Three-Fingered Joe

Three-Fingered Joe
by
Bobby Derie

Even from the back of the bar Aaron Blackman could see the thin mangled digits strum and pick at the strings. The plain white handkerchief wrestled the neck of the old guitar, concealing the tapered, mutilated fingers of Three-Fingered Joe’s left hand; his right hand was bare. A callused thumb struck the final chord of the second-to-last song in the set as Aaron checked his watch: quarter past eleven. Time enough to see Joe with the broken hands do his last song.

Aaron never heard of any other guitarist that overcame a disability like Joe had; he still couldn’t understand how he got the chords to play right. The gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt was supposed to be about the best that ever lived, and he only had three working fingers on his left hand — a fire in his wagon had crippled him and he had to learn to play again with two paralyzed fingers. Joe could play with only three fingers on each hand. It was something to watch, and hear.

Every time Aaron saw him play, Joe had the left hand covered up so you couldn’t watch what he was doing, except for the last song of the night. You couldn’t say much for him as a showman, because he was a quiet one; but that was his signature act.

The stage dimmed to a single, burning red floodlight centered on Joe, so he sat half in shadow half bathed in an alien sun, and the conversations in the club sputtered out with expectation. A square of red-limned cotton fell from the guitar as the thin three-fingered hand, pale and patchy with vitiligo, brought out a small black-handled pocketknife. Joe could have posed for the face on Mars right then. The broken-handed guitarist worked the knife under the strings with the three-fingered claw of his left hand and began to play.

Aaron’s grandmother had an obsession with the devil’s music. Didn’t have anything to do with cassettes or CDs, wouldn’t know an iPod if it bit her. What she had were old black vinyl, with faded labels and thin, yellowing paper envelopes. She played the devil’s music. Old stories told by bluesmen, stolen and passed around from black mouth to black ear, until some white folk heard it and we ended up with Satanpunk and fine old churches burning down in those parts of Europe as cold as the final circle of Dante’s hell, and ancient, overindulgent rebels begging for someone to make up their dying bed.

The old stories, the first stories, always got to young Aaron. Tommy Johnson and Robert Johnson were the famous bluesmen that dealt with the devil and sang of hellhounds on their trail. His grandmother told him how every twenty-seven years the devil would come to a certain crossroads, and you’d hand him a guitar, he’d tune it, play you a piece and hand it back to you. From then on you’d play as well as he had — until the devil’s note came due.

Aaron would sell his soul to the devil to play as well as Three-Fingered Joe.

He reckoned he wouldn’t be the first to, either. Joe finished his set with a slow-dying caterwaul from the guitar and Aaron checked his watch again. Eleven twenty-nine. The lights brightened as Joe unplugged the guitar from the amp, picked up the handkerchief, and began to pack away the foot pedals as the drummer for the next act started loading up. The bar noise swelled again as people took to talking, got a new drink, headed to the toilets for a piss or outside into the Chicago night. It was time to go, so Blackman paid his shot, picked up his own guitar and left.

The young bluesman came out of the club and got a lungful of summer air, warm and a bit wet. The blues scholar in him said he should be out on some lonely country crossroads down in the delta, or at least out on Maxwell Street, where Chicago blues was born. But if the devil ever came to Maxwell Street these days, he’d hardly recognize it; the university had bought out and renovated damn near the whole thing for student housing.

Blackman’s feet took him north on Turnbull, the guitar slapping his knee, then west until he hit the train tracks, which he followed north again. This section of rail ran down the border between two cemeteries, St. Mary’s and Evergreen. There was a bit of unpaved road, almost a path really, that connected the two cemeteries, right across the tracks. Aaron couldn’t think of a lonelier or more fitting crossing for what he wanted to do. A sudden skittishness took hold as he crossed the final road. Blackman looked around to see if anyone was watching as he walked along the track, thought about what stories he would give for why a young black man would take a guitar on the railroad tracks between two cemeteries at night.

No mouth of hell opened before him though, no police cars cruised by. Just a level track laid straight on between two fences, moonlight playing on gravel and long grass. Blackman found himself holding his breath, like his grandmamma taught all her children and grandchildren to do, and let it out. The dead couldn’t steal his breath. Walking along the tracks, gravestones watching him from either side, Aaron felt the city pass away. The sky was limned by ten thousand streetlights forever distant, but the cemeteries were dark and quiet save for the grasshoppers and other singing insects. When Blackman arrived at the crossroads and checked his watch again, he had four minutes to murder.

The moon hid behind a passing cloud and the night grew darker. Aaron busied himself for all of thirty seconds, taking the old guitar out of its case, heart beating out a strange rhythm. Blackman knew what the stories said would happen, and he’d planned to come here and practice — and, well, he knew they weren’t true. Devils don’t stalk graveyards, in Chicago or anywhere else. The young bluesman admitted that part of him wanted to believe in them, just a little, and part of him was excited to be out here, alone in the dark, and thrilled at the scare he’d put on. Aaron wiped his palms dry on his jeans and touched the strings to play a couple scales.

A scuttle of gravel over gravel came out of the darkness, and Aaron froze at the sound. In the dark a tall shadow of a man loomed, which sent his thoughts racing back to the crossroads tales of witches and the Black Man and his damnable book and obscene kiss. Then Aaron’s eyes adjusted and saw Three-Fingered Joe walking further down the track, alone and without his own instrument or anything else. The young bluesman felt he really saw him for the first time, then. Before Joe had only ever been on stage, in his ill-fitting suits, hunched over his guitar and hiding his left hand under that old handkerchief. Out here on the crossroads, he was taller than Aaron remembered him, and the clothes ill-fit Joe because he was the wrong shape to wear them. His dusky splotched skin looked unhealthy and grey, and his eyes … for a moment the moon came out from behind the clouds and his eyes were so wide and dark that Aaron could clearly see his own reflection in the pupils. Then the cloud covered the moon again and Aaron forgot all of that.

Joe took the guitar from Blackman’s unresisting hands, and the young guitarist saw Joe’s hands up close for the first time. Aaron stared guiltily, like you do at someone with a birth defect or an amputation, trying to make sense of the smooth unbroken skin and knotty joints. There was no sign of scars where the missing fingers should have been.

The elder bluesman carefully tested the guitar, running a finger up each string and fret. Then he fetched a scroll of dark velvet or soft leather from his pocket, and unrolling it on the ground revealed a strange set of tools. One probe and blade at a time, Joe began to take the guitar apart. It was like watching surgery on TV, as the knowing three-fingered hands worked to loosen the strings, cracked open the shell and exposed the vulnerable electronics within. The old bluesman worked slowly, with no sense of rush, and Aaron couldn’t have said if minutes or hours passed as Joe tested each part of the guitar, shaving and cleaning, adding or subtracting bits and pieces, slowly reassembling the instrument into a semblance of its original shape.

To look at it whole again, Blackman could tell it was the same guitar but subtly different at the same time. The strings shone like new silver and rose higher above the neck; the faux-wood plastic face with its aluminum had been stripped and replaced with soft-grained planks and a shiny, lustrous metal that Joe had cut by hand with a pair of heavy clippers. No seam showed where he’d broken open the body and replaced the electronic guts.

The guitar complete, Aaron watched him work his way through each string, tuning and calling them soft names that Blackman didn’t know, moving through scales the young bluesman had only heard in fragments of songs on old vinyl. When he had gone through the whole thing, which must have taken quite some time, Joe took out his black-handled knife, fixed it beneath the strings, and began to play.

The air tasted different to Aaron then; the slight tang of ammonia crept into each lungful and burned the back of his throat. Sleep or something more suddenly made the young bluesman’s body feel heavy, the bones and meat weighing on him and his lungs labored harder. Dropping to his knees, Blackman’s hands sprawled in dry red dust that was warm to the touch, and when he raised his head he looked up at a vast and purple sky with two moons.

Three-Fingered Joe began to sing an old blues song, his voice high and falsetto, and the guitar rumbled and hissed. The old bluesman seemed perfectly at ease here, in the strange setting, like a burden had been taken off him, and his eyes were wider and blacker under the light of the twin moons than when Aaron had seen them in the bright, familiar, light of Earth’s moon. The knife worked its way along each string, the pitch and timbre shifting, and the young bluesman felt his own hands twitch in response, aping the motions Joe was making, muscles learning the strange gropes and slides.

The words of the song slipped from Aaron’s head almost as soon as he heard them, but it was a familiar tune; an old story about not being able to go home, alone and lonesome in a crowd, forced to eat unfamiliar foods and sleep in strange places, bereft of all company and comfort. There were rocks all along each road he had traveled, Joe sang, trouble dogged his every step, and all he wanted was to go home, to go home, to go home. The part that came next wasn’t any darker or stranger than what had come before, but Joe’s voice got angrier and cruder, the rhythm of the piece picked up and alternately squealed or growled or droned. It wasn’t about love or sex like you hear in most songs, but it expressed a desperate need, urges that come and go in everyone like the tides, but which are wrapped and stifled by custom and courtship. It was the rawest and terrifying and titillating tale of seduction Aaron had ever heard. There were secret sins that shepherds committed on lonesome nights out on the range, and sailors far from home who begin to eye each other in new lights when their craving for sweet release overwhelms their natural inclinations.

When he was done playing the piece, Aaron felt himself settle back into his body. He could still see the shadow of an alien sky, but he felt the summer night of Earth and it had gotten cold. Beneath the illusion of red dust, the gravel felt chill and dry beneath his hands, and somewhere far off a police siren howled. Blackman shivered. Joe was still there, looking at him, and the bluesman never looked stranger and more alien than at that moment.

The old bluesman set the guitar back in the box, gently, very gently, and then he came over to where the young bluesman knelt. One dry, three-fingered hand found the bottom of Aaron’s shirt and untucked it; the other fumbled at his pants. Blackman didn’t resist. At that point, Blackman didn’t know if he even wanted to.

*

A red nova flared behind Aaron’s eyes like sunset on Krypton. He was awake before he opened his eyes and recognized the familiar rumble and worn-out seating of the Chicago L train. Nostalgic disorientation set in, of waking up somewhere strange with no clear memory of the night before, the satisfied aches of a one night stand. Slowly, the bluesman sat up and took stock of himself.

His guitar was on the seat next to him. There were grass stains on his knees, gravel rash on his elbows, and his ass was sore and burned like he’d taken the longest and most painful shit of his life. A glance around showed him that there were only a handful of people in the car with him, which was on the Brown line. Aaron decided to ride it to the end of the line and get off at the Loop.

Aaron tried to piece together what had happened. Three-Fingered Joe was at the club, he left after his set… bits and pieces were coming back: the crossroads, the devil that tuned his guitar, an alien with black eyes and caresses from long tapering fingers, an otherworldly nightscape and the names of notes Aaron couldn’t quite remember but felt he could play. Almost by instinct, Blackman took his guitar out of the case. The balance felt different, better. Instinct guided the bluesman as he played a couple scales, almost inaudibly so as not to upset the other passengers.

Blackman needed a slide. He looked around for something, anything in the car that would make do, and his gaze fell on a plain brown paper bag someone had left on the floor, the tip of an empty bottle poking out. He fished it out from under the seat, Aaron had another flashback from last night — a familiar humping motion, an unfamiliar position. He snagged the bottle and sat down again.

Blackman waited until no one was looking then “accidentally” slammed the guitar case down on the bag, cracking the glass. He fished out the broken bottleneck. One end was jagged and wickedly sharp, but it fit securely over Aaron’s finger and slipped neatly between the neck and the strings. Aaron tried a few notes and it worked fine, so he began to play.

It was like a duck taking to water. Blackman had never played that way before, never played that well. Everything that happened last night, the pain in his ass, melted with the thrill of hearing and feeling himself play so well. He could feel the bottleneck resonate with every note, and almost by instinct he slipped into a song that he only half recalled, humming the words and hearing the guitar echo them.

The train came to another stop and people got on and off, a few of them taking notice of the bluesman and listening to him play. The half-sung piece talked about a dark-lit world and a long lonesome journey, a sailor cast off on an ocean of night and marooned on an island in space under a strange sky. His voice hit new pitches he’d never sung before, telling of a brief abduction from the fields we know, a bestial urge that dare not speak its name, and how the sailor wandered on again, unfaithful, lonesome and depraved.

Aaron finished the piece and sat quiet for a spell, scared and more than a little ashamed. He’d seen things last night he couldn’t quite articulate — the music, the double-moon in that vast purple sky – it was all weird and strange to him, and he didn’t know who would believe him if he was want to tell it. Maybe those old bluesmen had been telling the truth about the devil at the crossroads — they just hadn’t said it was a horny old devil. Blackman thought of that strange old alien, homesick and alone, singing the blues. Twenty-seven years between seductions, lonely men that were willing to give up everything for music. Except the Black Man at the crossroads didn’t want your soul, he wanted a piece of your ass.

A handsome black woman shook Aaron out of his reverie, asked him what he called that piece he just played. The bluesman was at a loss for its proper name but one suddenly came to him.

“Starry Crossroads Blues, ma’am. I call it that.”

She liked it, and asked Aaron to play it again. He gave her a shy smile and started working the slide again, singing a little louder so she could hear. This time, of course, he left out the verse with the anal probing.

The Spy that Smiled

The Spy that Smiled
by
Bobby Derie

The men with the hooks dragged what was left of Jim out of the river. The coroner dug a 9mm PBP round out of his skull. The bullet rattled in the pan, bloody ice-melt haloing Jim’s thinning hair. He was smiling.

I had known Jim since he came back from Berlin. I got to know him over cold turkey sandwiches in the cafeteria, weak cups of office tea, lingering stake-outs in workhouse bars that catered to union-workers. I wanted to hear about how it was out in the cold, on the front lines. He never smiled when he said to me:

“This is the front line.”

We sipped gin in the open, in the wee dark hours, watching what Jim thought were safehouses and letter drops. We had no approval from up above, as far as I knew, but we were out there anyway, on our own time. We were a team, Jim and I, playing our games against the enemy—follow and fall back, never to approach, never to engage, never to give the game away… He sat out there on the river, not ten yards from where they found them, and he never smiled as he told me:

“They follow me, you know. Like I follow them. They’re good at it. I go back to my place, and you would never know they had been there, but I know. The little signs are there, the way the carpet lays, the hairs in the doorframe, the ragged little rip in the envelope, where someone maybe tried to open it a little too hastily. It followed me here, the war. They have followed me. Because they know that I am following them.”

P. called me in, a week before. P. was apparatchik, a bureaucrat, hard to ever imagine him in the field, drinking whisky from a frozen thermos, out in the cold. P. was worried about Jim—not personally, not for the man, not for what he had gone through or was going through; it was all for the department, how it looked, the constant reports, requests for assets, out in the middle of the night at his age, chasing phantoms. He said:

“There is no mole.”

At that range, Jim must have seen the shooter. At close enough quarters to glimpse a face he recognized in the muzzle flash. At peace with the blow, maybe, for that final confirmation. He must have known, right before he died, that he was right all along.

###

Hellboy/Atomic Robo: Demon Gods of Mu

Demon Gods of Mu

by
Bobby Derie

Synopsis: In 1989 Hellboy and Atomic Robo, each acting off information of unusual activity, converge on a sunken island near Nan Matal. There, among the megalithic ruins, they are accosted by robot zombies and the scarab-eaten mummy of Klaus Werner von Krupt, a “survivor” of Project Ragna Rok and the brain of Helsingaard. The two are searching the ruins for the entrance to Muria, a lost remnant of the sunken continent of Mu, but manage only to release the Dweller in the Moonpool.

Cover:

Caption:

Hellboy * Atomic Robo

Demon Gods of Mu

Image: Hellboy and Atomic Robo, back to back.

Page 0: Credits

Hellboy, B.P.R.D. and associated characters created by Mike Mignola.

Atomic Robo, Tesladyne and associated characters created by Brian Clevinger.

The Dweller in the Moon Pool and associated characters created by A. Merritt.

John Thunstone & Judge Pursuivant created by Manly Wade Wellman.

Doctor Adam Spektor created by Donald Glut.

Zoth-Ommog created  by Lin Carter.

Conan and Crom created by Robert E. Howard.

All characters and entities are the sole owners of their respective creators or copyright holders, who are not affiliated with the author in any way. This comic script is for non-commercial entertainment purposes only.

Page 1:

Summary: Hellboy visits the funeral of Judge Keith Hilary Pursuivant (1891-1989), John Thunstone gives him a message about the ruined city of Nan Matal.

Layout: First panel, strip across the top. Second panel, 1/2-pager. Panel 3 is inset in the second panel. Last three panels in row along bottom of page.

Panel 1: Man in a white suit and string tie, older playboy with a cane, shaking hands with Hellboy.

Box: 1989, Virginia

First Man: Adam.

Second Man: John.

Hellboy: Hellboy.

Second Man: Well met.

Panel 2: A simple obelisk marks a grave. The name Pursuivant is clearly visible. Hellboy is on the right. A few older gentleman on the left. Trees/leaves on the edges. In the background, gravediggers rest on a mound of dirt, wearing flatcaps, big work gloves resting on shovels.

Hellboy: This is a nice place.

Adam: His family plot.

John: It’s what he wanted.

Adam: His instructions were quite specific.

John: We’re glad you came.

Adam: It’s good to mark the passing of one of our own.

Hellboy: And make sure they stay buried.

Panel 3: <inset>

Hellboy’s eyes, solid yellow.

Hellboy: Yeah.

Panel 4:

John hands Hellboy an envelope.

John: The Judge had a message for you.

Panel 5:

Hellboy reads the letter.

Letter: “February 20^th. The Demon Gods of Mu rise at Nan Matal.”

Panel 6:

Adam and John in the background.

Hellboy: Okay.

Page 2:

Summary: Atomic Robo is in a Tesladyne lab, where techies explain to him about the weird signals coming from the Moon and Nan Matal.

Layout: Six strips across the page, evenly laid out.

Panel 1:

Box: Tesladyne Industries, New York

Robo dressed as Indiana Jones, bullwhip in hand. Background is clutter of science junk. A young African-American science guy is walking toward him.

Robo: “Nazis. I hate these guys.”

Vik: Robo, we’ve got a situation.

Panel 2: Robo is walking to the left. Vik follows.

Robo: <sigh> What’s up, Vik?

Vik: We’ve been monitoring some strange moonlight fluctuations.

Robo: Sunspot activity? Or is somebody playing with lasers again? I warned Reagan about that “Star Wars” stuff.

Panel 3: Robo is walking to the left. Vik follows.

Vik: Negative for both, as far as we know. The weird thing is one of our satellites has picked up a signal from a site on earth that directly matches the frequency and intensity of the moonlight signal.

Robo: What kind of signal?

Vik: We’re not sure, but there’s a match in our files—unknown radiation signature #24.

Panel 4: Robo stops, fedora off. Vik stands.

Robo: Applesauce. Can we trace the signal to its source?

Vik: Yep. Nan Matal, a ruined city built on artificial islands off the coast of Pohnpei.

Robo: Okay. See how fast you can get a team and some transportation together. Call the local government; we’re going to want to bring in some heavy firepower.

Panel 5: Robo shrugs off jacket. Vik makes notes.

Vik: Got it. So what’s unknown radiation signature #24?

Robo: It’s the designation for the stuff Helsingard was playing around with the first time we fought, back in ‘38. He called it vril. I call it unknown radiation #24, because I don’t base my theories on bad science fiction novels from the 1800s.

Panel 6: Vik asks question, Robo walks off to the left.

Vik: But it worked, right? So maybe some of that Nazi mysticism stuff is real?

Robo: No. Vril is just bad science.

Page 3:

Summary: Nan Matal. The BPRD and Tesladyne expeditions run into each other, swap notes. Hellboy and Atomic Robo decide to go in first.

Layout: Top half single panel, bottom half three strips stacked on top of each other.

Panel 1: On the left Vik and Kate Corrigan talk about jurisdiction and crap. On the right, Hellboy and Atomic Robo shake hands.

Robo: Mr. Hellboy, I presume?

Hellboy: Atomic Robo Tesla. I’ve heard a lot about you.

Robo: Same here. I’m surprised we haven’t met before. You’re not going to give Tesladyne the third degree about jurisdiction, are you?

Hellboy: Nah. The B.P.R.D. doesn’t have a monopoly on the weird. You’re here, we’re here, let’s do this.

Robo: I’m an honorary human!

Hellboy: Me too.

Robo: We have so much in common.

Panel 2: Kate and Vik talk.

Vik: Prof. Corrigan and I have been comparing notes, and this may be worse than we thought.

Kate: It all goes back to the Goodwin expedition in 1918. A series of weird disappearances prompted an expedition to Nan Matal. The expedition leader, Dr. Walter T. Goodwin, claimed to have discovered a vast underground chamber and the remains of an ancient, advanced civilization called Muria. During the course of his adventures, the entrance to the underground chamber—the moon pool—was sealed.

Vik: The International Association of Science suppressed the report after Hitler came to power in ’33. That didn’t stop Helsingard or the Nazis from looking for—and apparently finding—similar locations.

Panel 3: Atomic Robo and Hellboy talk.

Robo: You buying this hollow earth nonsense?

Hellboy: Nah.

Robo: Don’t you have a fish guy? Shouldn’t he be here?

Hellboy: Abe Sapien. He’s off the coast of New Jersey chasing a vanished Coast Guard cutter.

Panel 4: Kate and Vik talk.

Kate: After the Goodwin expedition, the disappearances stopped for a couple decades. Sometime around ’79 they started up again—random fishermen never coming home, strange lights in the ruins.

Vik: The local government says that in the last few days that’s changed. People and small vessels around Nan Matal have been vanishing. No plane or boat that comes close to the place is ever heard from again.

Kate: Hellboy, you and Atomic Robo have the most experience at this sort of thing.

Vik: And are the most indestructible.

Kate: So you two go in and do your thing.

Page 4:

Summary: Silent page. Hellboy and Atomic Robo go in by boat, Hellboy at the helm, past strange cyclopean ruins.

Layout: Six strips, stacked.

Panel 1: Hellboy and Atomic Robo paddling in through a gap of two cyclopean blocks.

Panel 2: More paddling. More ruins.

Panel 3: Paddling. Ferns. Ruins.

Panel 4: Paddling. Overgrown terraces.

Panel 5: Deep water. Broken, cyclopean blocks.

Panel 6: A tree and broken stones.

Page 5:

Summary: Hellboy and Atomic Robo go deeper into the city. Make note of the architecture.

Layout: Six panels in two rows.

Panel 1: Kate’s head floats in upper right corner.

Text box: Nan Matal dates back to prehistory. Copeland’s 1907 translation of the Ponape Scripture suggests it was contemporary with the legendary civilizations of Mu and Hyperborea.

Hellboy looks at a broken, weed-covered statue.

Panel 2: Vik’s head floats in upper left corner.

Text box: We know Goodwin consulted the Ponape Scripture after he returned from his expedition; that may be why he called it “Muria.”

Atomic Robo looks at a more intact, vine-covered version of the statue.

Panel 3: Kate’s head floats in upper right corner.

Text box: Goodwin and Copeland actually met in ’22. We found correspondence between them showing both men believed there was a connection between the civilization Goodwin discovered and certain myth-cycles from different parts of the world.

Vegetation dies away, exposing massive stone walls.

Panel 4: Vik’s head floats in upper left corner.

Text box: Goodwin’s report also mentions a Russian scientist, Marakinoff, a Bolshevik.

Shot of the boat going down waterlogged streets or canals, like Venice.

Panel 5: Kate’s head floats in upper right corner.

Text box: Marakinoff did not survive according to Goodwin, but the CIA thinks the Russians have a copy of his preliminary notes, and we know they salvaged the bulk of the German occult archives in ’46.

Atomic Robo points towards something. Hellboy looks over his shoulder.

Panel 6: Vik’s head floats in upper left corner.

Text box: The Russian Pacific Fleet staged some maneuvers out here last year. We think that was a smokescreen for a covert occult expedition to Nan Matal. That would fit the timeline of when the disappearances started up again.

Tail of a Russian helicopter sticking up out of the water.

Page 6:

Summary: Atomic Robo uses GPS to find “the Moon Pool.” Hellboy refers to the Godwin expedition, gives a brief summary. Talk about the architecture.

Layout: Six rows, one panel each

Panel 1:

Robo: We’re getting close.

Hellboy: How can you tell?

Robo: I’ve got GPS.

Hellboy: Cool.

Robo taps his head.

Panel 2:

Robo: So you’ve read the Goodwin report?

Hellboy: Yeah, most of it.

Robo: Anything useful?

Hellboy: The first part is pretty straightforward. Weird light that steals people, UFO style. A door that only opens in the moonlight. I didn’t follow most of the science. After he goes down the rabbit hole, it gets weird. Giant frog monsters. Death rays. Lost civilization and races that predate mankind.

Robo: That’s a solid “no” then.

Panel 3:

Text box: Later

Robo: Dirk Daring.

Hellboy: Really? For me it was Lobster Johnson.

Robo: Oh, hey yeah. I remember him. “Here is the claw!”

Panel 4:

Text box: Later.

Robo: “Conan! What is best in life!”

Hellboy: “To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of der wimmen!”

Robo + Hellboy: “Crom!”

Panel 5:

Text box: Much later.

Dark out. Night has fallen. The moon shines. Robo points.

Robo: “Nazis.”

Hellboy: “I hate these guys.”

Robo: No, really, Nazis.

Panel 6:

The courtyard of the moon pool. With Nazis and broken robots.

Page 7:

Summary: Nazis.

Layout: Four panels, 1, 3, and 4 inset on 2.

Panel 1: Shot of Hellboy’s hand holding the Samaritan; Robo holding a lightning gun.

Panel 2: Hellboy and Atomic Robo firing.

Panel 3: Nazis getting shot, returning fire.

Panel 4: Detail of stone carving, with bullet holes.

Page 8:

Summary: Dead Nazis. Helsingaard insignia. Bugs on their necks.

Layout: Three small panels up top, single row. Fourth is a large panel.

Panel 1:

Robo covers as Hellboy ties up the boat. Dead Nazi in the water.

Robo: Nice gun. Where’d you get it?

Hellboy: Torch of Liberty gave it to me.

Robo: No foolin’? I did a mission with him back in’48. He was a good man.

Hellboy: The best.

Panel 2:

Robo points to a flag on the wall.

Robo: Helsingard.

Panel 3: The Moon Door, with equipment all around it. The door is open. Hellboy holds a robot-head. Robo picks at a busted robot.

Hellboy: The Moon Door is open.

Robo: That’s a bad thing?

Hellboy: Real bad. These things look like Neanderthal-you.

Robo: Some sort of automaton, yeah. No power source. No obvious controller.

Hellboy: These things were made to move. Someone must have hit the off switch.

Panel 4: Hellboy and Atomic Robo walking through the Moon Door.

Robo: Why’s it called the Moon Door?

Hellboy: It’s only supposed to open at night, under moonlight.

Robo: There’s always moonlight. I mean, look the moon is up right now.

Hellboy: Maybe sunlight overpowers it? Goodwin said something about the frequency of moonlight. He used some lenses to focus and filter it, open the door ahead of schedule.

Robo: That’s almost science. Almost.

Page 9:

Summary: Into the city.

Layout: Four panels, striped.

Panel 1: Inner courtyard. Nazi camp.

Panel 2: Hellboy and Robo peek through the tents.
Robo: No one’s home.

Panel 3: Hellboy points to structure just visible above the wall, looks like a satellite dish with a weird fork.

Hellboy: What’s that?

Robo: Transmitter. Russian.

Hellboy: How can you tell from here?

Robo: Telescopic lenses. I can read the Cyrillic from here. It’s been modified, though.

Panel 4:

Carving on wall as Hellboy passes it. Shows a primitive flower/radio dish with the same fork.

Page 10:

Summary: Hellboy tries to read an inscription. Reveals the history of the Murian conflict.

Layout: Six panels, striped and stacked.

Panel 1: Hellboy studies a wall. Robo looks around.

Panel 2: Closeup on Hellboy and the wall.

Hellboy: This is old Lemurian.

Robo: That’s not a recognized language. Also, you shouldn’t be reading the ancient forbidden texts. Nothing good ever comes of it.

Hellboy: Professor Bruttenholm taught me how to read it.

Robo: Professor Boom?

Hellboy: Bruttenholm. My dad.

Robo: Your actual dad?

Hellboy: He adopted me. Raised me. Treated me as his son.

Robo: Your dad. Got it.

Panel 3: Hellboy and the wall of text.

Hellboy: This is a chronicle of war between Muria and Mu.

Robo: Mu?

Hellboy: Prehistoric civilization. Some say pre-human.

Robo: Right. And the reason they haven’t left any traces of their existence around is?

Hellboy: They have. I’ve run across a few of ‘em.

Robo: Then why haven’t I heard about it before?

Hellboy: Most experts don’t like seeing evidence that doesn’t jive with their theories. So they discredit it, ignore it, hide it away.

Robo: I’ve known scientists like that.

Panel 4:

Hellboy: Muria was an outpost of Mu—a colony. They started worshipping something underground. Mu had their own gods trapped underground and didn’t like that. So there was a war.

Robo: Does it actually say “god?”

Hellboy: I’m paraphrasing. Mu won, and the Murians fled underground. Someone called Iraan put his seal on the moon pool, to keep the demon god from escaping.

Robo: Demon god. You might as well say “ghost wraith.” Who would take the time to carve this on a gigantic block of stone after they won the war?

Hellboy: Egyptians. Mayans. What would you do?

Robo: “Dust off and nuke the site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.”

Panel 5:

Hellboy and Atomic Robo laugh.

Robo: Hey, lookit this.

Panel 6: Robo pokes at something.

Robo: Huh. This was a braided metal cable.

Hellboy: Was?

Robo: Well, thousands of years of exposure to air and water haven’t helped much. It runs right through this wall. I wonder what it was for?

Page 11:

Summary: Earthquake. Flashes of power.

Layout: Four panels, two rows.

Panel 1: Wire flashes.

Robo: Gah!

Panel 2: Walls shake, Hellboy tries to keep his balance, Robo falls into him.

Hellboy: Gah!

Panel 3: Wire hums, glows.

Panel 4: Robo stares at wire from ground.

Robo: Unknown radiation signature #24.

Hellboy: “What a revoltin’ development.”

Page 12:

Summary: Zombie robots!

Layout: Four panels, three inset #2.

Panel 1: Hellboy, Robo, eyes wide.

Panel 2: Zombie robots attacking Hellboy and Atomic Robo

Robo: What did I tell you about reading the ancient forbidden texts!?

Hellboy: I didn’t do it!

Panel 3: Hellboy punches zombie robot.

Robo: Zombie robots!

Hellboy: They’re not zombies.
Robo: They’re robots, and they’re zombies. Zombie robots.

Panel 4: Zombie robot biting Robo.

Robo: See? This one’s trying to eat my foot.

Hellboy: Huh. Zombie robots.

Page 13:

Summary: Hellboy and Atomic Robo race for the Moon Pool.

Layout: Six panels, two rows.

Panel 1: Hellboy and Robo fighting.

Hellboy: How are these things moving?

Robo: Broadcast power. Tesla used to broadcast electricity wirelessly, but these things are vril-powered.

Panel 2: Still fighting.

Hellboy: So how do we stop it?

Robo: Find the antenna and punch it.

Panel 3: Click click.

Hellboy: You mean that satellite dish?

Robo: Scanners say yes.

Panel 4: Hellboy kicks robot.

Panel 5: Atomic Robo smashes two robot heads together.

Panel 6: Closeup carving of Right Hand of Doom grasping antenna.

Page 14:

Summary: Surrounded by Nazis, Zombie Robots outside, Hellboy and Atomic Robo face Helsingaard and von Krupt using the Black Seal to unleash the Shining One.

Layout: Four panels; 1^st-panel half-page, other three stacked.

Panel 1: The Moon Pool, surrounded by scientific apparatus and Nazi techs. Helsingaard has the Black Seal.

Helsingaard: Emmet macha hem. Emmet hothoth. Shedu an mech.

Von Krupt: |||||||||||| ||||||||!

Nazis: |||||

Panel 2: Hellboy and Robo, still fighting robot-zombies, look shocked.

Robo: Helsingaard!

Hellboy: Von Krupt? No way…

Panel 3:

Von Krupt swings the satellite dish with Anung’s Fork around toward Hellboy.

Panel 4:

Helsingaard continues the ritual; the Moon Pool drinks in the light.

Helsingaard: Nama-esh temet anat. Zoth-ommog sancti abjura.

Page 15:

Summary: Von Krupt versus Atomic Robo; Hellboy makes a lunge for the Black Seal.

Layout: Six panels, stacked. Panel six is split.

Panel 1: Von Krupt’s blast hits the zombie-robots.

Panel 2: Hellboy fights Nazis.

Nazis: |||||

Panel 3: Von Krupt (luger) faces Robo (lightning gun).

Robo: Never bring a luger to a lightning gun fight!

Panel 4: Flash of lightning. Von Krupt appears to disintegrate into scarabs.

Robo: Bugs…why did it have to be bugs.

Panel 5: Atomic Robo covered in hoard of scarabs.

Robo: Getemoffmegetemoffgetemoff…

Panel 6: Split panel. Hellboy, smashes the satellite dish, grabs Anung’s Fork with the Right Hand of Doom.

Hellboy: Boom!

Page 16:

Summary: Hellboy and Atomic Robo defeated, explain plan. Hellboy’s hand will unleash the Shining One.

Layout: Four panels; first half-page, last three single row.

Panel 1: Massive green explosion, centered on Hellboy’s hand and Anung’s Fork.

Text block: The Shining One was beyond the power and knowledge of Mu, but the Black Seal was brought down from Yuggoth, and provides power over all. With the Black Seal, Iraan imprisoned the Shining One by the power of vril, the force which can reduce man to ur-slime and raise him up again to take on the flesh of the lizard or the snake. The Shining One was trapped deep in the earth, in a cavern left from when the moon was broken from this pitiable planet. Some element of the moon remained in its birthplace, at that entrance to Hell where Iraan trapped the demon god, and set his wards upon it. And when the moon is full and its light shines upon the moon door, for the space of a night the Shining One is released to prey. Always though is the Shining One drawn back as the moonlight fades, and so shall remain the Dweller in the Moon Pool. – The Ponape Scripture

Panel 2:

Hellboy and Atomic Robo tied up. Hellboy is attached to the satellite dish, holding the Fork. Robo is hooked up the equipment, powering it.

Robo: Psst. You awake.

Hellboy: Yeah.

Panel 3:

Robo: What’s with the bug-guy? Is he one of yours baddies?

Hellboy: Klaus Werner von Krupt. Nazi stooge. He’s supposed to be dead.

Panel 4:

Robo: Guess it didn’t take.

Hellboy: Nope.

Page 17:

Summary: The Moon Pool is unlocked.

Layout: Four panels; first half-page, last three single row.

Panel 1: Power pours from the fork into the Moon Pool, arcing off Hellboy and nearby equipment. Helsingaard raises the Black Seal.

Hellboy: Aaargh!

Helsingaard: You were fools to come here. Soon, the gateway will be clear. Once more will I descend into the dark, and lay claim to the secrets of the ages.

Von Krupt: ||| |||||||

Helsingaard: Soon, my friend. New bodies for us both. Human in form but immortal and omnipotent with the limitless power of vril.

Robo: You guys are nuts!

Panel 2:

The moon pool begins to shine. Hellboy can see his reflection.

Panel 3:

The light on the water spreads. Sparks come from Hellboy’s eyes, and his horns begin to grow.

Panel 4:

The light from the water is blinding; fiery tears fall from Hellboy’s eyes.

Page 18:

Summary: The Shining One emerges.

Layout: Single, full-page panel.

Panel 1:

Floating in the middle of the wrecked equipment is the shining one, a sphere of white light surrounded by seven smaller, colored orbs, and a columnar cloud of floating crystals or mist. Hellboy and Atomic Robo on the left, Helsingaard and von Krupt on the right. Hellboy is still holding the Fork.

Page 19:

Summary: Helsingaard and von Klumpt try to master it, and fail.

Layout: Six panels, stacked.

Panel 1: Helsingaard holds up the Black Seal.

Helsingaard: Abdemma, abdem. Abdemma, Helsingaard get-et hem!

Panel 2: The Shining One’s light falls on the Nazis, and they are transformed.

Von Krupt: ||| ||||||!

Helsingaard: No! Obey me. Abdemma, abdem. Abdemma, Helsingaard get-et hem!

Panel 3: The Shining One expands, the ones it touched crawl toward the moon pool.

Robo: “Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.”

Hellboy: “Do not call up what you cannot put down.”

Panel 4: Black light arcs from the Black Seal toward the Shining One.

Helsingaard: Meth-ech, atnu! Tothem anu Iraan!”

Panel 5: White light bursts from the Shining One around the courtyard.

Panel 6: The remains of the Zombie Robots climb toward the Shining One.

Page 20:

Summary: The Shining One conquers the Zombie Robots.

Layout: Six panels, stacked.

Panel 1: The Shining One deals with assaults from both Helsingaard and the Zombie Robots, which spit yellow fire. Hellboy fire with his Samaritan to no effect; Robo does likewise.

Panel 2: Robo and Hellboy lower their weapons.

Hellboy: I’m out of ammo, and this isn’t working.

Robo: You’re right. We need a new plan.

Panel 3: White light washes through the robots and von Krupt.

Panel 4: Robo ties a big cable to the end of the Fork (still in Hellboy’s hand), and wrapped it around his arm.

Robo: The last time Helsingaard had vril, I shot it with my lightning gun. It exploded.

Hellboy: So?

Robo: That antenna you’re holding broadcasts vril. If we can get it inside that thing, it should pick up a vril charge. If I plug the lightning gun into my own atomic power supply, I can overcharge it. We’ll get one really big jolt before it melts.

Hellboy: That’s your plan?

Robo: Everything explodes.

Hellboy: This is gonna hurt.

Panel 5: The black and white light meets and clash.

Panel 6: Robo tinkers with his lightning gun. Hellboy plugs his cable into one of the glowing wires on the floor.

Robo: Think of it as an experiment.

Hellboy: Not helping.

Page 21:

Summary: Atomic Robo and Hellboy fight the Shining One, who turns the conquered Nazis and Zombie Robots against them.

Layout: Six panels, two rows.

Panel 1: Hellboy and Atomic Robo run at the Shining One.

Panel 2: The Shining One overpowers Helsingaard, who drops the Black Seal.

Panel 3: The light washes over von Krupt’s scarabs, and his swastika monocle.

Panel 4: Hellboy jumps, stabbing the fork into the Shining One.

Panel 5: Robo fires the lightning gun

Panel 6: The lightning gun hits the Fork.

Page 22:

Summary: Atomic Robo and Hellboy pull out all the stops.

Layout: Single panel, one pager.

Panel 1:

Pull-away of the ruins. Massive explosion.

Page 23:

Summary: Total lunar eclipse. The Shining One weakens. Hellboy uses the Black Seal to trap it again.

Layout: Five panels, first large and three inset, one on bottom.

Panel 1: Hellboy and Atomic Robo, burnt and bruised, lay in the glassy crater surrounding the Moon Pool. The Shining One remains, diminished but otherwise unharmed. Overhead, the moon is eclipsing.

Robo: Well, that almost worked.

Hellboy: Damn!

Panel 2: Hellboy’s right hand settles on the Black Seal. The left fishes around in his belt pouches.

Hellboy: Wait a minute, I got something.

Panel 3: Robo looks at the moon.

Robo: The eclipse is cutting off the moonlight. It’s weakening!

Panel 4: Hellboy holds up the Black Seal in one hand, reads a scrap of paper in the other.

Hellboy: Nef azz-ram. Nef azz-diss. Na graf azzur. Nang-gazroth. Bagrom nagrom. Diss. Nef azzgrom dis. Diss abbal.

Panel 5: Hellboy and Robo stare at the empty moon pool, eyes glowing in the dark.

Robo: That worked. Why did that work?

Hellboy: Dunno. It’s an old prayer my dad gave me.

Robo: Huh. Well, now that’s over wanna see a movie?

Hellboy: Sure.

Page 24:

Summary: Hellboy and Atomic Robo watch Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

Layout: Three panels, stacked.

Panel 1: Private theatre. Robo wearing his fedora.

Text box: Epilogue. A private preview screening. Atomic Robo’s home theater, New York.

From the speakers: “Don’t call me Junior!”

Panel 2: Hellboy and Robo on the edge of their seats.

From the speakers: “That is the boundary…and the price, of immortality.”

Panel 3: Hellboy and Robo humming.

Hellboy + Robo: Doot do do doo, doot do doo…doot do DO do, do do doo do doo…DOOT do do doo, DOOT DO DO…

Textbox: Fin. Little scarab beetle in one corner says “||||!”

Malekeke

Malekeke
by

Bobby Derie

Benevolent cannibal gods smiled on me from the entrance to the thatch-roofed a-frame, and I left the sun and smog for a smoky world of jungle jazz and driftwood furniture, where grass-skirted hips swayed beneath dangling coconut shells and leis delivering food and drinks while a lean, long pig was slowly roasting on a central fire-pit. The man behind the bar was a bare-chested Samoan Budai in a brightly patterned lava-lava, with plugs in both ears and an actual bone through his nose—though I had seen him off-work, and knew he preferred a much smaller, barbell-headed ring in his septum piercing. I gave him the finger and he took a break from extolling the different colors of rum to some haole touristas to mix me a tall zombie.

The walls were a ship’s graveyard—or at least Hollywood’s. A float from the S. S. Minnow was nailed to the wall above an autographed black-and-white of Bob Denver, and a pair of wooden rails that might have come from a schooner but really disappeared off a back lot once filming was done provided a handy aisle between to sets of tables. Nets and long, thick cables of manila and hemp with strange knots mixed with palm leaves to hide the bare beams of the ceiling, and the tiny black speakers. I walked on a mat of dried coconut shell and black sand to the back, near the kitchen, where animatronic parrots peeked out of strange corners to squawk and then return. This part of the bar had been cannibalized from a dozen failed ventures—sand gave way to marble tile and bamboo furniture, the intimate table fires replaced by hanging paper lanterns, and a wall-length aquarium sported exotic, spindly, and striped fish, weaving their way through a rainbow kelp forest and what might have been a real human skull, a tiny silver minnow peaking out of an authentic bullet hole.

The owner Lou was in the back with the Necronaut, both of them decked in outrageously bright silk Hawai’ian shirts. Lou looked Polynesian and spoke Yankee; his people had come over to Cape Cod from Fiji on the clipper ships; he’d outlasted and outlived the tiki boom, bust, and revivals, then swooped in to pick up the props and any drink or food recipes worth keeping. A grass-skirted, bare-chested himbo wearing less than most male strippers sashayed up with my zombie in a tall tiki-head plastic mug, then moved off to flash his bare chest to a party of cougars in the far corner. I sipped my drink and sat down to get a better look at the Necronaut.

The suit was old, and in a constant state of repair, but whoever designed it had a macabre taste—or maybe that was necessity. Black rubber coils with brass fittings outlined the rib-cage over the cuirass, mostly hidden by a red-and-white flower print shirt, and the pauldrons were huge, bulbous things of artificial ivory and aluminum; the arms coming out of them looked small by comparison, being only human-sized, and the metal-ring sleeves ended in bulky six-fingered articulated gloves of spun copper and mother-of-pearl; the legs and feet were more of the same, with some stiff ridge of something over the spine I never got a good look at. The centerpiece, though, was the helmet—not an old-fashioned diving helmet, or one of those NASA black mirrored fishbowls like you would see on a space suit, but something in-between; a high collar that came up along that back of the head and held a half-globe of some dark, quasi-transparent crystal, raised up about two inches so the Necronaut could sip his umbrella drink through a straw, revealing a pale, wrinkled jaw and a mouth full of stainless steel teeth.

“Detective,” he said.

Lou excused himself, and I squeezed into the booth.

“Got some work for you.”

“Of course, of course,” the old man said. “Where is the body?”

“Parking lot, in my trunk.” I took another sip, and noticed my zombie was half-gone. It always amazed me how easy it was to put away. “No rush, you can finish your drink.”

The Necronaut leaned forward a little, began to slurp. I watched the himbo make a volcano for the ladies in the corner, blue flame shooting up from the little vegetable mound on the tray; heard the music switch tracks to a ukulele piece—maybe something by Iz, but I didn’t recognize it right away.

Impulse seized me.

“Hey Necro?”

“Yes, detective?”

“Why do you stay here?”

The Necronaut leaned backward, bamboo creaking under the weight of his rig.

“This is a house of the dead, a shrine to the dream of a culture that never existed, save in places like this, and the lands of dream. Like myself, it is a relict out of time, sustained by the—reuse of old parts, and the donations of those curious and faithful. Lou does well, as a collector, to harvest the old things and put them on display here, to arrange them to maximize their power and better invoke it. I visited it once, you know, the dream, before I came here. A Disneyland volcanic island, in a Pacific ocean dyed bluer and greener than the real thing, with black lagoons where fish-men made love to stolen brides, and a wooden stair of a thousand steps led up to the platform of sacrifice for the great tiki that warded that sacred space, where the old chieftain-priests warred with cargo cultists, dreaming Cthulhu in sunken R’lyeh ousted by a wooden mock-up of an aeroplane…and there were deaths there, where the dream turned to nightmare, both closer to and farther from reality. Missionaries devoured, young men and women sacrificed to grease the launch of great ships, dark harbors at night lit by the fires of war fleets, as rival tribes prepared to battle each other…” The Necronaut smiled at the memory, then touched his glove to a stud, so the dark shell of crystal came down to hide it.

“Now, show me what you’ve got.”

###