"How many children do you have here?" asked Hellboy, craning his neck to try and take in the enormity of this place. The walls of the cave — or whatever the hell it was — soared upward at either end like the sides of a ravine. Looking up, it seemed to Hellboy they could never meet in the darkness overhead.
He stood at the crossroad of several different paths, all strewn with random stones and loose piles of scree. Illuminated by the light from the dozens, possibly hundreds, of torches, he saw that these paths became narrow and steep, the rocks growing fewer but larger, stacked one on top of the other. In the distance he could make out something that looked like a chaotic staircase of massive, wedge-shaped boulders. This was evidently the anteroom of some vast, silent, ancient chamber.
Ahead, he could see a bluish radiance, haloing some kind of rock formation. On a small plateau, under an overhang of white calcite that curved gracefully upward like a snowdrift hollowed by the wind, stood a cluster of meticulously carved stones, each roughly the size and shape of a woman, arms outstretched, holding something whose shape he could not quite discern. Their bodies were complete but all of them lacked faces.
Hellboy turned slowly around, looking upward, and felt his breath catch in his throat.
"Holy crap," he whispered.
Crisscrossing above his head like strands of a web was an intricate network of handmade bridges, some constructed from disparate sections of metal, others made from rope and planks of wood. Below these bridges was a catwalk, also made from wood, that seemed to encircle the entire chamber. Lighted torches and battery-operated lanterns hung from the surrounding walls, and every ten or fifteen feet there would be a rope ladder, some leading down, some leading up.
And everywhere above there were hollowed spaces that looked like small tombs, each of them lit from within and tenanted by children. Hellboy could hear music coming from some of the chambers, laughter from others. Other chambers were cut off by means of curtains that had been nailed into place somehow. The more he scared, awestruck, the more apparent the ingenuity that had gone into constructing this place. The curtains were not nailed into position as he'd first thought; expandable shower curtain rods had been used in each doorway, so that if the tenant desired privacy, they had only to slide their particular curtain closed. Some used quilts, others blankets.
"How ... how many of you are there?" he asked again.
"I quit counting almost fifty years ago," replied a voice near Hellboy's side. "These catacombs go on for miles, and where one series of chambers ends, there are passageways to others just like this. There's an underground spring not too far from here — the cleanest water you've ever tasted. I'd offer to give you a tour but you don't look to me like you're up for much sightseeing at the moment. In fact, you kind of look like a sick walrus trying to climb over a rock, so I'd have a seat if I were you."
A moment later, the children erupted from their rooms with squeals of laughter and anticipation, scurrying down the ladders, running across the catwalk, dashing over the bridges. Hellboy thought for a moment that this cavern perhaps opened somewhere near the top because he was again seeing stars — some so far away they were mere pinpoints of light — but as he watched, he became aware that these distant stars too were moving, circling around other catwalks, traversing higher bridges, descending other ladders, or being lowered in their wheelchairs on wood-and-steel elevator platforms that were operated through a massive and ingeniously constructed system of chains, pulleys, winches, and counterweights, all coming toward him, not stars at all but yet more torches and lanterns being carried by children whose rooms were hundreds of feet above those he had first seen.
It was incredible. He'd thought there might be only a few dozen children living here, maybe a hundred, but now saw that their numbers were legion; there had to be at least two thousand children, maybe even more. He tried again to pull all the shadow-children into his vision but was overwhelmed with dizziness and vertigo. There were just too many of them.
"Are you all right?" asked another voice, this one a child's.
Hellboy nodded, then took a deep breath, and then shook his head. "I am feeling a bit dizzy, now that you mention it."
The children continued to descend from above until the chamber was packed; never before had Hellboy seen so many in one place. He tried to regain his balance before the dizziness got the better of him but managed only to drop onto his ass, his tail getting entangled with his oilskin coat and sending a sharp lance of pain up through his back. He looked around at the sea of surrounding faces and realized he couldn't see where the crowd ended.
"I'll be passing out now, if that's all right."
"I'm surprised you remained conscious for this long," someone said.
"I'll expect pancakes later ..."
"Beg pardon?"
"... was told ... there would always be pancakes ..."
And, as he'd always suspected would one day happen, Hellboy was cast afloat into a dark corner of the universe.
He'd known something was up before he'd even entered Tom Mannings office. The director of the B.P.R.D. had this air about him any time his authority was overridden by someone, or something, higher up. Manning had been named director while Trevor Bruttenholm was still alive — the professor had wanted to use his time for research and field work — but Hellboy knew that many in the B.P.R.D. viewed him as a simple bureaucrat, a poor replacement for the accomplished Bruttenholm. In the wake of the professor's death, Tom Manning, Hellboy suspected, needed no one to remind him that he was the consolation prize. For a while, Hellboy himself had felt this way, but as Manning proved time and again just how well qualified he was for the directorship, what had first been an outright resentment on Hellboy's part became a gruff form of respect and, sometimes, even admiration.
Still, sometimes it was easy to see that Manning, for all of his stiff-backed demeanor and even steely manner, felt as if he were sometimes reduced to the role of errand boy — especially when it came to honoring requests made by Trevor Bruttenholm prior to his death. Who would dare argue with Hellboy's dead father, after all?
So when Hellboy saw the way in which Manning did not so much walk to his office as plow through the hallway, eyes not making contact with anyone along the way, he knew something wasn't right. That suspicion doubled when he received the call not one minute later to come to the director's office immediately. If any doubts were still lingering, they vanished as soon as Hellboy closed Manning's office door and saw the look on the director's face; Tom Manning looked humiliated beyond words; helpless, ineffectual, inept.
"Hellboy," said Manning, gesturing for him to take a seat.
"Sir," replied Hellboy, hoping that the tone of his voice was as neutral as he tried making it sound.
Manning met Hellboy's gaze for only a moment before returning it to the telegram on his desk. Reading it over once more, he pushed it across the desk, then sat back and rubbed his eyes. "That arrived less than an hour ago."
Hellboy nodded, then picked up the telegram:
HB
I hope this doesn't get you into trouble. I need your help. Please get here as soon as you can. Urgent.
The Reverend
"I promised Professor Bruttenholm a lot of things before his death," said Manning. "Not the least of which was that I'd respect certain matters the two of you wished to be kept private. Your friend the Reverend was near the very top of that privacy list. I never pressed Trevor and I've never pressed you about who or what he is. I know he's helped the Bureau on several occasions and has never asked for anything in return. Hell, even in the telegram, he doesn't demand your help, he asks for it. That tells me the man's got integrity and knows how to show respect."
"That he does, sir."
Manning tried to smile, didn't quite make it. Hellboy felt kind of bad for the guy.