, too worn for that, too much late-night business with demons and ghosts, werewolves and nasties; even someone of demonic origin gets a little worn out, needs a break, thinks of Hawaiian shirts and smooth beaches and girls in bikinis, some kind of cool, alcoholic drink.
As the tall man and Kate approach, Hellboy says, "Its not good to see you. I'm taking a break. I don't want any. Gave at the office. Can I borrow five dollars? I have runny sores."
"Weak," Kate says, sauntering over.
"Yeah, well," Hellboy says, "I'm not feeling so good. My dog died. I have to wash my hair."
The tall guy just looks at Hellboy. Hellboy doesn't like those eyes. Human enough, but they're way too deep in the skull and too small and too close together, the pupils are like greasy B.B.s. Hellboy watches, wondering: Does this dude blink?
"This is Jim Jeff," Kate says. "He's a Reverend of sorts. He thinks it's the end of the world."
"Again?"
"Big time," Kate says.
"Ah, saw you blink," Hellboy says to the Reverend.
"What?" says the Reverend.
"Don't pay him any mind, Reverend," Kate says.
"Reverends have always got problems," Hellboy says. "I've come to the conclusion religion isn't any fun."
"Glad to meet you," says the Reverend, and he doesn't mean it, of course. Hellboy takes him for one of those self-righteous types, probably wondering what m the world he's doing associating with someone that has the stench of sulfur about him. That's all right, Hellboy thinks. I don't like you either.
"Salutations and all that stuff," Hellboy says. "What's up, Rev? Let's make it snappy. I got a manicure coming."
"Manicure?" says the Reverend.