Roman

Roman's Archive

_{Location: Hell}

#1.10

^{_{_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}}

"You know, John, I have lived for over forty-nine thousand years. Nearly fifty centuries stretch out behind me. I've walked Earth since the first great cradle of civilisation and seen nearly everything there is to see upon that rock. But over the course of those millenia, I think I have learnt one lesson above all others: humans are so surprising."

Nergal crept forwards out of the dark, appearing with no more aplomb than a vulture landing softly beside a starving man. He bore a wicked smile, and leant over John's dead body to neatly pluck the bloodstained cross and rosary from what remained of his ragged throat.
"So dramatic of you, John, but I can't deny its efficacy." He mused, running a black tongue across the surface of the wooden icon, lapping up John's blood. Nergal sighed, sated and satisfied. "That Constantine vintage does have such a uniqueness to it."
All the while, John watched on with a faint spectral awareness; he perceived Nergal simultaneously looming over him like a fat child over a freshly-opened packet of crisps, and also from behind the demon, regarding his unfurled wings and flicking tail and the way he stooped and twitched his fingers in anticipation. Nergal hadn't let a single second go to waste - John's corpse was still warm, rivulets of blood still trickling from his throat down his chest and face, staining his features with streaks of crimson until John could barely recognize himself. Oddly, John found himself compelled to speak, drawing breath into ethereal lungs and producing sound from lips that did not move.
"Quick on the draw, Nergal."
Nergal smiled wider, continuing to address the cadaver even as the words echoed around him from all directions and none.
"Oh, hello Johnny. Good to see you're still with us for the foreseeable. Hell is tricky in that way. Yes, I never miss my opportunity; though you've done far better than I expected. Family is oh-so-complicated, isn't it? I think you'd know more that more than most by now."

𝕋ℍ𝕀𝕊 𝕀𝕊 𝔹𝕌𝕋 𝔸 𝕄𝕀ℕ𝕆ℝ 𝕊𝔼𝕋𝔹𝔸ℂ𝕂-

"Do pack it in. You've no horse left in the race now; the prodigal son has been slain by the other prodigal son. A nice straight-forward gambit played out well, and now you've got nothing. You're just a pack of ghosts."

𝕋ℍ𝔼 𝕃𝔸𝕌𝔾ℍ𝕀ℕ𝔾 𝕄𝔸𝔾𝕀ℂ𝕀𝔸ℕ 𝕎𝕀𝕃𝕃 ℝ𝕀𝕊𝔼 𝕐𝔼𝕋-

"Hell is tired of you, dears. We've our own machinations to be getting on with. Now, do fuck off. I've business to attend to."
Nergal clapped his hands in two short sharp raps, and there was a strange slurping, sucking sound; and then a pop in John's dead ears as the atmosphere shifted, and he was left with the feeling of a sudden absence.

"So what now?" John asked, feeling lighter and lighter by the minute. The blood flowing from his body's neck had finally ceased, and now what little heat remained in his cadaver was leeching out into the ground. Nergal rubbed his hands together greedily.
"Oh, quite simple, John. I collect, and that's the end of the whole mess. I'm impressed with how far you came, I have to admit; I'm almost tempted to grant you reprieve. Ah, alas - a deal is a deal."
"Certainly is," John replied, non-chalant, "and I don't want anyone saying I don't make good on my debts. So - here you go. One Constantine soul."

Nergal licked his lips, bending low and repeating once more the brushing motion across John's body like he'd done so with Gary's on the bridge, so many lifetimes ago - and came away with a misshapen, speckled, dimly-lit orb of...something. Nergal inspected it, and his features lost the slimy smile he'd been sporting, his expression twisting into one of contemptuous rage.
"What do you think you're doing?!" He demanded, and somewhere off in the distance, John picked up the grin Nergal had discarded.
"I promised a Constantine soul, musha. Not mine. Jacob's is as perfectly good as the next one - take it or leave it. Maybe if you'd had the good sense to be a little more precise..." John replied, revelling in parroting Nergal's facetiousness back at him in this small moment of triumph.

Nergal raged. Apoplexy took him over, and he thrashed about, flailing his limbs and clawing the ground and tearing the trees of the grove up by their roots. He slammed a fist against the stone block Cheryl had laid upon mere moments ago, and the entire thing split in half, sundered by the force of the blow. The demon slumped over the cleaved rock, furious and beaten. He heaved breaths in and out, and eventually raised his head to look at John's body over the lip of the slap with a terrible wicked gleam in his eye; slowly, carefully, he drew himself up, marching on the corpse with malevolence in his gait.
"Think you're clever, do you? Think because you're a Constantine and you got one over on your disgusting undead fetus of a brother you can play hopscotch with Hell? You are a speck, John Constantine, and you are playing with powers far, far above your station."
"We made a deal. We both made good on the terms set out."
"Undoubtedly. A bargain struck and a debt paid. But you're dead, Johnny-boy, and you've got a litany of missteps on your soul that He does not look kindly on. Suicide. Murder. Another suicide. So debt paid or not, you'll find that you're due down here, and if you're going to insist on being so insolent about it, I think I'll just ferry everything along and take what's mine in the process. After all - what can you do to stop me?"
"Not much," John admitted, watching Nergal raise himself to full height, splaying his wings in a show of force, brandishing a vicious claw to strike John's spirit down for good, once and for all, and claim it as his own, absconding with it into the dark corners of Hell to inflict atrocity after atrocity upon it as due recompensive for perceived slights...except none of that happened. Instead, there was the briefest of flashes through Nergal's upright figure, and he made an odd, strangled, throttled coughing nose; and then his body peeled apart from tip to taint, bile and blood splashing out of the newly-bifurcated halves. Mammon rose out of the mud, ooze already scouring itself from his distinct scarlet hide, those golden spikes already shining through. In his hand he hefted a magnificent greatsword, gilded and jewel-encrusted and as wide and tall as John was himself.
"He might have something to say, though."

Mammon picked one half of Nergal from where it had collapsed in the muck and regarded it with open disdain, an expression matched by the bisection of Nergal's face as the singular eye whipped around to spy its slayer.
"Most ill-mannered miscreant," Mammon rebuked, carefully running the edge of his blade between the skin and flesh of the portion he held. "Even in the bowels of Hell, a bargain struck must be duly honoured. 'Tis the only thing left that remains holy. Befoul my kingdom no longer, wretch."
The blade finished its smooth motion, cleaving Nergal's hide from his body, and Mammon dropped the flayed muscle back in the dirt as he began to fashion his leathery skin between delicate claws. Once finished, Mammon held a longcoat out before him; the mud had stained Nergal's once soft-red skin an earthy, clay-like tan, and when Mammon concluded inspecting his work he nodded satisfactorily.

John watched him cautiously from his diaphanous, far-off hiding place, feeling the call of some deeper misery pulling him away, try as he might to resist; and then Mammon snapped his fingers again, and there was a powerful wrenching sensation, something seizing upon the absolute base foundations of John's very being - and then he woke up, dragging air desperately into his lungs in great ragged breaths through the tear in his throat that gurgled and spasmed as it knitted itself back together. John sat up, shaky and disconcerted, wary of Mammon. Mammon simply tossed him the coat.
"Thou hast impressed and amused me two-fold, John Constantine. Once with thy promised vanquishing of thine detestable kin, and once more with thine trickery of Nergal. Rare is the human who gambols with devils and exits favourably. Thou hast truly blazed through Hell like so few before thee."
John sat in the mud, pulling the coat on over his cold, sodden arms. It sat comfortable and warm against his skin, exuding a faint sense of bolstering. From the inside pocket, an eyeless lid batted fruitlessly back at him.
"So what's the deal? Back to life and a new coat to say, 'thanks for kicking those arseholes out my front yard'?"
It was, but Mammon would never admit it.
"Believe what thou wilt. I need give no reason." He replied, in a tone that told John not to question him further. John was more than happy to oblige, not wanting to look a gift demon in the mouth. "Thou art still stained in your soul, John Constantine, and bound hither when next your fate arrives; of that, Nergal didst spake truth. But until then - there hast ne'er been a Laughing Magician so entertaining. Thine predecessors were all so frightfully dull. If thou art to be truly the last of thy line - Hell would benefit from what trouble thou canst yet conjure."
"Then I'll thank you once again, Lord Mammon." John answered, aware he'd pushed his luck as far as it would go. "You have been most gracious."
"Indeed. My magnanimity hast reached its boundaries. Get thee gone, wastrel; I wouldst say thine business here is concluded, and mine with it. Shouldst we meet once more, be assured - I shalt not indulge thee thusly again."

And with that, Mammon clapped; John blinked; and when his eyes fluttered open, he was back on the bridge, having returned from Hell with a coat, a scar, and a sister once more.

---

_{^{TWO WEEKS LATER}}
John, Cheryl, and Chas all sat around Chas' kitchen table in his flat in London, steam drifting up from each of their mugs, fresh tea cooling off in the ambient air. On the countertop next to the kettle sat a small ceramic urn filled with ashes. John felt a squeeze around his fingers as his gaze lingered on it, his sister reaching across to him. He dropped his eyes from it and looked at her instead, taking in every pore of her soft, warm features. In the two weeks since she'd woken back up on the bridge in Chas' arms, she'd been struggling to re-adjust, as well as re-align with all that had happened in her two years away; yet, slowly but surely, she was coming back to reality, able to leave the flat and be among people again, even if John made it a point to never let her out of his sight. She couldn't blame him for it. His story had been bizarre and difficult to swallow at first, but Chas corroborated as much of it as he could, and the rest of the tale John told with such solemn conviction that Cheryl didn't have it in her heart to disbelieve him. The scars across his neck and the coat that never left his back both seemed to endorse his apparent odyssey, and from what little he'd revealed about those two peculiarities, Cheryl was reluctant to probe further. Fragments of awful feelings and memories flitted through her mind when she did, and down that path lay Ravenscar. She was just happy to be home again; happy to know he'd never given up on her. Happy to see him again.

The wistful smile that had crept across her face as she'd looked over John faded as he pulled his hand back, cradling his mug with both palms and clearing his throat. His eyes fell to stare at his wrists as he began difficult, painful words.
"When it was teenage practitioners asking for sigiled autographs, or dumb yanks in suits begging for a quick transmutation, or even some half-breed with a few choice swear words, it was almost funny. A bit of notoriety. Splashing the surface of a new pool and seeing what came up to check out the ripples. But today...today an honest-to-God devil, no half-anything about it, came to me with a message from Nergal. And when you're wearing the skin of the demon that's sent someone to deliver a threat - it's no longer funny. It's something we need to take seriously. It's something I should have been taking seriously."

It had been almost enjoyable on first return; John's escapade and the things he'd come back with - trophies, titles, knowledge of hidden things - had illuminated a secret world previously darkened to him, a new layer and depth revealed that made everything seem so alive in a way he'd not thought possible before. Mammon naming him as some historically-significant figure certainly hadn't hurt, either; who would turn their nose up if they'd landed in some strange and fantastical new land, much like their old world but not quite, and at the same time some mighty king had declared them powerful and famous? John was but a man, and could not help himself revelling in it, even if just a little bit. But then, that devil had approached him with horrible intent, bearing a vengeful portent from Nergal and it had been like sinking into an ice bath. The mantle of the Laughing Magician was not merely one of fame; it bore with it a target pointed squarely at his head, and today he had been reminded that he'd already made at least one powerful enemy, and more than likely had inherited several more.

"So what's your point, Johnny?" Chas asked, taking measured sips from his mug while he watched John over the rim with a careful gaze. John met his stare, equally steady.
"I'm dangerous. I've got a target on my back, and I don't think anyone - anything - coming after me is going to care about collateral damage. I'm a bomb. I've got a blast radius. And you two are both in it."
The three of them shifted uncomfortably as John paused and looked pointedly at the urn on the counter. Even before his jaunt, John's curse had claimed one of their number already. The silence was clear; he wasn't about to risk what was left.
"I should have a say in this," Cheryl announced. "You spent two years ruining yourself coming after me, and now you, what, want me and Chas to hit the road? Or fuck off yourself and leave us behind? We're meant to help you, John. Protect you. That's what friends do."
John smiled. God, he loved her.
"You spent seventeen years protecting me, Cheryl. Ever since the first night Dad brought me home. I think it's my turn now. I spent all that time searching for you and I found you. I can't accept, after all that, that I might be responsible for you getting hurt. Even accidentally."
Chas huffed, and both Constantines looked at him.
"What's even your plan? You can't just tell us to fuck off. This is my flat. And if you think you're gonna start living rough again I will drag you back here. Unconscious if I have to."
John chuckled, but he knew Chas was serious.
"I've scraped every account I've ever had. Pooled all my cash. Pumped the last out of my UC payments. Even got into some of Dad's money, which I really hope he's going ballistic about somewhere. And I bought myself a ticket."

John put a hand in the inside pocket of his coat and pulled out a small white envelope. He opened it up and fished out the contents, laying it in the center of the table: a one-way plane ticket from Heathrow to New York City. It was leaving tomorrow.
"Oh, you bastard." Cheryl said, exasperated. Chas raised an eyebrow.
"How were you planning on getting to Heathrow with no money left?" He asked. John cleared his throat, seeming to shrink in his seat.
"Well, uh, I um, I thought you might be able to give me a lift...?" He answered sheepishly. Chas huffed again, and then stuck his hand in his own jacket pocket; in one quick motion, like playing a game of cards, he slapped his own ticket down on top of John's.
"You ain't as slick as you think, fancy title or no."
"Oh, you bastard!" Cheryl yelled. "And what the bloody fuck am I supposed to do?"
Chas stood up, walking to the front door of the flat and unhooking his keys from a little rack that hung on the wall. He tossed them to Cheryl, who fumbled as she caught them and then looked dumbfoundedly back up at Chas.
"As the only one of us who got a job after everything went to fuck two years ago, I had savings. Last week I paid a year upfront and stuck your name on the lease. John's got a right to protect you, but that doesn't mean the little spunk-stain can't have anyone to look out for him."

Cheryl stood wordlessly and moved to hug Chas, who welcomed her in with outstretched arms. After a moment, John stood up too, and the three of them embraced quietly, no more words needed.

---

♫

The next day, John and Chas hefted hastily-packed rucksacks over their shoulders as they scanned the departures board for their gate number. Cheryl sat quietly nearby, picking nervously at the skin around her fingernails while she bounced a leg.
"There it is," Chas said, breaking the tension. "B47. We're up."

This was it. John exhaled a deep breath, trying to steady his emotions. Beyond the glass walls of the terminal building, the sun was beginning to set, and John couldn't stop the feeling that the light was fading from a life he'd only half-lived for twenty years, and would now never have the chance to do properly. Beside him, Cheryl stood up, and though John had tried to steel himself, the wetness in her eyes as he turned cracked through him until, in all of a single deleterious second, they were sobbing in each other's embrace.

"H-harder than I th-thought it'd be." John choked out, and Cheryl just squeezed him in response. He squeezed back, and in that moment, focused for an instant; between them, something ethereal and invisible snapped, a hidden tether severed and cast away. Synchronicity - the silent power of the Laughing Magician. Without having to worry about causality, Cheryl would be safe. She could be happy.
"No one's finding you now unless you want them to. You'll be safe. For good." He said, pressing his forehead against hers. She nodded and wiped her cheeks.
"I'll miss you two." She said. John felt a hand on his shoulder.
"We'd better not miss it." Chas said, and John nodded.

On the steps up to the cabin, John looked back, just for a second, to the window at the terminal gate. Cheryl waved, and for a tiny calamitous moment, John was seized with the overwhelming urge to dive from the stairs, hit the tarmac, drop his bag and sprint from here back into the building, see her one last time, give her one last hug, share with her one last goodbye; and then someone walked in front of her, and once they passed, she was gone.
"C'mon, Houdini." Chas said, stood above him up the steps at the cabin door, holding a hand out. "Let's go."
"Alright, mate." John, answered, taking the hand offered in his own. "Let's go."

Roman's Archive

_{Location: Hell}

#1.09

^{_{_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}}

Beyond the boundaries of Mammon's court the mud grew thick and hard and crusted over until the bog disappeared and in its place lay a dry and barren salt flat, sterile and dead, not even the insects and plants of Earth's deserts present to breathe tiny life into its colourless, desolate plains. Dust kicked up around John's boots with each step and the muck caked to his clothes and skin and hair was finally beginning to dry out, cracking and flaking and bringing with it a new itchy, chapped sensation, a fresh discomfort. Hell never let up. Ahead of him, the wolf-fiend padded along, its misshapen form heaving left and right, naked flesh slapping against the dirt as it lead him on a merry hunt, occasionally stooping over awkwardly to sniff and snort in the dirt with its lupine snout before pivoting direction. All the while it paused regularly to look back at John, regarding him with beady black eyes, almost salivating. John was very sure that only Mammon's word was preventing him from being wholly devoured.

The ruined cathedral that housed Mammon's court, crumbling yet still ostentatious and intimidating, had now shrunk from view behind them completely, and with its disappearance John now felt truly untethered from even tenuously 'recognizable' landscape. In absence of landmarks and features and flora the very ground began to crack and split open, fractures in the dry mud growing and deepening into fissures that rent the earth asunder, opening to further depths below them until all that remained were the chasms and ravines plunging into an inescapable darkness. The wolf-fiend was treading around the edge of one rupture, its nose twitching and sniffing feverishly at the surface of its depths. John caught up and peered carefully over the lip, trying to force his eyes to adjust to the darkness and discern even some minute detail; alas, the blackness was impenetrable. He could see nothing. The wolf-fiend stilled and pointed down - the meaning was clear.
"You're joking, right? I'm not bloody Bear Grylls, mate."
The wolf-fiend stayed pointing, but it added a snarl to the mix by way of motivation. Its bared fangs dripped with appetite.
"Alright. Heard." John said, morose, and they began their descent.

---

The deeper they descended the more John felt a terrible sense of dread pooling in his stomach and clogging up his windpipe until it felt like it was going to spill from his mouth. A keening fear, sharp and potent, accompanied by the undeniable feeling of deja vu; these dark cliff faces were familiar beneath his ragged palms, and as they approached the ground at the very bottom of the ravine the feeling only compounded itself exponentially. When John's boots finally touched slick black earth his knees almost buckled beneath him as terror gripped every facet of his mind. He strained, listening, expecting a sound but finding none. There was no thudding left down here; no further butchery needed. As they walked, John knew what to look for before they could even see, before the darkness parted and a singular soft glow broke through the gloom like a lighthouse atop a rocky shore, and indeed once illuminated there it was, John's dreams revealed as premonitions, his fright now justified: a grove. A circle of burnt and blackened trees. A mound of soil, writhing with insects and the carcasses of small, torn-up animals. The block. Oh, God, the block.

ℍ𝔼𝕃𝕃𝕆 𝕁𝕆ℍℕ. 𝕎𝔼 ℍ𝔸𝕍𝔼 𝔹𝔼𝔼ℕ 𝕎𝔸𝕀𝕋𝕀ℕ𝔾.

An invisible force seized John's entire body and pulled him inexorably forward. He struggled, leaning away and trying desperately to turn back but he was dragged all the same, his heels gouging lines in the dirt as the trees and the mound and the block grew closer, closer, ever closer; there was a canine whimper to his side and John turned his head to see the wolf-fiend being dragged along beside him, thrashing and barking and snarling to no avail. As they approached the block, John and the wolf began to rise into the air, now free-floating and removed from all purchase, unable to reach or grasp anything that might offer resistance to the compelling force that directed them forward. This close, John could see a figure lying on its back upon the slab, a dirtied white shroud draped over their form. Their chest rose and fell softly in a slow rhythm, but otherwise they displayed no movement except for a subtle and disturbing writhing and distention across the surface of their belly. John's heart simultaneously broke and soared. This was her. He'd finally actually found Cheryl.

𝕎ℍ𝔸𝕋 𝕀𝕊 𝕋ℍ𝕀𝕊 𝔹𝕃𝕆𝕆𝔻-ℍ𝕆𝕌ℕ𝔻? 𝕄𝔸ℕ'𝕊 𝔹𝔼𝕊𝕋 𝔽ℝ𝕀𝔼ℕ𝔻, 𝕆ℝ 𝔸 𝕄𝕆ℂ𝕂𝔼ℝ𝕐 ℙ𝔼ℝℍ𝔸ℙ𝕊?

John hung restrained in the air as the wolf-fiend slowly drifted closer still to the grove, inspected by a hundred invisible eyes. Its growls and barks petered out and changed to discomforting, frightened whining, and then to pained yelps and finally a repulsive, disturbing wet gurgle as spit and blood dripped from its jaws as its body cracked and folded in on itself, ankles forced backwards until the soles of its feet hit its calves, then the knees snapping the wrong way and tucking shins into thighs, legs splaying and splitting sideways as they parcelled up against its torso; all the while its arms mirrored the horrific manipulations and finally, when it was all done and every joint and bone twisted and snapped and sundered, skin torn under the pressure of impossible movements and severed arteries gushing forth - the wolf alive and screaming through every second - its head turned and turned and turned, a cork turning on the screw, more flesh rupturing, more blood spilled, until the entire thing came loose with a wet tear and a pop. The body went limp and collapsed beneath the head still aloft, crumpling to the ground below, askew and discarded like a ragdoll, completely unrecognizable as its once-humanoid form in the wreckage it had become. The head spluttered its last and ceased, spine dangling beneath like some red-stained ivory necktie. It too dropped, rolling and tumbling away into the darkness. John vomited down himself.

𝕆ℕ𝔼 𝕆𝔽 𝕄𝔸𝕄𝕄𝕆ℕ'𝕊 𝕋𝕆𝕐𝕊. 𝔸 ℙ𝔸𝕋ℍ𝔼𝕋𝕀ℂ ℙ𝔼𝕋 𝔽𝕆ℝ 𝔸 ℙ𝔸𝕋ℍ𝔼𝕋𝕀ℂ ℂℝ𝔼𝔸𝕋𝕌ℝ𝔼.

Whatever was commanding his body, John now felt the full pressure of its attention fall upon him. He felt flush, suddenly sweating in fear. Damp warmth spread across the groin of his trousers.

ℂ𝕆𝕄𝔼, 𝕁𝕆ℍℕ. 𝕄𝔼𝔼𝕋 𝕐𝕆𝕌ℝ 𝔹ℝ𝕆𝕋ℍ𝔼ℝ. 𝕋ℍ𝔼 𝕆ℕ𝔼 𝕎ℍ𝕆 𝕊ℍ𝕆𝕌𝕃𝔻-ℍ𝔸𝕍𝔼-𝔹𝔼𝔼ℕ.

John began to float down, drawn towards the block and the shrouded figure. He tried to resist, desperate to struggle and thrash and flail as he was pulled near, but his legs remained stiff, his arms pinned to his sides. Only his eyes spun wildly in their sockets, searching this way and that for whatever hands now dominated it.
"Don't! Don't fold me up like the wolf Jesus Christ please-"

ℍ𝕌𝕊ℍ, 𝕁𝕆ℍℕ. 𝕎𝔼 𝕊ℍ𝔸ℕ'𝕋. 𝕎𝔼 ℕ𝔼𝔼𝔻 𝕐𝕆𝕌ℝ 𝕍𝔼𝕊𝕊𝔼𝕃 𝕀ℕ𝕋𝔸ℂ𝕋.

The writhing beneath Cheryl's stomach grew wilder and more twisting, as if whatever snaked through her belly now became more and more impatient. John caught a glimpse of some gaunt, all-too-familiar face imprinted through the skin and against the shroud, and shut his eyes, screwing them closed tight until they hurt, willing the image to disappear from his mind; when he reopened them, the shifting roiling madness in his sister's flesh was moving, pathing upwards from her belly past her lungs - horrible popping sounds bursting from her sternum as it crawled up her ribs - pushing bones and blood vessels aside to finally come to a rest at her throat, wrapped around her esophagus. Cheryl's whole body spasmed, and then one hand seized the edge of the block in a white-knuckle grip before she rose, unsteady, the shroud covering her still but falling across her features as she sat up, some grim parody of a sheet-ghost, instead creating the effect of a macabre death mask over her obscured face. She drew a pained, rattling breath, and then spoke in a nightmarish blend John would never forget.
"Hello, brother." Said Jacob through their sister's mouth. "I have been waiting a long time to meet you properly."
Even through the shroud, John was close enough to smell Jacob's breath, stinking of death and rot.

ℕ𝕀ℕ𝔼𝕋𝔼𝔼ℕ 𝕐𝔼𝔸ℝ𝕊. 𝕐𝔼𝕋, 𝕄𝔸ℕ𝕐 𝕄𝕆ℝ𝔼 𝕊ℙ𝔼ℕ𝕋 𝕀ℕ ℙ𝕃𝔸ℕℕ𝕀ℕ𝔾 𝔹𝔼𝔽𝕆ℝ𝔼 𝕐𝕆𝕌ℝ 𝔹𝕀ℝ𝕋ℍ.

"And my death at your hands. Did you enjoy it? Did it make you happy? Do you even remember?"
John floundered, unable to answer.
"I remember. Choking in the warm dark wet. Spat out of our dying mother. A corpse birthing a corpse. You're cursed, John. You've always been cursed. Even since conception."

ℍ𝔼 ℍ𝔸𝕊 𝔸ℝℝ𝕀𝕍𝔼𝔻 𝔼𝔸ℝ𝕃𝕀𝔼ℝ 𝕋ℍ𝔸ℕ ℙ𝕃𝔸ℕℕ𝔼𝔻. ℕ𝔼ℝ𝔾𝔸𝕃 𝕎𝔸𝕊 𝔸 𝔻𝕀𝕊𝔸ℙℙ𝕆𝕀ℕ𝕋𝕄𝔼ℕ𝕋 𝔹𝕌𝕋 𝕎𝔼 ℝ𝔼𝕄𝔸𝕀ℕ 𝕌ℕ𝕀𝕄ℙ𝔼𝔻𝔼𝔻 𝔸𝕃𝕃 𝕋ℍ𝔼 𝕊𝔸𝕄𝔼. 𝕋ℍ𝔼 𝕃𝔸𝕌𝔾ℍ𝕀ℕ𝔾 𝕄𝔸𝔾𝕀ℂ𝕀𝔸ℕ 𝕎𝕀𝕃𝕃 ℝ𝕀𝕊𝔼 𝔸𝔾𝔸𝕀ℕ.

"Yes. Your intrusion in an inconvenience at worst, just for the effort spent in holding you. Sooner than we'd planned for, and Gary certainly was useless in the end, but I suppose you've solved that little hiccup for us. No more subtlety; no more shadow manipulations. Now we have all the pieces, and all that's left to do is fit them together."
Jacob laughed in a low, throaty chuckle, relishing every moment.
"Isn't it exciting, John? Death isn't so bad. You'll have plenty of time to get used to it. Just like I did."

Pain erupted across John's body. Christ, it was like nothing he'd ever felt; no beating from Thomas or scalding shower at Ravenscar or self-destructive blade across his thigh could compare. Hidden needles pierced his organs, bypassing the skin directly to sink deep into the soft flesh within his body; a thousand stings and slivers, like swallowing shards of glass - spines pushing through bone into the very marrow itself, tearing at him in his most hidden and intimate places. He grit his teeth until they began to crack, the agony simple and pure and too much to even yell out or writhe; no, to express his suffering would be a way to cope, a way to alleviate it, and this was something Jacob would not allow. Sweat poured from his skin and he began to feel like he would go into convulsions, but still the black-and-white strobe behind his eyes offered no relief - any seizure his body threw in response he was made to feel in full consciousness. There would be no passing out, no simple lapsing into blackness, nor would the pain kill him through shock, even as his heart pushed past the cusp of bursting. Jacob just hurt him in a singular, clarified way. Pain. Pain. Pain.

ℍ𝔸𝕍𝔼 𝕐𝕆𝕌ℝ 𝔽𝕌ℕ. 𝔻𝕆 ℕ𝕆𝕋 𝕂𝕀𝕃𝕃 ℍ𝕀𝕄. ℕ𝕆𝕎 𝔸𝕃𝕃 𝕎𝔼 𝕄𝕌𝕊𝕋 𝔻𝕆 𝕀𝕊 𝕎𝔸𝕀𝕋.

Cheryl- Jacob- the dead twin wearing the skin of the sister - whatever the body was now, it whipped its head around, the shroud fluttering and rippling with the movement. It addressed the unseen voices, its own words brimming with impatience and outrage.
"Wait? I have spent nineteen years waiting! What is there left to do? Everything has aligned. He's here, now! We have everything we need! We only have to flush him out and let me be put in. This is it! This is what it's all been for!"

ℕ𝕆. 𝕋ℍ𝔼 𝕋𝕀𝕄𝔼 𝕀𝕊 ℕ𝕆𝕋 ℝ𝕀𝔾ℍ𝕋. 𝕐𝕆𝕌 ℝ𝔼ℚ𝕌𝕀ℝ𝔼 𝕄𝕆ℝ𝔼 𝔾ℝ𝕆𝕎𝕋ℍ 𝕐𝔼𝕋; 𝕐𝕆𝕌ℝ 𝕊𝕀𝕊𝕋𝔼ℝ'𝕊 𝕊ℙ𝕀ℝ𝕀𝕋 𝕎𝕀𝕃𝕃 ℕ𝕌ℝ𝕋𝕌ℝ𝔼 𝕐𝕆𝕌 𝕌ℕ𝕋𝕀𝕃 𝕐𝕆𝕌 𝔸ℝ𝔼 ℝ𝔼𝔸𝔻𝕐.

"NO! We do this now! You give me this now!"

The pain eased off, even slightly, even for a second, enough for John to breathe and let his vision return and think. Jacob was in the fits of pique, thrashing Cheryl's body about, the skin twisting and raging as he ravaged through her flesh, seeming for all appearances to be in the throes of a tantrum. He ranted furiously, hurling curses and abuse; he was demented, out of his mind. He was at the cusp of everything, and being flatly denied in his fated moment.
"Near two decades I have spent as a wastrel! A wretch! An ethereal nothing, scheming and plotting and waiting, always waiting! Two years I have supped from my sister, nursed from her - what could be left?! What alignment remains?! Transform me! Deliver me! You'll deny my destiny no longer - now hand it to me!"

ℕ𝕆. 𝕋ℍ𝔼 𝕊𝕀𝕊𝕋𝔼ℝ'𝕊 𝕊ℙ𝕀ℝ𝕀𝕋 𝕎𝕀𝕃𝕃 ℕ𝕌ℝ𝕋𝕌ℝ𝔼 𝕐𝕆𝕌, 𝕌ℕ𝕋𝕃 𝕋ℍ𝔼 𝕋𝕀𝕄𝔼 𝕀𝕊 ℝ𝕀𝔾ℍ𝕋.

A single, terrible, inevitable idea popped into John's head.
"What if my soul fed you?!" He blurted out, and Jacob ceased in his frenzy, attention returning to John. The pain ebbed, but did not stop. From beneath the shroud, Jacob breathed heavily, hungrily.
"What if you didn't empty me out? What if I let you in, and you took the vessel you wanted, but without needing to wait?"

𝕋ℍ𝔼ℝ𝔼 𝕀𝕊 ℕ𝕆 ℕ𝔼𝔼𝔻. 𝕎𝔼 𝕄𝕌𝕊𝕋 𝕆ℕ𝕃𝕐 𝕎𝔸𝕀-
"Quiet!" Barked Jacob, before replying to John. "Why would you do that, after all this effort and coming all this way to kill me, again?!"
The pain ratcheted back up, Jacob vindictive and angry and venting his frustration on John's body. Through gritted teeth, John tried to answer.
"Didn't...come here to kill you...only came to save. Cheryl. Eat my spirit...don't need hers. Can let her go!"

𝕋ℍ𝔼ℝ𝔼 𝕀𝕊 ℕ𝕆 ℕ𝔼𝔼𝔻.
"I said shut up!"
Slowly, very slowly, Jacob lifted one of Cheryl's hands - bruised, scraped, knuckles split and nail caked in filth - and pulled the shroud off. John screwed his eyes shut once more, unwilling to let the first sight of his lost sister after two years searching be her piloted by this evil creature masquerading as his brother. He felt her- him- it creep close, rancid breath hot on his cheek.
"You would do this? For her?"
"Swear...to return her...unharmed. Back to bridge...where she can be found."
𝕎𝔼 ℍ𝔸𝕍𝔼 𝔸𝕃𝕃 𝕋ℍ𝔼 𝕋𝕀𝕄𝔼 𝕀ℕ 𝕋ℍ𝔼 𝕎𝕆ℝ𝕃𝔻.
"Why shouldn't I wait, and just get what I want anyway?" Jacob hissed. He was holding back, but John could feel him being reeled in.
"Nineteen years...in the pits of Hell. Ever...eaten? Drank? Had...a beer, a ciggie? Treated yourself...to a wank?"
Jacob licked his lips. He began to softly pant, appetites of all description igniting in his core.
"I'm all of that...and more, Jakey boy. Get some...rain on your skin. Take a dip in the...river. Have a stroll in the sunshine."
𝔸𝕃𝕃 𝕎𝕀𝕃𝕃 ℂ𝕆𝕄𝔼 𝕎𝕀𝕋ℍ ℙ𝔸𝕋𝕀𝔼ℕℂ𝔼.
"I just return Cheryl, and you let me in? Right now?"

With herculean effort and his eyes still screwed shut, straining against chains he could not see but felt heavily, John pushed a hand out toward Jacob.
"You let Cheryl go free...I let you in. And you walk out of Hell...tonight."
Jacob dragged a rough tongue up John's face, laughing in a sinister murmur that gave John goosebumps.
Everyone has an angle.
𝕀𝕋 𝕀𝕊 𝔸 𝕋ℝ𝔸-
Jacob seized his brother's outstretched hand.
"Deal."

---

A light drizzle had settled across Liverpool, slicking the ground and muffling all sound, even if ever-so-slightly on both fronts. It wasn't a particularly cold night, but the rain didn't exactly warm Chas as he came to, sprawled out across the Runcorn Railway Bridge. He head hurt and he felt groggy, but other than that his lungs breathed and his heart beat and his body moved with minimal protest as he dragged his arms underneath him and pushed up, unsteady at first but quickly getting his bearings back as he got to his feet. Headache aside, he felt alright; he surveyed the bridge again, thinking there was something he was forgetting. Something important. His eyes fell to Gary's still body, and it all came crashing back to him.
"John?!" He called out. Vague recollections swam around his head - some odd, uncanny stranger poring over Gary, John scrambling on his knees towards them - but he was alone now, just him and the corpse. He sighed, that deep sadness settling back in as his gaze lingered on his old friend's dead body.

He turned to look down the bridge. He assumed no one had passed by already - one corpse and one unconscious man were tricky to ignore, even in these callous times (or so he hoped, at least) - but there remained the slim risk someone still might. The night had plenty of hours left to wile away before sunrise, and there was no telling what else it might yet have in store. Chas couldn't see anyone currently, and he hoped it would stay that way. He still didn't have a better idea than dropping Gary into the river, but now that the panic and the terrible moment had passed, he was no longer sure he could stomach such an ignoble end for one of his oldest friends, regardless of however wretchedly it had all ended. He pivoted on his feet to look the other way, just to make sure they were safe from both directions, at least for now, to make sure he had some time to think and plan and figure out where the fucking hell John had gone-

There was another figure lying prone on the bridge a little ways down, just outside of the pools of light provided by the barely-there bulbs. Chas rushed over, worried that it was John, that he'd found a similar fate to Gary, that after two years and a return to this bridge he'd finally gone and bloody done it while Chas was out cold...

He slowed as he approached and began to make out details and features. Chas couldn't help but drop to his knees at the figure's head, dragging their unconscious body into his lap and overflowing with joy to see the soft rise-and-fall of their chest and feel the shallow pumping of their steady pulse in the skin at their wrist. Chas couldn't believe his eyes, and soon he couldn't see out of them either as tears welled up and spilled over. The drops splashed down onto the figure's face, whose eyes flickered and slowly opened, peering up at Chas.

"Fr...Francis?" She croaked out, her voice hoarse and quiet.
"Hi, Cheryl." Chas replied, and then he just held her for a while as they wept.

---

I am curled into a fetal ball, spinning and kicking aimlessly in a void of soft-light nothingness. I cannot see - my senses are blinded, numbed - but all around me, pressing against my skin, I feel the presence of another.

Everything is dark and John feels too full. Claustrophobic in his own body; not enough space to stretch out. Something else filled the space, pushing and needling him. Nudges and prodding became shoves and elbows and then blows were raining down upon him, accompanied by quick-flash stabs from an invisible blade. Jacob was relentless in his assault, and John summoned every last ounce of strength he had to raise a bulwark against his brother. Jacob railed against him, bringing forth all the hatred and anger and envy the dead twin had harbored for the last nineteen years, two decades of wrath and ambition and the poisonous prophecy of the Laughing Magician whispered in his ear bolstering his fury. He wailed at John, feral raving about his destiny, promised power, the deal struck between brothers. John didn't want to lose himself, but Cheryl was safe, spirited out of Hell back to Earth, the deed done, the mission complete. He could feel his soul slipping away. The sense of his own body started to fade, growing distant from him like his limbs were stretching out. Jacob was slithering into the cracks, worming his way in around John's receding edges. He was pulling the body on like a glove, sliding his fingers into place, gliding across the surface of John's diminishing will like oil on water to seep into the spaces left behind. The battle between the brothers raged and John knew, slowly, surely, steadily second by second, that he was losing. His false deal and sly intentions didn't matter; Jacob was simply mightier than him, and he supped on John's soul from a gilded cup to replenish his own.

Quietly, John accepted that these were his last moments. The plan had failed. He'd struck the bargain and Jacob had taken it and now, regardless of his designs, he was set to forcibly make good on the conditions of his own deal. Welcome to the consequences of your actions, John Constantine. They were bound to catch up with you one day. You lay down with devils, you get up with your soul leeched away into senseless oblivion.

He spent his final thoughts lingering on the few golden memories he had left.

He thought about Gary, sharing drinks in his bedroom and shuffling through CDs while arguing over bands and albums, getting messy in the put and throwing each other around at gigs.

He thought about Chas, sharing a quiet cigarette in brief retreat from burgeoning chaos, indulging in a vulnerable moment in the night while several beers deep, belly-laughing over unflattering impressions of their much-loathed parents until their faces were red and tears streamed down their cheeks and they clutched at their ribs trying to catch their breath.

He thought about Cheryl, about days spent under the summer sun running about the docks and watching the light play off the surface of the water, about a camera roll filled with imperfections that John would still hang proud in a gallery for all to see, about nights shivering in the bathroom, door locked, his sister gently washing and dabbing fresh welts across his back. About being taken into her arms as the proud bravado fell away and he sobbed into her shoulder.

Jacob was battered by this tide of overwhelming, alien feelings and memories, unable to parse or categorize, lost amidst waves of emotion he had no point of reference or comparison for. It all confused him, confounded his mind and muddled his purpose; for only the briefest of moments his steady advance against John's consciousness ground to a halt completely and John found himself suddenly back in full control of his faculties. He had precious seconds - there would not be another chance once Jacob recovered and resumed his assault. He concentrated, focusing all efforts on a singular limb. The rosary still hung from his neck, and he could faintly feel the weight of the cross still resting against his sternum. With stiff fingers and a hand battling the resistance of a hundred generations of ancestral Constantines, John wrapped his palm around the wooden icon and pulled outwards; distantly, he felt the chain snapping and beads spilling to the floor.

𝕁 𝔸 ℂ 𝕆 -

Jacob snapped out of his fugue, pushing the confusing, troubling feelings away, returning his attention to subsuming John with distractions dispelled; but it was all too late. It was already in motion. With one final burst of control, the hand that clutched the cross plunged it into John's throat, and then tore itself across.

John spluttered. Jacob screamed, furious, impotent. Blood rushed forth, staining John's chest and the ground beneath his collapsing body. The last sputters of John's life petered out, a single rattling breath expelled; and then John died.

Roman's Archive

_{Location: Hell}

#1.08

^{_{_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}}

The cloying mud was reluctant to let John go but the tree-creatures wrenched him up and out of the muck with surprising ease, tossing him carelessly through the air; bits of bark and twig snapped and splintered around him as he fell heavily and splashed against an intricately-carved stone floor. Whatever previous stir there had been now stalled at his arrival, and all beings present first looked from the trees to John's prone and clagged form, and then finally, inexorably, to the figure sat at the head of the court.
"Wherefore dost thou see fit to disturb my court?"
The first of the tree-creatures prodded John sharply, who was busy coughing and spluttering foul-smelling ooze from out of nearly every orifice.
"Answer our lord, worm."
"I address thee."
Mammon lifted a claw and gestured at the clustered trees. They creaked and snapped, faltering.
"My- my lord," said the second, "this mortal wishes-"
"Begone." Mammon commanded, and flicked his outstretched finger. All three tree-creatures exploded into uncountable fragments; with unearthly howls, the fiery essence that writhed beneath their bark was exposed, whipping and twisting about itself until it erupted upwards, exorcised with a single pained scream as a gout of flame and then extinguished. Mammon looked faintly amused, and then he spoke to John.
"Human. Declare thine purpose."

John craned his neck up, getting his hands beneath him and pushing himself up off the ground to rest on his knees. The figure before him was grand and mighty, there could be no doubt; the demon towered several feet over him even in his seated, relaxed position, and his rotund and bulging form, skin a deep crimson, was adorned with all manner of golden jewellery and ornate piercings. Golden spikes erupted from his shoulders, elbows, the top of his head, curved horns jutting out and bursting through the skin, and his belly bore hideous stitching barely holding together a great crossed wound; there was the glint of further gold behind that torn flesh, if you caught the right angle, and when he moved, his belly jingled and rattled with the metallic sound of coins on coins. His court was filled with all manner of fiends and devils, their own forms ranging from the mundane to the incomprehensible, each cowing under his heavy gaze. Above all else, the throned demon radiated greed, avarice, and an unquestionable power, and there was no mistaking: this was Mammon. Prince of Greed; Plutus the Golden; the Treasurer of Hell, the Avaricious Wolf, the Master of the Gambling Houses. And he was not to be toyed with.
"I'm looking for my sister." John answered plainly. Mammon scoffed.
"I hold no concern for such trifles." He said, waving dismissively and then gesturing to two attendants. "Take him hence; put him to suffering."

The attendants moved quickly to seize John and he panicked, darting out of reach. The mud, unpleasant as it was, was also slick and slimy and made finding a grip on John as he weaved through grasping claws difficult. Stubby, clubbed digits and ragged nails pulled at John's jacket and legs, slipping away as black muck squeezed through the seams between their fingers until finally one fiend tackled John entirely, and once again he was on his back, stone digging into his shoulder blades, some new devil pinning him down. This one had the body of a man but lumpy and malformed, and its head was of the wolf, the skin at its neck rupturing and torn where tufts of fur threatened to burst through. It snapped viciously at John with powerful jaws, adding foamy drool to the myriad slimes that coated him. Two more devils flanked him, and they lifted him bodily into the air, intending to parade the catch about the court and make a show of him; John cried out in pain as claws sunk into his shoulder, and this in itself already elicited jeers from the audience. As they jostled him, the rosary fell loose and dangled forward; under Mammon's vaguely-bored gaze, something caught his eye.
"Halt!" He called, and the proceedings ceased. He snapped a claw and pointed to the base of the dias his throne rested upon. "Fetch him hither. Present unto me his necklace."
John was carried to be held before Mammon, and here he caught pungent wafts of metal and blood as the great demon leant forward, examining the rosary carefully between two claws. He snapped again.
"Release him." He ordered, and John was dropped to the ground. "Human - by what rights didst thou acquire this? Conquest? Bargain?"
"Nergal gave it to me."
"Charity! Nergal is a loathsome, ambitious cretin - yet cunning; but ne'er charitable. I find thine claim hard to credit."
John remained silent, his face set. Mammon studied his expression, and then sat back in his throne. He looked almost curious.
"Very well. Tell thy tale."

The court quieted, and John pulled himself back to his feet, drawing sharp breath as the pain of the fresh puncture in his shoulder was added to his suffering.
"I'm John Constantine," he began, and almost imperceptibly Mammon shifted, a new attention paid to John's words, "and I'm looking for my sister. She's here, somewhere, trapped in your kingdom. My ancesters - the Laughing Magicians," and at this there was a wave of murmurs through the court, quickly silenced by a pointed glare from Mammon, "have her. They've got a terrible plan for her, one I intend to stop. I struck a deal with Nergal to bring me to Cheryl, but he dumped me on the outskirts on a technicality. The rosary is proof of our bargain, and a way for him to find me later."
Mammon raised an eyebrow. "That doth ring truer to Nergal's nature." He surmised, leaning back in his throne, seemingly satisfied. "I am acquainted with thy family. What plot do they weave?"
"My dead cunt of a brother should have been the next incarnation. They want to use my sister to revive him. Once they do, the whole bloody lot of 'em are marching on Hell - you first. They'll take your throne, and your power, and then they'll sweep through the rest of Hell, one lord at a time. And after that, there'll be no one left to stop them. Not even Him."
Mammon shifted, John's words rankling him. Even the implication that something could usurp him was dangerous, seditious talk that would encourage an unwelcome line of thought within his court. For this insect to suggest such a thing so openly in front of him was remarkably brazen; either John was markedly bold, or markedly stupid. Mammon oscillated between enraged and impressed.
"I am unconquerable; a bastion against all foes!" He announced, his voice reverberating and the court shuddering as he crashed his fist against the stone arm of his throne; his audience quivered, the display quelling any idea of a coup. "I shouldst slay thee where thy stand for the mere utterance of such a notion."
"Kill me then. I'll see you around Hell when my brother does the same to you."

The court became very still. John's heart beat like thunder in his chest. He was in a very large amount of very varied kinds of pain; he was cold and wet and uncomfortable; he was grieving a friend he'd just killed and another he wasn't sure he'd ever be able to see again; he was sore, and achy, and above everything else, he was tired. So tired, tired all the way down to his toes, so tired that even the unconscious acts of pushing blood around his beaten body and sucking this rancid, fetid air into his lungs were an almost unbearable effort. And he had run out of patience. He had two plays left: one here and now for Mammon, and one when he finally tracked down Jacob. If between now and then, or even after he succeeded, he dropped dead - he couldn't care less. At least none of this shit would be his fucking problem anymore.

Mammon erupted in great booming laughter, the court echoing with that jangling metallic sound as his belly heaved up and down in fits of amusement. Cautiously, the rest of the court attendees joined in, the stone walls chattering with the snickering of a dozen devils and more.
"Thy undergarments belie the vastness of thine cullions, John Constantine!" The demon lord declared, and he reached a lechorous hand forward to grope and tickle John's mud-sodden groin with calloused, thick-clawed fingers. John jumped back, outraged and disquieted, and this made Mammon laugh harder.
"Pray, tell, on what ground then shouldst I spare thy life? Make thine counsel."
"You kill me and my ancestors will soon be knocking down your door bringing war with them. Even if you win, I'll be dead and Nergal will have my soul and, like you said, he's ambitious. He'll make a play and you'll have another fight on your hands."
"Say then I allow thine exit alive, fine; but thy family squabble 'tis not my concern."
"They don't care. They'll come down on you anyway. Maybe you win, but it'll hurt you and your kingdom regardless. Why fight at all? And if you lose - well, imagine how happy the rest of Hell's gonna be when they find out the war breathing down their necks could have been nipped in the arse before it ever started."
"Hmmm. Thou wouldst possess a third proposal, then?"
"Sure. You don't kill me, and you help me kick my rotten family down to the ninth circle for good. You'd have the vanquishing of the Laughing Magicians, once and for all, to your name. That kind of trophy could be very profitable for you."
"Hmmm."

Mammon took a long silence to weigh his options. The power of just one Laughing Magician was well-regarded; in truth, he could not predict the scope of the might held by the entire ancestral line. Throughout history, the Constantines had never played fair, even when constrained by the Earthly plane. Down here, mortal shells discarded...he would never admit it, never show it; but a fragment of fear slithered into his blackened heart. He shifted forward in his throne and finally lifted his hands, delivering a short sharp clap.
"I am loathe to depart my court; but I can send thee in my stead. Thou shalt be directed hence to thine rogue family, and be assured of their dispatch. Shouldst thou fail or falter, I shalt be forced to slay thee all without mercy."
Mammon gestured again to the wolf-head fiend.
"Serf - show him whither his ancestors make their den."
The wolf-devil bowed graciously, and bounded away, waiting paitently at the threshold of Mammon's court for John to follow.
"I grant thee the protection of my kingdom, Constantine," Mammon said, waving lazily across John's body as the air shimmered and some new pressure settled into his skin. "Know that I shalt remove my boon at mine own pleasure. Do not misrepresent me."
John shivered. He knelt, making his best attempt at showing sincere deference.
"Thank you, Lord Mammon."
"Do not fail, John Constantine. Thine agony can still surely sink to greater depths than thine mind can possess."

John nodded, heeding Mammon's warning well, and then turned and left, more than a little surprised he was still alive at all.

Roman's Archive

_{Location: Hell}

#1.07

^{_{_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}}

John had the strong sensation of falling, yet his feet never left the ground.

The world rose up around them, the landscape stretching and bleeding into itself as the night sky shrunk to a focal point somewhere far above them. Building and terraces buried themselves in the clouds, expanding, distending, drawing perspective askew as they curved toward a single shared event horizon. The vanishing point swallowed the architecture and soon they were instead surrounded by tarmac, asphalt, concrete, then soil and dirt and soon the very mantle of the Earth itself, the ground devouring them as still they did not move but everything shifted around them; dark, light, heat, cold, the myriad methods John sensed his world all blended together, synapses firing off in unison and telling his brain every simultaneous and contradictory thing he witnessed and experienced, a great pressure accompanied by a weightlessness inside and out, a terrible silence that drowned out all other noise, a confining darkness that illuminated all to be seen, and still John remained planted, steadfast on the slick metal flooring of the Runcorn Railway Bridge, never to leave, never to return.

The first thing John noticed about Hell was the chill in the air. It seeped through his clothes and latched onto his bones, leeching even the potential for warmth away from him. It did not matter how he gathered his jacket about himself, or rubbed his hands until the friction burnt red-raw, or shivered until his knees knocked together. The cold persisted. But behind this permafrost, there was a second immediate shift, a strange new feeling - or more accurately, the absence of one. Yes, something was missing from this place, and subsequently from John. It stung like a fresh wound, every next moment picking at the scab, inflicting new injury. Such pain enveloped him and came with a solemn truth that it would not end, not ever, no matter the length of the journey or how many steps taken upon it. The agony superceded all other emotion, swallowing hope and love and joy into itself, gobbling up all feelings in search of remedy but finding no success in the debilitating attempt. This was not a place ever meant for man, and he suffered catastrophically for his presence here.
"God," John said, his voice strained and breath heavy from the effort of simply existing, "how do you bear this?"
Nergal raised a single eyebrow, his expression grim.
"I don't."

They stood upon a rocky outcrop overlooking a scattered, blasted landscape, every kind of barren earth and environ imaginable stretching out before them. Their surroundings slowed and finally ceased movement, and out of the corner of his eye John saw Nergal stretch and shake, his previous visage - adjacent to human, but not convincingly so - sloughed off, replaced with leathery, scaly skin, his feet splayed and claw-tipped to match his hands, and now sharp-pointed ears joined a monstrous forked tail and pair of ragged, powerful wings to complete his true demonic facade. He rose to full height, and stood tall and proud as they surveyed the desolation below.

"Where are we?" John asked, keen to get to the matter at hand and spend as little time here as possible. Already this void within him sapped his goodwill, and his urge to find and rescue Cheryl began to shift from a mission of love to one of pragmatism.
"We stand on the precipice of Mammon's fiefdom. The land below belongs to him, and his rule is final."
John chafed as he began to realize what lay ahead. Nergal planned to cheat him.
"You said you'd take me to Cheryl. That was part of the deal."
Nergal didn't look at John, only bearing an expression of mild irritation as he preened, fawning over his wings and tail.
"The bargain struck was to take you to where your dear ancestors are keeping her. They are keeping her in Mammon's domain, somewhere, and so here we are. I would not venture further into his kingdom, and you cannot compel me to do so. Perhaps if you'd had the good sense to be a little more precise in your terms..."
John flushed, angry. "What about the help you promised? Going back on that too?"
Nergal simply provided a loathsome smile, his tone dripping with condescension. "I promised you no such thing. You agreed to a deal for 'some' help, not my help. I have made good on the terms I agreed to. I'm sure at least one soul out there is of a charitable mind." He laughed, a wicked, piercing sound. "Mortals. Such fun."

John took a short pause as he stewed, stung by the trickery of devils. Eventually, Nergal clapped him on the back, and then produced the rosary once more, draping it across one callous palm before tipping his hand and dropping it into John's grasp.
"You may as well take this trinket with you. It shall make it simpler to find you when it's time to collect. Do take care of it, if you wouldn't mind; it is a particular favourite of mine. My, those Sisters of Mercy could have better learned their dogma of clemency..." he trailed off, lost in fond recollection of foul deeds and souls corrupted. John looked from Nergal to the rosary, opting to loop it around his neck. The wooden cross hung from the chain cold and heavy against his chest, and offered no solace.
"How do I...use it? When I'm done?" He asked, and after a stunned second of Nergal staring at him bug-eyed, the demon burst into raucous laughter. Through guffaws, he managed to choke out a reply.
"You- you really think you'll succeed, don't you? Ah, aha, the hubris of mortals! I shall never grow weary of it. How delightful!" He chuckled some more, theatrically wiping joyful tears from his eyes. "No, Johnny, it'll simply call to me when you die, however that happens. 'Use it' - oh, goodness me."

Nergal collected himself, and then unfurled his wings, wafting them wide and slow to feel the air beneath him.
"I'll be seeing you again, John. Rather soon, I imagine. I wish you fair or foul luck; whichever gets you killed quicker."
And with that, his wings beat a hideous rhythm, and he was aloft, soaring away into the endless oblivion. John, for his part, spent little time floundering or faltering, and began to descend into Mammon's kingdom proper.

---

John navigated his way down the ragged crevasse cautiously, mapping out each move before he made it. The stone was treacherous and jagged, and more than once an errant edge cut at his flesh; by the time he reached the bottom, his palms and forearms were criss-crossed with scratches and slices that stung and leaked blood down his skin. Another agony of Hell. Now returned to solid ground, his feet sunk into a mire, soaking his boots and adding to the bitter cold of the realm. He scanned the landscape ahead of him and paused to take stock, and in doing so could not stop his mind from wandering; he entertained, briefly, the thought of the ramifications and implications of this place. If Hell were real, and demons were real, then was He real? His Heaven and His angels? What of His son? Suddenly John thought of those he knew and found himself weighing their deeds: his father would end up here, surely, if he wasn't already, but what about his mother? What fate had Nergal in store for Gary, with that soft warm glow plucked out and hidden away? Did John narrowly avoid this damnation when he'd been pulled from the Mersey, or was the mere attempt enough, and this was now his inevitable, inescapable doom? The existential weight of it all crashed down upon him, and there was a moment where he considered he may have cracked completely. Perhaps killing Gary had been the final straw. Perhaps his mind had simply rejected the horrible truth and instead created a new narrative, constructing demons and souls and other planes around him to shield John from reality. Perhaps the climb down the cliff-face had in fact been scaling the side of the bridge. Perhaps the muddy water he stood in now was actually the silt bed of the river.

He dismissed such notions. That train of thought served him no purpose. He had to see this through, real or not.

He picked his way across the wasteland. The ground was uneven, cobbled together without logic, land smashed into itself and left to rot. Dessicated trees played neighbour to shattered boulders and heavy, oozing vines snaked across the landscape without rhyme or reason. Every so often he would think he spied movement, something shifting underneath the ground, something else darting out of sight from the corner of his eye; at the same time, myriad sounds of suffering echoed all around him, harmonizing into a symphony of despair, yet no source could be found, no origin rooted out. His arms stung as he pushed through brittle shrubs and splashed himself with and muck and ooze every step, matched only by the continuing vacuous agony of absence within him. This place was raw despondency, and John began to grow lonely, yearning for some, any manner of companionship or partner - yet he also could not bear the idea of subjecting another to the pain of Hell. Slowly he crept forward, no true direction in mind other than one foot in front of the other, journeying ever-deeper into Mammon's fetid domain.

John's wandering daze was shaken off when he stumbled, a stray vine entangling his foot and causing him to trip over, planting himself in the bog. He turned, his jeans soaked through, and reached to release himself, swearing in frustration as he wrangled with the vine; it had coiled around his ankle and held him fast. Try as he might he could not unwind it from about his leg, and instead just sighed, putting a hand down to lean on as he looked around for a stray rock or jagged piece of terrain to sever the vine with - but suddenly his arm was seized as well, something cold and rough wrapping around his wrist and pinning it to the ground. John looked down and struggled, shocked to see a gnarled hand gripping him; the vine around his foot shimmered and then it too was a wood-like claw grasping his ankle. The mud around him erupted, and out of the muck a small group of strange, tree-like creatures dragged themselves up and to their feet, dirt and sludge cascading down their knotted, bark-layered backs. They cracked and groaned like splintering trunks, twigs snapping off them as they hauled their bodies to stand straight and gather around the now-supine John, another dendriform limb seizing upon his remaining free arm and pushing his elbow back into the mire.

Whatever these fiends were, they moved slow and laboriously and had the sheen of parody about them, like their resemblance to earthly trees was a deliberate, mocking choice. Their faces were disorganized messes, bark and faux-leaves and caked-on mud obscuring any recognizable features - except for their eyes, misplaced pits of cold, ever-burning fire, traces of that same flame seen through gaps and gashes across their bodies: a hidden essence, guarded by twisting bark, full of anger and hatred. When they spoke, it was with the noise of a gale ripping through the forest and tearing trunks from the earth, the crackling rush of a wildfire burning and killing the trees it raged through down to the root, the industrial roar of chainsaws and machinery felling log after log after log, acres lost to greed.
"Another to feed the swamp..." groaned one, taking arduous steps closer to John and inspecting him. "Curiously alive. Those that walk this mire are usually dead already."
A second tree-creature leaned over John, joining the inspection and prodding painfully at his body with a sharp limb.
"Hmmm...only the strong dare tread here while living. Yet this one seems...puny. Fragile. Perhaps escorted?"
"Look, there - about its neck. A curious trinket. Perhaps it believed it would be protected?"
The third had lifted something that might have been a hand and extended something that might have been a finger to trace the mud-caked chain of the rosary that hung around John's neck. It tapped against the wooden cross, and then creaked and snapped rhythmically. The noise had the cadence of a laugh, but sounded as far removed from mirth as John could imagine.
"Symbols of Him. Mortals often misplace power in His icons. He will not tend to you here, worm."

John's mind raced. The more he writhed and struggled the firmer the wooden limbs held him down, and soon he could barely twist without the harsh bark cutting into his skin. He needed something, anything to give these fiends pause, some lie to spin - and then he seized upon an idea.
"Look closer!" He called, putting as much gravitas and bravado into his inflection as he could muster. "It is no mere bauble, and certainly not worn in His name."
The first tree-thing peered closer, tracing a careful gaze around the rosary.
"The mortal speaks truth. There is Hell about this relic; if it was once made in His honour, it has been corrupted since."
"It is Nergal's!" John announced, and this caused a stir in the fiends; they looked to one another, moaning and creaking with every motion. Again, the first scrutinized the relic, and then a hole opened beneath its eyes and a thick wet vine snaked out, running across the carved wooden cross before retracting.
"Truth once more. This icon reeks of Shamash. The mud has dulled the scent, but his repugnant taste cannot be masked. How did you come to have this, mortal? The Whore-killer is an ugly, repellant, covetous thing. Have you come as his emmisary?"

A subtle contemptuous tone in the question told John that 'yes' would be a very bad answer, so he switched track, thinking on his feet.
"I have subjugated that odious fiend. This relic was one he was most fond of; an apt trophy of my conquest."
The trees stirred again. This time, the third spoke.
"How did a simple mortal accomplish such a feat?"
And this was the big one that really needed to land.
"I am the Laughing Magician Constantine. I am reborn, and my power is vast."

All three creatures burst into that same rhythmic laughter again, and now John was raised off the ground, held in mid-air level with their eyes.
"It has been generations since the last. If you are who you claim to be, why do you struggle so? Why have you not freed yourself? A trifle, for one with magic so potent."
John maintained a serene expression, putting on the calm face of one with absolute confidence and conviction.
"This is Mammon's kingdom, is it not? His eminence is known throughout Hell, his might and wisdom revered."
The trees murmered.
"It is. You seek our lord? You wish to conquer him as well?"
"No - such an attempt would be churlish. I seek his audience, that we may forge a pact for mutual gain. If I were to wreak havoc upon his land and his serfs - such rash action would be unbecoming, would it not?"

The trees deliberated over his words, and all the while he held strong. They faltered, and John could feel the bonds around his limbs loosen.
"Deliver me, and I would consider myself indebted. I will prove a powerful ally." He said, offering his final gambit. There was a tense pause as the fiends made their final considerations - and then:
"Very well."
The bonds wrapped tighter than before, and all three creatures sunk beneath the mud; John had time to draw a single breath before the roots and vines enveloped him completely, and then he was dragged under as well.

Roman's Archive

_{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.

Roman's Archive

_{Location: Liverpool - England}

#1.05

^{_{_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}}

The bridge dominated the landscape ahead of them. It was all-encompassing; it stretched to each edge of the periphery and spanned the horizon in between, subsuming all other architecture and cityscape into its oppressive presence. While in view, nothing else existed. The bridge - the past actions taken upon it - the approaching reckoning it harbored for them; there was a feeling that this bridge, this damn bridge, was all there was and would be. John saw in their steady advancement toward it a great long thread, stretching all the way back to his birth, one terrible path set from his very first breath leading to his end on this bridge and in the murky, troubled waters beneath. It all seemed so neat, so logical: a murdered brother and dead mother - a hated father and a taken sister - friends who fled in the wake of darkness encroaching. The thread ended here, deftly cut and knotted; The Life And Death Of John Constantine, from waters to waters. It seemed so clear, here, now, in the shadow of this ruinous bridge, that the mistake - the great blunder of the world - had not been the tragedy of John's suicide. It had been his survival.

John was so lost in his calamitous revelation that he had not noticed Chas coming to a standstill some ten paces back. It was only his calling out to him that shook John from his lapse. He stopped, tearing his gaze away from the brick and steel of the bridge to look back at his companion, still feeling the omen on his spine.
"We shouldn't do this." Chas said, simple and obvious and yet so, so futile, so late. Chas could see it in John's face, the solemn determination; but if he just let him climb up there without a word, without voicing even a fraction of how insane this had all become, he would never see another restful night again. "Please, John. Nothing good will come of this, for anyone. Not for me, not for Gary, not for you. We've taken it this far - but don't you feel it? It's all wrong, John. It's all perverted and crooked. We should just walk away. Please."
John breathed a deep sigh. He could not deny the truth to his friend's words any more than he could deny the impotence of the attempt. He walked back to stand beside him, and simply pulled Chas into a brief embrace.
"I'm sorry, Chas. I'm going up there. You don't have to come with me - but at this point, it's not even about finding Gary anymore. I am grateful you took a chance and came back - glad we reconnected. I can't tell you how indebted I am just for coming this far with me. But if I turn away now - if I run from this - I'll just be confirming all my worst fears about myself. My life would be defined by this bridge forever. If I want even a modicum of control back over my own destiny - I need to climb back up there. One last time."
Just to prove that I tried. John thought, saving just that small piece of his soul for himself. Chas did not reply - but he got a stoic, steely look in his eye, and his jaw clenched and set like he was enduring great pain; and then he nodded. The two forged on, their bond now forever-set.

The climb up the bridge was difficult and taxing and by the time they crested the end of the causeway the sun had well and truly set. Only a series of small and worn-out bulbs illuminated the way ahead, and a mist was descending around them as the night drew in that obscured even that. They paused for a moment, catching their breath but also peering through the darkness down the bridge to try and spot their quarry; it took a moment for their eyes to adjust to the gloom, but once they had, Chas spied a shadowed figure lurking roughly halfway across. He nudged John and pointed.
"That could be him, lad. But this all feels hideously wrong. We can't, John."
John could feel it too, a pressure all around them, a subtle push that sent chills down his spine and made him dig his heels in on instinct. It didn't matter.
"We must." Was his only reply, and he set forward. They crept along the bridge, hopping from one feeble pool of light to another, each step meticulous and calculated. The waters of the River Mersey rushed beneath them, and John very pointedly did not look down, did not peer over the edge to witness those dark and roaring floods down below.

They approached the veiled figure quicker than they'd have liked, and it was Chas who took the initiative as they grew near:
"Gary?" He called out, cautious and low. No part of him wanted a response.
The figure jerked, twitching as it stood straight and turned toward them. It took one agonized, lumbering step toward them and, in the process, moved into the light. John and Chas froze, unable to suppress a gasp.

It was Gary, unmistakeably so - after all the asking around, the chasing, the sheer rigamarole of it all, they'd really found him - but he looked...even taking the ravages of two years of substance abuse into account, he looked terrible. This wasn't the visage of a mere junkie - he was almost skeletal, parchment-dry skin stretched over sun-bleached bone. What hair remained hung limp and lifeless from his pockmarked scalp; his arms and chest were carpeted with sores and scabs and needle tracks, and his eyes were sunken deep into dark, maddened sockets, bloodshot and darting this way and that in some paranoid fit. He raised a hand to scratch at a rough, shingles-like abrasion that marred his neck, and John noticed several fingernails chewed down to the quick or missing entirely, the skin on his knuckles and palm red and cracking. But all of this aside, there was something else about Gary, something that haunted him and distorted his outline, made him dizzying to look at. It seemed to John like one of those magic eye puzzles: if you squinted at it just right, at just the proper angle, it would all align and reveal its secrets. As it was, Gary just vaguely hurt to behold, frayed around his edges like a sketch yet to be lined in.
"Gary?" John asked, hesitant and afraid.
"H...hhellooo, John..." Gary answered, all hiss and rasp, his voice like a belt-sander to the ears. Nothing about any of this was good or right, and John wished deeply that he had listened to Chas. It was all too late now. John took a deep breath.

"Gary. I'm sorry. I'm two years late, but I'm sorry. That's why I had to find you, why I've been looking for you. And I'm glad we have," he lied, "and if you need any help then I'll do whatever I can. But I just wanted to tell you I'm sorry, for everything I said and did and how I left things. I want to work things out. I want to make things better. I want to be friends again. I want to try."

Silence, but for the dark waters beneath them; then a gurgle from the depths of Gary's throat, a wet death-rattle hissing, and a dry bark that may or may not have been a laugh. Gary smiled a smile John would see every night for the rest of his life.

"No." He answered. "I don't forgive you. But not because of some, some drunk yelling two years ago." His voice was harsh noise, the slightest reverberation layered behind his words; John felt every syllable echo up his spine and through his jaw. "I don't forgive you for lying. I don't forgive you for crocodile tears and scheming." Gary crept forward as he spoke, every step toward John and Chas matched by their step back. "I don't forgive you for inviting devilry into our lives. Two years, John! Two years, I've been waiting for the chance to fix everything. Two years spent learning the truth of it all! Learning about how you played God, about all the things you'd happily discard just to play at having power!" He was raving like a madman, loud and final; the situation was spiralling out of control - if they'd ever had any to begin with - and John could feel Chas pulling on his arm, trying to drag him away. "Witchcraft, John - you're a fool! All those sacrifices made in vain. You tore everything to shreds, and got nothing in return! But I can fix it. Here. Now. I can rectify the great error and put it all right again. Your deepest sin, John, unpardonable, inexcusable - surviving. Getting a second chance - when Cheryl never even got her first!"

He was fast - Gods, he was fast. He shrieked inhumanly and suddenly he was on John, wailing and beating and biting and clawing, feral, a man possessed; above the din rang out Chas' shouts as he tried to pry the two men apart, catching his own stray blows in the process. Gary snarled and they fell to the ground, writhing and wrestling, rolling around on the wet metal flooring, every flail pushing them closer to the edge of the bridge. Chas tried to wrench them back to their feet, but a foot found its mark in his chest with the force of a mule and the kick sent him sprawling back, tumbling over himself and knocking his head against the brickwork - dazed and reeling, the fracas was reduced to only the manic Gary, feverish in his murderous zeal, and John desperately fighting back, reckoning both with the realization that Gary truly intended to kill him, and also that he didn't want to die.

They rolled and Gary was beneath him, and John felt something cold slip around his neck; he barely managed to slide two fingers underneath what was a strange black-and-brown beaded rosary before it was pulled taut, pressing into his throat. Gary meant to strangle him.
"Just let it happen, Johnny. Slip away. Go be with your brother..." Gary hissed in his ear. John kicked and struggled, pulling at the rosary, gasping and clawing for air. The chain dug into his neck and he felt his strength fading, his mind going white. John looked at Chas, splayed out on the ground and clutching his head, spots of blood seeping through the seams between his fingers. He couldn't do it...couldn't get free...it was all going dark, fading away. He really was going to die on this bridge. John saw the thread of his life again, drawn across the backs of his eyelids, looping back on itself to finally tie the knot where it had slipped two years ago.
Is dying really all you're good for?

John kicked Gary's ankle hard in a split-second of freedom from his twisting limbs and felt the frail bone give way beneath his boot. Gary howled, anguished, and John had a crystalline moment to suck air into his screaming lungs and twist them both whole-body, rolling over and pushing up, Gary toppling, John coming down on top of him and now their positions were reversed: Gary was sprawled out on his belly, his head dangling over the edge of the bridge - John pressed his knee down on Gary's back - the rosary now winding through his own fingers as he glided it around Gary's throat, the length of it far longer than it had been mere moments before. Behind the pounding of his heartbeat and the rushing pulse in his ears, John could hear Chas' muffled voice, weak and disoriented, imploring him to stop. John looked up. Behind Chas was the ghostly figure of Cheryl, saddened but calm as she watched on; behind her was the shadowed outline of something altogether unworldly, resting delicate clawed hands on his sister's ballooning belly. John's eyes glazed over; his hands twisted of their own accord. Gary thrashed and clawed and snarled, the only thing he could see the very same waters John had thrown himself into two years ago.

No, not the same waters. Not the same John.

There was a sickening, grinding crunch, and then a wet and visceral snap, and Gary fell limp. John felt an indulgent wickedness spreading warmly throughout his body; and then it all came back into focus as he fell back in horror, the night quiet once more.

Roman's Archive

_{Location: Liverpool - England}

#1.04

^{_{_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}}

Chas was currently taking his third phone call of the last ninety minutes, chatting away with the air of politeness held by someone who was only talking to the other because they wanted something, and to get it they had to grin and bear the pleasantries. He'd dropped some texts to old contacts, dealers he used to bargain with - hoping that someone had had recent tradings with Gary, or at least knew someone else who had. The first two hadn't known anything and had at least half-suspected Chas to be part of some narc sting, especially as they'd not heard from him in the last two years - those calls had been swift and un-enlightening, quickly shut down. The third though - more forthcoming. Gave Chas the benefit of the doubt; he was either cocky or thick, but it didn't really matter which, as long as he had the information they wanted. In the Before Times, the guy had been an infrequent backup when other dealers fell through, or the group was in a pinch. He had been reliable, and near-always available - Chas just didn't like him, because he had a habit of trying to push harder stuff than just the weed they wanted, and when they turned him down, he had a petty tendency to mark up what they'd actually came for. He was an opportunist with little scruples, and Chas expected that not to have changed.

Chas finally got off the phone and turned to John, who looked sullen, but was actually just bored.
"You alright?"
"I can hear Cheryl." John answered, gravitas filling his voice. Chas looked panicked for a moment, quickly sitting beside John and putting a hand to his shoulder.
"You can?" He asked, urgency in his tone.
"Yeah. She's saying I should have brought a book."
John smirked as Chas pushed off him, his face swapping from concern to aggravation.
"Bastard." Chas said, then looked at his phone as it pinged. "Alright, I have good news and bad news."
"Good news, please. Need some of that."
"Fella dealt to Gary pretty recently. Knows where he was staying. Gaz might still be there."
John's face perked up, excited at this positive development. Cautiously, he asked:
"And bad news?"
"He sold Gary a lot. Like, a lot a lot. Like, what did you do to get this cash and why are you making a swan-song purchase, a lot."
"Ah."
"Yeah. And he's not heard from him since, either. Maybe Gary was just buying in bulk like a sensible consumer...or maybe..."
"Or maybe he shot up everything he had and we're gonna find him on his back with a faceful of his own vomit." John finished the thought. "If the coppers haven't already bagged him."

He sat back and sighed. Every step forward seemed matched by another one back.
"But the guy has the address, and he just sent me the meet spot. We just have to bring cash."
"Bastard."
"Yup. Regular entrepeneur." Chas agreed, bouncing his leg and staring off into the setting sun. "What do you want to do?"
John dragged his hands down his face. Despite the cool temperatures of the encroaching evening he felt sweaty and unsettled.
"Fuck it, let's go. It's the best lead we have. If this falls through we'll just have to call it. Maybe one day he'll find us instead."
"The only thing Gary's finding is a vein he hasn't blown through." Chas remarked in a low, cynical voice. All the same, he slapped his knees and stood up. "Alright. It's not too far. You got cash on you?"
John put a hand into his pocket and pulled out the notes inside, counting them up in his head. He felt a knot in his stomach as he thought about what was left of this month's Universal Credit. It'd have to do. They couldn't turn away now.
"Yeah, but not enough if I remember this guy's prices right. I'll have to get more."
"Bank machine on the way." Chas said, already walking off. "Let's get moving."

---

It all felt a bit cliche to John. They'd crossed to the city outskirts and snuck through a roundabout to underneath the motorway bypass, great concrete pillars holding aloft the hundreds of cars that roared past overhead. The rough ground around them was littered with rubbish discarded by drivers above, and roadkill that had been flung over the roadside barriers; birds, mostly, popped into split-open carcasses and clouds of feathers, but also the odd squirrel or rat that had made the poorly-fated climb. John could see all had been gnawed at indiscriminately, and some of the bursted corpses made his stomach turn. Ahead of them where the bypass rose was a flat cement wall that marked the end of the initial ramp; it was against this surface that he and Chas could make out the dim figure of their rendevous partner, illuminated only by the faint orange glow of his cigarette. John itched to look at it, and almost instinctively reached for his own pack, sparking up and puffing away as they approached.

Beverly Hughes was an unfortunate man. His name had caused him no end of grief most of his life, but at this point he had become inured to it, and even much preferred it to the other moniker that had been attached to him. You see, Beverly was a misshapen fellow, rotund and bottom-heavy with an awkward, rolling gait. He was also quite short, and pronouncedly hairy, and his face, while large and round, had all its main features converging to a point on his wide nose, with a small mouth hanging beneath and a pair of prominent front teeth completing the picture. The resemblance was as uncanny as it was undeniable. That the maligned sobriquet fit quite neatly against Beverly's actual name was just a petty joke played by God.
"Alright, Beaver?" Chas called out as they neared, attempting a friendly, jovial air - but Christ, even at a distance and in this fading light, John could tell he didn't half put his foot in it.
"Very bad start..." John murmured low so only his friend could hear. Chas just waved dismissively.
"Fuck off, Chandler." Was Beverly's only reply, his rodential face immediately darkening. Chas opened his mouth to speak once more, but John pulled the cig from between his lips with one hand while fishing the cash from his pocket with the other, stepping in front and across Chas to interrupt him before he blundered again.

"I've got the money." John announced, taking the attention of Beverly's squirrelly little eyes away from the gesticulating Chas. Beverly lashed a hand out to seize the wad from John's grip, and then passed back a small scrap of folded paper. John opened it carefully. Scrawled in biro was an address - an address John had heard before. It was one many 'roommates' from his hostel wound up in. He could've slapped himself.
"When did you last see him?" He asked, tucking the paper away. Beverly didn't look up as he thumbed through the notes, counting it was all there.
"Mmmm...three weeks, maybe?" He answered, non-committal. "More than a fortnight, less than a month."
"Anything unusual?"
"Nah. More paranoid than usual but who isn't these days. He's been a pretty regular customer past two years. Would have expected to hear from him again by now."
"And you haven't?"
"I told Chas over the phone. Gaz bought big last time. You're probably looking for a corpse."
"We're staying optimistic." John growled, Beaver's flippant nature and ugly face beginning to grate on him.
"Well good luck, but I'd say you're wasting your time. Guy's been looking for the will to kill himself for two years, and you ask me, he just found it. He's been fucked up ever since that girl he was sweet on disappeared."

John screwed his eyes shut, but not before he saw Chas tense up as well. Beverly didn't notice either of them shift in demeanour, and carried on shoving his foot in his mouth.
"Never did figure out what happened, not for lack of trying bless him. Well, as much as shooting smack up to your eyeballs can be called 'trying', anyway. I did tell him to forget it. She probably just ran away. Shit town, shit fam, shit mates, who wouldn't! Either that or the silly bint got herself snatched, or killed, or both. Any day now, they'll dredge her skeleton out of the Ter-"

Beaver did not manage to finish his sentence. There was a dull smack, the sound of flesh hitting flesh, then a couple more, and then the addition of leather into cloth as boots wailed against the fallen figure.

John opened his eyes. To his own surprise, it had not been him to lay into Beverly. Chas was standing over the groaning huddle of Beaver, his shoulders heaving. Chas bent down and ripped the cash from Beverly's fist.
"Chas..." John said, almost a whisper. Chas turned to look at him, a frightening expression of tranquil and deliberate rage painted across his face. John pointed at a bush off to their right. "...do you see Cheryl over there?"
Chas followed John's arm, took a long look at the indicated shrubbery, and then returned his eyes to John's as his face softened.
"No, John, I don't." He answered. "How's our old girl looking?"
John took another look. Cheryl stood with her arms twisted and stretched out toward them. Her hair was matted with dirt and grease and some viscous ooze; it fell across her face and obscured her expression, except for her mouth, warped into a screaming maw roaring in some unheard black tongue. He tried not to look at her belly, torn and ragged and hanging off in loose strips of flesh beneath a shredded, blood-stained blouse.
"Fine." John lied. "We need to get out of here."
Chas nodded, giving Beverly's writhing form a final kick for good measure.
"Yes lad, I would say we do."

---

John and Gary sat in John's kitchen, the steady rain pattering at the window as the hallway clock's ticking melded with the raindrops into an off-kilter rhythm that set John's teeth on edge. The pair were quiet aside from the slight clinking of glass bottles being lifted from the table to their lips and back down again. John had opened his dad's case of Becks and deemed it free for pilfering; he'd pay Hell for it later, when Thomas returned from work late that evening, but right now he didn't care. The belt was normal by now; there wasn't any point to fearing something that had become so routine. With any luck, between the Becks and the plastic bottle of voddy he'd stolen, he'd be drunk enough by then to barely feel it anyway.

It had been a fortnight since any of them had heard from Cheryl, and a week since John had reported her missing to the police. Six days since he'd sat at this very table under very different circumstances, pinned between a stern police officer and a reticent Thomas, pertinent questions asked and guarded answers given. All he'd wanted to do then was seize the baton from the back of the officer's belt and pulp his father's head with it until he gave up what he'd done to his sister; now, that suspicion had crept away. Thomas just didn't seem to care all that much. There had been a time, distant and fading from memory, that Thomas Constantine had loved his daughter - but since the day John killed his brother and mother, Thomas' hatred of his surviving son had stained everything else. Cheryl defended John, protected him, looked after him, cared for him unconditionally; so by her actions she was deemed tainted by their father, an extension of John's rot. Another thing he'd taken from Thomas. Another threshold carved on the boundary between Before and After John. John felt the encroaching spectre of his own defining delineation; he looked back on With Cheryl with deep fondness, despite its own hardships. He could not fathom a life Without.

John cleared his throat, breaking the silence. Gary didn't react, just swayed slightly in his seat as he carried on drinking. When John spoke, his voice was scratchy and hoarse from under-use.
"Coppers said they'd be able to crack her phone in a day or two."
This was the latest development in the case. Truthfully, it was the first proper forward direction since the missing persons report had been filed. The police had rifled through Cheryl's room for any indicators of where or when or why; they'd discovered more an absence of items than a presence of anything meaningful or incriminating, but the phone was at least significant, an opportunity to review recent activity and potentially monitor anything new.
"Then we can see if she's been threatened, or pissed off some creep. Find a suspect, maybe."
Gary grunted, a dry noise of acknowledgement but little else.
"When I get my hands on whoever took her..." John mused, mostly to himself but still loud enough for Gary to hear. An empty promise, made by the desperate - unable to mount a rescue, so reduced to vowing retribution instead. For a micro-instant, Gary frowned, a dark anger passing across his face; John almost missed it, the expression so brief and Gary's face falling back into drunken fugue so quickly that he wasn't sure it had ever occurred to begin with.
"I think I see her sometimes." John continued, picking at the label on his half-empty bottle. He drained it and opened another. "Catch her face in a crowd, or a whiff of her perfume, or hear her chuckle. But when I turn to look, or run after it, it's not her. It's never her..." he trailed off, taking another long sip of lager. It wasn't working half as fast as he needed it to.

This time, Gary's dark expression lasted longer, and he leant forwards in his chair. The plastic creaked beneath him.
"Wishful thinking," he replied, pointing at John with the neck of his bottle, "or a guilty conscience."
"What?"
"Which is it, Johnny-boy?"
Gary didn't budge; John was stunned, but he felt outrage bubble within him. He set his own bottle aside.
"What the fuck is that supposed to mean, Gary?"
John was raising his voice. Gary retracted his bottle and finished the beer, standing up and looming over John from across the table.
"You've been consorting with devils, John Constantine."
John slammed the table; bottles jumped and toppled, his own drink splashing to the floor as the fallen beer rolled to the edge of the table and tumbled off. He stood, pointing his own aggressive, accusatory finger in Gary's face, trembling slightly.
"Have you gone fucking mental, Lester? Like, have you actually lost your marbles? Say what you fucking mean to say."
There was a long moment of quiet, a stand-off between the two boys. The hallway clock had stopped ticking.

Eventually, Gary blinked, and he stepped out from the table, unhooking his jacket off the back of the chair as he went.
"I'm leaving. Thomas is going to beat you raw when he gets home."
John sat down, shaking, retrieving his spilt beer. "Get the fuck out of my house, cunt."
"Raw, Johnny. But not half as much as you deserve."
Suddenly the bottle in John's hand sailed through the air at a vicious speed; it passed within a hair's breadth of Gary's temple, and obliterated itself against the kitchen wall. Glass shards and lager oozed down the plaster.
"I said get the fuck OUT!"

Gary left. John stared at the wall for a while, and then he wept and wept.

---

John's last words to Gary lingered in his mind as he and Chas arrived at the address on the scrap of paper Beaver had given them. They were both anxious and fidgety; the remnants of adrenaline still coursed through their systems from their altercation with Beverly, and they were also aware that Bev knew exactly where they were going and who they were looking for - now, they were against the clock, racing to find Gary before Beaver did, or before he caught up with them, or both. The place looked promising, at least. John knew of it off-hand from some ex-residents of his own hovel, and as they approached, a vagrant-looking young man watched them suspiciously from the first-floor window. John looked up, trying to discern if their observer was also their quarry; whoever it was, they darted away from the glass before he could make them out. He briefly thought he saw the outline of Cheryl's rough-cut bob past the fluttering net curtains, but brushed the notion away quickly. Since he'd opened up to Chas, he felt elucidated; the visions were not so all-consuming, easier to dismiss. Reality felt more within his gift. It was a feeling he had forgotten, and not one he wanted to give up or take for granted again.

"Your turn I think." John said, his voice low while the pair surveyed the despondent building before them. Chas looked back at him and raised an eyebrow; John could only shrug, looking kite-like with his hands in his jacket pockets. "Last time Gary and I spoke...last time we ever spoke - we didn't exactly leave it on good terms."
"And what if it's not Gary that answers? Got bad blood with all of Liverpool?"
John wouldn't be surprised if he had. "My track record with strangers not so great either."
Chas couldn't argue with that, so he huffed and stomped up the front path, delivering several heavy blows to the flimsy plywood door. His knocks peeled out like thunder, and John couldn't help but feel overcome with a deep sense of ill omen. They waited. There was murmured commotion within the house. John hoped this would be the last strange home they would need to cold-call; and then, finally, the door opened.

Chas backed away immediately, suddenly throwing his hands up and open, palms flat and facing out, making calm and steady movements. John couldn't see anything at first, but as the door swung open completely, the flickering streetlight illuminated the doorway and caught the glinting metal of a blade, brandished waist-height toward Chas. He felt a surge of panic, but daren't move; sudden action would be a very poor decision at this juncture.

The wielder of the kitchen knife - a rather large kitchen knife, John noted with another pang of fear - stepped fully into the light; he was scratty, agitated, greasy and dirty and littered with trackmarks up his arms. Chas kept his distance, and spoke with a gentle tone, slouching his posture and bending his knees slightly to reduce his height as much as he could and appear as non-threatening as possible. The doorman looked jumpy, and no one needed hospitals or police involved.
"Easy, fella. Not here on any bad business. My friend and I are just looking for someone."
Chas pointed back at John, who pulled his own hands out of his pockets to hold them up and show empty palms as well, throwing in a slight wave at the same time.
"That's my friend," Chas continued, "his name is John. I'm Chas. We're looking for Gary."
The doorman's face dropped, his eyes going wide and skin pale. The hand holding the knife dropped, arm slack at his side, to which both Chas and John breathed a slight sigh of relief.
"W-what d'ya want w-with him?" He asked, fear and urgency filling his voice.

There was something electric in the air. The question felt leading, like the answer was already known and expected, he just needed Chas to say it. All of a sudden, John wanted deeply and darkly to abandon his mission, give up on his search; he and Chas needed to leave, to go home, to watch some shit telly and depart for London in the morning. No good would come of pushing even one more step down this path.

It was too late. Chas was already answering.

"We, uh - we want to put things right."
The knife clattered to the floor, released from its grip in shock.
"That's what he said you'd say." The man hissed, and Chas shot John a worried look. John could only return it in kind.
"Yeah, he's been here. Out of his mind, man. Talking about devil worship and black magic for weeks. Thought it was just the drugs, but he wouldn't stop, man, just kept talking and shooting up more than I've ever seen anyone shoot. Yeah, he mentioned you two as well. Said you were looking for him. Hunting him down. Called your 'friend' all sorts, a warlock, a sorceror, a demon in disguise - and you, man, you, he called you a pet, a husk, a meat bag puppeted around-"
"I mean I've put on a few pounds sure but-" Chas tried to lighten the mood, calm the frightened man down, but he was cut off with a look of deep terror and dread that belied the gravity of Gary's lunatic ravings.
"He said you'd arrive. Tonight. And he said you'd say exactly what you did say."
"Look mate, why don't we step in, get this all sorted-"
"NO!" The man shouted, and suddenly the knife was back in hand and raised once more. John's heartrate spiked and Chas put a few more steps between him and the blade. "You're not coming in here. Gary ain't here. He left this morning and he left you a message: if you're looking for him, if you really wanna 'make it right', then you go to the bridge so you can try again."

Powerful horror gripped John, and Chas went rigid.
"Now fuck off. Gary might be mad, but I'm not taking any chances anymore. You take whatever bad voodoo you're carrying away from here."

The door slammed shut; neither Chas nor John had any desire to try it again. They stared at each other for stretched-out seconds, letting something dark and unnerving take root in their bones; and then, all at once and without a word, turned toward the River Mersey and the fateful bridge that spanned it.

Roman's Archive

_{Location: Liverpool - England}

#1.03

^{_{_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}}

John and Chas stood on the other side of the street, leaning on a lamppost as they looked up at the home Chas had lead them to. The sun was out today but did little to dispel the Autumn nip in the air, and as John cast his eyes over the front of the terraced house he pulled his jacket a little tighter around himself, feeling the temperature dip another one or two degrees. John only had vague recollections of this building, this street; the colour of the brick and the row of gates and low walls certainly felt familiar, but he could summon no memories of the house's interior. They must have spent time here - between Thomas' drunken abuse and Chas' ogre of a mother, the Lester household was the only calm home the four of them had known - but it all escaped him now. Instead, he could only linger on the state of disrepair the house had fallen into. The garden wall was chipped and cracked, faded graffiti marking the front side; the gate hung limply off one hinge, the wood rotted; the front door was scuffed and scratched up its entire height, and a piece of roughtly-cut plywood had been nailed across one of the window panes. What little grass there was in the front yard was overgrown and yellow in patches, and the ground that could be seen was littered with cigarette butts. There was a dark sense of portent about the place; it loomed over them even from across the road, shadows stretching out toward them. John had a feeling like he and Chas were carcasses, splayed out across the asphalt, and the house were some starving, feral creature, desperate to eat and without the luxury of finding a better meal. He suppressed a shiver.
"You sure this is the place, Chas?" John asked, secretly hoping it wasn't, but he knew already.
"Not certain, no. But I know it's not the wrong place." Chas answered, cryptically, but John had no need to clarify. He knew exactly what Chas meant. He felt it too.
"On with ya, then." Chas said, sweeping his arm to usher John over the road. John looked from him to the house and back again, nervous; his carotid throbbed against his neck as his heartrate quickened.
"Me?"
"Yes, you. Your crusade, ain't it?"
John shrugged slightly, non-committal. He hadn't thought as far ahead as actually finding Gary, and certainly hadn't spent any time on what he might say on seeing him again. The phone call to Chas had had that degree of disconnection to make things easier - but he'd have no such advantages meeting Gary face to face.
Chas elbowed him in the back.
"Yeah alright mate. I'm going."

John hopped briskly across the street and picked his way through broken glass and ciggie butts to the house's front door. He hesitated for a couple seconds, his fist hanging in the air, before finally bringing it to bear against the solid wood, three sharp raps on the door ringing out into the building beyond. There was a pause; a long pause, long enough to think no one was in, and as John didn't hear sound or movement from inside the house he almost assumed it had all been a failed endeavour and made to turn away, pre-empting a shrug to Chas - but then there were footsteps on the other side, and locks clicked and chains rattled and the door opened. Stood in the doorway was a young woman - older than Chas or John, but still young - dressed in a velour tracksuit and bearing an expression of thunderous defiance; yet still tempered around the edges by a look of quiet fear, as her gaze darted from John, to Chas across the street, and back to John, two strange men on her doorstep. They didn't know her either.
"Yeah? What you want?" She said, demanding but shakey. John realized he has stood silent for a few more seconds than was appropriate. He cleared his throat and tried a friendly smile; the scrunched-up scowl he got in response did not bode well.
"Um, we're l-looking for, uh, G-Gary? Gary Lester? O-or at least his, um, his m-mum. She lives- lived here. Uh..." John floundered, unable for the life of him to remember Gary's mum's name. "...Mrs. Lester?" He settled on, wincing as he said it. The girl looked him up and down, and John felt familiar feelings of being weighed and measured against some obscured metric.
"Don't know no Gary. But old bat who lived here last was Helen Lester."
John's face lit up at that - 'Helen' rang dusty old bells. The girl must have read his expression, because she continued: "She left a forwarding address. D'ya want it?"
"Yes, please. Thank you." John answered, in his best attempt at a friendly and deferential tone.
"Alright. Two ticks. Stay here."
"No problem."

The girl stepped away, retreating back down the hallway into the depths of the house, disappearing around a corner at the end of the hall. John let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding, and turned back to look at Chas. He flashed a thumbs-up to his friend, which Chas half-heartedly returned, and then John pivoted back to the door to the house-

Cheryl walked across the end of the hallway and vanished around the same corner as the girl had gone previously.

John didn't hesitate. He stepped into the house and took quick, fevered steps down that corridor, his mind consumed by the singular purpose of finding his sister. He reached the end and peered around the corner in the direction he's seen her but there was only more hallway; yet he couldn't let himself be deterred. He barreled around the turn, picking up his pace, footsteps stomping down vinyl flooring as he investigated doorways, cupboards, peered into offshoot rooms; the hallway went on and one, twisting into the bowels of the earth. John had crossed the threshold, already far deeper into this expanding corridor than he knew he could be - the house wasn't this deep, didn't turn like this, the floorplan was laid out all wrong - but he paid it no mind. It didn't matter. Cheryl was in here.

He turned another corner and there she was, idly fidgeting with some bits of paper, back turned to him. He was overcome with emotion, happiness and relief blossoming within him but also a deep anger: that she'd been fine this whole time, that she'd hidden from him, that she'd caused all this pain for him and his friends and had just been living in this run-down old house - he clapped his hand down on her shoulder, twisting her around and ready to embrace, to confront, to weep and prostrate before his lost sister...

It wasn't her. It was the girl who'd answered the door. The winding halls were gone and they were stood just around the corner off the end of the main hallway from the front door.
"John?! John!" Chas was hollering from the entryway. The girl's eyes were wide with fear.
"Get the fuck offa me!" She shrieked, and then the whole house erupted.

John was a panicking mess; he oscillated between profuse apology and stuttering explanation, trying to clarify what he'd seen and the reasons behind his actions to a deaf audience. Chas barreled in, committing his own trespass in order to pull John out, hooking him under the arms to yank full-bodied back down the hallway toward the front door, spilling his own apologies as he tugged and wrestled against John's flailing limbs. The girl herself was shrieking and hurling expletives, bursting with anger born of fear, and in the ruckus her partner had appeared - a large and ill-tempered man who now turned to violence in defense of his loved one, shoving and jostling and poking harsh fingers into John's chest. His temper only grew hotter and his face redder in the wake of John's babbling, and quickly he took a fistful of collar as John tried to wrench away from his arms, accusing fingers escalating to slaps and light blows. Above all this, Chas just kept apologising, kept pulling John out the door, and eventually they crossed back out through the entryway and, with a final shove from the boyfriend, tumbled to the ground in a dishevelled heap. The irate man stood in the doorway, a singular arm gesturing a strong warning to John:
"Your sister's fucking dead!"
John's ears rang. Part of him refused to believe he'd heard those words. "W-what did you just say to me?!" He demanded, which only stoked the fire; it would seem that only the woman's grip on his other arm prevented the man from continuing his beatings.
"I said I ever see your face again, you're fucking. DEAD!" He screamed back, and then slammed the door on them.

"C'mon, John." Chas said quietly as the street returned to stillness around them. The two picked themselves up, John pulling a couple small shards of glass and asphalt out of his palms, and they slowly walked back down the road the way they'd came.

---

John, Cheryl, Chas, and Gary all sat in a circle on the carpet in Gary's bedroom. The evening twilight cast dappled, purple-orange sunset rays through the window, and the lamp in the corner produced a warm ambience that kept the group cosy and coddled. Chas pulled a few puffs from a half-smoked joint and held his breath, counting the seconds down until he finally released, blowing smoke rings before expelling the rest and handing the spliff to John. The smoke hung in a thin layer from the ceiling, and only served to further the gloaming atmosphere that sought to swaddle them. John's effort with the joint was less heroic, but enjoyed all the same, and the depleting bifter next went to Cheryl, then Gary, and then the circle repeated until they were smoking the remnants of the roach. Cheryl made the call, stubbing the smouldering remains out on the sole of her boot before dumping the stub in an empty can. The four relaxed, sitting quietly in their collective high, soaking in what was left of the ambient smoke.

Cheryl swigged a can of Irn Bru, wrinkling her nose slightly as she swallowed. She reached for the snacks in the center of the circle - the group was idly picking at Haribo, Twiglets, a half-empty packet of stale Hobnobs - and shoved a fistful into her face before swigging again.
"Shit ain't been the same since sugar tax." She said, breaking the silence and with it the hazy spell the boys had fallen under. John reached for the can, sniffing the opening suspiciously before taking a sip for himself. He produced his own grimace and passed it back.
"Seems just as vile as it's always been." He replied, and Cheryl only smirked in answer. Chas stood up, swaying on his feet slightly before steadying himself and traipsing over to a coolbox in the corner of the room; he lifted the lid, retrieved three cans of Stella, and rejoined the circle. He, Gary, and John all cracked their tabs and drank while Cheryl watched over the rim of her soda. John finished two-thirds of his can in one pull, and when he set it down, his sister picked it up and shook it a little, feeling the weight of it in her hand. She didn't say anything, but they were both thinking of Thomas.

Gary rolled another joint and around it went again. The boys made their way through the eight-pack Cheryl had bought them from the offy - John declined a third can, conscious of his father in him, and instead let Chas and Gary polish off the odd two at the end of the case - and John zoned out to the stereo, Two Coffins' lyrics wrapping round and around his head as he sunk into the smog. One day soon, there'll be nothing left of you and me. Or you, or you. Counting off his only friends on his fingers. Four coffins for sleep.

His daze was interrupted by Gary's quick shift upright and onto his feet, darting over to the stero to switch it off. The sudden absence of music felt like a cold plunge, and John blinked hard as he came back to earth.
"White Crosses was so much better than this." Gary said, running a finger over his stack of CDs to pick something new. "And no politics getting in the way either."
Gary shouted as he was suddenly pelted with empty cans and one not-so-quite empty one that splashed its dregs up the nape of his neck. He whipped around, already holding his hands up in surrender while stumbling out a quick apology.
"Shut the fuck up, Lester." John answered, dropping the next can he'd scooped up as ammo. "Dysphoria Blues is a masterpiece, and you're an arsehole."
"They're both decent," Chas interjected, "but 'masterpiece' is a bit strong."
John waved him away dismissively. "What do you know anyway. You can't pick your Against Me's from your Rise Against's."
Chas shrugged, not really having a horse in the race. John was the only one in the group to get this worked up about music.
"Cheryl, you have to back me on this. TBD over Crosses any day."
Cheryl gave her own shrug, showing John a wry smirk.
"I like Shape Shift." She said, and to this, Gary and John both jeered.

"Doesn't matter anyway." Said Gary, diverting the conversation. "Talking 'bout the wrong band."
He finally fished a CD from the rack and loaded it into the player, and suddenly powerful strums began to pulse from the speakers and swell into the room. John bounced his leg as the chorus exploded forth; Gary, meanwhile, disappeared downstairs and returned with more beer. John declined initially, but Gary insisted, pressing the can into his hands. John looked at Cheryl, torn; she just shrugged again.
"Thomas won't notice anyway." She offered, and Gary chuckled.
"Thomas ain't expectin' ya!" He announced excitedly, and John and Cheryl exchanged quizzical looks. "Had me ma cover. Said we was all workin' on a group project."
John rolled his eyes. "In the clink for the night would've been more believable, Gaz." He remarked. Cheryl hushed him and raised an eyebrow to Gary.
"What're you planning, Gary Lester?" She asked, lucid and to the point. Her eyes glistened with a hopeful suspicion. At this, Gary grinned wider than ever, and stuck his hand underneath his mattress to rummage around, pulling out a large brown envelope that he tossed to the group's feet. Chas swept it up and peeked inside.
"Fuck off." He said. Impatient, John snatched the envelope for himself and pulled out the contents.
"Fuck off!"

In his outstretched arm John held four tickets for Frank Carter & the Rattlesnakes, live at the O2 Academy that very night.
"How the fuck d'you manage that, you cunt?!" John shouted, punching the now-laughing Gary in the arm before giving him a solid hug and joining in the laughter. He stepped back and cracked the fresh can Gary had fetched, raising it up while the others followed suit.
"Well fucking done, lad." John toasted, Chas giving Gary a fond slap on the back. "Let's go get fucked!"

---

John and Chas sat outside a Costa in the declining afternoon sun, thick silence hanging between them. John wrapped his still-shaking hands around the cardboard cup of milky, over-sweetened tea, focusing on the heat against his palms and the smell of the steam to try and ground himself. He replayed the incident in his head over and over and over, poring over every detail: the house, the girl, the Cheryl who was there and then wasn't, and then the rolling disaster afterwards. He had seen Cheryl; he had delved deep into impossible, twisting hallways; he had found her, seen her hair, smelled her perfume, heard her soft hums. And then he hadn't. He rubbed his eyes, pushing back a burgeoning headache. He couldn't let this happen again. Seeing things that weren't there, unable to trust his own senses, walking into warped realities. It wasn't fair. He was trying now. He fumbled for a cigarette, struggling to hold his lighter steady to spark up.

"I can't do this again, John." Chas declared. "You called me to patch things up and I gave you the benefit of the doubt. But I'm not sticking around if you're just gonna regress. I won't watch you jump off the Runcorn again."
There was a long stretch where all John did was smoke and cradle his drink and avoid eye contact. Chas grew increasingly frustrated, ignoring his own cooling coffee, and eventually he pushed his chair back to stand and storm off-
"When Cheryl first went missing we thought it'd just be a couple days. We all did, right?"
Chas sat back down.
"Sure. She knew people all over Liverpool. Manc and Blackpool too. Not like she hadn't taken breaks from Thomas before."
"Exactly. Couple days and she'd reappear, like normal. We just got on in the meantime, us lads. Business as usual. Duck my dad and head down the park for some bevs."
John sat forward, dragging on his cigarette, sipping his tea, feeling the warmth from both cascade down his throat and pool in his lungs and belly.
"We only filed with the pigs after a week because she hadn't even texted. Dad couldn't give a fuck but couple of the old bills knew him from noise complaints and an old social services visit so they actually took it serious when we reported. God they looked into him right quick and they were right to as well, the cunt. Wasn't him though. Even I believe that now. No evidence of foul play at all - that's why it was all so slow. Nothing broken, no other suspects. Even her phone was clean when they found it; no funny calls or texts or emails or nothing. So when it turned up her little cash hidey-hole was cleaned out and her earings and necklaces'd been sold and there was a missing suitcase and empty hangers in her wardrobe..."

John trailed off. This was known to Chas; he was just recounting history, setting the scene, working up to the meat of the matter.
"And then I started seeing her." John said, his burden revealed. "I started seeing her everywhere. And I'd run after her, because of course I did, who wouldn't? I wanted to find her, wanted to bring her home. I wanted to see my sister again. Didn't want to be alone in that house with Thomas anymore. And when I was alone, I'd screw my eyes shut, and I'd hear her instead. Gasps. Whispers. Little, little fragments of a sentence that I couldn't quite make out. Didn't tell anyone. Didn't say anything. Couldn't let you all know I was going completely fucking mental. You and Gaz were struggling anyway, I couldn't make it worse. And then when the coppers gave up...so did I. And I was just drifting, drifting, right up to the edge of the Runcorn Railway. And I saw Cheryl again on the way down, waving to me."
There was a break. Chas' nose and eyes were red and he blinked furiously. John himself felt oddly serene.
"Anyway. Was only after they fished me out of the Mersey most-of-the-way-dead that I actually got sat down in front of someone trained to hear this kinda thing. They called it a psychotic break and said I was a danger to myself. Suppose I was, given the jaunt they'd just pulled me from. Plus dear old dad had done a runner by then, so that was that. Committed. Marched me into Ravenscar and never looked back. Nurses in there threw pills and all sorts else at me for months and months. I did stop seeing things, hearing things, to be fair, but I completely shut down. Two years later they thought I could give the whole 'living' thing another go and let me out. Conditionally. They needed the bed space, I think. And here we are. Wasn't seeing Cheryl, but wasn't doing much else either."
"Jesus, John..."
"And then today I saw Cheryl again. And Chas, God help me it feels so real. I just fixate on it."
"John..." Chas sighed. He was reeling, torn, shredding his conscious to pieces wanting to help his oldest friend, but also desperately aware of a need to protect himself as well. He was stunned. John just soldiered on.
"Everyone's like, 'healing isn't linear', like that makes it easier when things get fucked up. It doesn't, but it's not wrong. I am getting better. I want to get better, which is a few steps up from even only a couple days ago. But I might stumble. Hell, not might, I did. And I'm sorry! I'll always be sorry. I'll never not be sorry, for all of it, for all the ways everything got fucked up and ruined. But I promise - I promise - I am not going to try and hurt myself again. And I'm going to ignore what I can't trust. And when we find Gary, and I can apologise, and I can at least try to make things right with him as well - I'll give up on this city. I'll give up on Cheryl. Fuck Liverpool. Never did me no good. If you'll have me, I'll come back with you to London, and I'll start over. I'll leave it all behind."

John sat back, his spiel over, his confession made. His cigarette had burnt out but his tea was still lukewarm, and he finished it before lighting another stick. A weight felt lifted. Chas maintained his silence. John waited for him to get up and walk away; there was still time to catch a train back to London and not lose the entire evening.

"I got one last lead on Lester we can try. After that, we might just have to accept he's gone. Hope he's somewhere peaceful with your sister."
John tried to smile as he began to weep.
"Thanks, Francis."
"Don't mention it, Johnny."

Roman's Archive

_{Location: Liverpool - England}

#1.02

^{_{_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}}

John was ten, Cheryl fourteen. It was Summer in Liverpool, or at least as much Summer as Liverpool could allow; though warm, the sky was still covered by a pallid shroud of gray clouds, the sun smothered behind them. The Constantine siblings were collecting change - running through the streets, spotting shrapnel on the floor, swiping cash from abandoned tables, rattling for coins in phoneboxes and vending machines, even scooping coins out of fountains. John's pockets clinked melodically with copper and silver scrap as he joked, jostled, teasted and cracked wise, no leg unpulled, no wool left without eyes to cover. Every hoodwink would receive an eyeroll from Cheryl, but then she'd turn away and hide her face as she giggled, tittering at John's uncharacteristic rambunctiousness; this was the only audience John cared about, the only performance he was moved to put on. An afternoon to forget their troubles and gallavant about town unfettered, acting every inch the children they were supposed to be.

At a dockside cafe, Cheryl distracted the owner with meandering, protracted questions about the menu and the coffee and pointless childish musings that the recipient was far too polite to halt; meanwhile, John dipped his hand into the tip jar and came up with a fistful of silvers, surreptitiously slipped into his pocket as he picked a table outside. His sister ordered cola and sandwiches, plus one packet of crisps that they shared, littering the insides of their doorstop slices with the bag's contents - and then, when the owner was once again distracted serving another customer, the pair ran, laughing at themselves and each other as the frustrated shouts faded into the distance behind them.

Back to the high street and the duo ducked into a Boots and found a disposable camera. At the tills, John emptied his pockets onto the counter so that Cheryl could dutifully count out the correct amount, pushing the small pile of coins when finished toward the beleaguered cashier and returning what was left to John's trousers. They unwrapped it there and then, leaving the plastic behind before running off with their prize. The pair filled the roll in only a couple short hours, coming back to the same Boots to develop the film as soon as the last shutter clicked closed and the finished film rattled inside the camera. John turned out his pockets again to cover the fee, and when his remaining change came up short he and Cheryl made a show of digging in pockets and socks and purses, hemming and hawing while the attendant at the counter huffed and puffed in growing exasperation, until their combined performance become too tedious to deal with any longer, and the oustanding amount was waived entirely.

With the sunlight fading and the day coming to a close, but neither child prepared to surrender to the onset of evening even amidst shuttering businesses signalling them to go home, John and Cheryl sat on a high street bench and thumbed eagerly through their envelope of photographs. Many of the pictures were marred by poor lighting, or an unfortunate lens glare, or even intrusion from John's clumsy fingers across the shutter as he'd played with the camera, but one photo stood out: Cherly was standing center-frame, the Royal Albert Docks positioned neatly behind her, smiling and laughing at the John behind the camera. The clouds had opened up in a moment of serendipity to free the sun and stream rays down onto the water, which bounced off the dappled surface to light up the picture from behind. The created effect sillhouetted Cheryl near-perfectly, and she was outlined in a way that looked evocative of the gold-flaked paintings of saints by the old masters. To John, the photo was remarkable, perhaps the singular accomplishment of his young life so far; it captured a paradoxically fleeting and infinite moment of serenity, and seemed to encapsulate an angelic quality about Cheryl. It was a glowing representation of John's sister though John's eyes. He loved it, and her, and they spent the rest of the evening delaying their inevitable return home by any means necessary.

---

John's eyes could burn a hole through the photograph, such was the intensity of his stare. He'd not stopped stealing glances since he'd left the house, his hand dipping almost reflexively at intervals into the inside pocket of his jacket - pulling it out, unfolding it, swallowing all the emotion it projected for the scant few seconds he could bare, before putting it back away. He'd held it between his fingers whilst on the payphone, moral support to make the call; he'd held it flat in his palm as he'd stood in front of the fridge in the corner shop and chosen a Ribena instead of a Red Stripe; and now, he held it pinched between the thumb and forefinger of each hand, sat on the steps in front of Liverpool Lime Street station, waiting for a train to get in but not sure which or when. He was still having trouble believing it even existed, even against the evidence of his senses; the picture must have been at least a decade old by now, and he hadn't thought of it since even before going away to Ravenscar - yet here it was, unmarred save for creases down the fold lines and a scuffed corner. There it had appeared in his jacket pocket, John himself struck by nothing less than a bolt of divine inspiration to check a wallet he hadn't opened in years and truthfully had forgotten he even possessed. Such strange and terrible dreams he was having, to be followed by the rediscovery of what amounted to a personal sacred relic.

John felt, just out of sight - just down the road, around the corner...he couldn't be sure, and the feeling passed with such haste; and yet, a lingering sense of a hand proffered, a guide down an unknown path...

His stupour was interrupted by a swift kick to his side just beneath the ribs, a jolt of shock more than of pain but flash-in-the-pan anger rearing up all the same - he whipped his head up, scowl set and ready, only for the bubble to burst immediately as he clapped eyes on the one responsible.
"Hi, John."
"Hi, Chas."

There was a pregnant pause. Chas loomed over John; he was a tall man anyway, having the better part of a full foot over John, and from his standing position above his friend's seated perch he towered, blotting out the sun as John squinted up at him. In two years Chas had grown and changed; taller, sure, but the way he held himself had shifted too, more cautious now, guarded by default. His hair had grown out, and the mussed waves were struggling against a plain cap that attempted to tame the wild strands, while his hands, pockmarked and tan, idly scratched at a rough, couple-days-unshaven beard. Chas' eyes looked older than John knew he was. Overall, John was struck by how grown-up Chas looked. He wondered how he himself held up under his old friend's gaze.
"Didn't realise you'd gotten out. Could have met you at the gate."
John looked back at the photo one last time before stowing it away and standing up.
"No you wouldn't have." He replied. If Chas was offended, John couldn't tell. His face was inscrutable.
"Can't believe you remembered my phone number." Chas said instead, changing track.
"I can't believe you haven't changed it."
"I figured at least one of us should have stayed reachable for everyone else 'round these ends."

There was a sharpness to that last jab that did not pass John by. He counted off people in his head: Cheryl disappeared. His dad up and left as soon as he was cleared as a preliminary suspect. Gary dived into vice, and John...well, John went diving too. In the midst of the maelstrom, Chas had moved to London to escape it all - but apparently couldn't stop himself laying at least one lifeline for those left behind. It was good-hearted nobility that John remembered as characteristic of Chas, if even just a sliver of it. There was another pause in the exchange as John computed and processed everything through the brain-fog.
"You look like shit, John," Chas finally said, but with a tone of compassion rather than derision. "But at least you're out."
He gestured off to John's side, signalling toward the station-side Wetherspoons.
"Lunch?"

---

They'd eaten, and Chas had had a pint while John sipped on a glass of Pepsi. Chas had the tact to notice John's quick glances at his ale and feigned distaste for a second drink once he'd drained his glass. Instead, they departed to wander the high street, window shopping in the ONE Mall until John grew weary of the security guard side-eyes; they stopped at Greggs on the way back, and as John chewed on great mouthfuls of sausage roll he realized with a dual twinge of guilt and regret that today had been the best he'd eaten since commitment to the asylum, and more than that it had all been on Chas' coin. He couldn't come up with the words to thank him, but hoped Chas would understand. Chas did, though equally he would not voice anything out loud. Eventually they called it, both feeling the fatigue of the day but for different reasons, and parted company with a follow-up rendevous agreed for the morning.

That very morning arrived quicker than either expected and they found themselves on a bench in the Rupert Lane rec ground with the early-morning mist coiling about their ankles and sipping on hot tea from paper cups once again emblazoned with the Greggs logo - this time John's treat in some honour-bound attempt at repayment for Chas' inadvertant charity the day prior. They exchanged idle pleasantries as the hot liquid scorched their bellies and brought them around to the day awaiting them, but these tapered away as hastily as the last vapours of tea, and the pair lapsed into an uncomfortable silence. Tension hung in the air, the atmosphere thick with all the thoughts and questions neither of them knew how to address. Eventually, Chas was the first to cross into the no-man's land that spanned the gap between them.

"Why'd you call me, John?" Chas asked.
John was disarmed, thrown askew by the question. It carried all the tone of a man finally shedding his burden, choosing to damn all consequence rather than bear the weight another second. John slow-turned to look at Chas, who did not return his gaze, only keeping his eyes locked on some distant horizon. After a minute, John answered:
"I said on the phone. Apologize. Make amends. See how you were getting on."
Chas sighed, the slightest hint of frustration in the motion.
"I meant, why'd you call me now?"
At this John was lost; the expression on his face must have said it all, because this time Chas did look at him before clarifying:
"Why now, two years later, and not then, before you threw yourself off that bridge?"

And there it was. The question hit John like a knife, sliding neatly between his ribs and popping his lungs like a balloon. His breath left him completely and his vision pulsed. He tried to stammer out an answer, willing the shaking in his hands to cease.
"You...you'd gone to London...Gary gone too - didn't, didn't want to bother you - you'd gone for a reason, thought it'd just all be neater if I..."
"I'd have come back. You know I would have. Hell, John, I came back yesterday. You could have said anything and I've have come back. You should have said something."
Tears welled behind John's eyes. He floundered for words, tripping over his own panicking mind.
"I understand why you didn't come with me. I understand you couldn't just give up on her. But to do that instead... I was still there for you, John. I'm still still here for you."

At that, the tears flowed freely; they were a stready stream, like a tap left on behind John's eyes, forgoing the wracking sobs for simple quiet, awkward weeping.
"I just..."
Through shaking breaths, John gathered what composure he could find, and considered his words before reciting them.
"Our friendship - you, Gary, Ch-Cheryl...it was - is - the only good, pure thing of my life. I just- if I was going to live, going to carry on? If I didn't want to end up face down in the Mersey again...I needed that back. However splintered, however small a part of it remained. I needed a light."
He patted his pockets, searching for the box he'd purchased that morning before meeting Chas, almost in anticipation of a conversation much like this one. He found it, and quickly put a cigarette to his lips, offering the box to Chas as well; he held up a hand to decline, but also raised a lighter in the other to spark John up. John took a few deep drags, and began to feel the knot in his chest loosen.
"I know I hurt you and Gary when you were already hurting over...over Cheryl. It wasn't fair. I'm sorry."
What else was there to say?

Chas sipped what must have been the cold and unpleasant dregs of his tea, stretching out the silence. John wiped his eyes on the sleeve of his jacket as the flow of tears slowed to a halt. He felt lighter, adrift in the post-emotion calm that came after a good cry.
"Okay." Chas finally answered, anti-climactic as all get-out.
"Okay?" John replied, not sure whether this was a good or bad response.
"I can't say I like being back here. I'm not going to sit here and lie and say seeing this town and these old haunts don't bring back hard, hurting memories. I can't even say looking at you at all is easy, like you aren't wearing the same stained tshirt you had on yesterday, or weighing twenty kilos less than you should. It's all painful, and that's the truth of it. It's all why I went to London in the first place."
Now Chas did look at John, and he rested a warm hand on his old pal's shoulder as he continued.
"But it's good to see you alive. Cognizant. Rejoining the rest of the world, instead of running away from it. I guess, John, what I'm saying, is that however tricky this whole thing is...I'm glad to be here. With you."

They embraced, ever-so-briefly, with all the stuttering, stilted movement of two young men poorly attempting to express their affection and emotions.

When they parted, they both cleared their throats, and set eyes straight forward toward that far-off invisible point once more.
"Did you keep in touch with Gary at all?" John asked, changing the subject and happy not to linger on that prior topic any longer. "Or keep tabs on him at all? It...it would be good to see him again as well. To apologize."
Chas shook his head in John's peripheral, an expected answer despite the hope that had crept in to the corners of the question.
"No. He went dark even before I moved, and after you went away- Lester may as well have dropped off the planet.""
John nodded absently, and then jumped as Chas suddenly stood and darted to a nearby bin to chuck his empty cup. He whirled around and looked at John with a face that said 'A-ha!', to which he could not help but return a slight smile.
"But," Chas said, "I do remember where his old ma used to live. I figure that's as good a place to start as any."

He stretched a hand to John, who studied it before seizing it and wrenched himself up off the bench.
"Alright then fella," he said, "lead the way."

Roman's Archive

_{Location: Liverpool - England}

#1.01

^{_{_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}}

<sub>^{A DREAM}
I am curled into a fetal ball, spinning and kicking aimlessly in a void of soft-light nothingness. I cannot see - my senses are blinded, numbed - but all around me, pressing against my skin, I feel colour and light flow through this shared liminal space and onwards toward the seams in reality. Claustrophobia settles in as the pressure maintains and my discomfort only builds as the space begins to shrink and trap me; my muscles scream against themselves as I push back against the encroaching darkness, attempting to divert or at least postpone my fate, but all efforts are ultimately futile. The void holds my chest in place, unable to expand and draw breath into my lungs - pressure, pressure, inside and out, on the verge of suffocation, lungs wailing and heart thundering for air, air, sweet air! - then the nothingness open beneath me and spits me out, a wad of primordial ooze, a stain upon the carpet. A cold mire clings to my skin. There is nothing here, just myself and the mud, a bog that spans as far as the horizon and further still.

With some difficulty, I stand, knee-high in thick black mud. I stand for years. Sunless days pass me by and I gaze up at starless night skies, straining every sense I have for a single sign of life. It takes several lifetimes, but eventually I hear it: a blunt, rhythmic thudding, somewhere in the distance beyond the mud. I cannot see a source - but the thudding is all there is, and so I move toward it.</sub>

---

John Constantine's room was a shithole.

It was, at least, in keeping with the rest of the house - a council hostel for deprived and houseless persons, suffering from budget cuts and the lack of care from its rotating cast of residents, most of whom were recent releases from either the prison or Ravenscar. Some left the city; some just left the hostel to find some other derelict to haunt. Others still just found themselves remanded back into penal custody. John had only been here a couple weeks, shown in with little more than a blanket and a few pairs of jeans to his name, and he'd already seen three other residents of varying stability come and go. He expected a new replacement any day now.

He rubbed his eyes, pushing off lingering drowsiness, which only gave way to a burgeoning hangover. Cans of Tennent's Super littered the floor, and his mouth was rank and dry with the aftertaste of cigarettes and lager. Gods but his head pounded, sounding a throbbing beat that seemed to swell and warp the walls. He could barely face the thought of moving, but a tiny voice, breaching the surface of his booze-fuelled oblivion ever-so-briefly, demanded water - to drink, to bathe, and Christ, to piss. John started slow and carefully pushed himself up on matchstick arms to a sitting position; the change in temperature as the duvet fell off his body was barely noticed, both because of the thin ineffectiveness of the sheets in the first place, but also because the movement pushed waves of nausea through him. He quickly became sweaty and clammy as his body prepared to vacate its contents, but no such luck, as welcome a purge might be; he instead just dry-heaved and tasted bile in the back of his throat. A plastic bag hung looped around one leg of the bedframe, an impromptu bin, and John hocked thing phlegm into it. The need for water overwhelmed him, and he could ignore his bladder no longer; he fished a stained pair of jeans from the corner of the bed and pulled them on as he hopped strategically through litter, cigarette butts, and dirty laundry to his room door, before making a quick dash down the hallway to the bathroom to shower and piss and drink gluttonously from the tap. His hangover, a fetid miasma of muscle ache, migraine, and nausea, crashed laboriously against him in waves - but with his pills, a handful of ibuprofen, and a couple slices of stale bread standing in for breakfast, he attempted to soldier through it.

Two hours later, out of the house and in the sunshine and lighting his third cigarette, the hangover had eased off; he'd sweated most of it out, and the smell clung to him, at least somewhat masked by tobacco. Still, though John had showered, the same could not be said for his clothes - jeans and a plain t-shirt beneath a Harrington jacket, an ensemble he had worn all week. Today, though - today was Universal Credit day, which meant today was also launderette day, and refilling his prescription day, and getting some more cigarettes day. All of that he stumbled through with heavy footsteps and a lulling head, pausing only briefly to enjoy a meal deal in the park as he waited for the pharmacy to re-open after lunch: an egg mayo sandwich and a full-fat coke were ambrosia in his hands. John found a moment of stillness on the bench after eating, another cigarette idly burning between his fingers, and he seized upon a fleeting feeling of peace - only for it to be broken just as quickly as the world rushed back in. Shrieking children and bluetooth speakers and obnoxious estate agents taking an early finish all pulled him back to a reality he had been trying to escape, or at least tune out; instead, he resolved to collect his pills, and then dash into the co-op on the way back to stock up, before he retreated back to his room to wile away the hours until sleep claimed him once more.

---

<sub>^{ANOTHER DREAM}
The thudding persists, and so do I. Slowly at first, every step demanding all my body has to give just to wrench my foot free of the mire, placing it forward and plunging it back into the muck just to repeat the motion, over and over in a monumentous effort that feels further out of reach every second...and yet, I glide effortlessly across the bog without movement, the mud motionless around me as I sail across the surface without a ripple, pulled forward along an invisible track. I see both; I do both; the thudding grows ever-louder as I strive onward.

I find myself, all of a sudden, in the centre of the swamp. There is a small grove of scorched trees here, their trunks charred and cracked, limbs twisted, split and blackened. They form a crude circle around a singular mound of dirt, upon which rests a great wooden block, stained with all manner of blood, muck, ooze, and foul scum and viscera. The thudding is at its loudest here, crescendoing in a violent volume that slams against me, and as I listen I can begin to discern shadowy, obscured figures surrounding the block. They look roughly human in a crude, unfinished sort of way; their outlines frayed and warping, faces blank and featureless yet radiating malice. Each of them clutches a cleaver, chopping incessantly at something upon that filty slab. The scene hurts to look at, but I cannot avert my gaze, cannot resist peering closer, desperate to see the meat they are butchering; when I finally make it out, I simply faint.</sub>

---

John was cold when he awoke. Almost feverish; he could feel the sweat clinging to his flesh, gluing sheets to skin, but there was a draught through his room that carried away all heat. His door was slightly open and drifting voices filtered through the gap - some manner of conversation, two stern voices and one self-affacing one. John knew immediately what was playing out beneath him: police visit, having either returned a runaway, delivered a new tenant, or just here to question around an existing one. Any way you sliced it, John was not interested. He reached for clothes and pulled on a clean pair of jeans and a shirt from a carefully folded-and-stacked pile atop a chair in the corner, then once more quietly padded down the hallway to the bathroom. He'd hoped he could just sit on the bog until the voices beneath him stopped and left, and then continue his day unassailed, but the squeaking bathroom door had already betrayed him; footsteps came up the stairs, and John listened to them tread past the lavatory to the doorway on his room, and then back again. They paused at the closed door, and then several light knocks sounded that let him know the jig was up; he stood, flushed, and prepared to meet whichever pig on the other side wanted to ruin his day before it had even begun.

John opened the door to be face-to-face with some wet-behind-the-ears PCSO, a young lad who looked only slightly less scrawny and slightly less pre-pubescent than John did himself. John ignored his introduction, as well as the timid wavers in his voice, to peer around him instead, noticing the broken window at the end of the hall. The shattered edges of the pane had been taped over, and a towel hastily hung across the opening, but this was clearly where the draught was coming from - and judging by the wiped-away remnants of fresh blood staining the sill and yet to be scrubbed out of the carpet immediately below, this was the likely catalyst for the current police presence. John sighed, an affectation the young faux-officer in front of him did not appreciate, before he was lead downstairs to join the actual police officer and the only other present resident of the house for 'questioning' in the form of a righteous and bullying lecture.

Lectures were the theme of the day; it opened with the porcine duo, John only permitted to make his escape after an hour in that uncomfortable kitchen, and then he was on his way to receive another at the local job centre. He was lucky enough to get only a brief dressing down from the receptionist, before sitting for another hour and then being called for a more expansive diatribe from his appointed case worker. He left that onerous meeting and the depressing, brutalist building that played host to it with a mixture of relief and dread swilling in the pit of his stomach; his next agenda item was the worst of the week - his therapist. He'd not opted for CBT when presented with a choice by the nurse overseeing his release from Ravenscar; such an active course, requiring such conscious and actionable behaviour from him, seemed an unconquerable mountain. Instead, he'd chosen what seemed to be the less arduous of the treatments offered, and so it was he was locked into a six-month minimum of guided counselling. This was to be only his third session, but already the urge to play truant had blossomed within him; only the looming spectre of the asylum battled the feeling, a forced remand back to that hostile cage and its darkened corridors the ever-present consequence of failure to comply with his mandated release conditions. So it was he would indeed attend the third floor of a city-centre office building, and sit beneath buzzing fluorescent lights as a well-meaning, but ultimately ineffectual practitioner nodded solemnly along as John played association games with his own train of thought. Occassionally his therapist would scribble something down in a notepad, or attempt to pry further past the surface level John kept them on, efforts recognized and halted quickly. These were the worst lectures: the ones John gave himself, forced for fifty minutes a week to talk around events he'd rather pretend never happened, faltering under the eye of some blasé, courts-assigned third party - and all while he inwardly berated himself for being incapable of seizing the opportunity for healing and resolution and a pathway toward being even an small percentage closer to a human being with worth and purpose.

The weekly impotent rattling of his own bars, slamming against the walls of a cage he had constructed around himself - it all exhausted him. These were the booze nights, the trudging journey back to the house intermissioned only by a stop at the offy for as much as alcohol as the cash in his pocket would get him, the only question in his mind whether to aim for greater liquid volume or percentage potency. After making his purchase he returned to his room and closed his door, stuffing a towel underneath to block the draught, and drank himself into oblivion once again.

---

<sub>^{A FINAL DREAM}
I am lying on my back, strapped to the slab by great leather belts that restrain my limbs and body and head so tightly all I can do is wriggle my digits and whip my eyes around in their sockets, searching in the dark for an escape or a perpetrator. There is nothing, only an expansive pitch darkness and a chill in the air that cascades goosebumps across my skin and puts a bitter cold in my bones. Then, suddenly, they're there - the shadows, holding their terrible cleavers, gathered on all sides and pulsing with hatred. The cleavers rise in unison; and then the thudding begins again.

Over and over the cleavers rise and fall, carving away at my body. They start at my feet and I cannot move as every falling blade bloodlessly hacks away a sliver of flesh, only for the blows to keep coming, the steady rhythm of their cutting and carving never ceasing, never slowing. A shadow looming at the base of the slab deftly plucks away each hewn strip of flesh and tosses it over its shoulder, discarded into a pit dug in the mid behind it. I thrash and struggle and attempt to break my ties with all my might, but it's no use; I am bound so thoroughly that my efforts are futile, and instead I can only strain my eyes to watch as the thudding grows louder and the cleavers move up my body until the noise and glint of the blades is all there is. I am portioned up neatly and thrown away. The last cleaver falls across my eyes. I am returned to the dark.

Everything melts away as the pit swells and opens up, swallowing the world. The figures, the trees, the slab and the mud - all dissolves as I fall, now little more than scattered remnants of a spirit long-forgotten. My descent is slow and gentle, a slow sink, but eventually it ceases and my ethereal feet stand on solid inky blank. In front of me is a woman, softly humming and cooing a soothing melody, her refrains interspersed with lilting sobs. She is clutching something to her chest, rocking ever-so-slightly; in front of her lies a bloodied pile of gore and viscera, the scraps of my body cut and quartered. I reach out with ghostly hands to console her, to ease whatever burden troubles her so - but my hands fall through her. She turns. She has my sister's face. I see through her eyes as she raises her own arms to clutch my neck, watching as she slowly strangles what is left of me.</sub>

---

John woke with a franticness he hadn't experienced in years, if ever. He tore off his bedsheets and tossed clothes around his room and kicked litter and cans around the floor, ripping through his surroundings in desperate search for a piece of himself he'd deliberately buried; a piece that now, in a waking fugue, he feverishly sought to exhume. He dug through jean pockets and cuffed shirt sleeves and discarded cigarette packets, and then, in a moment of clarity - it was so obvious, why didn't he try there first? - he went to his Harrington and fished in the inside pocket for a cheap velcro wallet, empty save for some rolling papers and years-old receipts and-

His quarry. He got goosebumps again as his fingers pinched the glossy paper, and pulled out a folded photo that every neuron in his limbic system told him to stop, put it away, don't look, you don't need to, don't want to, shouldn't, can't - the tips of his fingers found the edges of the paper regardless and unfolded the square.

John barely glanced at the old photograph before he dropped it reflexively and cast his gaze away; his whole body flinched before going rigid. He was dumbfounded, all thought functions having seized up and clattered to a halt. His vision swam and his heart and lungs sped up involuntarily as the surroundings seemed to swell against him. He sat back upon the bed, half-collapsing as his legs buckled beneath him; he screwed his eyes shut hard enough to hurt, blood pounding in his ears. John was breathing but he felt suffocated - his chest was like a spring wound tighter and tighter, twisting his innards into a tense ball, every gasp for air a renewed threat that the whole thing would burst and punch a hole clean through John's sternum. It would kill him and set loose every devil and fear, every insecurity and bad thought he'd ever had, an endless tide of poison to spread and burn and rot and everyone would see and recoil, ridicule, flee and ostracize-

There was the briefest sensation of a kindly hand rested upon his shoulder, and then it was all over. The coil unwound, slowly but surely, and John opened his eyes as his breath came back to him. He let go of the bedframe he'd been unconsciously clenching, his knuckles brilliant white and hands aching, and carefully, deliberately, picked up two pill boxes that sat alone atop his singular chest of drawers. He pulled a foil rack from each and pop-pop released the pills he needed into his waiting palm, briefly reading the words 'citalopram' and 'clozapine' with glazed-over eyes as he put the boxes back and swallowed the pills dry. With gathered resolve and steady, controlled breathing, John bent to retrieve the photograph from where he'd dropped it, holding it open with two hands as he stood. The photo was of a young girl, center-frame, an expanse of water behind her and the light of the sun reflecting off it to illuminate the subject from behind, giving her an ethereal golden outline. He pushed back tears as he studied the photo.

He finally tore his eyes away to dress, pulling on his jacket before he pocketed his pills and carefully re-folded the photo and tucked that away too. He checked what cash he had and then, downstairs, drank a pot of tea without milk or sugar and put away half a pack of digestives before heading for the front door.

John's hand felt heavy on the doorknob, and he hesitated. His other hand went to his jacket pocket and brushed fingers over the folded photograph of his sister.

With a short breath, and a resolute nod to himself, he left.