Read Emerald Hell for Free Online Page B

stood, and followed Hellboy to the door. “You wanna wait until morning and I’ll send some men with you.”
    â€œI can’t wait,” Hellboy said.
    â€œThen you be safe, son.”
    Mrs. Hoopkins pressed a hand atop his own. “You think you can find them three girls out there in the slough ’fore any danger befalls them?”
    â€œI’m going to try.”
    â€œI got me a bad feeling in these old bones.”
    Hellboy thought, Me too, but said nothing.
    â€”
    Tapping at the driver’s window, Hellboy waited while Waldridge snorted awake from his nap. He told the houseman that he was going to go off and look for the bog village.
    â€œYou want I should go with ya?”
    â€œNo, that’s okay. I was just hoping you could point me in the right direction.”
    â€œYou just gonna set off walkin’?”
    â€œYeah.” He knew that something would be along to shove and prod him on the way. Ever since he’d been let off in Enigma he’d felt he was being watched.
    â€œSwamp that way,” Waldridge said, angling his index finger south-east down a dirt track. “They say it’s eight hundred square miles. Heard it on the radio once.”
    Only about 450,000 acres. “That’s not so bad.”
    â€œYou don’t know your way ’round these black waters.”
    â€œDo you?”
    Waldridge considered the question. “No man does fully, but it’s better to have someone with ya. In case’a . . . well, snakebite . . . and to keep an eye out for gators.”
    A tough old feisty dude, all right. Hellboy said, “Thanks anyway. I appreciate the offer, but there’s things I’m better off doing alone.”
    â€œI s’pect you’re right about that. Hope to meet up with you again soon. If not, you’ll always have my prayers.”
    Hellboy knew what they were worth, but it was nice to hear anyway.

  CHAPTER 4
    â€”
    People had been dying out here by the dozens since the beginning of the world, swallowed by the bayou without a ripple. Or found hanging in the cypresses after a week of being lost in the maze of green, tormented by swimming snakes, alligators, and half-pound spiders.
    Tourists came for the gator farms, tent revivals, hootenannies, and jamborees. Hellboy still didn’t know what he’d come for, but he was glad he had a reason now to do the only thing he knew how to do.
    As he walked the empty road he sensed the scrub around him beginning to encroach, the night growing heavier and blacker, reaching for him. He stopped, stood still, and watched as the tree branches whirled and clawed past the moon. The ground shifted, alive, advancing and somehow taking him along with it. In the distance ahead he watched as . . . as the distance itself came closer without real movement. The road began to flood, abruptly filling not only with rising water but with cypress, titi, and hard-packed earth. The marsh prairie came alive and rushed forward to meet and surround him.
    Before him now stood a small one-room shack.
    â€œNow that was a pretty neat trick,” he said. Stepping over, he waited for someone to come out. No one did.
    Hellboy thought, All of that and they’re going to make me knock.
    So he knocked.
    The thin pineboard door of the dilapidated shanty slowly opened, answered by a hulk of a man who managed to tower even over Hellboy. The giant looked back over his shoulder and said, “Mama, Satan hisself is at the door.”
    â€œThen let him on in, Luther,” an ancient, but oddly powerful voice, called. “’Fore he get up to any mischief out there.”
    â€œCome on in, O Lucifer, Son of the Morning!”
    Well, Hellboy thought, this is going to be fun.
    Lit from the glow of a blazing fire within, Luther’s eyes burned a strange bronze. He stood nearly seven feet tall and went at least three hundred pounds of hard muscle. His enormous head was crowned by a small tuft