Read Online Constantine by John Shirley, Kevin Brodbin - Free Book Online Page A

a nearby Bible as he spoke. “I’ve read the manual. Ever consider you’re the ones with the problem? Impossible rules. Who goes up. Who goes down. And why. Why? You don’t even understand us.” He blew a smoke ring at Gabriel. “You’re the one who should go to Hell, halfbreed.”
    Gabriel stood, a single fluid motion that was more a thought in action than the movement of a human body. He glowered down at Constantine. “I am taking your situation into account, but do not push me.”
    “Why me, Gabriel?”
    Gabriel’s reply was telepathic. Why you! All mortals die and when they do they all say, “Why me?”
    “It’s personal, isn’t it? I didn’t go to church enough? Didn’t pray enough? I was five bucks short in the collection plate? Why?”
    Gabriel looked into his eyes. “You’re going to die because you smoked thirty cigarettes a day since you were fifteen. And you’re going to Hell because of the life you took.” He shrugged sadly, sweetly. “You’re fucked.”
    --
    In another part of the room, Angela, talking to Father Garret, looked over. “Who is that man, the tall one, Father?”
    “Ah - I rather think you wouldn’t believe me. Listen - about what’s happened to your sister - you’ve got to accept the tribulations that come to you. Accepting our lot is what it’s all about, Angela.”
    “You can do something, Father. She has to have a Catholic funeral. She has to.”
    “Angela - suicide is still considered a mortal sin.”
    “She didn’t commit suicide.”
    “The Bishop believes otherwise, my dear. It’s out of my hands. You know the rules, Angela.”
    She looked at him pleadingly. “Father… David. This is Isabel!”
    He looked at the floor, not knowing how to answer. Angela went on, “God was… I think God was the only one she ever believed loved her.”
    He just looked at her. Unyielding. “Please, Father….”
    --
    Angela’s eyes were wet before she reached the rain falling outside the Theological Society.
    She stepped back a moment, under the eaves, to watch the rain come down. Thousands of tiny little splashes on the ground. Thinking of Isabel, hitting the water of the pool, oozing blood…
    She heard a cough and turned to see the rude man standing on the other side of the door, smoking a cigarette down to the filter, looking as if he’d been burned down to the filter himself.
    He looked up at the rain. “At least it’s a nice day.” She just looked at him. What an odd man.
    Something about him…
    “God,” Constantine said, “has always had a rotten sense of humor.” He threw the cigarette into a puddle. “And His punch lines are always killers.”
    There was a taxi waiting nearby - the driver, a young man, leaning over to shout through the window as it rolled down. “Constantine? Come on, it’s raining! Hey!”
    So his name was Constantine. She watched as he ignored the taxi and trudged off into the rain.
    --
    The same downpour hammered the window of Father Hennessy’s studio. Hennessy kicked restlessly through a litter of tom aluminum foil, Power Bar wrappers - they were mostly what he ate - Diet Coke bottles, and liquor bottles, to get to the small, listing brown sofa next to a stack of recent publications .
    He sighed, a jelly jar of Early Times in one hand, and let himself fall back into the little sofa.
    Time to return to work.
    The voices came and went, usually half heard, like angry conversations penetrating through the wall of a cheap hotel - but these came through the walls of the astral plane. They were the voices of the purgatorial dead, wandering between levels. Not quite in Hell - except the hells of their own making. Babbling, overlapping, each pressing to be heard over the others.
    “…I knew they’d betray me, and they’ve put me in this place so they can get my money, but they will find out that it’s all gone, and how I shall laugh… Oh, why don’t I have any hands. .. if I could only see my hands. … “
    “Mama? I’m sorry,