LOOKING WHERE I DAREN’T, SEEING WHAT I MUST

At least everything had been cleared out of the room by then.

All the forensic equipment and the evidence markers and the yellow tape, all the police and the government agents and the reporters—oh, the reporters and the endless questions they’d asked about everything in the room.

The room was silent, now, a dead chamber full of books and curiosities, statuary and bric-a-brac. Full of things but completely devoid of sound, of movement, of life.

The lighting remained the same, the colours, the textures, the smells. The lamps still glowed, the soft blue light still diffused from the huge tank of water that dominated one wall. The windows still admitted muted sunlight, the kind you found in old bookstores and antique shops. A warmth remained there, but it was distant, the warmth of something that had sat in the sun and had only just been brought into darkness. The scent of old things, the scent of time and dust and books, of wisdom and knowledge still hung in the air, as undisturbed as the dust motes that floated in the shafts of light. A brown-grey smell, a dry smell, a comforting smell, tinted ever so slightly by the green of pungent, salty seawater and the dark, homey blue of an old man’s aftershave. Nothing had changed, yet nothing was the same.

No-one had been in this room for more than perhaps an hour at a time. They couldn’t bear it. If they stayed too long, they expected the old man to walk in at any moment and turn on some music and make his slow, steady, contemplative course about the room, watering plants and winding clocks and saying hello to the room’s only other regular occupant, perhaps turning the pages on the books that still sat quietly in stands facing the water. Or they expected to come in and see him behind the desk, poring over dusty tomes or holding a quiet conversation.

But all the books sat untouched, the record player silent, the room empty and quiet and alone. The plants had withered from two weeks of inattention, the water grown stagnant and murky in the tank.

Because no-one went in there. They couldn’t. It was the Professor’s room and with him gone something had grown disturbing and almost frightening about it. The random agents and employees avoided it like the plague. Manning never even entered the building any more. Meyers stuck to the office like a hedgehog in his den. Hellboy made as many excuses as physically possible to be elsewhere and Liz … Liz wandered the halls almost incessantly, passing by the door numerous times but never getting up the courage to walk inside, to break the silence and the stillness.

That left only one, whose soft tread made its way slowly and wearily across the carpet, leaving slightly damp footprints. He stopped at a nearby bookshelf and reached up one hand to run a finger slowly along the spine of one of the books. All of these things, the books and the statues and the furniture, held so many memories. So vivid, so … immediate. So real.

Another argument with his son about the girl, Liz. Hellboy wanted her to stay. Wanted him to order her to stay. It wasn’t that easy and it tore him up to see the complete lack of understanding in those honest golden eyes. A being so straightforward was lost when it came to dealing with people….

Ah yes, right before the investigation of that murderous spiritualist. He’d been there for that row. Hellboy and the Professor hadn’t spoken to each other for days after that.

He removed his hand from the book and continued further into the room until he came to the desk. Drawing a hand along the corner of the desk brought up a confusing jumble of sounds and images and impressions, like the flickering of images on a television screen. He stopped, blinking curiously at what he saw.

Someone had carefully placed the Professor’s glasses on the desk, right above the blotter, as though intending the old man to find them there. Just like the Professor himself had done, countless times.

He reached out and stopped, staring at his own pale blue fingers as they hovered over the glasses. If he reached out and touched them now, he would know everything. Exactly and in every detail. How the Professor died. All the circumstances that led to his execution by a single stab of the Nazi Kroenen’s blade.

Oh, they’d asked him to look. Manning had ordered him to do it for the sake of investigations and records. Meyers had tried to wheedle him into looking for the sake of closure. Closure. Such tired psychobabble from someone so young. Hellboy had demanded he show him what had happened to his father. Liz had begged to know what had happened, her hands pressed against the glass of the sleeping-tank he’d taken to spending almost all of his time in.

And he’d refused every single time. Some things you have to do for yourself, else there’s no point. Else you’re doing it for all the wrong reasons.

Which was why he stood there now, his hand poised over the one thing that would answer everyone’s question, the one thing that told him exactly what he needed to know and exactly what he didn’t want to know.

It’ll be too much, he thought. Reading something that witnessed its owner’s death always is. Just walk away. Don’t do it. It makes you sick every time. That’s the last thing you need…

His fingers grazed the lenses.

"He disclosed to me the child’s true name. Would you like to know it?”

“I know … what to call him. I call him … son.”

Rasputin. He could almost hear the Russian mystic’s voice in his ear. Could see him, for just a second, such madness in his eyes. A soft ticking on his other side. Kroenen. How did Rasputin even get in there?

So much for the Bureau’s much-vaunted security if it couldn’t keep out a crazy half-possessed magician.

Almost spasmodically, he reached out and grasped the glasses. Now or never.

"It’ll be quick.”

Rasputin walked away. All was sounds now, sensations. The Professor had closed his eyes, his hands resting on the book on its stand before him, his omnipresent rosary gripped in his right hand. A fire crackled. Music played softly. He had stilled his thoughts. No point in fighting the inevitable. Everything had been planned far too well.

The ticking grew closer. The sound of breath rasping through a face mask. His skin crawled involuntarily at that nearness. A hand placed itself on his left shoulder, fingers curling around it. Cold and dead. The sound of metal. A blade whipped through the air, once, twice, then a third time. The hand shifted. So many details, but the last thought he had was of his son and the knowledge of what he would do in the face of Rasputin’s plan as a fiery pain stabbed through the back of his neck, right below his skull and everything… stopped.

Stilled. Pulled away. Life sucked into the ether in the blink of an eye and he gasped, falling dizzily to his knees, forcing himself to breathe. Counting the frantic beats of his heart and fighting to stay conscious. Breathe. Breathe or you’ll join him. Breathe or it will take you, too. You’ve done it before. You’ve lived. Every time is a little closer but you can separate yourself this time. All you have to do is breathe….

A hand curled round his, almost unbearably hot, and his eyes flew open. Still fighting to breathe, respirator bubbling madly, he looked up. Blue-grey eyes looked back at him, patient, concerned, a white face beneath black hair, sad yet calm in that way people get when someone else is ill and all they need to do is be there until it passes. She smiled ruefully.

“Keep breathing, Abe,” was all she said, her hand rubbing his back almost out of habit.

It took him a solid five minutes to catch his breath. Every time it took a little longer and every time he wondered when would be the time that he wouldn’t recover. No point in worrying about that now. He looked up, feeling calmer, and met her gaze again.

There was a long pause as the two knelt on the carpet, looking at one another. Presently Liz’s eyes dropped to the glasses. “I won’t ask you to show me,” she said. “Not unless you want to.”

He placed the glasses in her hands. “It was quick,” he said. “And before he died, he knew … he knew that Rasputin would fail.”

Liz nodded. A single tear ran down her cheek. “That’s why he let them kill him, isn’t it?” She dropped her head, her fair falling to obscure her face for a moment. Almost without thinking, he reached out and gently pushed it behind her ear. She looked up at him, a strange smile playing at the corners of her mouth. He nodded silently in answer to her question.

Another pause. They remained still, her gaze on the floor, his on the glasses in Liz’s hand, and silence fell over the room once again. But this time the silence failed to unnerve. The spell of death had been broken. It was just ordinary quiet once again.

“You gonna be okay?” Liz asked, looking up at him again. A simple question, but one impossible to answer - did she mean now? Did she mean the days afterward with the unifying force of their little freak show gone? Did she mean the years that would pass that would slowly forget the old man and his rosary?

All of them. “I think so,” he answered.

“I still miss him. I’ll look at pictures of him and they won’t make any sense any more. Because they aren’t the same.”

He nodded, not knowing what to say. Liz took pictures of everything around her in order to force them to stay still and make sense. The purpose would be defeated if the subject was now dead.

She leaned her head against him and he knew, innately, without looking, that tears ran down her face even though it never moved. That was normal. That was Liz. Almost instinctively, they slipped their arms around each other, two beings seeking out someone else to buffer their own emotions.

A water-dwelling creature cannot produce tears.

So he let her do it for him.

 

FIN

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