Emerald Hell by Mike Mignola Read Free Book Online

of wispy yellow hair. In his left hand he held two dead rabbits, and hooked on his huge pinky was a jug of moonshine.
    â€œSatan,” Luther said, “don’t stir no strife in this here house.”
    â€œLuther, if you don’t start any crud with me, I won’t with you. Deal?”
    â€œI reckon that’s as fair an offer as I’m likely to get from the Devil.”
    â€œProbably,” Hellboy admitted. “At least today.”
    Luther moved aside and Hellboy stepped in, his upper lip curling in response to the overwhelming stink of cooked meat.
    Tucked into her small wooden wheelchair a crone sat, smoking a corncob pipe. She was missing both legs, her left arm, right eye, and both ears. Long white hair grew in crazed clumps, some braided, some knotted into a pattern he recognized as a Litany Web. Powerful mojo.
    Behind her, against a shack wall abundant with cracks stuffed full of mud and sawgrass, he saw numerous jars filled with amber fluid and dark floating matter. Labeled in a childlike scrawl were: Granny’s Left Thumb, Granny’s Right Big Toe, Granny’s Shinbones, Luther’s Wisdom Teeth, Boysenberry Jam, Granny’s Anterior Margin of Pancreas, Granny’s Celiac Ganglia with the Sympathetic Plexuses of the Abdominal Viscera, Luther’s Kidney Stones, Peaches.
    â€œI’m Granny Lewt,” the woman said. “We got business together, you and me.”
    â€œWe do?”
    â€œTha’s right.”
    Drinking his moonshine, the hulking Luther tossed the rabbits onto a broad wooden kitchen table and began to skin them. He was very adept with the thick cutting blade, and Hellboy didn’t want to think about what that might imply, considering the old woman’s current state.
    â€œLet me hear what’s on your mind, lady.”
    â€œYou showin’ up like this only gonna make bad matters come together that much faster.”
    â€œUsually does.”
    â€œAyup. You put fear into the things that ain’t afraid’a much in this world or the next.” She plucked out her pipe and pointed the end at Hellboy. “Wish there were more like you around.”
    â€œBe careful saying things like that,” Hellboy said. “You never know who might be listening.”
    In the center of the stone hearth a black pot of stew bubbled. Luther gutted the rabbits, chopped the meat and some vegetables, several of which Hellboy didn’t recognize, and threw it all into the cauldron. Some of the liquid boiled over and splashed the inside of the fireplace. The flames heaved. A heavy draft swept by, moaning and wheezing through the perforated walls and up the chimney.
    â€œYou heard tell’a Brother Jester?” Granny Lewt asked.
    â€œYeah, him I heard about already. Can I go now?”
    â€œDon’t you shrug that one off too lightly.”
    Holding onto the pipe with her remaining two fingers, Granny Lewt snaked her right hand—her only hand—through the air for emphasis. Then she sat back and puffed deeply, enjoying her smoke.
    The old woman said, “He’s out there in Enigma right now. I don’t know his meaning. He’s got power, and he’s sly.”
    â€œThey all are. Don’t worry about me, I’ve been doing this a long time.”
    â€œI pray tell that’s so. But you don’t know these swamps, and these here black waters is different than anything you ever known before.”
    He’d been in Jerusalem when the Whore of Babylon crept out of the olive trees at the Garden of Gethsemane. He’d fought off goblins and trolls and African tribal demons that possessed snakes sixty feet long. He’d gone head to head with the Japanese Lord of War called Aragami, the fury of wild violence, the God of Battle, slayer of 8,888 men, and Hellboy had trounced him. He hadn’t been so damn tough.
    So Hellboy figured that a little moss and slime, a few thorny patches and a lot of mud, some