"The designer. What do we know about her family? We have to go to the Sirbilex office. Via a bookshop."

The public end of Sirbilex Designs was a sparse, minimalist, and intensely trendy office, full of catalogs and consultants. The back rooms, where Ellie Margolyse met them, were shabby-chic, cramped, dusty piled with papers, ledgers, and samples, "I ... is there a problem?" Ellie said. She looked from Liz to Kate to Manning to the agents in uniform scanning the room with arcane bits of equipment, running them over the overloaded bookshelves and old furniture. "All our work's under warranty if anything's gone wrong ..."

"There's no problem with the work," Kate interrupted her. "If anything, it's a bit too damn good. I take it you're not so into your grandfather's look?"

"You mean the way it looks outside compared to this? No ... Grandpop was a genius, he could do stuff like no one else, ever, but I want to pull this place into the nineties. You can see what it's like. Whenever we have a spare minute we try to pull out a few files and check to see if there's anything useful."

"What happened to your father?"

Ellie stared at Kate.

"What do you know about my dad?"

"Please. Just tell us."

"What is this?" She looked down. "He had a stroke."

"What was he doing? He was going through his father's papers, wasn't he?"

Ellie stared at Kate.

"... Yes," she said. "How do you know?"

"Please, think carefully a" can you remember which papers?"

"What? Are you crazy, I..." Ellie stopped suddenly. "You know ... actually ... I do know. Because one of them was so weird it stuck in my head." She went to a bookshelf. "Mostly Grandpops was into old gothic novels, nineteenth-century ghost stories, that sort of thing. But one of the things that I found that Dad must have dropped when ... he had his attack, was some sci-fi thing from like the 1980s, that Grandpop had been scribbling in. I remember because it was totally not the kind of thing he normally ... Here." She turned, a faded magazine in her hand, and froze.

The B.P.R.D. agents all had their pistols out, were aiming them at her. She made a little noise.

"Drop ... the Interzone," Kate whispered, tilting her head and reading the title. Ellie dropped it.

One of the agents crept forward, picked it up with tongs, and placed it into a case that he locked. Kate sagged in relief.

"That issue," Kate said, "has a story in it about a design that short-circuits the human brain. That's what your grandfather was doodling. That's what your dad saw.

"The decor of fiction. That's why he had that issue, because he kept his ear to the ground for any stories like that. Sirbilex. Ex libris. From the books of. He was too talented, Miss Margolyse. He was too good at what he did.

"Where was the file with the designs you found, Liz?" she said.

Liz found it at last, on a low shelf behind an art-deco figure, one box file among many, full of cuttings and Mr. Margolyse's sketches in batches, each folder bearing a one-word tide: Nurseries; Libraries; Attics.

"Look," said Kate. She held up a hand-drawn picture of a quilt. "That's the bedspread Mrs. Rochester had in her attic. He was so good a designer, so sensitive a reader, he could draw the interiors of whatever he read. This is the bedspread." Kate waved the picture. "Doesn't matter that Charlotte Bronte never bothered to imagine it. This is it."

"There," said Liz, pointing over Kate's shoulder. "That's the one my design was in. Why does it say 'cave' on the front, there's no pictures of caves ..."

"Not 'cave,'" Kate said. "What's in here isn't just, you know, the upholstery on the chairs in Little Women. This is the folder where the magazine should have been kept. Cah vay. Latin. Beware."

She looked at Liz. "You looked at all of these, right? Okay, so there can't be any that smack you down like in the magazine." She went through the papers in the folder. Some were annotated with names. "M.R. James," she read. "Roald Dahl." She held up a picture. "The carpet from Dahl's 'The Wish.' Read it? Don't fall into the black lines if you walk on that. And here it is, Liz. You put it back." She lifted out the strange picture of wallpaper, encoiling lines, a secondary pattern just visible behind them, impossible to make out, its sickly colors, its ugly compulsive designs. "There's nothing written on this, but I can tell you where it's from," Kate said. "Read it in college. Introduction to Feminist Lit. Ring any bells? Charlotte Perkins Gilman. 'The Yellow Wallpaper.'"

At B.P.R.D. HQ, the feed from the fiber-optic camera had been piped into a briefing room.

Hellboy was on all fours. Hellboy crawled in his ruined dress. His head moved side to side, still tracing the patterns in the wallpaper around the room. He dragged himself on his limbs, slow like an old animal, along the edge of the room. He had pushed most of the furniture out of the room.

"He's been doing that for hours," Abe said.

"Its in the story," Kate said. She held up the Collected American Short Stories which they had all been issued. "Everyone read it now?"

"Yeah, and what the hell was that moaning crap?" Manning said. Kate closed her eyes a moment.

"Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Born 1860. Poet, writer, radical, feminist. 'The Yellow Wallpaper,' 1891. Woman told by doctor husband that she needs a rest cure for depression and quote hysteria unquote. Forbidden from working, leaving, or doing anything. Becomes obsessed with the yellow wallpaper. Sees it as bars. With a woman or women creeping behind the patterns. Could be ghosts, could be madness. Becomes obsessed with freeing her, or them. Ends up ripping the wallpaper off the wall to do it. I've got out at last,' she says, still crawling. It was her who was trapped." She tapped the slowly circling Hellboy on the screen. "That's the pattern Margolyse drew, and that is what Hellboy's living." They sat silently for several seconds.

"Why don't we just let him finish?" Liz said. "When he rips off the paper, he'll be free, like the woman in the story." Kate stared at her.

"She gets out by going mad."

"Yeah, but she gets out."

"Yeah, by going mad."

They looked at each other.

"We can't risk it," Kate said at last. "If he has to go through the story, we don't know if he can come back from the ending."

"I can't believe I'm hearing this bull," Manning exploded. "This is a story. It is not real."

"Don't you get it?" Kate shouted. "Margolyse made it real. Gilman knew what she was talking about. She was frustrated, like a lot of bored smart women with contrary ideas, so of course she's diagnosed 'depressed and hysterical.' And she got 'prescribed' the so-called rest cure herself by Silas Weir Mitchell, who was a total celebrity doc back in the day. He ordered her into her room and, get this, not to write. Not to think. The story's her trying to fight his misogynist crap. Don't roll your eyes, Manning, listen" She flicked through papers. "This is from Fat and Bloody Mitchell's book about his so-called 'cure' for women like her. He says you need to seclude them not just for their sake but for everyone else's. Says a hysterical girl is, listen, 'a vampire who sucks the blood of the healthy people about her,' that you have to take control and let her know who's boss ..."

Manning took and scanned the pages. He put them down, pointed at the screen. "Hellboy's not a depressed or hysterical woman. He's Hellboy. Whatever's got into him is some mind game and I'm snapping him out of it. I know what's best for him." Manning stormed out, to join the operatives waiting outside Liz's room.

"Wait," said Kate. "You can't..." But he was gone. Liz picked up the scattered pages of Fat and Blood. "This is not going to go well," Kate said.

On the screen, Hellboy turned his head toward the door. There was no sound on the little monitor. At the edge of the picture, the door burst open and B.P.R.D. operatives streamed in, with Manning behind them.

With a terrible crippled motion, without rising, Hellboy sort of lurch-crawled at them, his tattered dress ripping even more, his hands up, punching and shoving mightily. The agents tried to fan out with stun sticks and prods as if to snag cattle, but even on his knees Hellboy shoved them against walls where they collapsed with broken ribs, hurled them out of the door, slammed them into each other. On the silent black-and-white screen the violence looked like slapstick.

The agents were all incapacitated, crawling away themselves, dragging their comrades with them. Hellboy resumed his slow all-fours shuffle. In his path lay one prone figure. Manning, still unconscious. Hellboy delicately crawled over his body, continued his penitent's circumnavigation of the room.

"... No good," a voice gasped from Kates walkie-talkie. "Jesus he's strong! Can't even get near him. 'Got to help her!' he keeps saying. Asked us if we were there to make the room nicer, then he went for us ..."

"Why does he think Liz is in there?" Abe said. Liz did not look up from the papers.

"It's like the story," Kate said. "She talks about 'the woman' a long time before she talks about herself. I guess it's not easy to admit that you're the one who's being ... who's ..."

"How long do we have? Until he starts ripping the walls?" Abe said.

"And why is that a problem again?" Liz said.

"If he goes by the story, not long," Kate said. "Liz, maybe you're right. Maybe he'll rip it all off, stand up, sniff, take off the dress and walk out. But what if he doesn't? What if the wallpaper wins? You want to risk it?"

"If we enter and try to incapacitate him," Abe said, "we might seriously hurt him. If we don't incapacitate him he might seriously hurt us. And if we leave him he might go seriously mad."

They watched. Not wanting to risk another incursion, Manning's agents managed to snare him with a makeshift lasso, and drag him out at last into the corridor.

"What is that?" Abe said. He pointed at the screen. "I thought it was a flaw in the electronics, but..."

In the corner of the room, something hovered. A figure, barely, hazily, just. It stuttered in and out of focus, and presence. A shadow. They stared. No one breathed. There was nothing, then nothing, then as Hellboy continued his slow crawl, it appeared again, behind him. Watching him. Moving.

"It's a woman," said Abe.

"You think?" said Kate. "I thought it looked like ... I thought it looked like Hellboy." They both squinted. The shuddering shadow watched Hellboy's terrible slow progress. It guttered like a candle, a woman-shade, then nothing, then a horn-stubbed thing, gone again, then a thinner remnant, something else again, shadowed with a" what was that? a" a ghost beard. Gone, and only Hellboy remained, crawling.

"It was a woman. The trapped woman. And the trapped Hellboy too," Liz said. "And that other thing was ... the other part of the presence haunting that room." She waved the papers. "The one with the cure for uppity women. Doctor Silas Weir Mitchell.

"'You must morally alter as well as physically amend,'" she read from Fat and Blood. "You need to control the woman 'with a firm and steady will ... with no regard to her complaints ...' He's there to make sure the rest cure goes the distance. He's the bars in the wallpaper."

"Oh my god," breathed Kate. "What are we going to do ... ? It's trapping him." On the screen that baleful presence was there again, close up to the camera suddenly, leering, behind Hellboy.

"Listen," Liz said. "Hellboy keeps asking if we'll improve the room. That's the wallpaper asserting itself." She read again. "'If circumstances oblige us to treat such a person in her own home, let us at least change her room, and also have it well understood how far we are to control her surroundings.' That kind of improvements okay because its all about power. Which is what that damn wallpaper wants."

"So?" Kate said. "Even if Hellboy or the room or the wallpaper lets us in, it'll only be to throw in some cushions or something."

"Even when Hellboy, and the woman, fight him to try to get out, they're stuck in that room," Liz said. "They're secluding themselves, just like the wallpaper wants. There's a whole chapter on seclusion in this." She waved the papers. "That wallpaper wants them in there alone. The last thing it wants is another presence."

"Well its not going to get it." Kate said, "Hellboy wont let us in there ..."

She stopped. She and Liz stared at each other.

Kate dialed Sirbilex. "Where," she said, "is your grandfather's folder? How fast can you run up a design?"

Fast, it turned out. A quick block printing, some speedy sewing. Under this kind of pressure, Ellie produced a pair of curtains within a few hours.

"He's started picking at the walls," Abe said urgently when Kate returned. They pushed very gently at the unlocked door, looked into the room where Hellboy knelt in his ragged dress, a strip of the strange wallpaper in his hand, an end still anchored like skin to the wall. Behind him, the shadow stained the air. They felt an onrush of malevolent attention as the spirit of the wallpaper regarded them across the oppressive yellow atmosphere.

"Hellboy." Liz said, quickly. Hellboy hesitated in his crawl, and looked up at her.

"You here to help you ... her ... out, Liz?" Hellboy said. His voice was heartbreaking.

"No, Hellboy," she said. "You can do that. I trust you. I'm here to make the room nicer. Can I? You were right. Those curtains are terrible." She dangled the cloth she held for him to see.

"What's going on?" Approaching from the end of the corridor was Manning, his head bandaged. Kate clapped her hand over his mouth.

"Hush," she whispered. He stared at her. "Liz has got this."

"Yeah," they heard Hellboy mutter. "Those curtains are kind of ugly. C'mon in."

Liz stepped carefully past him. The something, the whatever, the ugliness in the room parted for her. She stepped past the remaining furniture. Hellboy's constant circling had worn a smear across the wallpaper, in the lower half of the wall.

"She's trying to get out," he whispered. "I'll have her out in a moment."

Liz bit her lip. "Don't rush," she said. She could feel the wallpaper watching her, with its little bud-pattern-ugly-nub yellow eyes. She stood on a chair by the window. "This'll make it nicer in here," she said. "This'll go better."

She fiddled with the runners, threading the curtains onto them, replacing the violently multicolored ones she had so recently put in place. Their replacements were strange and old fashioned. Their pattern was of rippling vertical stripes like tresses, interspersed with coils of ribbon. The bands joined together in clutches at the top of the curtains. Liz stepped back.

"There you go," she said. "Much more appropriate." The odd pattern was not much more attractive, but was at least more subdued in color, more antique in design. "Good luck, Hellboy," Liz said as she left.

"You're giving him new curtains?" Manning muttered.

Liz closed the door. They crept to where they had brought the monitor, in sight of the door.

Hellboy tugged at the rip of wallpaper. He tore it slowly from the wall. They watched him on the screen and heard his sigh, a moan, of relief or sadness or something, through the door.

"Come on," Kate whispered. Hellboy reached with his great right hand, and with strange delicacy snagged another piece of the wallpaper, and began to tear it. There was a whispering in the room, of women, men, somethings. Behind the kneeling Hellboy, the shadow appeared again, the woman, Hellboy, the controlling doctor, insinuations in wallpaper spirit, overseeing another mind tearing itself apart to freedom. "We're too late," whispered Kate.

Wordlessly, Liz pointed at a further corner of the screen. At the curtains. They billowed. Though the window was closed, and there was no draft. Something was moving behind them. The viewers froze.

Hellboy tore another strip from the wall. The wallpaper-presence stuttered out of sight for several seconds as Hellboy paused.

Behind him, crawling low out of the shadows below the curtains, something was coming toward him. Something like a cadaverous human figure, reaching out with bony arms, it and all its limbs all covered with reams of unnatural long hair. The thing crept, spidery, toward the frozen Hellboy.

"What the hell... ?" Manning whispered.

"You," said Abe, "could perhaps benefit from reading more ghost stories."

"The curtains," Kate said. "From 'The Diary of Mr. Poynter.' Ghost story by M.R. James."

"What is it?"

"According to James's story," Kate said, urgently, as the hair-thing advanced, "probably the ghost of Everard Charlett, notoriously dissolute seventeenth-century rake. Kind of his ghost. Or at least the ghost of his hair."

"Fictional rake, yes?" Manning said. "Wait, his hair?"

"Yeah. It's invoked by the pattern on those curtains, which are based on his hair. Whatever, it's hair related."

"And vain," Abe added. "I've read the story."

"And predatory," said Liz. "Damn it, it's coming for him!" The hair-thing stalked, ungainly and vile, toward where Hellboy sat.

Hellboy did not move. He still held a strip of wallpaper. In his hand, and around the room, it was growing agitated. The patterns on it were flexing. There were women visible behind its bars, and faint, faint reproductions of Hellboy, crawling. The shade-thing that emanated from it flickered around the room, agitated, stopped, suddenly, darker than before, between the approaching curtain-thing and Hellboy.

"Neither of them wants competition," Liz said. "They both want him."

The two pattern-spirits stared at each other. The newcomer rose, tottering, in baleful inhuman motion. It stood, a humanoid shape in flamboyant locks, facing the rest-cure-and-seclusion-enforcing spirit, a twisting figure-coagulum of wallpaper pattern, a constantly plaiting twist of yellow skeins.

"Look," said Kate. The women were clearer on the walls now, the vague Hellboy-shapes with them, as the intricate curling patterns that trapped them faded, and the wallpaper-spirit grew more tangible, more yellow, so yellow the slippery color seemed visible like urine even on the black-and-white screen.

"They're getting out," said Liz. The crawling woman-shapes, the vague, crawling Hellboy-shapes, escaping from the bar-free walls, their hidden coloration and contours moving swiftly and disappearing, as the spirit of the yellow wallpaper, outraged at the intrusion of another predator decoration, took its attention away from its prisoners and turned to the curtain-monster of hair.

The wallpaper-spirit reached up with a limb made of pattern and shoved the curtain-apparition in its hairy chest.