Hellblazer 2 - Subterranean (34 page)

He was getting rid of her, so maybe now was the moment to press the attack.

MacCrawley rubbed the cloth the more firmly, murmuring to Constantine’s mind through the psychic link, making him feel that these thoughts were his own:

The world is shite, isn’t it? You save people by killing people. Does that make sense? How many died down there, killed by the Lord of Stone? How many in the village were fed to the crankers? All people I failed to save. And that’s the kind of world it is. The Americans had stopped the second world war by nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Death to stop death? Satan’s little joke on us. And how long does anyone live anyway? Maybe eighty years? A drop in the bucket of time; then you were churned back into the sea of consciousness. It was all meaningless. Why not just leap headfirst into that sea? Suicide will be confession, confession of my failures, my complicity in the deaths of my friends . . . It is an ugly world, after all. It’s reckoned that by 2010 half of the children in the UK and USA will be obese, while more than half of all children in India are malnourished. What delicious irony; how Satan must enjoy it. Horror after horror stalks the planet . . . so why stay and take part in the horrors? Look at that stinking bum in the doorway—that’s my soul, really, that’s John Constantine’s soul, a rotting pissed-up tramp at heart, that’s me . . .

It was working. Constantine was heading for the River Thames. And a foggy echo came back from him: Constantine envisioning throwing himself in the river.

Drowning.

Not bad. Not as pleasing to MacCrawley as poison would be, but not bad.

~

The rank old Thames. A high concrete bank in this place, mottled by graffiti. One bit of graffiti read DIE YOU PIGS. The jade-colored water, sluggish and dark.

The ancient artery of London. It’d be perfect to die there. Perfect. Join his ancestors . . .

Constantine took off his trench coat, folded it up, laid it on the ground. He smoked a final cigarette, watching a tugboat chug by. He’d bought the pack of cigarettes on the way to London. Still twelve left. Seemed a shame to waste them. A bearded tramp, toothless mouth hanging open, shambled past, wearing a trench coat himself. Gray hair but hints of blond remaining. Like a ghost of the future Constantine, maybe, if he was fool enough not to kill himself.

The tramp gaped at Constantine, then made a two-fingered gesture, the universal sign for “Got a smoke?”

Constantine threw him the whole pack. “Keep ’em, mate.” The tramp nodded to him and moved on, lighting a Silk Cut.

John Constantine took a final, long hit on his smoke, and blew that last plume into the air; it drifted over the Thames, quickly lost in the drizzly wind . . .

Just like me. A puff of smoke, blown away. And good riddance.

“Good-bye you bastards,” he said aloud, flicking his cigarette butt into the river.

And then he backed up, got a running jump, and flung himself into the River Thames, his mouth wide open to make sure he got water into his lungs as quickly as possible.

The dirty, cold, dark water closed around him. He sucked water in, and kept his body rigid so he’d sink faster.
Get it over with . . .

~

MacCrawley cackled to himself, watching from the limo pulled up on the side street leading to the river. He got out and rushed to the river side, and watched with deepening satisfaction as Constantine sank into the water, the bubbles rising where he’d gone under. But he was no fool. He was going to wait and be sure . . .

The minutes passed. More than enough. Then the body bobbed to the surface, facedown.

There it was. John Constantine’s body, unmistakable, floating facedown.

MacCrawley kept watching, just to be absolutely sure.

The body floated slowly down the Thames, not far from the bank, where the current is slower. Turning slowly, slowly, like an autumn leaf on the water.

MacCrawley rubbed the triangle of cloth, tried to connect with Constantine psychically. Got a few faint reverberations from some dark place. Constantine’s lost soul.
Where am I . . . darkness . . . There are things here . . . coming for me . . .

Not wanting to be damaged by the psychic feedback from a soul being eaten by a demon, MacCrawley broke the connection. He chuckled and skimmed the little triangle of trench coat cloth into the river.

That was it. John Constantine was dead.

Humming a Scottish ballad, MacCrawley turned and walked back to the limo. “To my club,” he told the driver, climbing in. “I’m going to celebrate.”

~

Seeing the limo drive away, Maureen emerged from the dark doorway she’d been hiding in and hurried to the concrete bank. She saw the old rusted ladder that went down to the water and she climbed down it, stopped on the bottom rung, hung low and trailed one hand in the river.

“Lady,” she said, “return him to me, as you promised.”

I have preserved him, giving him the air he needed, in my river,
came the reply.
He returns to you, the breath preserved in him. This boon I give you in honor of your ancient bloodline, child of fairies.

“Bless you, Lady!”

The body floating down the river suddenly stopped floating, and a current that shouldn’t have been there carried it back, against the main current of the river, to the rusted ladder. The body began to thrash, the head lifting free of the water, sputtering, spitting. Maureen grabbed Constantine’s hand and pulled him to the ladder.

He gasped and spat more water. “Christ on a Vespa but that’s foul! Pull me in closer, darlin’, will you?”

She helped him up on the ladder. They climbed to the concrete bank. “Bloody hell, that was unpleasant,” he said, putting on his trench coat, teeth chattering. “Cold. The Lady came through, though. Kept enough air moving into my lungs, all the time I was under. I want a shower.”

“Do you think it’ll work?”

“I think he was convinced. I sent him a little message there at the end to complete the illusion. If the Servants of Transfiguration reckon me for dead, they’ll leave us alone. Only, I’ve got to leave town for a while. Lay low somewhere to make sure. Can’t even tell Chas, for now. Let them think my body wasn’t recovered . . . Shite I’m cold . . . Wish I hadn’t given away me smokes . . .”

Constantine reeked of the river, and he was cold and wet, but he was feeling lighthearted, quite uncharacteristically cheerful. Like a world of weight had been lifted off his shoulders. As if his “suicide” had actually been a kind of ritual enactment of death—a kind of cathartic death. And his coming back, an enactment of rebirth.

He glanced at Maureen—thought about Kit for a moment. He made up his mind he wasn’t going to write to her, after all. Sometimes the omens spoke loud in a man’s ear. And somehow—he didn’t miss her so much now. Not with Maureen here.

Not so very many minutes later, with Constantine huddled in his trench coat, they were climbing the stairs to his flat. Geoff and Bosky were just coming out, and looked “busted” when they saw Maureen and Constantine.

“How’d you get all wet, John?” Geoff asked.

“Never mind that,” Maureen said sternly. “Where do you two think you’re off to after I told you to stay here?”

“We were just going to a jeweler’s, see if they could give us a, what do you call it, an assay or whatever it is,” Geoff said, “on these . . .” And he showed them the bag of jewels he’d taken from Spurlick.

“Well!” Constantine laughed. “Look at that, Geoff! You’re rich, boy! Funny old world, innit?”

“I’m rich?
We’re
rich! You saved my life, John. We all did our part. We’ll share equal, like. This is enough for all of us!” Geoff declared. “And I’ll need someplace to live; don’t want to be a sponge. What do you say, we can go on a road trip for starts.”

“Yeah!” Bosky said. “We can buy a van! Or one of them big American SUV things!”

“Funnily enough, a road trip, the four of us, is just what I had in mind,” Constantine said, looking at Maureen.

She looked at him coolly. “So, you think I’m just going to go off with you on a road trip, do you? A man I barely know . . .”

“Oh, right, I shouldn’t have—”

“. . . but then again, that’d be a pretty bloody good way to get to know you. Now wouldn’t it, John?” She smiled and put out her hand.

He cleared his throat. Put on a look of cool detachment. And said, “Yeah. It would.”

And then he took her hand in his, and they went into the flat together.

About the Author

JOHN SHIRLEY
is the author of many novels, including
Demons, Crawlers, In Darkness Waiting, City Come A-Walkin’,
and
Eclipse,
as well as collections of stories, which include
Really, Really, Really, Really, Weird Stories
and the Bram Stoker Award-winning collection
Black Butterflies.
His newest novels are
John Constantine: Hellblazer–War Lord
and, for Cemetary Dance books,
The Other End.
Also a television and movie scripter, Shirley was co-screenwriter of
The Crow.
Most recently he has adapted Edgar Allan Poe’s
Ligeia
for the screen. The authorized fan-created Web site is
www.darkecho.com/JohnShirley
/ and official blog is
www.JohnShirley.net
.