Constantine

by John Shirley

  . . . the chapel as it was in the human world.

  As Angela finished her question, “—not on this side?”

  He’d gone to Hell and come back in the space between two words in her sentence.

  She stared at him, blinking, seeing he was now covered in sweat, steaming, perfumed with essence of Hades. He was already flipping through the book, scowling over it, muttering.

  Angela shook her head. “Where did that book come from?”

  She looked at the shelves. None missing.

  Constantine was looking through the “New Testament” correspondence in Hell’s own bible. “Thirteen twenty-nine . . . thirteen-thirty . . . Here.” He tapped the page, finding the entry he wanted. “ ‘The sins of the father would only be exceeded by the sins of the son.’ ”

  “Uh—whose son?”

  “That symbol on Hennessy’s hand.” He looked at her in sudden realization. “It’s not a demonic sign. That’s why I didn’t recognize it. Could be something much more powerful than a mere demon.”

  “John—what are you talking about?”

  Constantine mused aloud. “But he can’t cross over . . . impossible for the son to cross over . . .” Shuddering inwardly at the implications. Soon it would be party time for devils.

  “Whose son?” Angela asked desperately. “God’s?”

  “No. The other one.”

  She looked at him, not wanting to understand. But understanding dawned slowly on her anyway. “The Devil had a son too?”

  ~

  There was a reason Beeman lived in the back of a bowling alley, behind the lanes, at the end of that narrow strip of noisy corridor where the maintenance was done on the pinsetting machines. Back in the clatter and smash of the pins, most of the day and night. There was a bit of extra storage space at the end of that corridor.

  Beeman suffered from a particularly nasty form of tinnitus—ringing in the ears, from the explosion of an alchemical beaker. He’d been a hair away from the Philosopher’s Stone itself, working from the only known copy of the alchemical diary of Abremalin the Mage, and he’d put in a grain too much brimstone. The explosion had knocked him across the room and consumed the book he’d worked from. He’d always figured that wasn’t an accident. Something, someone—maybe the Angel Gabriel—hadn’t wanted him to have the Philosopher’s Stone. It led to immortality, and that led to cheating death, and that broke the rules for mortals. And Gabriel had warned him once. Maybe the tinnitus afterward was a cruel reminder . . .

  The constant buzzing in his damaged inner ear, the whistling, whirring, loud as a guitar amp turned two thirds the way up—it made him nuts unless he was somewhere noisier than the buzzing. Something, anything, to mask that sound. And he’d always loved bowling.

  So now he sat at his desk, talking by phone to Constantine and peering at a page of scrolls under the glow of a goose necked desk lamp with the bowling pins clashing behind him—but only one lane going, since it was early morning: The manager always played a solo game or two before he started getting ready to open.

  Beeman had a telephone—dialed to the absolute loudest setting—held by his shoulder to his ear. His neck ached from holding the phone there.

  “16:19 . . . 16:30 . . . Yes, here we go,” he told Constantine. “I’ve got it.” On the page was an etching of that same damnably recurrent symbol. Underneath were ink drawings of a devil rising up through a human body.

  Above the beast, a familiar figure on a crucifix, weeping, welcomed the beast into the human world.

  ~

  “Oh my,” Beeman added, from the speakerphone in Angela’s SUV. “This is certainly not good . . .”

  She was driving, nursing a Starbucks coffee. Constantine was riding shotgun. “This world has been invaded, all right,” she muttered, “by Starbucks. And we all let it happen . . .”

  Constantine glanced at her, smiling, thinking she was getting punchy with fatigue.

  “As you know,” Beeman continued, his voice as disembodied as any errant ghost’s, “the myth says Mammon was conceived before his father’s fall from grace—but he was born after.”

  ~

  In the storage area at the end of the maintenance corridor, Beeman seemed to hear something anomalous in a brief pause while the ball was rolling back to the alley’s manager. A door opening?

  He turned to look back down the alley: a long narrow strip of darkness with little pools of light coming from each lane, pacing it off. Nothing moved there, except the mechanical works of the pinsetter in lane seven, going up and down like the gnashing of a giant robotic jaw.

  “Beeman . . . ?” came Constantine’s voice on the phone.

  “Sorry,” Beeman said, turning back to the scroll. “Sorry. Right here.” He forced himself to focus. But that uneasy feeling wouldn’t go away. He glanced over his shoulder again. Saw nothing.

  Well, he had various warding signs set up back there, to block whatever wanted to get in. Probably it was some irate elemental with a bone to pick—from the old days. Just hanging around. Let it hover. It couldn’t get to him—he hoped.

  He pulled the lamp closer to the scrolls. “Um . . . unlike Satan himself, Junior has never been in the presence of the Creator, so he has no fear of him. No respect, either. And that contempt goes double for us—God’s most prized creations.”

  Beeman thought: If we’re “God’s precious ones,” as it says here, then God needs some higher standards.

  “Mammon—Satan’s son—would be the last demon we’d ever want coming into . . .”

  Was that another anomalous sound? Echoing laughter—echoing from far, far beyond this little mortal edifice?

  “. . . into our plane.”

  Something was definitely trying to get to him. Maybe something powerful enough to stamp over his warding sigils, the way a man in heavy boots might kick through a small campfire. He felt like he was over a slow flame himself. Sweat was breaking out on his neck, his face. It was strangely hot in here, where it was normally quite cool . . .

  But it was important to get this information to Constantine . . . important to far more than the two of them. And Beeman—though he dabbled in the black arts—had long ago chosen sides. He served the Light.

  “But demons can’t cross over,” Constantine was insisting on the phone. “Right? Remember? Beeman?”

  “Wait . . .” The ancient text swam before his eyes. It was so hard to make it out in the heat waves . . . hard to concentrate when things were crawling on his desk. Scuttling across it. Bugs of some kind. Flies. He swiped haphazardly at them, squinting at the yellowing scrolls. Something alit on the back of his neck, crawling there. He shook it off but it only came back, to be joined by a companion, and another.

  “Wait—John. Wait. I’m reading. There seems to be a . . . loophole. Very old. Very old. The translation is difficult. Conceived in Heaven, born in Hell—normal barriers might not apply . . .”

  He glanced up. Something was forming over there in the shadows, in the corner. Forming of thousands of tiny moving parts. But he had to finish telling Constantine about the scroll. This was the most important thing he would ever do. The agglomerate in the corner took on a vague outline—he wanted to scream but instead he managed to say, croakingly, “It says . . .” He looked again at the scroll. “First, Mammon would have to possess an oracle.”

  ~

  Angela pulled the SUV up at a stoplight. “That’s a psychic,” Constantine told her. “A very, very powerful psychic.”

  “I know what an oracle is,” Angela said. Her voice distant. Thinking of . . .

  Then she said it aloud. Making up her mind. “. . . Isabel.”

  “But that wouldn’t be enough,” came Beeman’s voice. Sounding frightened even through the poor resolution of the speakerphone. “To cross over he’d still need . . .”

  There was a growing background sound in the speakerphone. Noise from Beeman’s—and not the usual noise. A kind of swelling buzz.

  “. . . he’d need divine assistan
ce. To cross over, Mammon would need the help of God. It says—look for signs. Signs of his coming.”

  “What kind of signs . . . Beeman?”

  “Minor demons. Trying to break through.”

  That buzzing noise . . .

  “John,” Beeman went on, his voice breaking. “I know you’ve never had much faith. Never had much reason to . . .”

  Constantine looked at the phone. Something about Beeman’s voice. Was he in danger—right now?

  “Beeman?”

  A certain resignation in Beeman’s voice now. “But remember, John—that doesn’t mean we don’t have faith. In you,”

  The buzzing rose in volume—and suddenly cut off. There was no voice, no sound—except the dial tone.

  Constantine looked hard at Angela. “Drive. Fast.”

  TWELVE

  “What’s that smell? Sulfur?” Angela asked, as they stood outside the door to Beeman’s peculiar little impromptu apartment.

  Constantine sniffed—and winced. What was that smell? Raw sewage—and blood?

  The door that led to the maintenance lane was closed, locked. Constantine hadn’t been able to find the manager, though the outside door had been unlocked. A morning talk show played without volume on a TV set behind the main desk, above the shelves of bowling shoes. No other life visible.

  “Beeman!” Constantine called. “Beeman!”

  Angela stepped back from the flies slipping under the door, a stream of them darting past. That buzzing sound again, fluctuating.

  Constantine felt something tickle his ankle—he shook it, and several large houseflies flew loopily away. More were coming from the openings at the back of the lanes, and under the door, the air darkening with them.

  He stepped back, and located the door’s weak point, then kicked it—hard. He had a lot of practice kicking down doors, and it flew open immediately.

  Inside the maintenance corridor, what should have been cool darkness was instead a sticky, buzzing heat. They hurried down the lane, past pool after pool of light, till they got to the area that widened for Beeman’s little compartment.

  The darkness seemed to thicken around Beeman’s desk. To move there . . .

  Buzzing. Black buzzing.

  “Do you see that?” Angela asked. Her voice taut.

  Constantine pressed forward—and the flies swarmed up at him, as if warning him back, like bees disturbed at their hive. Angela kept up with him, covering her mouth, wanting to scream but only whimpering.

  The swarm of flies had a locus, a thicker center. A solid mound of moving flies on the floor.

  “Oh Jesus,” Constantine muttered. “No . . .”

  He took off his coat, flung it at the mound, and the swarming flies scattered, becoming a cloud over Beeman’s body—or what was left of it. Mostly eaten away. Flies poured out of Beeman’s mouth and ears.

  “Oh God,” Angela choked.

  “Who?” Constantine demanded—of no one in particular. Who had done this to his friend?

  The flies began to vanish into the shadows—were almost gone. He had to stop it from escaping . . .

  He pulled his shirtsleeves back, revealing two distinctive tattoos on his forearms that he used for conjuring; when he put them together they made one symmetrically complete image. He slammed the tattoos together and—drawing astral light to project the magic into the air near Beeman’s body, visualizing the symbols—incanted, “Into the light I command thee!” He was having trouble breathing, the sickness in his lungs threatening to betray him at this critical moment. He might still be able to help Beeman, at least in the next world . . . if he could reveal the demon who’d destroyed him. “Into the light I command thee!”

  Don’t cough. Not now. Focus. The moment will be gone and it’ll be too late. Don’t cough!

  “Into the light I command thee!”

  The air around his outstretched arms seemed to warp as the summoning took hold. Angela stepped back, afraid. The flies buzzed overhead . . .

  “Into the light I command thee! Into the light I—”

  And then the coughing fit came on. He couldn’t breathe at all. His head swam with weariness, lack of oxygen—and despair, as blood erupted from his lungs into his mouth. He spat . . . and fell to his knees.

  Angela knelt beside him, instinctively putting an arm around his shoulders. The flies were gone. There was only Beeman’s stripped body. And little spots of Constantine’s blood on the floor.

  The coughing fit stopped. But it was too late.

  “This is my fault,” Constantine said hoarsely. “A damned one-man plague.”

  “John . . . you need a doctor.”

  Constantine made a sound of disgust, deep in his throat, and shook his head. “I’ve seen a doctor.”

  He stood up—and the room seemed to spin. He was still having trouble getting his breath. He was afraid he was going to fall on his face. Put out his hands to try to keep his balance. Swaying. Angela stood and tried to help him.

  “Stay away,” he told her. Hoping she’d understand. He wanted to send her somewhere safe—away from him. First Hennessy, then Beeman. Maybe she’d be next. “Please . . .”

  He looked at Beeman’s desk—wasn’t surprised to see that the scrolls were ashes now.

  Angela sighed. She drew out her portable squawk box. “Ten-twelve to base. Officer needs assistance. We’ve got a . . .”

  She looked at Beeman’s body. How did she classify this one? Which number was it in the manual?

  “. . . uh, officer needs assistance.”

  ~

  Constantine’s apartment. He sat on his window seat, looking out at the street. Watching the police vehicles drive away from the bowling alley.

  “It wasn’t just Isabel,” Angela said from the doorway. “I used to see things too, John.”

  He looked at her. Hadn’t he told her to stay the hell away from him? Was everyone going to be stupid and walk in front of a juggernaut, whistling a merry tune as they marched blithely to certain death?

  “But you knew that,” she went on. “Didn’t you.”

  He had suspected. But he said nothing. She took a step into his room. There was something about that step—like crossing a line. Coming over to his side, in someway.

  “You see something in me,” she said. “Something Isabel had . . .”

  “Go home, Angela.” Constantine looked at the cigarette in his hand. Almost burned out. The way he felt, he identified with the cigarette.

  Angela came in, wandered around, looking at the oddities that constituted his “interior decorating.”

  “I need to understand, John.”

  Constantine just shook his head. “You don’t want to know what’s out there. Trust me on this.”

  “I’m not Isabel.”

  “No. She embraced her gift. You denied yours. Denial is a better idea. It’s why you’re still alive. Stick with me, that’ll change. I don’t need another ghost following me around.”

  Another ghost, he thought, staring at me reproachfully, asking, “Why didn’t you do something? Why didn’t you save me?”

  Constantine got up, and started toward the door. If she wouldn’t leave, then he would. Maybe she’d have a few more days before the end . . . if she stayed away from John Constantine.

  “Dammit, John—they killed my sister!”

  He stopped for that one. Sensing she’d go on without him, with that kind of motivation.

  Angela continued, softly, meaning it: “I’d trade places with her if I could.”

  He just looked at her, waiting.

  She went on, “I used to pretend I didn’t. See things, I mean. By the time we were ten, they started forcing her to take pills, have treatments. They’d come for her and she’d look at me and say: ‘Tell them. Tell them, Angie. You can see ’em too.’ ”

  Tears were streaming down her face now. But her eyes had a hard gleam to them behind the tears.

  “But I lied. I said I didn’t see anything. And then one day, I finally stopped se
eing. I left her, John. All alone.” She turned away. Took a deep breath. And added, with finality: “I can’t look away anymore.”

  She turned to him. It was there in her face: She was determined to go on, investigating this thing. And though she was clearly afraid to do it alone, she was going to do it, with him or without him. Either way, the Enemy would take notice of her. But if it took notice of her without Constantine around, she’d be a sitting duck. Defenseless. He sighed. He was left with no real option . . .

  “You do this,” Constantine said slowly, “and there’s no turning back. You see them—they see you. Understand?”

  Angela just nodded.

  ~

  The car had broken down on a surface street, near the Los Angeles airport, and Francisco had flagged down a taxi, which cruised through the early evening past a row of high-rise hotels. The yellow taxi was driven by a rangy, wide-mouthed black man with a dollar sign shaved into either side of his head and a Raiders jacket that seemed three sizes too large for him. The man was listening to something on the radio. Talking rather than singing, but to a beat.

  Francisco had heard some variant of this music in Chihuahua. Irritating stuff, but it interested him in a way. He touched the iron spike and listened. Something about slapping female dogs, and making them work as whores for him. Ah! This word for female dogs must mean women. Something about ruling the neighborhood, annihilating enemies, giving the biggest parties, getting two women into bed and putting money in their cleavage and kicking them out when you were tired of them . . .

  Francisco decided he was going to like America.

  But the whispering cautioned him: Francisco, you are in danger . . . This man cannot be trusted . . . Look at the photo on the dashboard.

  Francisco looked. The licensing photo on the dashboard was of another man entirely.

  “Say now, man, you got American cash, right?” the taxi driver asked. “I don’t want no pesos and with you not speaking English and the way you looking around, it’s like somebody just got here . . .” And as he finished the sentence he pulled the car into a side street near a parking lot full of rental cars. No one was around.