The God Machine Read online

  "Probably some animal bones," he said to Bethany, who wrinkled her nose in distaste.

  "Hey, Jack," Stan called out. "What'd ya find?"

  Jack looked up and waved. He was holding a gnarled tree branch, and had been poking at something in the dirt.

  "Come here!" the boy cried. "Ya gotta see this." His sister had joined him, picking up her own stick, but it was snatched away by the easily excited Sadie.

  "I hope it isn't anything gross," Bethany said as she stepped carefully around the stones and debris that littered the ground.

  The couple moved beside the children and Jack looked up from where he was probing with his stick. "It's not gross," he assured his mother, a twinkle in his young eyes. "Just kinda weird."

  "Weird," Rebecca echoed in agreement. She had managed to pull the stick away from Sadie and was holding it high so the dog couldn't take it back from her.

  "I was looking around at stuff, and these things just pushed right up out of the ground."

  "I saw 'em too," Rebecca exclaimed, waving her stick in the air. Sadie sat at attention by her side, eyes on the stick, tail wagging.

  Stan crouched down for a closer look and saw five cylindrical objects sticking up out of the earth. They seemed to be made of metal--copper by the looks of them. They reminded him of the old-fashioned batteries he had seen in some of the older houses he'd worked in, but he'd never seen any quite like these before.

  He was suddenly filled with an overpowering dread--the kind of feeling that would strike him when the phone rang in the predawn hours and he would be certain, deep down in his gut, that somebody had died.

  "What are they, Dad?" Jack asked, extending the stick to tap one of the copper objects.

  "Don't, Jack," he barked, somehow knowing that they shouldn't...upset them. "I don't know what they are, but we should get away from here and..."

  Bethany moved closer, and Stan wanted to grab the children and run away as fast as he could. But his rational brain overruled his increasingly irrational emotions.

  "Look, Mommy," Rebecca said, pointing at the cylindrical objects. "They're like funny plants growing out of the dirt."

  Funny plants.

  Normally Stan would have laughed at his daughter's ridiculous observation, but he could find nothing humorous about their current situation. The intense sense of apprehension continued to grow.

  "They are funny," Bethany said, moving even closer herself.

  Stan reached out, grabbed her arm and yanked her back.

  "Ow," she said, pulling her arm away indignantly. "What'd you do that for?"

  "Sorry," he said, his eyes fixed upon the cylinders.

  "Mr. Attwater said there was a barn here a long time ago, and that the people who lived in the house got killed when the people in town set the barn on fire," Jack piped up.

  "That's terrible," Bethany said, still rubbing her arm. "Why did they do that?"

  Jack shrugged. "Mr. Attwater said that the people in the town didn't like what they were doing in the barn. They had machines and stuff."

  "What were they doing, Jack?" Rebecca asked. "In the barn."

  "He didn't say," the boy said, then extended his stick and gave one of the cylinders another poke.

  "Jack!" Stan snapped, and everyone jumped. "Don't touch them," he ordered as he pulled his son away. But that was all he could say. He couldn't tell them why the objects filled him with such anxiety, why they made him so afraid, for he didn't know himself.

  The air grew heavy with the acrid stench of ozone, like being outside after a heavy thunder and lightning storm.

  "What's that?" Rebecca asked, her tiny fingers pinching her nose shut. "It stinks!"

  The stink became stronger, and the air seemed to hum with an electrical charge. Stan could see that the others were feeling it now as well, looking around curiously for some kind of explanation.

  Rebecca began to laugh uproariously. "Look at my hair," she cried, pulling off her hood to allow her hair to stand on end. "It's electric."

  Stan could feel a tingle in his own scalp, and the hair on his arms stood up, the skin prickling.

  "What's going on, Stan?" Bethany asked, reaching out to pull their giggling daughter closer.

  He was about to tell them that they had to get out of there right then, when Sadie began to bark wildly, her hackles rising as she crept toward the cylinders.

  The objects were glowing, the terminals on the exposed ends sending snaking arcs of white, electrical current up into the air. The exposed portions of the cylinders pulsed with an eerie light.

  "I'm afraid," Bethany whimpered, and Stan found himself stepping between the objects and his family, yelling at the dog in his sternest voice to come. But Sadie seemed to be picking up on the same vibes as he, sensing a danger to her pack.

  What happened next unfolded in a kind of slow motion. With a guttural whine, Sadie lunged, snapping at the pulsing cylinders, the loose skin around her muzzle pulling back to reveal glistening pink gums and sharp teeth. And as the tip of her black nose made contact with one of the objects, there was a flash, and a sound like the cracking of a bullwhip.

  Sadie cried out.

  Stanley stared in horror as a bolt of blue electrical energy shot up from the cylinder and lanced through the dog's left eye. It exploded out of the side of her neck in a puff of oily smoke and arced down to connect with the copper terminals of the cylinder beside it. That was followed by another and then another until all five of the batteries--if that indeed was what they were--were linked by cords of the crackling discharge.

  Stan screamed as the bolt of electricity ripped through his dog's flesh, setting her fur on fire. He knew he had to protect his wife and children, to scoop them all up in his arms, and carry them to safety...but everything was happening so fast--and yet so slowly--that there was nothing he could do.

  Except scream.

  The conjoined cylinders lashed out at him with a single bolt of electrical force, a hissing cobra strike that pierced his chest, turning his insides to liquid fire before exiting through the fingertips of his left hand.

  The lightning current shot into his wife and from her into Jack, and then from the boy into little Rebecca. They were linked together now in a strange kind of circuit--the dog, his family, and the objects that had pushed up from the ground.

  Stan wondered if they were going to die.

  A voice like an angel's spoke in his mind, reassuring him that his sacrifice, and that of his family, would not be in vain, that they would be instrumental in bringing about a new and glorious age to mankind.

  A god is coming to the world, the voice inside his head whispered. And this time, there will be nothing to prevent it.

  Stanley Thomas wasn't there anymore.

  Certainly, if one were to observe the tall man, dressed as he almost always was in his Levi's and heavy leather jacket, suspicion would never be aroused that everything that defined the man as an individual--his loves, likes and dislikes--had been locked away.

  Replaced with another's.

  The man who was no longer Stanley Thomas stood trembling in the midafternoon New England cold and gazed down at hands not his own. They were strong hands, hands that were used to a hard day's work.

  His vessel had been chosen wisely, for there was much that needed to be done.

  How good it is to be seeing through actual eyes again, he thought looking about. The land upon which he stood appeared vaguely familiar, but so much had changed since last he stood here.

  There was a sound from behind him and he turned slowly, an expression of rapturous joy blossoming upon his new face as he recalled that he was not alone in this.

  He looked upon them, dressed in their new vestments of flesh, blood and bone, and though he did not recognize them--the woman, two children and a dog--he knew them all.

  "Brothers and sisters," he said, pleased with the strength that he heard in his new voice.

  "It is good to be back."

  Chapter 1

 
; Now. December, 1995

  T his guy seems kinda squirrelly, Hellboy thought, as he entered the home of Donald Kramer. Or maybe it was just the fact that a seven-foot-tall, red-skinned demon dressed in a trench coat and packing some serious heat was standing in the guy's foyer. Nah, that's not it. Kramer just seemed like one of those types.

  The man's hands hadn't stopped moving; touching his face, running his fingers through his hair, as he explained why he'd called in the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense.

  "One day it was there in the backyard like it always was," he said with a shrug and a twitch. "And then it was gone." Kramer gnawed at one of his fingernails like he hadn't eaten in a week.

  Hellboy glanced at the clipboard in his hand. "We are talking about a rock, right?"

  The man nodded eagerly. "Yes, a boulder. Been there forever. It separated my property from the woods behind it."

  Alarm bells had gone off at the BPRD headquarters in Fairfield when some desk jockey at the Plymouth, Massachusetts, Police Department keyed Kramer's case into their computers. The Bureau had a deal with most of the police departments in the U.S., and hundreds of locations abroad; if anything out of the ordinary was reported, it raised a flag and a copy of the file was sent to the BPRD. Most of the stuff was junk, but every once in a while something piqued their curiosity. Lately, that had been happening more often than usual. The brain trust at the BPRD had noticed a pattern. Things were being reported missing--odd things.

  The BPRD didn't like patterns.

  "Was there anything unusual about this boulder?" Hellboy asked.

  "No," Kramer answered sharply. "It was just a rock--a big rock. Why?"

  Hellboy scratched the back of his head, unsure how to explain. This particular "big rock" had been cataloged in the Bureau's informational database as an object of religious significance, something worshipped by a primitive people long ago. The cheat sheet Hellboy had on his clipboard didn't give him much more information than that, but he knew that it was only the latest in a long list of similar items that had disappeared throughout the region over the past month or so.

  "No reason." Hellboy shrugged his large shoulders. "Just covering all the bases." He placed the clipboard under his arm. "Can I take a look at the scene of the crime?"

  A twitch had developed at the corner of Kramer's right eye. "A crime? Do you think a crime's been committed?"

  Hellboy sighed. "It's just an expression. So can I take a look?"

  "Certainly," the man replied after breathing a sigh of relief. "It's through here." He turned toward a room behind him.

  Yep, definitely squirrelly.

  Kramer led Hellboy into a room filled with books, floor to ceiling, on shelves and in piles on the floor.

  "Do a lot of reading, huh?" Hellboy was careful not to disturb any of the precariously balanced stacks.

  The man stopped halfway across the room and turned. "Yes, yes I do. For my work. I'm a writer. This is my reference library."

  From the corner of his eye, Hellboy saw something dart around one of the piles to disappear behind a heavy-looking, floor-to-ceiling bookcase. It was bigger than a mouse, maybe a rat, but he couldn't be sure.

  "Do you read much, Mister...Boy?"

  Hellboy looked quickly back at Kramer to find the man glaring at the bookcase. He had seen it as well.

  "Not as much as I'd like. I read a little Louis L'Amour, some Spillane, and I really like that Mc-Murtry guy."

  "Yes," Kramer nodded, obviously humoring him. "I hear he's quite good."

  "Wish I had more time," Hellboy said. "But you know how it is, slave to minimum wage and all."

  The man nodded--smile way too friendly for an ordinary suburban guy having a conversation with someone big and red, with hooves and a tail. Hellboy normally made ordinary citizens nervous at first, and as squirrelly as Kramer was, he didn't think he was the cause.

  Kramer continued on across the room. "I know what you mean."

  Hellboy followed, searching for anything else out of the ordinary. "So what kind of writing do you do?"

  An arched doorway at the end of the room opened into another hall. A large, winding staircase on the right led up to the second level, and the hallway straight ahead would take them to the kitchen.

  "Fantasy mostly," Kramer said, turning back to face Hellboy. "I have a best-selling series about a wandering knight who--"

  "You got dragons in those books, Don?" Hellboy interrupted. "I can tell you some stuff about those babies that'll curl your toenails." He winked conspiratorially.

  Kramer forced a smile. "That...that would be wonderful. Maybe after you find out who took my stone..."

  Something crashed to the floor in the room above them. Hellboy's gaze darted to the ceiling and then the stairs.

  The writer laughed uneasily, moving to the staircase. "It's nothing," he said. "Probably just the cat getting into something he shouldn't."

  "Yeah, they're like that," Hellboy said.

  Kramer gestured down the hallway. "The back door is right down there."

  There was another, louder crash, followed by the sound of breaking glass. The look on Kramer's face was one of absolute terror. He shrieked, frantically starting up the stairs on his hands and knees.

  "Leave it alone," he screamed. "I told you I would make it right!"

  There was more commotion from above, and Hellboy took a wild guess that it had nothing to do with a curious cat. He pulled his revolver from its leather holster. He didn't want to chance being caught with his pants down. A few months back he'd been chasing a Stullenwurm across the Alpine passes from France to Austria. He thought he'd had the cat-headed, lizard-bodied beastie cornered in an ice cave and barreled inside with a flamethrower, only to find a nest of pissed off Fire Drakes, eager to eat his weapon and fry his ass black.

  Man, did he catch a ton of crap from the guys back at the Bureau for that.

  Hellboy winced with the memory; patches on his body were still tender from the blunder. He had no idea what he would be facing today and hoped the gun would be enough.

  "Let's find out," he grumbled, ascending the stairs two at a time.

  As he reached the second floor he spotted Kramer standing in a doorway at the end of the hall.

  "Stop it, please!" he cried over the din of destruction from inside the room. "I told you I'd get the stone back...please!"

  Hellboy held the pistol tight in his grip as he strode toward the room.

  Kramer turned to see him coming and held out his hands. "Don't go in there," he pleaded. "They're angry enough as it is."

  "Don't worry." He pushed the writer out of the way with ease. "I'm Mr. Personality. Everybody loves me."

  The room had more bookshelves, a desk and a computer, and Hellboy figured it was Kramer's office. The place was also full of Graken Spriggin, at least fifty of them.

  Leprechauns, Goblins, Brownies, Faerie Folk: he'd take any of them in twice the number over Graken Spriggin. These little bastards were the worst.

  They had tipped over multiple file cabinets, torn artwork from the walls and pushed the computer off the desk to the floor, where it lay in broken pieces. The two windows in the room had been shattered as well and large, black crows with tiny saddles upon their backs perched on the glass-covered sills. In the center of the room, several of the six-inch Graken Spriggin wielded wooden matchsticks like torches, preparing to set fire to a pile of shredded paperback books.

  "Knock it off," Hellboy roared, watching in amusement as the leathery-skinned forest folk retreated from the sound of his voice. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

  The Graken stood unified beneath the broken windows. The tiny creatures glowered, brandishing weaponry created from rubbish--an ax made from a disposable razor, a sword fashioned from one-half of a pair of scissors. Some were even wearing armor that had been cut from soda and beer cans.

  Hellboy let them get a good look at the gun he was carrying. One well-placed shot could easily kill ten of them. "So which
one of you little freaks is gonna tell me what the problem is?"

  "She's gone, ya red bastard!" one of the creatures screamed in a high-pitched brogue, crazy with emotion. "She's gone, and we've nary a clue as to where she was taken!"

  The Graken shook a nasty-looking spork over his head, and Hellboy could have sworn he saw tears in the tiny warrior's eyes.

  The others started to become agitated; their escalating emotion riled up the crows perched on the windowsills above them. The cawing of the birds was starting to give him a headache.

  "All right, all right!" He holstered his weapon. "Let's start over. Why don't you start by telling me who's gone?"

  "The blessed mother of us all!" the Graken cried in unison, and before he could respond, they swarmed at him, fury and grief etched on their ugly little faces.

  "Aw, crap," Hellboy grumbled as they leaped onto his coat, scaling his duster. He tried to swat them away, watching in awe as they hit the floor hard, shook themselves off and started toward him again.

  "Knock it off, ya little creeps!" he barked, shaking his leg and sending at least twelve of them flying. "Let's talk about this."

  The Graken Spriggin weren't listening.

  "He's likely the one what took her!" bellowed one, wearing an old knitted dog sweater and a helmet made from a bottle cap.

  "I didn't take a damn thing!" Hellboy yelled, trying not to squash his pint-sized attackers. "And if you don't knock this crap off, I'm really gonna give you something to cry about!"

  The crows sprang from their perches, squawking and making as much of a racket as the Graken themselves. They flew at Hellboy's eyes, wings flapping furiously, razor-sharp beaks seeking out the vulnerable orbs.

  He raised his arms, swiping at the attacking birds. "You no good sons of..."

  He was temporarily blinded as he tried to shield his face, and could feel the weight of Graken as they continued to climb him like Everest. He stumbled, thrashing his body and whipping his tail around as he attempted to dislodge the diminutive assailants. He could hear Kramer out in the hallway, begging the Graken to stop, but they weren't too keen on listening to him either.