The Bones of Giants Read online

  The Bones of Giants

  Christopher Golden

  Prologue

  Like the death cry of an antique god, thunder tore the night sky asunder and the northland trembled at its fury. It was loud enough that Jan-Olaf Kjell felt its rumble in the hollow of his chest. He turned, boots crunching the snow, his fishing gear and his catch for the day banging against his back and legs.

  A quarter of a mile back, the river raged; ice floes swept along with the current as it twisted and turned through the frozen hills of Lapland. Twelve miles south, the river flowed through Skellesvall, and some hun­dred miles beyond that, into the Gulf of Bothnia. Jan-Olaf lived by himself outside of Skellesvall and had never been south of the Arctic Circle. This was what he knew of the world, but this he did know. This land, this river, these hills. Forty-seven years he had fished the banks of the river at a secret spot his father had found decades before that. His father was dead now, but Jan-Olaf still believed what his father had told him.

  The gods had blessed the river. As long as it was approached with the proper respect, it would never fail to provide all the fish he could hope to carry home. Forty-seven years, Jan-Olaf had seen the proof of it, and his father and grand­father, and who knew how many Kjell men before them? Always a secret, though, because the men of Skellesvall would surely taint the blessing of the gods and ruin it all.

  Jan-Olaf smiled. The gods. He was a Christian, but his father had always said that the old gods were forgotten but not gone, that it was best to give them the respect they were due, just in case. Just in case…

  With a brilliance that made him flinch and shield his eyes, lightning tore a wound in the sky, fire from the heavens reached an accusing finger toward the ground. Three seconds later the thunder came again, a crack so loud it was as though the earth itself had split in two. Jan-Olaf swore aloud and nearly covered his ears, though of course it would have been too late to protect them from the roar.

  A deep frown creased his forehead. He knew this land. This was his world, and he understood all there was to understand about it. But now, this early evening, lightning split the night from a perfectly clear, star-filled sky. Thunder roared without storm or heat or even much wind.

  Impossible.

  Again the sky brightened as a fresh tendril of lightning sliced the dark from earth to stars. It was followed immediately by yet another, this slashing down at an angle, cutting diagonally across the horizon. Thunder rolled across the land, echoing in the hollows and thumping upon the snow.

  Jan-Olaf stared, eyes narrowed, at a spot to the northeast where the first bolt of lightning had touched ground. The first, yes, but also the second, and the third… and again the lightning split the night. The roar of thunder now had enough power to rattle his remaining teeth, and Jan-Olaf was certain that the snow moved under his feet.

  An absurd thought went through his mind, then, but he could no more prevent it than he could touch the sky.

  The gods, Jan-Olaf thought, and a shiver passed through him that had nothing to do with the temperature.

  It angered him, this thought. He glanced around to mark his place—he was perhaps half a mile from his truck, just below a cleft in the hill where he and his father had camped once, long, long ago. Then Jan-Olaf dropped his equipment and his catch and set off on a direct course to the northeast. With the snow giving way beneath his boots, it took him more than half an hour to make the trek up the steep hill and then down the other side. Large stone outcroppings jutted from the ground and served both as landmarks and resting areas that would prevent him from tumbling the rest of the way down.

  The sky remained pristine and clear, only the stars to mar the perfect darkness. Or that was how it ought to have been, were it not for the unnatural lightning, which only increased in frequency. It flashed so bright in those moments, it was as though the sky were on fire, and the thunder bellowed so loudly that soon his hearing seemed muffled, eardrums numbed by the sound. Jan-Olaf pulled his hat down and pulled his jacket up to cover his ears, but it did not assuage the onslaught of the thunder. The roar of the heavens was inside his head now, in his heart.

  At last, sliding and grabbing hold of rocks, he came down a steep incline that he recognized. Just ahead it ended in a rock ledge five feet above a wide stretch of riverbank where the snow was thin and patches of earth showed through. He usually fished downriver, but had come this far north many times. Now, even as he reached that overlook, lightning scorched the air perhaps thirty feet away and Jan-Olaf froze, covering his eyes to protect them from the blinding light. The thunder was deafening, but he no longer cared.

  He knew this land, thought he had understood it, but this was like nothing he had ever seen or experienced in his life. Thoughts of ancient warriors and chariots across the sky clashed in his head against the rational logic of the modern world.

  When he opened his eyes he had to blink several times as his vision adjusted to the darkness again. At last he was able to peer down over the edge. The wide swath of riverbank was dappled with snow and ice save for a scorched and blackened patch of ravaged earth. At its center lay a withered corpse larger than any man Jan-Olaf had ever seen. Part of the hillside seemed to have given way, for there was rubble strewn about down there as well. Whether the desiccated thing had been thrown ashore by the river or torn out of the breast of the earth, he did not know, nor did his mind have space to consider such things just then.

  His eyes were wide and he had ceased breathing in that moment, simply forgotten how to draw breath. Jan-Olaf knelt in the snow on that ledge and stared at an ancient truth that numbed him more deeply than the frozen land ever could. Everything he knew was wrong.

  He stared at the wasted thing, there on the riverbank, at the iron weapon it clutched in its dead fingers.

  The lightning came again, and this time when Jan-Olaf closed his eyes, he wept frightened tears, for he was lost now. Lost in a world that was suddenly new to him, and yet also so incredibly old.

  Chapter One

  When he set eyes on the figure that emerged from the limousine into the moonlit night, Officer Aaron Bruckner nearly wet himself. It was taller than any man, its flesh a dark crimson like drying blood. Though there were things about it that suggested humanity—the thick sideburns on its cheeks, the jacket and pants it wore—the thing was far from human. How else to explain the long tail that thrust up from beneath the duster jacket, the hooves that clicked on the pavement, the broad flat spaces on its forehead that could only have been the stumps of horns.

  “Sweet Jesus,” Officer Bruckner whispered as he unholstered his weapon. He ignored the limousine, ignored the rest of the cops around him. Half the Hollis, Virginia police department were there in a cordon around the Playtown USA amusement park. Calls had been coming in all day from parents whose children had been terrified—pants-wetting, catatonic, scarred-for-life terrified—by some freak hiding in Playtown. Ugly. Scary. Big. Red. That was about the best description the kids had been able to give of the thing that had frightened them… chased them… even choked a couple of them, though thankfully none were seriously hurt. Freak, Bruckner thought, and he laughed at the word. This thing was no molester or lunatic. There was only one word for the monstrous, inhuman thing that stalked across the lot now. Demon.

  Despite the heat of that August night, a chill ran through Bruckner as the thing came toward him. Beyond that limousine was nothing but darkened, empty parking lot, and past that, the trees that lined Route 82. The press had been kept away, save for the helicopter that even now buzzed above. Behind Bruckner were dozens of cops and park officials, but in that moment it was just him and the creature. Him and the demon.

  Aaron Bruckner stood his ground. His throat was dry and he fel
t tears beginning to form at the corners of his eyes, the sting of salt and fear. His fingers felt numb and his limbs moved as if of their own accord, some distant cosmic puppeteer pulling his strings. Holding his breath, he stared at the blood-red beast, its features angular and hard as though hewn from stone. Its right hand was enormous, huge beyond all sense of proportion, and he thought for a moment that it might well be stone.

  Something was frozen inside Aaron Bruckner, but it kept him steady as he raised his service weapon in both hands and took aim at the monster’s chest.

  Movement at his side. Aaron flinched, glanced to the left, and found Sergeant Wilkie staring at him. The heavyset sergeant had wide, dark eyes, a missing upper incisor, and a nose that looked to have been broken at least twice. A thick vein throbbed in his temple whenever he was stressed, which was just about always.

  “Bruckner,” Sergeant Wilkie snapped in a low voice. “What the hell are you doing? Put that weapon down!”

  The gun wavered in his hand. Bruckner stared wide-eyed at the demon, then back at Wilkie. “But Sarge…” Didn’t he see it, for God’s sake? “The thing… in the park…”

  Wilkie stepped right in front of him, blocking his view of the demon, this fiend that would haunt his dreams for years thereafter with a throaty laugh and eyes of fire, its long tail swaying behind it. The sergeant pushed Bruckner’s hands down, his numb hands, and Bruckner let him, too stunned to fight it.

  “Damn it, kid, don’t you ever read the papers?” Wilkie muttered. “It’s that guy… that Hellboy. This is just the sort of thing he gets involved with.”

  Even as Wilkie’s words sunk in, the demon strode up behind him, towering over him. It paused a moment there, as Wilkie turned and the two cops stared up into the grizzled, granite features of the creature.

  “Hey,” Hellboy said. “Anybody seen a monster around here?”

  Playtown after dark was a surreal, nightmarish landscape. Under normal circumstances the power would have been shut down at the end of the day, but the park had been evacuated several hours before dusk. There were no floodlights—no need, since the place was supposed to close at dusk—only the multi-colored bulbs and glowing neon on the rides themselves. They were just enough to twist the golden light of the moon into a sickly, hallucinatory sort of illumination.

  From the Ferris wheel came a tinny calliope music, clashing with the melody coming from the distant carousel. Other than that, Playtown was silent.

  Creepy little place, Hellboy thought, though Playtown wasn’t exactly little. It was a small but modern amusement park whose roller coaster, Whiplash Mountain, had some local notoriety. Of course, Hellboy would not have ridden the thing even if he had a gun to his head. He was not fond of roller coasters. Too rickety. Not that he had had a great deal of experience with them. Save for a couple of trips Professor Bruttenholm had specially arranged for him when he was small, his only visits to amusement parks had been like this one: go in, figure out what the hell was haunting or stalking the grounds, get the heck out.

  What sort of unnerved him, though, was that the few times he had done this in the past, the amusement parks had fit the mold better. Ancient relics of good times past, barely able to stay open, but appar­ently attractive to spirits, demons, and, in one case, a woman with the head of a boar. He didn’t like to think about that last one. It had been a while since he had been asked to look into one of these places. Once a decade, it seemed. And Playtown was next. But it was too new, too nice, too well kept, or at least that was how he figured it. Playtown did not follow the pattern. It had none of the things that usually seemed to attract the supernatural. Freaky.

  Hellboy walked the paved path that wound in and out of the rides, past gift shops and take-out windows, past picnic tables and abandoned ice-cream and pretzel and cotton-candy vending wagons. The smell of fried dough was strong on the breeze, but he couldn’t see a wagon for that anywhere. Paper drink cups with straws jutting from them sat atop an overflowing trash can, precariously balanced, waiting to fall. No one was going to empty the trash until Hellboy handled the pest control.

  Pest control. He hated thinking of it that way, but sometimes he could not help it. The really intriguing stuff, the stuff that made his employers at the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense wet their pants, did not come along as often as this kind of mundane ghostbusting crap.

  Of course, whatever was lurking around here at Playtown, he didn’t think it was a ghost. The reports that had come in had referred to a tall creature, skele­tally thin, with leathery red skin and long, shaggy hair. It was supposed to move in a kind of dance, arms windmilling around. And it scared the crap out of a bunch of kids. Hellboy wasn’t particularly fond of the research part of the BPRD’s name, but the Bureau had a guess as to the monster’s ID within an hour.

  The night was hot and dry, but, as he passed the log flume, Hellboy could feel the air grow heavier with the moisture of evaporated water. There was a Tilt-a-Whirl and the Octopus and the Roundup, all of which were designed to make riders scream and vomit, and a hydraulic tower that would lift riders hundreds of feet above the ground and then plummet them toward the ground before slowing at the last moment. The lights were brightest in that area, turning the pavement an odd melange of color, like the inside of a nightclub.

  Further on he passed a clutch of rides for small children: kiddie canoes and Red Baron planes and slowly spinning teacups. The Red Baron ride had been split in half by a thick oak tree that grew up through the metal works and shattered it from the inside.

  Hellboy grunted as he looked at it. That was new. He had heard reports of the trees that had suddenly burst up through the ground—that was what had finally forced the park authorities to evacuate—but seeing it was another story. No wonder the little kids had run screaming. By now their parents were probably talking lawsuit.

  Other than a couple of dropped ice-cream cones—long ago melted to almost nothing—and a child’s backpack with colorful clowns painted all over it, there was no sign of trouble here save for that intrusive tree. A couple of the Red Baron planes had actually broken off and smashed to the ground. How this all had happened without any children being badly hurt was beyond him.

  Unless whatever was responsible had not wanted to hurt the children at all? He frowned and rolled that one over in his mind. Hellboy glanced at the backpack again and shuddered. Clowns creeped him out. No one was that happy. It was unnatural.

  From the kiddie corner, he went past a garishly painted funhouse and an entire alley filled with those ring-toss and basketball-throw-type games that no one ever really won except by sheer luck. Then, on the other side of a small building that housed vending machines and restrooms, he came in sight of the bumper cars and the carousel. The music from the Ferris wheel had receded behind him now, and as he walked toward the merry-go-round, its sweet carnival melody grew louder. It made him think of the ice-cream man—of watching the ice-cream man out the window and being forbidden to chase him… after that first time, the BPRD had decided it would be better for all concerned. The late Professor Bruttenholm, who had raised Hellboy within the confines of the BPRD’s facilities, had always been more than willing to go and get something for him from the white truck, but it wasn’t the same.

  The carousel was still spinning. The horses and other animals in the painted menagerie upon its platform went up and down on their poles, some in time with the music and others to their own mechanical rhythm. A second tree, much larger than the first, grew up out of the ground only a few feet from the edge of the turning carousel. It was dark and gnarled, twisted limbs thrust out at all angles. Some of the branches extended into the carousel itself and scraped against the poles and the wood and plastic animals as they went around. The ends of those branches had been stripped of leaves, a few of which were on the ground. Hellboy figured the others had blown away.

  He stared a long moment at the carousel, wondering if he should climb aboard to search it. But after a minute, it was clear to him th
at here, as well, there was nothing out of the ordinary save for that tree.

  Then something moved.

  On the other side of the carousel, in the shadows beside another row of those rip-off carnival games, a tall figure slipped forward. The moonlight glinted off its skin, red as reported, though much brighter than Hellboy’s own. Like a candy apple, and just as sticky looking. It spun as it moved, hands swirling above it, hopping from one leg to another in a kind of mad, capering dance. Shaggy hair hung halfway down its back, but otherwise the thing was naked. It leaped upon the carousel and swung ‘round the pole that jutted up from the back of a dolphin.

  The carousel came quickly around, happy music filling the air, and the thing stared at Hellboy as it swung past him. Its face was skeletal, yes, and thin, its chin pointed, cheekbones high and jutting from beneath leathery skin.

  Hellboy shivered. The thing was pretty damn ugly.

  It rode the carousel around twice more and then leaped off in an acrobatic tumble that sent it twisting through the air. Its clawed feet hit the pavement in utter silence and it continued its wild capering, dancing around him with flailing limbs. Hellboy rolled his eyes as the thing circled him, staring, studying. Dr. Manning at the BPRD said the thing was supposed to be able to become invisible when it wanted to be. But Hellboy often saw things other people didn’t.

  When it danced past in front of him again, Hellboy glared at the thing impatiently. “I can see you, moron.”

  The thing faltered, its expression almost comical. It had a mouth full of jagged teeth that were crusted with a green moss, scraped clean in spots, and now that it had stopped moving, Hellboy could see that its skin had a texture closer to bark than leather.

  It spoke to him in quick flurries of words in a language Hellboy quickly realized was an old dialect of Portuguese. He figured that pretty much confirmed the monster’s identity.

  “You’re Caypor, I guess.”