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

Mama. Mama? I’m sorry, Mama. Mama? I’m sorry, Mama. Mama? I’m sorry, Mama. Mama?”
    “So he thinks we’re imaginary, we’re but characters of his invention, or some phantasm in a book he reads. .. and all the while we stand just behind, waiting our chance . … “
    “What did he mean he was dying for nothing? If the fucking Reds take South Vietnam they’ll take the rest of Southeast Asia and we’ll have commies hitting the beaches in San Diego. Why did he say he was dying for nothing? Why’d that have to be his last words? I was following orders, goddammit. … “
    “ Mama? I’m sorry, Mama. Mama? I’m sorry… “
    Hennessy stopped listening to them. They were too random, there was nothing useful in them, and they rarely responded to direct questions.
    He took a pull on the bourbon, put the jar down, and focused his attention on the newspapers and magazines stacked beside the sofa. He laid a selection out on the scarred coffee table, closed his eyes, and extended his hands over them, palms down, a few inches from the surface of each page, pausing now and then, without opening his eyes, to turn the pages, then once more hovering his hands over them… picking up vibratory associations… probing the layers of information.
    Surfing the ether, Constantine called it. He went through one stack and was starting on a second…
    Hennessy’s left hand suddenly came to a stop. A definite pull, an impulse of urgency.
    Supernatural power had recently penetrated this world, with considerable force - and it had entangled itself with the subject of this newspaper article…
    SUICIDE IN PSYCHIATRIC WARD
    Long-term psychiatric patient Isabel Dodson jumped to her death from the roof of Ravenscar Hospital on Tuesday, according to the coroner’s report filed on…
    --
    Angela sat in her recliner, watching the tape from the security earn over and over. It was as if she were trying to share Isabel’s hell.
    Once more she hit rewind, and play.
    There in grainy black and white was Isabel in her nightgown, walking like she was already a ghost, across the roof toward the mezzanine.
    Angela was all cried out, her eyes aching with it.
    But now and then a sob racked her, from deep inside. She looked away from the image, fumbling with the remote to turn it off. Maybe she should erase it.
    Murmuring, “Tm so sorry, Izzy…”
    She heard Isabel’s voice, then, crystal clear. “Constantine… “
    Shaken, Angela looked at the TV screen. Isabel was ready to jump - but this time she was looking right at Angela.
    Then she jumped.
    The tape ran a moment or two more, on the empty rooftop, then went to snow.
    She rewound it. She played it again, leaning forward in her chair. The whole sequence -
    Isabel approaching the rim of the roof. Tearing off her bracelet. Looking at the city. Looking over her shoulder. And jumping…
    But this time she didn’t look at Angela. This time she said nothing.
    Angela just sat there. A grief hallucination, she told herself. It’s a common syndrome.
    Only, she knew, somehow, it hadn’t been. She had that same feeling she’d had when she’d shot the crazy in Echo Park. Uncanny certainty.
    From somewhere else… from across the gulf of death - Isabel had spoken to her.

SIX
    T he rain had stopped but the streets were reptilian with wetness as Constantine emerged from the Mobil station into the humid evening. His eyes burned; maybe the smog was merging with the rising mist from the asphalt. Maybe that was why he felt the coughing rise up in him again.
    When it passed, he shook a cigarette partway out of his fresh pack with his left hand, popped a cough drop with his right, then lipped the cigarette from the pack, watching a surprisingly large rat scuttle by in the gutter. You didn’t often see rats on Sunset Boulevard.
    Constantine glanced up at a billboard across the street. It held his eyes for a moment. It said:
    YOUR TIME IS RUNNING OUT
    Seemed a message for him, even though below that in smaller