Hellboy: Unnatural Selection(31)

Gal's flashlight beam flooded the cave when daylight faded away. Richard turned his flashlight on and combined the beams, shining them into the cracked walls and rugged ceiling. The floor here still consisted of sand; the sea must flood in here sometimes, and he hoped their calculations about the tide had been correct. Perhaps there were other ways out of there ... perhaps ... but he had no desire to find out.

In there for three days! the old drunk had said. No light, no food, drinking my own piss. Three days! And I heard it calling to me every minute of every hour of those days.

They worked their way into the cave, squeezing through a couple of narrow openings where the rock walls and ceiling had been scoured smooth by water being forced through at pressure. The sand floor eventually gave way to rock, and all signs of the sea — smashed shells, dried seaweed — vanished. The cave headed up, then down again, turning left and right. Cracks led off to the left, but Gal and Richard chose the easier route. The drunk had tried giving them direction, but he had been so flooded with rum by then that his words had been slurred beyond recognition. Stray un, he had said, Jus go stray un.

It took half an hour to reach the cave. It opened up suddenly, and the space took their breath away. The flashlights were powerful, but even they could not fill the cave with light; there were always shadows evading the beams. Richard felt as though they were being stalked.

"There," Gal said. "Do you hear that? Is that what the old fool meant?"

Richard opened his mouth to try to calm his breathing. His beam shook, and he placed the heavy plastic flashlight on the ground, propped against a rock. "Yes," he said.

Something was whistling at them. Gently, consistently, so low that it was almost below their level of hearing. It was sensed rather than heard; Richard felt the tiny hairs in his ears reacting to it, his skull vibrating slightly with the sound. And it seemed to be coming from all around.

"He thought it was the kraken's ghost," Gal said. "Stupid old shit."

"And it isn't?" Richard said. "Are you really sure of that?"

"Were not here to find a ghost," Gal said. He walked into the center of the cave and looked around, turning a slow circle and splaying his beam across the lower walls. "There!"

The two brothers hurried to the light patch in the dark rock wall. Something glittered in there. Like treasure seekers, they felt their excitement rising, but this was not any traditional treasure. It was evidence of the past they sought, proof of a myth. And like everything else they had spent the last ten years searching for, its discovery delighted them.

"It's huge!" Richard said.

"Imagine the size of the thing this came from ... "

"How did it get in here? What's that it's buried in?"

Gal stepped back and aimed the beam wider. "Whale," he said. "Dried, fossilized. Maybe this cave was under water. Earthquake could have closed it in, raised it, who knows? Who cares? Father will be so pleased with this. We've sent him things of the air and the land, now he'll master the sea as well."

Richard produced his knife and set to work prizing the barb out of the hardened whale hide. The barb was as long as his hand, and it was set in a definite circular scar on the whales skin, a sucker mark. Richard could have stood within the diameter of that circle with room to spare. The size of this thing! he thought. But soon he would not have to imagine it any longer. Soon his father would bring it back from the Memory. That scared him, but it thrilled him as well. With so much power at their disposal, how could they not find the vengeance they sought?

It was all going to be so easy.



* * *



Two hours later they emerged back into the sunlight. Gal had one arm slung across Richard's shoulder. The sending had tired him more than ever, and there was a small smudge of dried blood beneath his nose. Richard had pretended not to notice.

The rains had come and gone, and the trees along the back of the beach steamed in the afternoon sun. It was hot, humid, sweaty, but they were both glad to feel the sun on their skins once again.

As soon as Richard had removed the sucker tooth from the wall of the cave, the whistling had stopped. Gal said it had been a draft of air moving across the tooth, but Richard wondered. Perhaps it really had been the ghost of the kraken, singing into reality from the vagueness of the Memory, silenced now in anticipation of what might come next. Silenced and ready.



* * *





Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense Headquarters, Fairfield, Connecticut — 1997