Location: Liverpool - England#1.06
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________"Jesus fucking Christ, you've killed him! He's fucking dead!"
John scrambled on his hands and knees toward Gary's limp corpse. He cradled the body in his arms, rocking slightly, alternating between frantic whispered apologies and desperate denial, willing life back into the discarded cadaver to no avail. Chas threw himself about, still woozy from his head wound but unable to deny what he had witnessed, now reckoning with the implications, the complications, the consequences.
"H-he was attacking us, he w-was going to k- to ki- to kill you, i-it's self-defense, didn't, didn't mean to-to kill h-him back, just slipped, slipped is all, and h-he's so weak, h-he was gonna d-die anyway, all the, all the d-drugs, o-on his way out..." he rambled on, reeling and spinning justifications, excuses, anything to explain away the ghastly truth of it all, the terrible sin laid bare before them. He picked himself up and stumbled over to John, pulling him by one lax arm to try and get them off the bridge and away.
"Stop fucking apologizing," he hissed to John, "didn't do anyone any good and now he's dead, alright? He's dead and you killed him and it's done now so fuck all this we need to go!"
"I- I can't just- can't just leave him-" John choked out, swallowing his own sobs, "not here, please, not on this bridge, oh God not on the bridge-" he descended into wracking cries, both of them now grappling with the full scope of his actions. Chas let go of his arm and John dropped back to his knees, pawing at Gary's legs, nearly prostrating himself in panicked grief and remorse at the feet of his friend's still-warm corpse. Chas froze, staring bug-eyed the body, feeling nauseous at the sight of it, at the uncanny angle his head hung over the edge from his snapped neck, at the unnatural bumps beneath his skin from protruding splintered vertebrae.
All at once Chas dropped to one knee at the body's feet and wrapped his hands around the soles of Gary's worn-out, ragged shoes. The ground was wet, working against him as his own boots slipped, unable to find purchase, but steadily, ever-so-slightly, he began to push. John looked up when he felt the body start to shift beneath him, and he wailed sharply as he tackled Chas away, sending the both of them careening and scuffling to the floor.
"Don't!" He shrieked, keenly aware of the abominable pragmacy that had seized upon Chas.
"Let go! We have to- be weeks before they find him- we'll be long gone- they won't even care- just another junkie suicide-"
"NO! He's not a suicide he can't be- that can't be all anyone remembers of him - can't be what his mum hears!"
"Then what?!" Chas roared; panic had given way to anger and he had very little patience in him now for the architect of this fresh calamity. He wrenched John up, holding his wrist firmly and twisting his arm up and around his back in a way that made it difficult and painful for John to move. He towered over John, using his height to force attention. "You gonna walk yourself down to St. Anne street and hand yourself in at the station? It won't be Ravenscar this time John, they'll throw you in the nick, and then they'll forget you and Gary and what good will any of it do! Huh?! No one left to mourn either of you!"
"Chas, my hand, Jesus let go, my hand-"
"Don't you try and twist your way out of this, fucking listen to me for Christ's sake-"
"Chas, my hand!"
The rosary had been steadily gaining heat, and before John could let go it had gotten white-hot, and the flesh of his palm where the beads still dug in hissed and smoked. The pungent smell of burnt flesh filled their nostrils. This was the last straw for Chas and he couldn't stop his stomach turning, forced to unhand John as he spun to vomit over the edge into the river below. John dropped the rosary, and it fell to the ground and sizzled against the slick metal while he clutched his seared palm to his chest.
The heat of the rosary continued to climb and it started to achieve a soft glow that spread into the metal immediately beneath it. John wondered briefly how the wooden beads didn't spontaneously combust, but such curiosity was quelled as he scrambled away from it and the heat was soon accompanied by a sound that begun as a swarm-like buzzing but escalated to a sharp, keening ringing, an infinite edge dragged across rusted iron, that was quickly more akin to the pained screaming of animals than any inorganic sound; and now the brightness of the burning glow spread and expanded and encompassed all vision in a brilliant, blinding white. Cutting below it, just barely on the edge of audible, were shouts and yells, John and Chas calling out to each other, frightened, confused - and then it all stopped. The noise ceased, the light dropped away, and as their vision returned, readjusted to the gloom of the still-young night, there was only the lingering scent of sulphur; and then a man stepped out of the darkness, casually suited, smoothing his jacket and bearing an expression of fading excitement lapsing into irritated disappointment.
"Oh John," he said with a weary sigh, "you really are just such a let down."
He took two short steps forward and bent at the waist to retrieve the rosary from the ground. The beads still hummed softly and maintained a dim glow from the heat, but this didn't seem to bother the stranger at all as he inspected the chain, pinched between two fingers.
The man was, in a word, ugly. Tall, but hunched over, his skin was of a strange stained-red hue and dry, cracking at the joints. His fingers seemed too long to be natural and tapered into thick, clawed nails. The suit he wore was ill-fitting, tight and bulging, and its strain at the seams was mirrored in the strain across his body as a whole, like his very skin was a costume a size too small that he'd stuffed himself into regardless. He was bald, liver-spotted and criss-crossed with surface veins, and his scalp culminated to an odd, elongated cone-like shape. A frog-like face completed the repugnant image; a nose too flat, a mouth too wide, a tongue too long. His eyes, wide-set and lying beneath a heavy brow, were a sickly yellow, cleaved down the middle by cat-slit pupils. John was almost too dumbfounded to be afraid of this grotesquery, but fear crept in regardless. The stranger ceased his study of the rosary, and stepped deftly across John to pore over Gary's corpse instead. Chas managed to bark out a sharp "L-leave him alone!" but the only response was a waved hand and the word:
"Sleep."
And Chas did.
John swallowed a growing lump in his throat, and spluttered, choking out a singular question.
"Who-who are you?!"
The stranger stood and turned, grinning large and odiously. He drew himself up, seeming to eclipse all light, and answered with an air of pomposity.
"Shamash, Son of Enlil. Whore-killer. Archduke of Mendacity. God of the Inflicted Death. He Who Comes Out Of Meslam. Lord of the Big City. Keeper of the Mace and Sword." He maintained the grin, reveling in his many titles and epithets. Arrogance shone out from him like a star. "Your people have given me many a name through the centuries; I admit, I am fond of them all. But for simplicity - one I have recently reclaimed - you may call me Nergal. And I've come to collect; although, to my aggravation, it would appear you have robbed me, John Constantine."
"Robbed you? I haven't stolen anything! How do you even know my name?!"
Nergal waved dismissively and moved back to Gary's corpose, brushing a hand across his still form before coming away with something that gleamed softly. He held it in the way one would hold a snotty rag.
"This is not the soul I was promised for my assistance in the matter, Johnny." He said, seemingly by way of an explanation, and tucked the glow into his jacket pocket. "Oh, your ancestors will be upset. First the debacle with your little dip in the river, then the delay at Ravenscar, and now this little stumble. The Laughing Magicians do not take upsets to their plans well; but you are quite the persistant roadblock, aren't you?"
John was bewildered. This unnatural stranger, this 'Nergal', he talked so casually, so familiarly, but about things John could not conceive of, terms and names he struggled to comprehend.
"Souls? Ancestors?! Who are the 'Laughing Magicians'? What are you talking about? Who- what, are you?!"
Nergal looked at him, perplexed, an expression of pure and genuine disbelief plastered across his unpleasant visage.
"You really are ignorant to it all, aren't you?"
"Yes. Please. Enlighten me. Give me some semblance of understanding on what the fuck is going on!"
Nergal paused a while, considering John carefully. Then he shrugged.
"This will be worth some small amusement, at the least."
And he told John of the circumstances of his life.
You killed your brother in the womb; of this much, at least, I'm sure you are aware. Strangled him with your own umbilical cord. Deliberate? Accidental? Impossible to say; commendable all the same. But that is where it all began - the first sin. The Constantines are a lustrous, storied bloodline; your family holds quite the legacy of magic and wizardry. But the true jewel of your line is the Laughing Magician: a wielder of extraordinary power, bending the world on a whim, subjugating reality beneath their will. Reincarnated again and again, over and over, all the way back through history. This was your brother's destiny, you see - the next in line, the first reincarnation after many generations absent, no less. Dear Jacob was set to change the world, a sorceror unlike any we'd seen in decades; but you killed him! Yet as entertaining as the cruel twist was, your ancestors - the Laughing Magicians that had come and gone before - they failed to find it amusing, and were instead upset. Deeply so. You had committed a grievous wound against them - against fate itself - and such an error required correcting; and your ancestors, tragic as it is for you, can become quite vindictive when they're upset.
They were patient at first, admirably. Set up all the pieces. Stole away Jacob's errant soul from under His nose. No one is sure how - but that has been the refrain of the Laughing Magician through the ages. 'Not sure how, but they did'. They nurtured it, kept it safe, hid it away - but such a measly thing would never grow of its own accord, not having never known life to begin with. No, they needed an incubator to cultivate it, to do what your dear mother failed to. So they waited - they have always been so very Proper, you see, which is so very dull - they waited until your sister was ripe. And then they stole her away too. A lovely little womb to nourish Jacob's soul; one half of the puzzle, but the other part was the body. The original one - the one you killed - useless. Dead flesh doesn't grow, doesn't wield magic, and whatever did manage to slip out of your mother's cunt after you'd done your deed was long-rotted anyway. But you know what wasn't rotten, Johnny? What walked and breathed and lived and grew? You, John. The surviving twin. The perfect vessel. They just needed to break you first - needed to empty you out so they could pour Jacob back in once he was ready. They were, unfortunately, a little too effective in that regard. That whole suicide business nearly put the whole scheme out of commission. Funny. I wonder if they'd ever considered they might have to save your life after ruining it so thoroughly. Hard to believe they could be so naive about what people can be driven to, considering they were once people themselves. How we forget.
Once they assured you'd be dragged out before drowning they thought they could get right back on schedule, but then you were sent away to Ravenscar. Oh, they broke you, but not in the right way, and now if they wanted to use you still they needed to let you put yourself back together. Irony is so delicious when sampled from a distance, don't you think? And so they were delayed while you 'healed'. But once you got out - they'd had time to plot, to formulate, to try something a little more subtle. So they put you on a path to dear Francis, and then the pair of you to the late Mr. Lester here, and this is where I shifted from audience to participant; they made me one Hell of a deal, you see. This rosary, a pact to deliver you, a few corrupting whispers in dear Gary's ear - and for my trouble, once they'd shucked you out and returned Jacob to the world, I'd get your soul. A ripe and juicy Constantine soul. Oh, Johnny, the wicked, wonderful things I could do with a soul like that.
But you fucked it up, as seems to be your sole virtue. Now all I get is this dirty little Lester soul, and I assure you, it is not worth what I paid for my side of the deal. So we come to a crossroads. Gary failed - that much is obvious - but the terms of the pact remain unsatisfied. Your ancestors do not have their promised vessel; I do not have my promised soul. Alas, many a bargain dissolves in Hell. These are turbulent times. I suppose I should just take my consolation prize, and leave you to whatever horrors the Laughing Magicians will conjure next. I would think, now, that they grow weary with 'subtlety'; I imagine whatever happens next will be somewhat more...direct.
John reeled. He bubbled with a multitude of emotions, simmering and churning within him, but of all of them only one seized his heart and steeled his resolve: anger. Fury, rage, righteous indignation at the sheer injustice of it all, the tragedy and horror that had plagued his entire life not simply the product of a single misfortune, a lone stroke of poor luck, but also the orchestration of a cabal of unseen forces, concerned for nothing but the incomplete destiny of a long-dead stranger. And not only that, but the web that had been spawned from it, entrapping everything he'd ever cared about, people so disconnected from the catalysing injury yet ensnared and brought to ruin all the same. How dare some faceless ghosts of the past toy with his life - with Chas and Gary's lives - with Cheryl's life - all in selfish pursuit of some bygone fated power. He was irate. He was outraged. He was sickened.
"Well, if that's all, my business here has long-since concluded. I'll be keeping an eye on you, John - as a purely impartial observer, of course. I'm sure you understand. It's all shaping up to be rather entertaining."
Nergal turned to leave; cogs whirred in John's head, rage-fuelled plotting weaving a singular idea, one John hoped would be his masterstroke.
"Wait!" John said, stepping after Nergal. The fiend paused and looked back, one brow cocked with intrigue. "So you're some, some devil, right? A demon?"
Nergal looked put-out, bordering on enraged. "I am not some devil, you impudent little worm. You pathetic mortals are all the same - tiny, ignorant, purile little specks of excrement-"
"But you make deals, don't you." He said, interrupting Nergal now that he was riled up; his ochre eyes sparked with curiosity. John had him.
"I do."
"And you want a Constantine soul?"
Now Nergal smiled.
"I do."
"So what if I propose a new bargain?"
Nergal's grin split his face, and eager saliva oozed from serrated teeth. His eye sparkled with fascination and appetite.
"And what, pray tell, would be the terms of your proposal, John Constantine?"
"If my soul really is all that - if it's really worth all this trouble to you - then here's my bargain: you take me to wherever they're keeping Cheryl - and I get some help to save her from them - and you'll get your Constantine soul."
John put his hand out, nervous under Nergal's gaze and with the distinct feeling he was plunging into an ocean far, far deeper and darker than he could possibly hope to understand. He put on as much bravado as he could muster. Nergal weighed him up, tossing the idea about in his own head, balancing the scales. Finally, he reached out his own claw - at the last second, John whipped his hand away, stipulating an addendum:
"But not until my sister is safe from them. Not a moment before."
"Hmm. Deal."
They clasped hands, shook once in a singular, firm motion, and Nergal erupted in a sly smile - and then everything changed.
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