Hellblazer 2 - Subterranean by John Shirley Read Free Book Online Page B

mate.”
    Chas turned and grimaced at them, then looked reluctantly at the path along the creek into the increasingly dismal-looking woods. “Right. I’m going with Constantine! Tell . . . tell whoever it is I’m going with him!”
    “No!” Cynthia hissed. “Chas—resist her! Don’t go with Const . . . an . . . tine! Come . . . with . . . me . . . instead!”
    “I . . . what?” Chas gulped. His voice shook as he went on, tears in his eyes. “Cynthia, darling, my sweet, I am truly sorry about what happened to you, I’m dead sorry—oh shite I shouldn’t put it that way—I’m . . . very sorry. But I can’t go with you!”
    “Someday . . . you . . . will!”
    Then she lifted her head and gave out a violent shout of disappointment—so violent that she fell apart with the reverberation of it, her head falling down into her rib cage, which fell into her hips, which tumbled between her legs, which crumbled into the water. The drowned men turned away and fell sighing into the creek. They sank into the ooze and vanished.
    Chas sat down then, just sat there for a full minute, head in his hands, hyperventilating. When he’d quieted, Constantine gave him a cigarette. They smoked in silence for a couple of minutes more. “I can see why you didn’t tell me about her,” Constantine said, wishing he could think of something more helpful to say.
    “That one was me mum’s doing,” he sobbed, “. . . and my own cowardice! I thought I’d put it behind me . . . then it comes up out of the bloody slime . . .” He turned a glare at Constantine. “Would be behind me too, was I not with Mr. John Fucking Constantine, the magnet for all things hellish!”
    Constantine stared gloomily at the cherry of his cigarette. “That’s me, innit? Sorry, mate.”
    Chas shook his head and wiped his eyes. “Fuck it. Come on . . .”
    He stood up and looked at the stream. Which simply flowed on as before—and they went on themselves, trudging along the creek, but against the direction of its flow.
    Another mile and the ground began to rise, as the woods grew denser around them, until they were stumbling through a thicket. “Bloody thorns!” Chas muttered. “And I thought heading out of town with you would be better than my comfortable little room! I was daft!”
    At last they came to a hillside covered in vines and boulders. The stream flowed from a crack in the hillside shaped like an inverted V.
    “Now what?” Chas demanded.
    As if in reply, the hillside began to groan.
    “Strewth!” Constantine muttered, as the crevice in the hill groaningly opened wider, wider . . . invitingly wider. An ethereal blue light shone from the crevice now; it gave off a scent of dissolving minerals, of fungi and rot.
    “Oh no, not me!” Chas declared, laughing bitterly. “I’m not going in there!”
    The water began to surge upward, pillaring; the hill groaned and growled warningly.
    “Oh do come on, Chas!” Constantine said. “We’re already wet. In for a penny, in for a pound.”
    “In for a pound of flesh you mean!”
    “No doubt—but we’re stuck.” He didn’t want to go into the cave, either—mostly because it intrigued him so. He wanted to struggle with that addiction, turn his back on it. Find Kit and tell her: I was on the edge of plunging in again—and I turned back. I left it alone. I can give it up, Kit . . .
    But the water began to churn restlessly. He knew what that meant. “We’ve got to go in,” he said at last. “It’s that or drown—it’ll come after us.”
    “But—if I go in the water . . . she was in there. She’ll pull me under . . .”
    It took Constantine a moment to realize that Chas meant Cynthia. “She’s gone, mate,” he said gently. “I’d feel her if she was about . . . she’s moved on. At least for now . . .”
    “I don’t want to go in there, John. But if it’s that or . . .” He shuddered.
    “Fuck it—come on!” Constantine climbed down into the stream, which flowed well above