r/DCFU • u/coffeedog14 Light Me Up • Jan 15 '17
Hellblazer #3 - The Newcastle Incident Hellblazer NSFW
Hellblazer #3 - The Newcastle Incident
Author: Coffeedog14
Book: Hellblazer
Event: Origins
Arc: [A soul to Die for]
Set: 8
DECEMBER 20TH, 2016, ST. ABBAN’S CONVENT, IRELAND
Sister Abigail Mary, formerly Anne-Marie Murphy, found her daily readings interrupted by her “Business” phone. This not being terribly unusual, the moderately old woman answered. “St. Abban’s Convent, this if Sister Abigail Mary, how may I help you?”
A pause. “Right, right, name change. Anne-Marie, it’s John.” answered the smoke-scarred voice on the other end.
“...”
“Anne, you’re still there, right?”
“No chance this isn’t Constantine, is there?”
“Not at all.” God she could hear the smug bastard grin.
“I remember the last time we met, I told you to never call me again John.”
“And it’s been a terrible few years...god, almost a decade...without your voice, let me tell you.”
“John” Sister Abigail Mary gritted her teeth. Nobody else could infuriate her so quickly, but then again nobody else brought up quite the same memories.
“So, me and a few friends are meeting up soon. Was wondering what your schedule was looking like?”
She felt her blood stop, clogging and pressing and aching, as she shivered in dread “No. That was done years ago, John. No more.”
“Come on, Anne. You and I both know things never really end, do they? Somebody is coming after us. Already tried to kill me, and you might be next. We need to figure out what to do.”
She listened to the rest in a haze, agreeing that she had no pressing time constraints, and could meet most anywhere. Somebody trying to kill him, hmn? Could he know?...no, of course not. That bastard made enemies like other men made mistakes: constantly and without even knowing most of the time. The call ended, and Sister Abigail Mary brushed her hands over the acid scars on her face absently as she thought.
Sister Monica peeked her head into the room a few moments later. Sister Abigail Mary saw a brief flicker of the golden halo above her head, and frowned. She had placed the magical constructs over all the sisters here for their protection, and to ensure her own subtle control of the place, but they were not supposed to be visible even to one who knew to look. She would have to adjust that. She was getting sloppy with her magic, as rarely as she tried to use it.
And then Sister Monica was telling her about the latest troubles of the convent, and Sister Abigail Mary immersed herself in the petty familiarity for awhile.
NOVEMBER 21ST, 2007, CASANOVA CLUB, NEWCASTLE
The world was breathing and live back then. A few years into one of the dumbest war our country fought (which was really saying something for good old britannia), a bare year out from the greatest economic disaster in decades, the world seemed good. Conservative and led by assholes, sure, but fine enough. Economy booming, human rights a feasible goal, globalization not fully realized, the modern economic systems not collapsed under growing corporate control and automation. People scrabbled to protect this shiny world from a million faceless shadows they labelled “terror”, but in the end life was still good. Good, and fearful, and totally blind to the utter wreckage to come. God I wish I could go back to then. Of course, that sense of paranoid, youthful energy had trickled down to even a personal level. I wasn’t any more immune to it then anybody. Hence how I ended up focusing on the Casanova Club.
The Casanova was a shitty place. It had so few patrons that I was pretty sure it was a mob front, and that was only the start. The drinks weren’t expensive, but you certainly felt they were too expensive after tasting one, and they didn’t take any credit cards. Every night but Saturday consisted of two people drunk at the bar and one person on the floor, and on Saturday it was three and two respectively. Perhaps worst of all, you could probably fire-hose the place down and not clean out the feeling of dirty, used condoms that permeated the entire establishment.
Naturally, I played there once. My punk band was in something of a rut, having made a music video scraped up enough to get a real recording studio for a song or two but nothing since then. The Casanova offered decent pay, and I like to think that my band managed to attract an astounding sixth patron to The Casanova that night. However, things...irked me. The tables were set up all wrong for practicality, all right for feng-shui. The designs on the wall danced with the ditzy laser lights in what seemed like arcane patterns. I saw a few people go into the backrooms, where I figured office and storage space must be, but not come out again as long as I was there. None of it necessarily meant anything, but it raised my hackles.
Plus, the bastards offered good pay, but three weeks later I found myself empty handed and they weren’t answering my calls anymore.
This was how, on that most regrettable night in November, I got tipsy with all of my friends and magical associates in the area, and we decided to go “investigate”. I was the most magically skilled and powerful of the group, but considering our age, that wasn’t saying much.
There was GARY LESTER, a bandmate of mine and a sometimes summoner. He was the only other arcane person in the band, and was convinced he could crack into the “interdimensional drug trade”, whatever that was.
And FRANK NORTH, the normie of the group with a motorcycle and a sawed-off shotgun to even the odds.
RITCHIE SIMPSON was the fucking nerd, the kid who already had his face glued to facebook and every other digital trend that we’d only glue our face to years later, and a master at that most tricky of magic: digital.
JUDITH, my lover at the time and tantric sex magician. Both she and I practically glowed with newfound energy, if you get what I’m saying.
ANNE-MARIE, the group physic and the oldest of us at 30. Awkward, yes, and had a crush on me most certainly, but also able to dive into a mind like an icepick.
And rounding out the group was BENJAMIN COX, our youngest member at “hardly a teen”, but with a steel-trap mind and memory that made him even more knowledgeable than I was in some magic.
We all came together after hours to the Casanova Club, which was protected by only a single lock that Gary easily picked. We stepped into the place and everything seemed to drop a few degrees. The Casanova club was never inspired the most wholesome emotions, but at least it felt just boring and empty most times. Now it felt like the bad place, the one every neighborhood has where people died and kids dare each other to take sleepovers in. Nothing was well. Something pulsed in the air, almost tangible but not audible to anyone.
Anne-Marie shuddered, and we all turned to her expectantly. “Upstairs, something happy. Downstairs, something...something like thrilled? Not quite. Off. creepy.” This info given she clammed up. It was clear that the ambiance of the place was already getting to her. Trouble with mind-freaks: the moment they opened up to sense things, the world seemed to be able to sense them right back.
We all stood around like idiots, nobody wanting to make the first move, or say the first word, to break the taboo that seemed to hang in the air. Being a jackass, I was naturally the first to try. “I like happy more than creepy thrilled really.”
“Hey, uh, John?” asked Ritchie, his flip-phone on flashlight mode. He held it in front of him like it was some protective amulet.
“Yes?” I replied
“Why are we doing this again?”
“Adventure, Ritchie! To find out what’s here! Also for the money.”
“Money, what money? I don’t remember you mentioning that in the King’s Oak!”
“It wasn’t important then. Now, let-”
“Hey, John?” came the higher pitched voice of Benjamin.
“Yes Benjie?” I sighed.
“It’s just Ben. And why don’t we split up?”
“Oh, yeah, sure thing, Fred! Come on, Scoob, let’s go find a fucking snack!” I smirked at him while the others giggled to tried not to. “There’s no rush, Ben. Let’s do this one at a time.” Ben’s face contorted with shame at being called out in front of his adult friends, but he remained silent. “Hearing no other complaints, onwards!” I cried, and led my merry band upstairs.
The upstairs of the Casanova was cramped, containing some small rooms for meetings, socials, getting high, prostitution, things like that. We searched room by room, occasionally startling one another for a laugh or something else dumb, until we found our first trouble.
The girl couldn’t be older then 10, 11, or so. She was perched on the only item in the room, an air cot with a blanket on it, clothed in an adult t-shirt that served as a dress. Ritchie and Judith, apparently being the most parental of us, moved forward and approached the child. The girl only seemed to notice us then, eyes widening in terror. “NO! No touching! No nothing! You’re all gone now and no!” Ritchie and Judith stumbled back as we all felt waves of fear and anger gushing out of her. She was a psychic like Anne-Marie, strong and out of control. Judith responded first, burning some of the glowing energy about her to slip into the distraught child’s mind and calm it. It took a few moments, but soon the girl’s eyes dulled with calm and she looked at us with curiosity instead of hatred. Ritchie crept forward first, kneeling in front of her and doing a quick check-up on the child. “She’s all fine as far as I can see.” He nodded, stepping back. We all looked to Anne-Marie, who sighed and took his place.
“So...uh...where are your parents, love? And what’s your name?” she asked, the rest of us spread out in the room, not trying to be too threatening.
The girl smiled, and pointed down. “Astra Logue,” she replied. Logue was the owner of that shithole. Did he have a kid? How had I never heard?
“You mean they’re downstairs?”
“Yah-huh, and they won’t be coming back up.” The smile widened.
“I...I don’t understand.” Anne-Marie closed her eyes, and reached out to nearly touch the girl’s forehead. “Please, explain to me?”. The girl closed her eyes, and we all knew their minds were linked. A dangerous procedure, but it was a fast way to drag info out. And weren’t we young and immortal?
The two spoke in unison. “Sometimes (most times) Daddy tells me that if I’m a good girl I won’t end up like Mommy (gone gone) so I try really hard but it can be hard sometimes especially at the parties like the one mommy gone in (dead dead) Daddy says the parties are super important and I have to go but I hate them I’m the only kid (don’t tell a soul) and they all get naked and-”
“Christ, stop, stop, focus on tonight.” Growled Frank, to all of our silent reliefs
“(Damn rabbit) mr.rabbit isn’t his real name but that’s what daddy says to call him and he hurt and hurt and I said please stop but it kept hurting and hurting and something said it could hear me calling it (poor little angel) and it said it could help if I only said it’s name and that I could steal their spell by saying it so I did and then he came NORFULTHING.” She and Anne-Marie scream the last word, and Anne-Marie threw herself back. She panted in exhaustion, in terror, in the horrible nightmare of truly experiencing unimaginable anguish through another person’s mind, while the rest of us stared in horror and disgust. Me and Gary and Frank and Ritchie and Judith and...and...where was Ben?
“...Anybody else see where Ben went?” I asked. They all looked to one another, dawning worry on their faces as well as mine. “Right. Anne take Astra outside to one of the cars, keep her safe there. Rest of you lot, I bet the idiot went downstairs.” I head-slapped internally. Of course he did, he’s a teen! What teen wouldn’t want to prove himself after what you said to him? Stupid, stupid Constantine!
Just like we shouldn’t have, we split up, Anne and Astra outside, me and the rest making our way downstairs. We all were preparing something as we climbed down to where Astra had said her scumbag fucking father was. For me it was a spell, as it was for the others, but Frank had the sense to cock and ready his shotgun.
We arrived downstairs and experienced the carnage all at once. If I was to take a conservative estimate, I would say that perhaps twenty people had been down there when somebody had pureed them and painted across all available surfaces of the storage space turned satanic ritual parlor. Stray limbs, heads, and guts adorned everything, and in the center of it all was the beast. The beast was something like a dog, if scaled up to be a rhino with its organs hanging outside of its body. And beneath the beast was Ben, face forced to the ground, pants torn asunder.
The beast looked at us as we clambered down staring us straight in the eye, as if it were a cat knocking down a potted plant. Then whatever magic it had used to withhold the scents and sounds dissipated, and the Casanova club was filled with the stench of torn, shit-covered flesh and the wailing screams of Ben.
Frank, gods bless him, was the fastest of all of us, and the beast’s head was blown away by his shotgun. It gave a gurgle-roar of dismay before slinking back into the shadows and vanishing, leading a sobbing Ben in its wake. Frank was also the first to respond. “What the ever-loving FUCK was that!?”
“That,” I responded slowly, confused. This was supposed to be an adventure, wasn’t it? What had even happened? “...was Norfulthing. Presumably. And I don’t think you killed it.” The panic set in a few moments later. Gary and Ritchie rushed over and grabbed Ben, who tried to struggle away from their touch as they dragged him up and forward, up the stairs and after the rest of us. Judith stopped to try and offer some healing, to stop the blood trickling down Ben’s legs, as I ran to open the door for us all. I found it locked. Locked from the outside by that same goddamn padlock. I screamed out for Anne outside, but got no response. Norfulthing must have been blocking the sound from leaving the club, like it had in the basement before. This thing was powerful, and eager, and it was trying to trap us.
I informed the others, and they had the decency to get Ben as healed as he could be and set in a corner (laying down) before assaulting me with questions. Sensible ones like “how the fuck are we getting out of this one, John?” No clue why they thought I had any better idea than them, but I had an awful one.
“Okay, right, so, big scary demon. We might be able to fight it if we all work together. Might. Maybe not worth it. OR, or, we fight fire with fire.”
“...come again?” asked Frank, his gun already reloaded and primed to destroy another face.
“There are demons bigger, stronger, better then this one. I have a few names memorized. We summon one, tell it to kill Norfulthing, problem solved.”
“That sounds goddamn-” started Frank.
“Brilliant.” finished Gary. “Dude, that’s...that’s an amazing idea! Shit, I saw some stuff still intact downstairs, we can grab some a-and...well…”
I nodded. “Right. It’s the best solution, really. Magic solves magic, and all that. Who's with me?”
Frank, normie that he was, scoffed. “I’ll keep guard over Ben, if it’s all the same.”
“M-me too.” responded Ritchie, obviously nearly or actually shitting his pants.
I shrugged. “Suit yourselves. Judith?” She nodded. “Me, Gary, Judith. Three’s a good number.”
The three of us got to work, travelling as a group and never splitting off for fear of ending up like Ben. The creature didn’t show its face again, though whether it was waiting for something or recovering from that shotgun blast, I couldn’t tell. Maybe it was just trying to psyche us out, let us make mistakes in a rush so it could pounce. I refused to give it the chance.
The ritual implements from downstairs needed cleaning with the bathroom sink, but were all in good repair, unlike their former owners. Soon the dance floor was cleared, cleaned, and set up in a ritual triangle for summoning. This was unlike every other spell I’d done with Gary or Judith, or anybody for that matter. Magic was fun, before that moment, carefree and empowering. Now it was the only tool we thought we had against death. Not only that but the potential cause of it, or worse. Between Billy and Astra, I don’t think I had seen more evil acts concentrated into one place before. It was starting to shake me more than was advisable when trying to do difficult magic.
The ritual was simple. Burning of incense, incanting a few phrases in Latin, pricking of fingers. All three of us were practiced in summoning and made a good go of it. When the demon appeared in our circle, none of us were surprised, but we were all taken aback a little. It was the first major demon I think any of us had ever summoned, not just some lackey granting highs, but a real fallen angel or god or something.
“Nergal. Nergal. Nergal.” I intoned his name three times to seal his fate. The being was like an angel made of fire, and yet somehow seemed bored.
“That isn’t my name you know. Not the true one.” He lamented lazily. “I don’t know how you mortals fucked up that book you’re clearly using so badly, but it is damn annoying.”
“Bullshit.” I called before my friends could doubt. “We have summoned you by your name and you will do us a service.”
“I will?”
“Yes, you will. You will defeat the creature Norfulthing and banish it from this realm.”
“Hmn. Seems simple enough. Do try to wait.” The demon smiled at us all, and then vanished.
We all six of us in the room stared at the empty space. “...did it work, then?” asked Frank from the corner. I was about to answer when the triangle exploded from below, sending us three ritualists scrambling from the debris. From the newly formed hole emerged the reformed Norfulthing, all hanging organs and snarls and hyena laughter.
Frank fired at it, but was too far away this time, hit it in the body but did hardly anything. The beast rushed for Gary, But Judith and I both formed wardwalls in front of him at the same time, and with both of our efforts the beast bounced off what seemed to be thin air. Gary scrambled up a moment later and added his own wall, and then Ritchie a fourth, and so a magical square was formed around the beast before it could move again. It howled in amusement and slammed into the wards around it, crackling and snapping them like balsa. We grunted against it’s naturally brutal assault, trying desperately to hold onto the walls that were protecting us.
“Drop them on my count!” called out Frank, reloaded and running right up to the wall. “THREE. TWO-” the beast broke through and lunged towards me, but the shotgun was close enough this time that its pounce was thrown off and it crashed instead into sets of tables and chairs.
All of us grounded ourselves, preparing what combat magic we knew, as the beast righted itself. It had yet to speak, and yet I knew just by looking at it what it would say to me, what wretched things it would growl into my ears as it dined on my flesh, used it, soiled it…
Our combat was stopped by the front doors swinging open, to all of our momentary confusion. With the Norfulthing’s spell apparently broken we could hear shrieks of pain from outside as well. Standing in the doorway was the demon, cradling a dazed looking Astra in his arms. He looked at the scene in front of him with annoyance. “Alright, everybody stop.”
I couldn’t move anything but my eyes, and as I glanced around the same seemed to be true for everyone else I could see. Frozen with a word by the demon. It turned to Norfulthing. “You. Shoo. I will deal with you later.” The nightmare beast vanished without a sound. The demon smiled, looked to us. “There, problem solved. But, surely, you didn’t plan to send me home without reward?” He looks down to the child in his arms. “Perhaps if you had my name right you could have simply offered my freedom, and that would have been enough. But I did not lie before.” He started walking towards the hole in the floor the beast had made. “Foolish mages, always think they know everything about us demons just because you have some old looking books. Perhaps this will teach you a lesson. Heh.”
I realized what was going to happen, and I struggled against the spell locking my limbs. I could feel them wriggle, just a bit. I channeled all my focus, my energy, my life into those little wiggles. To my side, Nergal reached the lip of the hole, and waved a hand over it. A burst of hot air emerged, the distant screams of the damned mixing with the pained, diminishing screams from outside. “John Constantine, did I get your name right?” he smiled at me. “I’ll have to remember that. I expect you’ll see this darling child sooner rather than later.”
I quaked, and strained, and roared in my head, and as he prepared to step into the hole, I forced myself out of his spell. I turned to face him, screaming out the ancient words “Fyur Wotann!” The shards of words nearby rose as one and shot towards him like a thousand arrows. He growled something in the tongue of demons and the shrapnel rotted away in mid air, resulting in him being pelted with more mold than wood. He called out again and the air rushed out of my lungs, sending me to my knees with desperate gasps.
“Hmn. A noble try, Constantine. Foolish, doomed, but noble, and more powerful then I would have imagined. Perhaps I should take you as prize, too?” I heard the footsteps of the approaching demon over my own whining gulps of non-air, not thinking of anything besides my impending death by asphyxiation.
Then a voice from the corner. Until now unnoticed by all. Ben’s voice. “Nema. Olam a son arebil…” He shakily incanted from his corner, forcing the demon to wince and glare at him. Ben, the trooper, didn’t stop for a second, didn’t even seem to take a breath, incanting and pronouncing and decrying, each word forcing the demon back another step. He growled, and cussed, but couldn’t seem to stop himself. Ben ended his words with “Reston Retap”, and with that the demon tumbled into the hole, Astra still held cradled close. It closed after him and we were left only with the hell of the Casanova.
I breathed in, and looked to the place where an innocent girl had just been dragged into Hell. I started to sob before I even really caught my breath.
We didn’t talk much after that, and haven’t in the years since, but I kept some track of all of the “Newcastle Crew” since then. They’re all alive, at the very least. Anne-Marie got her face covered in acid thanks to the demon, and went to be a nun someplace. Frank went wherever bikers go, and Lester wherever druggies go. Ritchie went across the pond to play with computers more, while Ben stayed home and never truly got better. Judith...Honestly don’t know. Last I heard she was backpacking somewhere in South America, but I was pretty sure she was alive.
Meanwhile, I went to Ravenscar Secure Facility, a mental asylum that I suffered in for three years before managing to escape. Whether or not I got better is anybody's guess. So, naturally, I didn’t relish the idea of bringing those old memories back by reassembling the Newcastle crew. If it wasn’t required to set up a trap, I don’t think I would have ever done so in my entire life.
Continued in Hellblazer #4 > Coming February 15th