Hellboy: Unnatural Selection(73)

The streets around their hotel had come to life with the dawn, and Richard was relieved that the silence of the previous night was no more. People talked and shouted, cars growled and hooted, motorbikes roared, traders called, and children chattered in the street two stories below their balcony, and the mouthwatering aromas of street cooking wafted up to them on pale smoke. He liked the feeling of the world around them being alive, yet at the same time Richard knew that he and Gal were apart from this world. They had removed themselves the day they fled their burning home with their father. Ever since, they had been hiding beneath the skin of reality, digging deeper into the petrified flesh of history. Anyone who happened to look up would see two middle-aged men on a hotel balcony, one staring intently at a big old book, the other standing at the rear of the balcony, looking out over Jerusalem with an expression of confusion that would be familiar to the observer. Many foreign tourists came here, but few ever truly understood the city.

Richard looked down into the crowd below. None of them could have any idea of what he and Gal were considering doing this day.

"How can you read this?" Gal said. His voice was croaky from too many cigarettes and too long sitting on his own, not talking, just thinking. "There's no sense here at all, no meaning. It's all distortion."

"That's because it's what you perceived the very first day Father showed us the book."

"And you saw clearly what it said?"

"No, I saw what it meant. I knew page one, and every page since has been open to me, with a little concentration."

Gal shook his head, closed the book, and smoothed its time-worn leather cover. "I'm glad I have you with me, Rich," he said. "I truly am."

Richard's heart missed a beat at the unaccustomed softness of his brothers voice. The brash man of last night had gone, burned away perhaps by the morning sun, and in his place there was his brother. Vulnerable, wasted, tortured by many things from many times, yet still his brother. They were from the same father and mother. However different their personalities, Richard liked to remember that.

"Are you ready to go?" Gal said quietly.

"I suppose so. But I think I need something to eat first."

Gal stood, twisted his body this way and that, easing out the stiffness. "We can pick something up on the way." As he passed Richard on his way back into the room, Gal put a hand on his brother's shoulder. "You know this is the right thing, don't you? Its in de Lainree's book, it's part of the Memory, and Father will only thank us." Gal went inside to get ready.

I hope so, Richard thought.



* * *



It took them most of the day to find the entrance to the tomb.

They walked through the streets of Jerusalem, ignoring street traders, avoiding police and army patrols, pausing every half hour at a street café, drinking strong coffee while Richard strengthened his spell of course and tried to make sense of that most esoteric chapter of the Book of Ways. He was doing his best. Whatever doubts he felt about what they were doing, never did he feign confusion. The words and text and strange drawings merged in his mind, steering him this way and that, until late in the afternoon, as they sat in bright white plastic chairs outside a building a thousand years old, two symbols bled into each other and showed Richard the way.

He sighed, slumped in the chair, picked up his coffee, and downed it in one gulp. "I have it," he said.

"Good." Gal leaned across and touched Richards shoulder. "I knew you would."

They remained in the café for a while and ate, Richard to regain the strength he had lost through that long day of spell casting and concentration, Gal to fortify himself against the sending yet to come. The sun dipped toward the western hills, and they both decided at the same time that they should not remain above-ground to watch the sunset. Much better to be on their way by then. They had flashlights, folded digging tools, and a crowbar packed into their rucksacks. They were used to breaking and entering, finding buried history. Richard sometimes felt that all the relevant moments of their lives had been spent underground.

He led them to a deep drainage ditch beside a park, filled now with discarded bicycles, clothing, cardboard boxes, and other refuse.

"Down there?" Gal said.

"Down there."

They began to dig through the rubbish, heaving it behind them and forging a path down to the base of the ditch. Richard cut himself on an old rusted baby carriage, Gal scraped his hand along the ragged mouth of a broken bottle, and they both gave blood to the land. Nobody came to see what they were doing. Whether they went unseen or people thought it best to keep to themselves, Richard was relieved.