Glimpses: The Best Short Stories of Rick Hautala (34 page)

“I was just telling
Lorraine, here, about what happened last year,” Hellboy said.

The Finn made a soft chuffing sound that might have passed for a laugh before saying, “Christ, Hellboy, look at you. You’re drunk on your ass.”

Hellboy slouched back in his seat and seemed for a moment unable to focus his eyes as he shook his head in adamant denial and said, “No. No. I just had a little something to drink with Lorraine, here, while I was waiting for you.”

The Finn leaned forward and ran his hands down the sides of his face.

“What kind of lies has he been telling you?” he asked Lorraine, and in the half-light, she caught the trace of a smile on his thin lips.

“Oh, he’d just gotten to the part where Moses McCrory was shot and killed … when he was standing next to the scarecrow, and that the murders kept happening after he was dead, only they got worse.”

“Uh-huh,” The Finn said, “and did he tell you about the straw?”

“The straw?”
Lorraine looked quizzically at Hellboy.

“Right,” The Finn said. “Once the killings started up again, there was always straw around the victims ... straw and rope fiber. It was that, and the fact that the killings only happened on rainy nights, that I was able to piece it all together.”

“
You?
” Hellboy said with a dry sniff of laughter. “You didn’t put
anything
together. It was me and Red Shirt who figured out about the pond.”

“Wait a minute you two,”
Lorraine said. “You’re confusing me. What’s this about a pond?”

“Okay, okay, I’ll give credit where credit’s due.” Hellboy’s voice was noticeably slurred now. “It was Red Shirt who figured it out. I told you that this new round of killings only happened on rainy nights, right?”

Lorraine nodded. She was more than a little tipsy herself, and it took a bit of effort to follow the conversation.

“Rainy nights,” Hellboy repeated, nodding to himself. “Only on rainy nights. There’d been a killing two nights before, but the weather had cleared, so that afternoon, the three of us went out to the cornfield where Moses’d been killed. I—
we
hadn’t put it all together yet, and one reason was ‘cause the scarecrow we’d seen in the police crime scene photos was still standing there. But when we got there, I noticed that the scarecrow wasn’t the same one that was in the photos they’d showed us at the police station. So I thought we’d better investigate.”

“
Investigate?
” The Finn said, barking with laughter. “What the hell are you talking about, ‘investigate?’ You took that cannon of yours and blasted the thing to pieces!”

Hellboy looked at
Lorraine with a sheepish shrug.

“Maybe sometimes I act a bit rashly before I have a chance to think things all the way through. But that doesn’t really matter because of what we found. See, the scarecrow wasn’t stuffed with straw, the way scarecrows are supposed to be. It was packed full of body parts.”

“Body parts?” Lorraine said, wincing as her stomach did a sour little flip. “You mean … like—”

“Yeah,” said Hellboy. “Moses was collecting body parts from his victims and stuffing them inside the scarecrow.”

“But you said
he
was the scarecrow … that his soul entered it the night he was shot.”

“It did. I mean, he was.” Hellboy shook his head as though desperately to clear it so she’d understand better. “But he had started making a new one. See, it hadn’t snowed yet that year, but there had been a frost the night before. It was getting late when we got out to the cornfield. The corn was dead, but the farmer hadn’t cut it back yet, so the stalks were more than head-high. They blocked our view, but I—”

Hellboy gave a sidelong glance at The Finn.

“I mean,
Red Shirt
noticed footprints leading down to the pond.”

“Actually,” The Finn said, “the footprints led up
from
the pond and then back down to it. Hellboy and I thought someone—Moses in the shape of the scarecrow, maybe, had walked down to the pond, for some reason, before leaving.”

“But it was Red Shirt—” Hellboy said emphatically as he nailed The Finn with a hard look. “See?” he muttered. “I can give credit when credit’s due. It was
Red Shirt
who read the tracks correctly, him being an Indian and all. So he determined that the prints coming out of the pond were the older prints, and the ones going back into it were fresher.”

“I—I still don’t get it,”
Lorraine said, shaking her head.

“Okay, think of it this way,” Hellboy said, slurring his words. “If you were a scarecrow, what would be your biggest fear?”

Lorraine considered the question for a moment, then said, “Probably falling apart ... unless I needed a brain.”

“Very funny, Dorothy, but—no. That’s not the problem,” Hellboy said impatiently. “You can always stuff more straw into yourself if you’re falling apart. Think about what would be your most dangerous enemy. What can destroy you if you’re made of straw?”

“Well ... fire, of course.”

“Bingo.” Hellboy clapped his hands together. Then, leaning back in the booth, he folded his arms across his chest and nodded with satisfaction. “And, if you were made of straw, you wouldn’t need to breathe, either. Would you?”
Lorraine shrugged, still more than a little perplexed. The more Hellboy talked, the less sense he was making. Must be the beer.

“No,” she said softly. “I guess you wouldn’t need to breathe.”

“So if you didn’t need to breathe, and you didn’t want to burn, where’s the safest place in the world to be hide when you weren’t out killing people?”

“In the pond,”
Lorraine said.

“Absolutely!” Hellboy shouted.

“And the safest time to be out and about would be on rainy nights,” The Finn added in a measured, controlled voice as Hellboy nodded solemnly.

Lorraine
was sure Hellboy was totally plastered by now and was about to pass out. His voice dragged terribly when he spoke.

“So we were down there by the pond,” he said, “The Finn, Red Shirt, ‘n me. It was getting dark, and it looked like there might be rain brewing in the west.”

Lorraine shivered as she cast a wary glance at rainwater streaming down the window beside her.

“Look,” said Hellboy, “I gotta take a leak.” He heaved himself up and stood beside the table for a moment, weaving unsteadily, trying to keep his balance. “You tell her the rest of it. Just make sure you get it right.”

With that, he started toward the restroom, taking short, halting steps and touching the other tables and chairs to give him guidance.

“Okay,” The Finn said, hunkering down and leaning forward, his arms hooked over the chair back. “You have to try to picture it. We’re out there in the middle of this cornfield. It’s getting on toward night. There’s a steady wind rustling through the dead leaves of the cornfield, but the first thing I notice—the creepiest thing about the whole thing is, there’s no wildlife around.”

“What do you mean?” Lorraine said as a strong shiver ran like teasing fingers up her back.

“I mean nothing. No birds singing. No late season crickets buzzing. No dogs barking.
Nothing!
Absolute, total silence … except for the wind blowing through the dried corn. Red Shirt tells us he’s gonna follow the tracks around the pond. It wasn’t very big.”

“What about the farmer ... the person who owned the field?”
Lorraine asked.

The Finn lowered his eyes and shook his head grimly. “He was already dead. Him and his whole family. They were the first of Moses’ new victims, once he’d come back as the scarecrow. I went back to the car to get some things—some flashlights, guns, a cigarette lighter, and some road flares.”

“Road flares?”

“We thought of making some torches, using the cornstalks, but they were too damp and brittle. I figured road flares would burn better, even if it started to rain.”

“Hey,
I
was the one who suggested that road flares would work,” Hellboy said, coming up to the table so suddenly even The Finn jumped when he spoke. “If you’re gonna tell the story, tell it the way it really happened.”

“Yeah, okay. It was your idea,” The Finn said with a half-smile on his thin lips that he thought no such thing.

“Boy, you guys don’t cut each other any slack, do you?” Lorraine asked, eyes wide, amused.

The Finn’s smile disappeared. “He lost something of mine, a long time ago. Call it a family heirloom. I’ve been torturing him for it ever since.” He glanced at Hellboy. “Look, are you going to let me finish the story or not?”

“No, I’ll take it from here,” Hellboy said as he sat back down in the booth. Before going on with the story, though, he took the second, untouched glass, filled it with beer, and slid it over to The Finn. Then he refilled his own glass and slammed the empty pitcher onto the table.

“Glad you made some room for that,” The Finn said.

Hellboy nodded. “So where were we?”

“Down by the pond,”
Lorraine said. “The Finn had just gone back to get guns and road flares.”

“Oh, yeah,” Hellboy said. For a moment, his eyes fluttered as he leaned back in his seat. Then he focused. “I went down to the water where the tracks led and was leaning over it, trying to see to the bottom, when I hear someone coming up behind me, but I figure it’s The Finn, returning with the equipment, so I don’t look up until it’s too late.”

“It was Moses, right?” Lorraine asked, anticipating the story.

Hellboy nodded. “Yup,” he said, the word sounding more like a burp than a word. “And he’s got this garrote he’s made with barbed wire that he wraps around my neck and starts pulling. Fortunately, I had just enough of a warning, and as I turned around, I got my right hand up between my throat and the wire.”

“Your
right
hand,” Lorraine said, glancing at the huge stone hand resting on the table next to the cooler.

Hellboy nodded. “Yeah, ‘n lucky for me, too, ‘cause once he started twisting that garrote tighter, I’d have been a goner if I hadn’t reacted so fast.”

“The problem was,” The Finn said, “with his hand up so close to his face, ole’ Hellboy here lost his balance and fell headfirst into the pond.”

“I didn’t fall. I slipped,” Hellboy said, glaring at The Finn.
Lorraine saw the dull orange of his eyes intensify. “The edge of the pond was all muddy, and I slipped and fell.”

“Fell. Slipped. Either way, you ended up headfirst in the water,” The Finn said. “And with that big stone hand of yours up around your head and weighing down, you were helpless as a baby.”

“How do you know?” Hellboy said, leaning forward and pounding the table with his stone fist. The impact made the pitcher, beer glasses, and cooler all jump. “You weren’t even there!”

“That’s when I returned,” The Finn said softly, looking directly at
Lorraine and ignoring Hellboy. “I saw him hit the water, and then he—the scarecrow, that is—saw Red Shirt coming back, and he attacked him. I shot at Moses twice with the shotgun, but if I hit him at all, it didn’t have any effect. He was charging at Red Shirt, but I knew I had to help Hellboy before he drowned.”

“I wasn’t all
that
helpless,” Hellboy said.

“What do you mean?” The Finn shouted. “You were stuck headfirst in the mud at the bottom of the pond, and you were drowning!”

Hellboy looked intently at Lorraine, his eyes flaring as he said, “I
wasn’t
all that helpless. Honest. I’d already started to loosen the wire some.”

The Finn sniffed derisively. “Sure. Whatever. But the way I remember it, I had to make a split-second decision. I could either light a flare and help Red Shirt fight the scarecrow, or I could drop everything and keep Hellboy from drowning.”

“I
wasn’t
drowning,” Hellboy said, slurring the words horribly and wavering in his seat.

“Okay. If you say so,” The Finn said. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter because I reacted without thinking and dove into the water and got him up to the surface before he was dead.” He nailed Hellboy with an angry stare. “I saved your goddamned life, and believe me, it wasn’t easy. The least you could do is show a modicum of gratitude.”

“What’s a modicum?” asked Lorraine.

“A tiny bit.”

“But I didn’t need your help,” Hellboy said. “I was just about free of the wire by the time you got to me.”

The Finn scowled angrily. “Given the choice to do it over again, I have no doubt what I would choose to do.”

Hellboy smirked and shook his head, letting his gaze go unfocused for a moment.

“Look,” he said, “either way, I got out, but it was already too late to help Red Shirt because Moses—the scarecrow—had another piece of barbed wire with him and strangled Red Shirt so hard his head came off. I saw that happen just as I broke the surface with The Finn clinging to me so
he
wouldn’t drown.”

The Finn leaned back and shook his head slowly with disgust.