Hellblazer 1 - War Lord (2 page)

Not sure how I decided to come over here today. Not sure where I was yesterday. More than that: feeling a little fuzzy about the last week or so. Must’ve gotten pissed, blacked out . . . must’ve been one fuck-all of a piss-up . . .

Passing a doorway exuding curry smells; passing a frock boutique, doomed to fail like most of them; passing a chippie with its smell of deep-fried fish—and here’s The Cutter, with a painting of a cutter, all sails set and billowing, on the swinging wooden sign over the door. Hope someone’s got a Silk Cut . . .

~

John Constantine was about to push through the door into The Cutter when it burst open and a couple of compact, short-skirted girls came bouncing out, their laughter tumbling together. Trying to keep in practice with the fairer sex, Constantine smiled coolly at the little blond with the heart-shaped face and said, “What’s so funny, then, love? I could use a laugh.”

The girl’s gaze slid past him like he wasn’t there, her expression unchanging, the stream of giggling chatter unceasing. The two girls flounced off down the street, arm in arm, helping each other walk and laughing at their own drunkenness.

Slipping through the door before it closed, Constantine felt a bit down at the snub. He was getting older—was he so old it was like he wasn’t there, for the young ones?

Grow up, John,
he told himself.
The bloom’s off the rose and that’s that. No new rose in town for you.

It felt good to be here anyway. He gazed contentedly at the teeming pub; at the dark, crowded wooden booths, floor going slanty with age, signs extolling ales, walls displaying banners for football and rugby teams. Good to be in his own local. Peculiar thing, a pub, how people are focused on whoever they’re talking to, or just there alone, drinking—but they’re with all the other people in the pub, too, people they don’t know and won’t say a word to, all night long. Not that there aren’t social boundaries. But on some level, you’re
with
everyone there.

Still, it seems some will walk right by you like you
weren’t
there even though they’ve known you for decades. Because there went Rich—skinny, lined face, hair dyed magenta, spiky atop, long in the back, dressed in whatever had come handy—walking by as if he hadn’t seen Constantine.

Rich was an old friend, clueless and yet peculiarly connected to the very heart of Britain. A fellow veteran of punk rock and devilishly improvisational was Rich—Constantine had known him since the era of his own band, Mucous Membrane.

“Rich!” Constantine called as his old mate, sloshing pint in one hand, roll-mops in the other, whipped by him in the crowd, shouting at someone over the noise. True, Rich was half deaf—maybe he hadn’t heard Constantine. He wasn’t blind, though. He had to have seen him. “Already sozzled I see . . .”

Or is it some kind of social freeze-out? What’ve I done now?

Trouble was, Constantine couldn’t remember how he’d come to cock things up. Really was blurry, the last few . . . hell, the last few
weeks.
He might’ve fire-bombed a day care for all he could remember . . .

But there’s someone at the bar who won’t ignore me.

“Chas!” Constantine called. More like an extension of himself than a best friend, was Chas. Cabbie and reluctant factotum. Chas claimed to be sick of the Hidden World—but always had to see what was hid.

Constantine slipped past a big weeping drunk in a football T-shirt—Manchester United—and a long-necked, probably French female in a black pinafore and heavy eye shadow, and found a spot at the dented oaken bar next to Chas. He looked Chas over as if he’d never seen him before—as if he were watching a stranger through a secret window.

With his short dark hair receding, Chas was not markedly younger than Constantine. The outline of his face was softening, thickening with middle age, the lines around his eyes etched with cynical humor. Just now he was telling a story to a stocky, bald bartender in a rugby jersey and matching braces. Took Constantine a long moment to remember the bartender’s name—Addy, wasn’t it?—which was strange in itself. Constantine rarely forgot a bartender.

The bartender was pretending to be amused as Chas rattled on, both of them ignoring Constantine. “Not again, I says! Stone me! You ‘in lurve’ again, I says! Woman’s allergic to sarcasm—all bug-eyed at me, she says, ‘Oi yeah I’m in love, ’e’s a god!’ Yeah he’ll be god of her fanny soon enough!”

The bartender grinned and caught up a cloth, swiping a lager spill off the bar directly in front of Constantine. “Pint of the usual, Addy,” Constantine said. “This wicked wag here’ll be buying. Eh, Chas? Can’t spare a greeting for your old mate, you can bloody well spare something wet and a fag.”

Chas kept chuckling, staring into his porter. There was a sadness behind it, Constantine saw. Chas was married—but could he have a thing for this girl he was talking about? Midlife crisis?

“Right, Chas, carry on as you like,” Constantine said, disgusted. “Just saw Rich. About as observant as you are. Unless you gits are playing at a snub. What’d I do, mate, get on a piss-up and summon your mum back from Hell? Let’s have it.”

Chas ignored him. Constantine shrugged. “Well you can bog off then. Oi, Addy—how about that pint?”

The bartender did set a drink down in front of him. Gin over ice. Constantine reached for the glass, thinking the bartender had heard him wrong, but sod it, gin would do the trick—and then he stared at the glass . . . as his fingers passed through it. He tried again to grasp it, again his fingers passed through it. He felt the cold of the liquid very faintly—but he was unable to really touch it. The girl in the black pinafore paid the bartender and took the drink.

“Strewth!” Constantine burst out, watching his gin and ice depart.

“You can’t pick up a glass, John Constantine,” said a voice at his elbow. “And you can’t talk to living people.”

Constantine turned to see a man who wasn’t quite there—he’d appear to be solid enough one moment, then someone would walk through him and he’d shimmer like a television image when a storm’s shaking the cable. Constantine saw ghosts fairly often—he’d seen some on the way here after all—and was not terribly surprised. “Your picture’s not coming in proper, mate,” he said, looking the ghost over. The ghost was a military figure, a British Army colonel in tropical-issue khakis and shorts. Hair slicked back; flaring, curled mustache; red scowling face.

“You escape from a David Niven movie?” Constantine asked. “Kind of chilly for those short pants.”

“Haven’t got time for whimsy, recruit,” the ghost said. “We’ve got a campaign to wage. No time to be swanning about bars. Just wasting your time trying to talk to the civilians. They can’t see ghosts.”

“Ghosts . . . plural?” It came home to Constantine then. The penny not only dropped, it clattered, and spun around in the coin box. No one was snubbing him—they simply couldn’t see him. Not many can see a disembodied spirit. “Bloody hell! Who did for me? Who killed me?”

“No no no no, you’re not
dead,
recruit!” The ghost slapped a quirt on his hip impatiently.
“I’m
dead! I’m a ghost as much as old Henry the Eighth still bumming about his castle. But you, you’re just missing your earthly vehicle! You’re traveling out of body. A good ways out of body—some thousands of miles! Your body is still alive—or was last I checked.”

Constantine snorted. This wasn’t adding up. “Now look here, you git—ghosts are confused, right enough. The dead take a while, sometimes, to realize they’re dead. But if I’m only temporarily disembodied, well, mate, I’ve been disembodied many a time. At least as often as Tony Blair tells the truth. You know—now and then. I’d
know
if I was traveling out of body. I wouldn’t have forgotten it.”

“You don’t know if something’s gone amiss. That is precisely what has happened. You got lost, Constantine. And the truth is, while you’re not dead—you’re
not far from it.
Wandering off like this, you’re in danger of being dead—and soon!”

“Am I now? Where’s my body, then? Someplace choice I hope. Being ravaged in a coed dormitory, is it?”

“Not sure what a ‘coed dormitory’ is. Your body is in a kind of trance state, do y’see, in a monastery, in Persia—they call it Iran now, I believe.”

“A monastery? Rubbish. You’ve got the wrong bloke. I’d never go to a monastery . . .” But his denial wasn’t convincing either of them. A monastery—Persia. It did sound familiar. “Persia . . . Iran . . .” Constantine almost remembered—but the memory flitted just out of reach. Then it settled down again in the shadows. He reached for it and again it flitted away. “Fuck me! I almost had it. Don’t quite remember . . .”

“That’s correct, John Constantine, you don’t remember. You have failed to remember yourself.” The mustachioed ghost clasped his hands behind him and scowled at Constantine like a drill sergeant. “You forgot your duty. You were given a task by those you went to learn from, and you buggered it up royal. Let your appetites carry you here, didn’t you, eh? Wanted a drink, wanted a smoke, see London again. Your spirit carried away by old cravings. Classic spirit-Bardo tendency, of course—heard old Swami Vivekananda warn of it once. Only
you’re
not a dead soul. Not quite yet. You’re just bloody AWOL is what you are! There is yet a thin kind of connection back to your body—otherwise it would die, completely, don’t you know. But that connection’s fading, recruit, eh? You’d best come with me . . .”

“And who are you, then, squire?”

“Not a squire—I’m a colonel, full colonel, Futheringham by name.
Was
a colonel, I should say. Not sure if rank applies posthumously. Seems improbable: very little applies posthumously, truth be told. Only reason I remember who I was at all, don’t you know, is my mission. Special privilege, and all that.”

“On a mission, are you, Futheringham? I was on a mission to get drunk. And you’re cocking up my mission.”

“You’re not attending, recruit. You
can’t
drink—you’re not in a body.”

Looking down at himself, seeing his own form flickering, Constantine had to admit the justice of this. He could see his trench coat, his slender hands, his crooked tie, his stained shirt and trousers, and his scuffed black shoes. But they weren’t quite there—they were a psychological construct. “Right. We covered that. Disembodied. I was forgetting. But look here, Colonel, why do you keep calling me ‘recruit’?”

“Sent here to recruit you, was I not, eh? Indeed I am. You’re to join up—become a Peace Corpse. Do your bit to stop war like a good dead soldier.”

“Become a—? Sod that game of soldiers, guv, I’ve no wish to be recruited. Only dead soldiers I’m interested in are the glass kind. I’m off to find my body and take it to the nearest bar in Iran—”

“You don’t actually expect to find a bar in Iran, do you, Constantine?”

“Right. Muslims don’t do pubs. Nearest country with a bar then.”

“Come now—aren’t you even curious about what a Peace Corpse is?” Futheringham asked, raising his bristly, ghostly eyebrows.

Constantine waved a hand dismissively. “Call me a fantasy-prone madcap but I’m going to hazard a guess it’s something to do with the ghosts of crazy bastards like you, mate, who died in war and don’t much care for it.”

“Not far from the truth, old boy,” Futheringham said, stroking his mustache. “Died in the Bengali rebellions in 1909, I did—in Mandalay. The rebels killed me in retaliation, don’t you know, for the massacre I ordered. Only justice was my death, really. At the time I thought it for the best, that massacre. I was quite wrong. A massacre—indiscriminate killing of any kind—is never for the best, not at all. Terror leads to terror, Constantine. Violence to violence. Hard for a man to learn that, when nature shapes him for killing. I knew better, and I ordered the massacre anyway. Still making up for it. I’m a Peace Corpse myself. Need your help. Come along, have a natter with the other Peace Corpses . . .”

Constantine patted his coat for a smoke, didn’t find any. If he could psychically materialize a coat, couldn’t he do cigarettes? Wouldn’t taste right, probably, if they had any taste at all. “I’m not interested in a cank with any kind of corpse—seen enough of them, I have—nor am I interested in
becoming
any kind of corpse, peaceful or restless, ‘old boy.’ Now bugger off so I can work out how to get back to that half-starved ‘vehicle’ I was shambling about in.”

“Work it out, eh? Don’t remember how to get there, do you, hm? Used to be able to, Constantine. Not the first time out of your body. Missing something are you?”

“Right, well . . . I do seem to be. Don’t seem to have a silver cord about me. Short one ectoplasmic lifeline back to the body.”

“That’s a sign that you’re amiss, you’re lost, wandered off, recruit—and too far from your body!” Futheringham broke off a moment to ogle the bartender pouring a beer. “Blimey, that lager looks good. Got a taste for lager in India—you want something light and cool, there. Wish I could have a drink myself.” He sighed and turned back to Constantine. “Anyhow, allow me to clarify one point, recruit: you don’t have to become a corpse to work with us. Truth is, we need one of the living, preferably someone with some talent. Used to the Hidden World. Great deal to be done. Got to avert a war.”

“A war, is it? Colonel there’s no avertin’ ’em. They get a fucking life of their own. I’ll be nipping off now before you start reciting ‘Gunga Din’—”

“Aren’t you wondering why you don’t remember coming here, why you were so disoriented? Slipping into the River of Nepenthe, washing down to the great Sea of Soul, eh? Wouldn’t want that prematurely. Got things to do, you have. Adventures awaiting.”

Constantine shook his head. “I’ve had enough adventures, cloth-ears. Want some peace and quiet—but not your kind. A glass of bitters, something cupping me packet, a packet of smokes—and I’m happy as a clam.”

“Not you, Constantine. You’re the restless kind. Hunger after the secrets of the Hidden World. Think you’re a great adept? Barely scratched the surface.”

Constantine snorted, turned away from the dead colonel, and walked determinedly to the nearest wall. There was a dartboard on it—and a dart flew into his etheric body, right through the place his heart should be. Someone crowed in triumph as the dart hit the bull’s-eye with a
thunk.
Constantine hesitated—then closed his eyes and walked through the wall, dartboard and all.