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Sarah—?” He realized then that he didn’t know what her last name might be. Not Nail. “Ahh—nineteen, both her parents died about a year ago?”
    â€œOnly iffun you count that she’s gone. Her and two other girls, they licked out sometime before dawn. Had the sheriff in and out of here all mornin’, him and his deputies been searchin’ all over town, but I fear. I fear.”
    â€œWhere’d she go? Do you have any idea?”
    â€œShe’s been actin’ fidgety lately all right, but she in her ninth month and that happens every so often. Them other girls, Becky Sue Cabbot and Hortense—”
    Hellboy thought, Hortense, ah jeez.
    â€œâ€”Millford, they both ready to drop their bundles too.”
    â€œSheriff’s here ’gin, Mrs. Hoopkins!” one of the girls called.
    Mrs. Hoopkins said, “Well, he’s a man of true conviction, I’ll give him that.”
    Hellboy drew back a frilly curtain and watched as a police cruiser pulled up in front of the house and parked next to the Packard. The sheriff climbed out of the passenger side. Guy was hefty, carrying a lot of extra weight around the middle. He took off his hat and drew the back of his hand across his brow, took out a handkerchief, and daubed around his neck. Behind the wheel, his deputy settled deeper into the seat, dipped his hat over his eyes, and went to sleep. Hellboy was starting to see a theme here.
    The sheriff liked to enter a room so everybody knew he was there. He clopped in through the front door loudly. “Whee-ah, sure is hot out there!”
    Mrs. Hoopkins said, “You say that every night.”
    â€œâ€™Cause every night it’s hot!”
    A solid tactic. You went in noisy and tried to shake everybody up, see what fell out, determine who scurried for cover. It focused attention. Hellboy stood back, and the sheriff smiled broadly at him.
    â€œSheriff Jebediah Hark, son, pleased to meet you.”
    â€œSheriff,” said Hellboy.
    â€œBliss Nail gave me a call about you. Said he hired you to help him out.”
    â€œHe didn’t hire me, but I am trying to help. What do you think happened to these girls?”
    Scratching at his jowls with one hand, Sheriff Hark boosted up his gun belt with the other. Crimson-faced and drenched with sweat, he looked like he was hurtling toward a massive coronary. “Might be they left for their own for reasons we don’t know about. Or maybe, well—it ain’t happened for a spell, but in times past we seen a share of children being taken by the deep swamp folk.”
    â€œTaken?”
    â€œSometimes they sell the babies to rich families in Savannah and Athens or raise them as their own to toil on their farms out in the morass of their village. And then mayhap there’s times when . . . well . . .”
    Hellboy waited. “Well?”
    â€œChildren in these parts ain’t always born, ah . . .”
    â€œAh?”
    Mrs. Hoopkins said, “He means they’re sometimes different. Got them some extra fingers or bodies covered with fur. Or no arms or too many arms, or they swim and crawl and slither but never walk.”
    â€œAnd the swamp folk take them in?” Hellboy asked.
    â€œTha’s right.”
    â€œAnd the girls?”
    â€œOn occasion they come home again,” the sheriff said, leaving the implication heavy in the air. “And sometimes they don’t.”
    â€œSo where is this village?”
    â€œAin’t nobody rightly knows. We’ve had men who’ve gone out there lookin’. Some return ain’t never seen it. A few, well, they says they seen it but most of them were outta their heads from fever and dehydration and maybe snakebite. Others, they’ve never been heard from again. Maybe gators got ’em, maybe sink holes. Maybe not.”
    He looked back at the sheriff and said, “Mrs. Hoopkins doesn’t seem to think the girls were