ISSUE #10 (January 2021)
Written by Chris Munn Featuring: John Constantine
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"MYSTERIOUS WAYS: PART ONE OF TWO"All he saw was white, a blinding reflection of brilliance cast across a field of ice and blowing snow. He’d lost track of how long he’d been trudging through the blizzard, his feet crunching the ground with each hollowed out step he made. Forward, ever forward, toward what he had no idea. He had to keep moving, though, or he’d soon be another soul frozen in the ice.
John Constantine was freezing to death on the northernmost slopes of Heaven, the last place he thought he would ever actually see. The lights of the angels could be heard over the din of the storm, buzzing loudly as they flitted about. The Thrones and Dominions, the Powers and Principalities, all gathering under the protective wings of the Archangels to bear witness to God’s wrath against a sinner most terrible. Constantine had known all along that angels were nothing but ego and id crammed into celestial bodies, but who knew they held such grudges? Sure, he’d been responsible for a few falls of their brothers over the years, including that time he chopped off Gabriel’s wings with a chainsaw, but weren’t angels supposed to be all about forgiveness and love? “Bollocks,” John muttered as he shook his head, flinging a layer of frost from his hair, “twats wouldn’t know grace if it bit them on their perfect Aryan arses.” The bitterness he felt seemed to make his body physically heavier, as each sin weighed upon him more and more, making the trek across the ice more difficult with each passing moment. He’d wondered briefly upon appearing amidst the ice palaces of Elysium why it was so sodding cold, until he saw the souls of the redeemed during his march. Hell was traditionally depicted with lake of fire imagery, so it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to find the opposite true of Heaven. It was surprising, though, and John couldn’t help but narrow his eyes in mute horror as he saw what awaited him on his journey. Souls as far as the eye could see, toward a never-ending horizon, frozen in place in a grotesque garden of statuary. That was what Heaven was offering, an eternal paradise of perpetual bliss as a disguise for imprisonment in soul-numbing ice. “At least Hell is up front about their bastardy,” John commented, teeth chattering from the cold. Heaven was eternal numbness, where a soul was joined with the godhead in a state of destructive bliss. The only cost was the loss of individualism, the sin frozen and shattered out of the soul upon union with the oneness. If Hell was the suffering of the personal, Heaven was the weightlessness of the communal. Constantine fell to his knees in the snow, ice collecting on his extremities as he finally gave up the struggle. “I shouldn’t be here,” he said angrily, “I’m not bloody dead yet!” It was impossible to hear over the roaring winds and the sounds of chittering angels overhead. It was impossible, but he heard it anyway, causing him to cock his head to the side to try and focus on the voice. A woman’s voice, distant but clear, calling his name. It was a siren in the snow, beckoning him to find her. He stood slowly on trembling legs, ice cracking as his coat began to whip behind him again. John couldn’t give up, he had to follow the voice. It was going to be his salvation. “I’m not going to tell you again,” John Constantine shouted, finger pointed accusatorily at the young couple dossing on the steps outside his flat, “piss off!” “Look, mate,” the unkempt boy with the lightning bolts shaved shoddily into his beard said, “we just want to talk with you, to learn from you…” “To lay hands on you, like,” his female counterpart with the green hair and acne added, “you should totally open up to us, share your magical wisdom, like.” “Christ,” John replied as he slammed the door to the building in their faces, “bloody spare me.” Constantine began the walk up the stairs to his Soho bedsit, the same one that had been the scene of a grisly murder the month previous. The tossers on the stoop were a recent addition to the building, the result of a tell-all front-page article in the Sun. Chas had brought the rag to his attention a week ago, sniggering through closed lips until Constantine read it and quickly deduced that the “mysterious cabbie” interviewed and quoted in the article was, in fact, Francis Walker Chandler, Esquire. “Sorry, mate,” Chas had said in response, “it’s all a laugh though, innit?” It certainly hadn’t been a laugh when Watford had showed up at Constantine’s door the next day with news of even more murder. Another former flame of John’s, a reporter named Danita Wright, had been found mutilated in her flat. The writer of the Sun article, some tosser named Gerald Davis, had thrown himself out the window of his office seconds after sending his report on John to his editor. Had he not been able to prove he was in Belfast at the time of his death, well, suspicion would likely had fallen upon him. Dani’s murder had been the work of the Demon Constantine, just like the other row of dead girls he’d left behind before being sorted, and Davis had topped himself. Simple as that, easy peasy, case solved. What wasn’t simple was the result of the bloody newspaper report. Though it wasn’t that the article was defamatory or scandalous, quite the opposite actually. Davis painted Constantine as a tortured man who had been forced by society to make hard choices, to cause pain to others in the name of the greater good, a sorcerer that was at the forefront of a magical world just out focus from the normal London reality. It was all bollocks, of course, and even though it didn’t take the piss or anything, it actually did something worse. The grotty little arsehole with the manbun and shoulder purse had arrived first, the day after the article had dropped onto London newsstands. John shrugged him off at first, only barely listening to the boy’s questions. On the second day the girl arrived, green hair tied back in a ponytail that hadn’t been washed since around 2016. John heard them then, the sycophantic pleading in their voices treating him like some kind of guru. He had an ego, for sure, but he never wanted to be worshipped, that would just be bloody silly. Constantine walked into his two room and bath bedsit and was greeted by the smiling face of his couch surfing freeloader, the young woman with nowhere to go and no one to call upon. Mercury winked from the loveseat, much to John’s aggravation. “Is your fan club still congregating outside?” she asked. “I’m glad you and Chas find this situation to be so funny,” he spat in response, flopping down on the sofa beside her, “but it’s bloody well annoying, love. I mean, those tossers are acting like I’m the second coming, that I can teach them all about magic.” “You could, though,” Mercury said off-handedly as she pulled her legs up to her chest, folding in on herself to fully sit beside him, “teach them, I mean?” “The only thing I can teach about magic,” John said grimly, voice full of regret, “is that it’s a death warrant. They have no bloody idea, Merc, no bloody idea.” “Oh come off it, John,” she interrupted, folding her legs back out to drape across his lap while she reclined back against the arm of the sofa, “magic’s your best girl, she’s who you snuggle up with at night to keep the chill at bay. Don’t pull the melancholy card just because you can’t handle instant celebrity.” “I thought I asked you to stay out’ve me head, love,” John said as he watched Mercury’s toes wiggle. “I don’t need to be psychic to read you like a book,” she said. Mercury leaned forward, drawing her legs back against her chest once again. “You might have been able to sucker my mum with the brooding git act, and countless other women as well most likely, but I see through you. I see your heart and your soul and all the things you don’t want to admit to anyone, especially yourself.” “You mean a heart shriveled black, a soul damned to Hell, and a secret fondness for cabaret?” John asked, using a passive aggressive smirk and swerve to distance himself from the conversation. “Besides, most of those ladies you refer to are dead now, right?” “Sensitivity was never your best attribute,” Mercury said sternly as she slowly rose from the couch, sighing heavily between statements, “nor was empathy.” “Oh,” John said, finally realizing his mistake, “your mum, yeah, sorry. My time with Marj was so long ago, I honestly forgot about her.” Mercury said nothing, just furrowed her brow and stared icy daggers at her friend on the couch. “I appreciate you letting me stay here, John,” she said coldly, “but that doesn’t mean I have to endure your callousness or your selfishness. If I’m being a burden, I’ll gladly sling my hook and go back to Paris, I did have a life there away from all this horror, you know.” “Merc, it’s fine, I’m sorry,” John apologized again, standing from the couch to cross the distance between them. He placed one hand on her shoulder and the other beneath her chin, lifting her head ever so slightly to look up at him. “Stay as long as you like, it’s nice to have the company, truth be told. You never took any shit from me, even as a kid. Nice to see that hasn’t changed.” “I won’t be patronized, John,” she said as she gently removed his hand from her face, “that hasn’t changed either.” “Right,” John replied, taking a step back to scan the room behind her, “I have to nip out for a bit, love. Unless you want to help me with a bit of hell and damnation down the Tate…?” “Hard pass,” she said as she reached for the copy of the Sun sitting on the coffee table, then flopped down hard on the sofa, “I’ve had enough of both of those things to last me a lifetime. If I’m staying here in London, I’m going to have to find a job, update my C.V., you know…” “Haven’t worked an honest day in me life, Merc,” John said with a laugh as he threw his raincoat around his shoulders, “always had more important things to take care of first.” An hour later, John walked into the large tearoom of the Tate Club, where a few scattered individuals in tuxedos and elegant dresses spent time in isolated solitude. Magic was contemplated in theory and practice within the halls of the club, which sat in a non-descript building just off the Oxford Circus, squatting directly in the heart of London. It had been the site of two mass murders in the past decade, a sour way to christen the 200 plus years its doors had been open. Constantine was not welcome inside the Tate Club, a major disagreement having barred him from entry years before, but he gave less than two shits about them. He strode through the tearoom, nodding as he passed by Clarice Sackville, who nearly choked on her biscuit when she saw him. Making his way to a shadowed corner of the room, he paused, lit up a Silk Cut, and stood facing an individual sitting with his back to the wall. “John Constantine,” a ragged voice said from the shadow of the corner, “as I live and breathe.” “Come off it, Tuesdire,” John replied, smirking as he kicked free a chair and sat down at the table, “we both know you haven’t done either of those things in a dog’s age.” The bearded man laughed while leaning forward, out of the shadow, to extend his hand toward his visitor. Constantine shook the hand openly, yet cautiously. Tuesdire was an imposing figure with a beard of grey and a girth that hinted at a musculature hidden beneath his overcoat. No hair sat atop his bald head, and his skin had a sickly tone of white. There was the slight odor of formaldehyde wafting from his body, which turned John’s stomach but was easily covered up by the smell of his cigarette. “What can I do for you, lad?” Tuesdire asked as he relaxed back in his chair, clutching his teacup with crooked fingers. “I’m not dim enough to believe this a social call.” “Looking for your take on something, mate,” John said, “something I’m trying to find. A door to a very nasty place, your neck of the woods in fact, has been opened somewhere in London. Tell me, Tuesdire, what’s Hell have to say about the Maw?” Tuesdire coughed, sputtering on his tea in a way that soaked his beard. “The Maw is a myth, John, one I heard about when I was just a lowly digger in the pit. A way out of Hell free of ritual and conscription? A fairy tale for children that only the hopeless and foolish cling to out of desperation.” “Nevertheless,” John continued, “it’s real, and it’s open, and I have to find it. Demons and things shat from Hell shouldn’t come up here unless they’re called, right? Someone managed to forego the rules, can’t have made your boss happy.” “The First of the Fallen has made no formal proclamations about an egress from Hell,” Tuesdire answered with a stroke of his beard, straining some of the tea from his whiskers, “but of course he wouldn’t want to advertise it, either. Perhaps machinations most foul are in the planning stages in the high houses? I know not, I’m afraid.” “So, Hell’s on silent running,” Constantine said, leaning back in his chair and releasing an exasperated sigh, “and I’m back at square fucking one. How can a door to Hell be so fucking hard to find in this city, I ask you?” “Again, I know not,” Tuesdire replied, “but if it’s the location of something magical in London, I hesitate to suggest a counsel with Map. Surely such a recourse has already been investigated and followed upon, yes?” “Map?” John questioned. “He was first on me list, but the wanker’s in hiding, isn’t he? Heard he went all barmy a few years back, something about channeling all the power of London sending him down the rabbit’s hole. Can’t consult who I can’t sodding find, and he’s been as elusive as the Maw itself.” “He’s in the Underground, lad,” Tuesdire stated, “walking the tube lines, as always.” “Bollocks,” John said, tossing his spent fag into his companion’s teacup, “I went to his haunt, mad bastard not in residence.” “You just didn’t go down far enough, that’s your problem,” Tuesdire said with a hearty laugh that quickly transformed into a series of coughs. When his lungs settled down and his breath was caught, he smiled widely at his visitor, flashing a set of razor-sharp fangs. “Last I heard, Map was riding the corpse train…” Not long after, Constantine walked outside the Tate and pulled the collar of his raincoat up around his neck. Seeing Tuesdire had been a colossal waste of precious time and he was determined not to waste any more on a search for Map. He’d filed the “corpse train” clue in his brain and soldiered on, realizing that as a last resort it might be worth pursuing. Now, though, he had another tactic to apply, and he started the trek to his next destination. If he couldn’t get any answers from Hell about the Maw then he’d just have to ask their opposition. “If anything, I’d say you owe me by this point, John,” the Professor stated as he led his guest out of the atrium and down a corresponding hallway. The British Museum was the last bastion of repository knowledge about the Isles, where anyone with any sense of nostalgic national pride could go for a reminder of the empire’s past glory. While Constantine was never one for patriotic fervor, in fact he openly disdained it, he couldn’t deny the wealth of opportunities the Museum provided. “So please show me the proper respect and refrain from invoking any notions of a favor,” the Professor continued as he unlocked a door, keycard swiped as a badge of office. “I allow you these occasional dalliances with our artifacts out of a morbid sense of curiosity and nothing more. You do always make things more interesting, from both a modern and historical perspective. If anything, it keeps me from getting bored.” “Glad I can be of service, mate,” John said in response while being ushered through into the wing reserved for artifacts of historically dodgy merit. “When you called ahead, I took the liberty of removing the item from its display on the floor,” the Professor stated as he led John into an office littered with scattered papers, dusty parchments, and ancient antiques. “I assumed you would want privacy with it, though I shouldn’t have to warn you of the repercussions should the item become damaged in any way. It would cost you more than you have ever and will ever earn in your lifetime, I assure you.” “Yeah, yeah, irreplaceable and all that,” John said as he approached the artifact on the desk. “So, this is it, then?” “Indeed,” the Professor replied proudly, “the Black Spirit Mirror of John Dee, used circa 1585 by the occultist as a key artifact in his seances. It was brought to the shores of Great Britain from Mexico by Cortes in 1527, not coincidentally the year of Dee’s birth. It was that fact that caused Dee to believe he and the mirror were tethered together with a mystical bond, though how he ultimately came into possession of it has never been substantiated. Perhaps he gained it through the contacts of his partner, Edward Kelley, who provided Dee with insight into the more criminal world of Elizabethan England.” John picked up the handheld mirror, carved completely out of volcanic obsidian glass. “Not much to it, is there? I guess I was expecting something more ornate, like.” “With that mirror,” the Professor continued, “Dee was able to summon and communicate with angels. At least, that’s the legend. I can not profess to have experienced anything supernatural about it during my examinations.” “John Dee was a magician,” Constantine said, “stands to reason only a magician could access its power. No offense or anything, mate.” “Doomed to be a lowly prole,” the Professor mocked with a back of his hand to his forehead to signal a swoon, “however shall I go on?” “Need some privacy now,” Constantine said as he sat down in the Professor’s office chair, his feet kicking onto the desk, “promise not to wreck your space or your mirror. Twenty minutes should suffice, any longer and I’ll just be wasting time.” “Suit yourself, John,” the Professor agreed before turning toward the door, “may fortune favor the foolhardy.” Mercury was exhausted, tired in a way that made her bones ache. Something was dreadfully wrong with her, she had realized not long after their return to London from Northern Ireland, and it was getting more severe each passing day. She had kept it mum from John, of course, for several reasons. He had too much on his plate already, true, and she didn’t need him playing her as a damsel to be rescued. It was embarrassing enough that she was still hanging around his flat, why hadn’t she returned to Paris like she’d planned? It was London, Mercury decided, the city itself was not only making her body turn against her but trapping her inside its borders as well. She sat up on the couch, stretched her arms above her head until her back popped, and shook her mess of blonde hair from side to side, clearing out the cobwebs in her mind. She wasn’t a damsel, nor was she some wilting wallflower, and she was going to put her free time to some good use. Clearing her mind, legs folded in the lotus beneath her and breathing slowed to a pulsing waltz, Mercury closed off her body from external stimuli and pushed her consciousness forward. Her astral form floated free from her physical shell, a spirit walk being just what she needed to get her aura back in tune. She’d done it countless times over the years, having learned the trick when she was young, and it had never failed to keep her healthy and whole whenever life had knocked her off course. As easily as slipping off her trainers, Mercury left her body behind and went exploring in the evening London sky. She could see all the wonders of magical energy around the city from her vantage point, each shining like beacons from streets and domiciles beneath her. She made her way north, pulled more than anything toward a building torrent of power, until she was directly above a large building. She theorized that it was likely a museum of some importance, given its scale, but before she could investigate further a sound like thunder cracked from directly above her. She barely managed to evade the bolt of incandescence as it pierced downward from the clouds, entering the museum without evidence of its arrival. It was something from the realm outside normal perception, but it was like a force of nature, so powerful that it sent shockwaves across the aether that nearly sent her careening back into her body. Shaken but not deterred, Mercury passed through the walls of the museum, following the trajectory of the sorcerous energy, until she came to a small office. She stepped through the office door, curiosity getting the better of her, as usual. What she saw caused her to freeze, and if she’d had breath it surely would have left her in a gasp. “Oh John,” she said without a voice, reaching out to him, “oh no…” Constantine sat with the mirror in his hand, staring intently at his smoky reflection in the black glass. He had an idea on how to activate the mirror’s latent mystical properties, to in effect open a channel to Heaven, but he had to concede that his knowledge of the Angelic Keys was spotty at best. “Guess I should have bothered to learn bloody Enochian,” he muttered to himself as he spun the obsidian disc in his palm, “what’s the angelic equivalent of ‘come by, Shep’, I wonder?” He reached across the Professor’s desk and rifled through the collection of pens, finally clutching a red marker in his hand. “If reverence is beyond me,” he said as he quickly slashed the felt tip of the marker across the mirror’s surface, “then blasphemy it is.” Holding up the mirror to his face, now marked with an inverted star and a sigil of naming, Constantine scowled. “Oi,” he said firmly, “I’m sure you’ve changed the locks by now, but that name should at least get your attention. After all, the big man downstairs used to be one of the chaps, didn’t he? Not likely to forget the Morningstar’s name, I imagine. Now tune the fuck in!” To his great surprise, a response came almost immediately. The mirror began to vibrate in his grasp, shaking him in the chair and forcing him to stand on unsteady legs. While the sigil marked on the mirror began to smoke and glow, essentially erasing it from the surface of the glass, a holy din of chanting boomed suddenly in his ears. Though he didn’t know it well enough to understand the mantra, he certainly recognized the language as Enochian, the speech of the angels. “Okay, okay,” Constantine shouted above the noise, “I get the sodding point!” He attempted to drop the mirror, but found his hands affixed to it, unable to be released. He thought, then, that perhaps he had made an error. Images swirled in the mirror’s reflection, a vaguely humanoid face appearing in the smoke, obscured though it was in mystery. “Got some questions for you, mate,” John said to the materializing being on the other side of the glass, “about the Maw.” Following the naming of the Maw, the Enochian chant changed to a piercing shriek, as if he had stabbed the heavenly creature with the word. The mirror’s surface rippled like water, and slowly did spindled fingers emerge, coming forward to form a hand and then an arm. It reached forward, toward John’s face despite his frantic attempts to remove his hands from the mirror. In his panic he felt, just for a moment, that Mercury was somehow beside him, but it was fleeting. The clawed hand grabbed Constantine’s face, searing it with light as if it was branding him with hot iron. When the hand released its grasp and pulled back into the mirror, something was pulled along with it, a ghostly wisp of a soul dragged out of John’s body and into the mirror itself. He fell to the floor a moment later, the mirror clattering on the tile outside of his reach. All color had faded from his eyes, which stared out with a blank whiteness from his position on the floor. All, then, was silent. He’d awakened in the heart of the blizzard, realizing that he’d crossed over to the ice fields of Heaven by whatever he’d disturbed with his insult of a summoning. He’d gone through the looking glass, literally, and was now something rare: a living soul in Elysium. He’d been trudging through the snow and ice for what seemed like hours, each step guided and beckoned by the woman’s voice barely heard above the cacophony of the storm. Heaven had always been described as peaceful and serene, but the reality was anything but that. Constantine eventually realized that he couldn’t actually freeze to death, considering he was merely an astral form on the Heavenly plane and therefore not technically in any danger. It was actually his soul itself that was being chilled and chiseled away, and if he stopped moving then the angels circling just out of sight above him would descend like vultures on carrion. What did angels eat, he wondered? “Keep coming, John,” the female voice said, and as her words become more distinct, he became more determined to find her. Each soothing syllable spurred him onward, goading another step, then another, then another, continuously. “For a final resting place,” he said aloud to no one, “this is far more like Hell than Heaven.” And with that as his epitaph, John Constantine collapsed, succumbing to the storm that had beaten him down to a frozen doom. All strength was gone, all that was left was a numbed sensation marked by a decided lack of feeling in his extremities. “Come on, lads,” he whispered, “dinner bell’s a’ ringing.” He felt the impacts all around him, easily half a dozen creatures landing in the snow from above. Their wings were actually welcome, blocking the wind that had been cutting through him like razors, but the presence of the angels filled him with terror. He was fortunate that he lacked the strength the lift his head, the sounds the angels made were enough to chill him even more without the ability to look upon them. He heard a scraping of knives as they screeched and howled in their indecipherable language, probably trying to decide how to best divvy up his portions. Then, against all odds, the storm simply stopped, wind halting like a fan had been switched off. Light shown down from above, melting the snow that had gathered upon him and warming his soul back to consciousness. The angels all chattered in seeming panic, their wings fluttering as their howls were buried in the overwhelming stillness of the silence. Something was happening, something unprecedented, and the angels knew their meal was going to be denied. “Back away, seraphim,” the voice of the woman said as her soft footfalls crunched through the disappearing snow, grass growing in her wake as she approached. “You may not have this one, go back to tending your fields.” One of the angels screeched before they flapped their massive wings, lifting from the ground. “Shush, I know,” the woman said as she shooed the celestial scavengers away, “but the Metatron has decided to give this soul audience.” Finally, John allowed himself to lift his head. The woman, blonde hair cascading down onto her shoulders and a smile beaming from her somehow familiar face, crouched down before him. “Oh John,” she said as she touched his cheek with the back of her hand, “I never thought we see one another again.” “Bloody hell,” John choked out, “Mum…?” To be Continued… |