Fic: Hellblazer - Chapter 1 [SPN/Constantine]
TITLE: “Hellblazer” - Chapter 1
AUTHOR: nanoochka
RATING: R for violence, gore, swearing, and UST
PAIRINGS: Dean/Castiel
SPOILERS: None, unless you mean Constantine, in which case… all of it.
WARNINGS: Constantine-AU, pre-slash, violence, blasphemous themes, multiple character deaths (sometimes repeatedly!), borderline crack given the nature of the work.
WORD COUNT: This part 3,981; overall WIP, but prolly more than 30k, since the screenplay is almost 25.
SUMMARY: Castiel Constantine, an irreverent supernatural detective, has literally been to Hell and back. When Constantine teams up with skeptical police detective Dean Winchester to solve the mystery of the death of Sam, Dean’s brother, their investigation takes them through the world of demons and angels that exists just beneath the landscape of contemporary Los Angeles. Caught in a catastrophic series of otherworldly events, the two become inextricably involved and seek to find their own peace at whatever cost.
DISCLAIMER: Because I’m basically doing twice the stealing here, extra disclaimer is required. The characters from Supernatural or Constantine: Hellblazer do not belong to me, and the dialogue/story taken from Constantine is the property of Jamie Delano and Garth Ennis (comic), and Kevin Brodbin and Frank A. Cappello (screenplay). No infringement intended.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: I have a confession to make: in spite of my (usually) good taste, Constantine is one of my favourite movies. It is, for the most part, horribly clichéd and terribly acted (no one’s looking at you, Rachel and Tilda), but I’ve seen it a bazillion times and still manage to squeal with glee through most of it. I suppose that’s owing mostly to the strength of the comics upon which the movie was based, but the film manages to pack quite the punch, too, especially in the latter half. Anyway, my point is that I love it to bits, and had a conniption fit upon my last viewing when I realized HOW FREAKING PERFECTLY the movie could overlap with the SPN-verse. It’s kind of scary. The Castiel/Constantine jokes have been flying fast and furious in the fandom on account of that damn trenchcoat, but no one, as far as I know, has actually attempted an AU/crossover. This is basically my way of saying, “See? See? TOLD YOU!” But for what it's worth, while I've tried to follow the screenplay as close as possible (as opposed to the movie), I do on occasion follow some scenes from the film where they differ wildly (moreso towards the end).
“Hellblazer” - Chapter 1 by nanoochka
Though the building is practically falling down, the apartment wasn’t hard to find; Father Zachariah simply followed the girl’s screams to the seventh floor. Her entire family and half of the neighbours had been waiting for him in the hallway when he arrived, sweating and out of breath from climbing so many flights of stairs in the interminable Los Angeles heat. It would have been a trial even for a man half his size, one in better shape than his portly, fifty-year-old body, and Zachariah was praying fervently for strength by the time he burst from the stairwell, reddening further when his exhaustion was met by the curious, frightened stares of almost a dozen people. He’d heard the girl, Jeanie, wailing from somewhere inside apartment 7B, and was ushered through the door by her terrified mother before he could catch his breath. It seemed like half the building came with them.
He found Jeanie perched, à la Spider-Man, in the corner of her room between wall and ceiling, hissing and spitting like a cat, making noises no human child should ever make. It took Zachariah and four grown men to pull the girl down and restrain her on the bed, where her small body contorted in agony, covered in several days’ worth of sweat. As if he hadn’t seen enough already, upon glimpsing her twisted face, eyes rolling around in her skull like 8-balls spinning across a billiard green, Zachariah unpacked his exorcism kit without hesitation, heart hammering like a tympani in his chest.
It’s been over twenty minutes since he began the ritual, though, and he might as well be reading the First Amendment in Esperanto for all his words affect the spirit inside Jeanie’s body. She’s twelve, thirteen years old, maybe, but even a young girl’s boundless energy isn’t enough to withstand this kind of torment over such an extended period. Growls and animal noises escape from her throat as she thrashes on the mattress, rattling the old bedframe against the wall in a way that might pass for ironic if not for the terrible screams coming from Jeanie and the horrified onlookers. Not for a long, long time has Zachariah found himself so blindly out of his depth, confronted by possession so insistent and so severe that even the most potent incantations of the Christian faith are useless. He can’t imagine what her mother is thinking right now, or if any of the other tenants even thought that such a thing as demons and evil spirits truly existed before today.
The supply of holy water is starting to run low, but Zachariah splashes her again, clothing already soaked through. Jeanie’s scream is so loud and so tortured that her mother whimpers from the doorway and crosses herself yet again, body jostled by the multitude of concerned friends and family crowding the door. Zachariah begins the incantation again.
“Et separatur a plasmate tuo, ut num quam laedatur amorsu antiqui serpentes!” he shouts for what seems like the fiftieth time, voice ragged. In response, Jeanie convulses as though hooked up to electricity, pulling against the bandages that constrict her hands and feet with more violence than so small a body ought to possess. With a sickening lurch of his stomach, Zachariah notices that Jeanie’s fingernails have turned almost black, stained darker than ink against the bloodless white of her fingers. Jeanie howls again. Zachariah’s hands are shaking so hard that his entire body vibrates with the force of it.
This exorcism just went bad.
Only in West Hollywood could a building this run-down and dilapidated compete with the scions of wealth and prosperity of downtown Los Angeles, looking for all intents and purposes like a slice of the Third World smack in the centre of one of America’s richest cities. The sparkling high-rises in the distance and the flashy billboards selling sex, fast cars and malt liquor make for an interesting backdrop as a battered yellow taxi screeches to a halt in the alleyway beside the apartment building, half in shadow, half out. Without irony, it reads Angel City Cab Co. across the side in thick, black letters, but no one cares, or stops long enough to notice.
From the back window, a cigarette butt flicks onto the sidewalk before the door opens and a man emerges after it, the heel of one glossy leather shoe grinding it to ash on the pavement as he pulls himself out of the car. Saying nothing to the driver, he pops the door shut and rounds the corner, enters the building without needing to check that he’s in the right place. Screams are faintly audible even from the ground floor, bleeding into the heat of the day like a mirage most people won’t give a second thought in this part of town. In the foyer, the squints to adjust his eyes to the sudden dimness, the light seeming to recede and disappear into the cracked, faded paint job like a television set gone wonky and desaturated. He pulls an ornate gold lighter from the pocket of his coat, lights a cigarette. For a second he just stands there and puffs away, appearing thoughtful, but then the moment passes and he’s at the stairs, mounting them two at a time. The tenants take one look at his game face and billowing trenchcoat, and move the fuck out of the way. He isn’t even breathing heavy when he reaches the seventh floor, cigarette clamped between his teeth like a vice.
The hallway is still lined with people, all bumping and jostling to steal a glance at the unexplainable, but the man just pushes through, scowling to get people out of his path. Most of them look at him suspiciously, but those that don’t step aside without a word, even the gangbangers deferring to his presence. Elsewhere, there are grown men crying. It might be his lack of patience, the lack of tact or politeness, but they all take a step back when they look at his face and the total lack of fear in his expression. Someone recognizes him, says, “Constantine,” but he doesn’t bother to acknowledge his own name, and slips into apartment 7B with no outward change in his demeanour. Dark-haired and blue-eyed, he’s attractive to the point of obnoxiousness, even despite the permascowl painted across his features.
In the bedroom, Father Zachariah visibly relaxes when he sees Constantine, though his panic over the child and the situation is very apparent. His face is red and streaked with grimy sweat, soaking into the collar of his shirt.
“Castiel,” he pants, rushing over. “Thank God you’re here…”
At Castiel’s disgusted look, Zachariah steps back and gives him as wide a berth as possible, looking nervously between the younger man and the child on the bed. Jeanie continues to convulse and writhe against the tangle of blankets. Having assessed the scene the moment he walked through the door, Castiel sweeps by the hysterical mother without even a glance and, setting his still-burning cigarette down at the edge of a dresser, heads straight for the window. Jeanie, or the thing inside her, has taken notice of him long enough to go still, but when Castiel sweeps the curtains down from the window in a single unhurried motion, the scream that wrenches from her mouth is not a sound any person could make.
He returns to the bed and climbs right on top of the mattress, dipping down into a crouch so low that he is almost straddling the girl’s body. Leaning close, he whispers, “This is Constantine. Castiel Constantine, asshole,” and pulls back with a smirk when Jeanie gives a violent jolt and her eyes snap back open, glaring through him at something that isn’t visible to the eye. Castiel smiles, smug. “How ya doing?”
Spitting, Jeanie snarls, “Vamos juntos a matarla,” jerking against the restraints, but the only response it elicits is another smirk from Castiel, who withdraws a keychain from his pocket, the metal loop crammed with medallions in silver and gold.
“Sure,” he says cheerfully, and begins holding them up against the sunlight, one at a time, fingers flicking quickly through each medallion as it casts a shadow onto the girl’s face. “Let’s see who we got here.”
Each one is unique, bearing the symbol of the different saints, and he continues flipping through them until Jeanie suddenly reacts to one in the shape of a sun, gasping in pain and struggling in her effort to look away. Castiel stares at the saint responsible, and seems genuinely puzzled for a second before he swoops back down and presses it to Jeanie’s forehead. It sizzles, burning through the skin in a wet bubble, and the girl goes berserk, bucking and growling so viciously that Castiel’s body rocks with it. Through it all, he continues to hold the medallion to her forehead, gripping the bedframe for balance until the body underneath him goes completely and abruptly still.
Brow furrowed, Castiel stares at her prone form with a muttered What the hell? before withdrawing the medallion from her skin. Dozens of angry, reddish veins are visible through the delicate skin of Jeanie’s neck and cheeks, a sure sign that whatever crawled beneath the girl’s skin is only playing possum; though to what end, Castiel isn’t sure. Still frowning, Castiel hesitates for a split second before putting his hear to her mouth, listening for breath. Almost instantly, a muzzle like an angry dog’s leaps from Jeanie’s throat, stretching the skin grotesquely far in its attempt to bite at Castiel’s face. Unceremoniously, he punches it; the mouth withdraws.
When Castiel turns his gaze towards Zachariah and the girl’s mother, his face betrays the first sign of real concern he’s shown since he arrived.
“I need a mirror,” he says urgently, face dark. “Now.”
As he leaps down from the bed, Jeanie’s mother produces a small compact mirror from the pocket of her robe, but Castiel pushes it away with impatience. “No,” he growls, shaking his head. He gestures at the crowd of people still gawping from the doorway. Gesturing, he instructs, “A large mirror.” After sizing up the child, he adds, “At least three feet high.” When no one moves, he barks, “Move!”
The men scatter.
With them gone, Castiel jolts into action, saying nothing to address Zachariah’s worried look as he proceeds to rip a television cable from the wall, before shattering the glass in the windowframe with a wooden chair. Ignoring the broken glass around him, Castiel pushes his body through the window and out onto the fire escape, looking down into the alley where the yellow taxi is still parked.
“CHUCK!” he bellows, gravelly voice echoing in the narrow space between the buildings.
From the window of the taxi, a scruffy, twentysomething face emerges, betraying all of the disgruntled frustration of a man who would very much love to be up there killing the bad things, rather than keeping the engine running. Eyes taking a moment to find Castiel on the fire escape, Chuck yells, “What?”
“Move the car,” Castiel bites out, looping the television cable over the rungs of the ladder one flight up.
This accomplished, he starts to move inside, but Chuck grunts, asking, “Why?”
“Move the damn car!” Despite the venom in his voice, Castiel ducks back into the apartment without another word, and without further explanation, taking the remaining length of television cable with him.
Inside the taxi, Chuck shakes his head and shifts the car into reverse, muttering to himself the whole time. “Park the car… move the car…” The taxi rolls backwards all of three feet. “There,” he grumbles, acidic, slamming the transmission back into ‘PARK’. “I moved the damn car.”
Meanwhile, a handful of the tenants return to apartment 7B carrying a massive mirror in a ornate iron frame, as Castiel grabs the foot of the bed and shoves Zachariah aside. He swings the bed around so that it faces towards the window, legs gouging deep gashes in the hardwood all the way. Sunlight falls directly over Jeanie’s body, and the thing in her neck continues to convulse and struggle for freedom, but Castiel ignores it in favour of looping the television cable over the ceiling fan above their heads. Climbing back onto the bed, once again straddling the child who is shaking badly as though succumbing to shock, obviously not strong enough to withstand whatever has taken her over, Castiel sets his face back into a scowl and slaps her clean across the mouth, forcing her eyes back open. They are dark and dilated, the whites of her eyes completely overtaken by black.
“Zachariah,” he says, gesturing for the him and the men holding the mirror to come forward. “Lift it. Over the bed. Up,” he instructs, and to Zachariah he says, “Tie it off.” Happy to finally be called upon, Zachariah does so, grasping the free end as Castiel says, “Over the top.” Zachariah repositions himself at the foot of the bed, and Castiel, exhaling heavily as he turns to focus back on Jeanie, addresses the men, muscles tense under the weight of the massive frame. “Close your eyes,” he tells them, voice grave. “Whatever happens, don’t look.”
His hand descends over Jeanie’s eyes and clamps down, hard. She growls as he begins muttering at her in Aramaic and English, voice growing steadily louder as he intones, “Amar natash bow basar! Rescind from the flesh, I command thee-” and Jeanie chokes as though ready to spit. Again Castiel says, “Amar natash bow basar! Rescind from the flesh, I command thee!”
Jeanie reacts, and the shape in her body reappears once more, contorting the young body so far out of proportion that she is almost undiscernibly human. Unblocking the mirror, Castiel shifts to one side to allow Jeanie’s reflection to become visible, and the image is no longer that of a young girl, but of something else entirely, and certainly not human.
The surface of the mirror begins to flex and shift in the hands of the men; one of them looks, and in his shock his hair and beard turn immediately grey, and he drops his corner of the mirror in his hasty recoil. “No!” growls Castiel, but in that instant Jeanie screams and breaks free of her restraints, rising up off the bed with unnatural speed to grab Castiel about the throat, nails digging in deep and tight.
“Castiel?!” Zachariah shouts nervously, but the man shakes his head and tries to glance back into the mirror.
“Not yet!”
Castiel struggles, hands fumbling and desperate to stay firmly against the girl’s eyes while whatever’s inside her wracks her body, pushing her into every possible contortion in its fury. The creature fighting for escape seems close to breaking through skin now, thrashing visibly against her throat in the most gruesome birthing process imaginable. In a split-second decision, Castiel heaves himself to the side, dropping low against Jeanie’s body.
“Smile pretty, you vain prick,” he sneers, and pulls his hand away from Jeanie’s eyes so that she is looking directly up into her own reflection.
The two of them are visible, except that instead of Castiel and Jeanie alone in the mirror, the brown, wizened body of a demon, skeletal and missing the topmost half of its skull, has leapt into the picture, fighting against the confines of the frame like a caged animal. It is furious, trapped, shaking the mirror wildly in the men’s grip, rippling the glass in its outrage. The reflection begins to warp and bend outward, three-dimensional, and the demon’s stinking, green-tinged breath mists up the glass.
“For your boss,” Castiel tells it, glaring over his shoulder. He extends the full middle finger, and then shouts, “Now, Zachariah. Now!”
The older man pulls, putting every ounce of his overweight frame into it, grunting with the effort as the mirror swings towards the window. The demon leaps against the glass in angry anticipation, fist rending cracks everywhere, but the mirror catches against the windowframe and refuses to budge. Splinters of glass begin to rain down, the surface crackling like thin ice, and at this Castiel leaps for the television cord and pulls, helping Zachariah push it the remaining few inches free. The mirror explodes through the window and tumbles end over end in the sunlight, plummeting seven stories down until all three hundred pounds of iron and glass come crashing down upon the taxi’s hood.
Inside the car, Chuck jumps and yells, “SHIT!” as the demon’s image shatters on impact, the glass splintering into a million fragments and choking the air. Looking up, Chuck blanches when he sees that he missed dying by about two feet, give or take. He falls back against his seat, breathing heavily and clutching at his hat.
Upstairs, Jeanie gasps and takes her first breath as a child again. Within moments she is crying, great, wrenching sobs that convulse her thin frame almost as much as it did when possessed, but her fingernails have faded to a normal shade of pink; all traces of the ugly veins in her throat have receded, and her mother is there pulling her into a hug without hesitation, shoving past Castiel in her haste.
The exorcist, body slumping slightly in exhaustion, pushes himself up off the bed with a glare at Zachariah as he approaches the mother. “Now about the fee…” Zach says, from the insistence in his voice it’s like his earlier panic never was.
Scowling, Castiel reclaims the cigarette stub that’s still burning on the edge of the dresser, and fumbles it with his shaking fingers for a second before he regains control and takes a drag. The kitchenette is as far as he can make it before he must lean against the doorframe for balance, trying to catch his breath even between pulls off the cigarette. He’s aged ten years in about twenty minutes, and finds himself looking around the grimy kitchen as he attempts to rediscover his composure and find his legs again. A child’s crayon drawing mounted to the fridge catches his eye; it’s of a figure stabbing another in the side with what could be a stick, or a spear, the image repeated over and over again in the same childish lines. Eyes narrowing, Castiel considers it a moment longer before he snatches it free of the magnet, and tucks it away into the inside pocket of his trenchcoat.
He leaves the apartment without waiting for thanks, or for Zachariah. The remaining tenants in the hallway cross themselves as he walks by, but some reach out to him, wanting to shake his hand or touch his coat. Castiel sweeps by with a stare that keeps most of the people back at a safe distance.
After a few minutes, Zachariah catches up to him in the stairwell, breathing hard from the short run between the apartment and Castiel’s descending figure on the stairs. Castiel ignores him as they tromp down towards the foyer, and neither man catches the figure that watches them from two floors up, clad in a slick suit and polished veneer that appears untouchable even in these grungy surroundings. Castiel pauses, gazing upwards through the stairwell as if sensing something; but when he sees no one there, they continue on down.
In the foyer of the building, Zachariah almost runs into Castiel’s heels when he stops dead. “Zachariah,” says Castiel, voice tense and annoyed. At the look on the older man’s face, he sighs and rips the white priest’s collar from Zachariah’s neck.
The man deflates. “I know, I know,” he sighs, “but I didn’t think she was really possessed, not like that.”
Castiel is pissed, staring the fake priest down. “I’m not back in the city an hour and you drag me into-”
“Don’t be mad, Castiel, don’t be-” Zachariah is interrupted by Castiel’s angry search through the pockets of his jacket. “On the left side,” he offers, but Castiel keeps searching, growing more annoyed when whatever he’s looking for fails to turn up. “Vest pocket,” Zachariah adds.
Withdrawing a crumpled package of cigarettes, Castiel levels Zachariah with a look that is caught halfway between impressed and exasperated. “Don’t do that shit on me,” he warns, and Zachariah mumbles, “Sorry, sorry.”
He pulls a wad of crumpled bills from his pocket. “Here, you can have half,” he says, beginning to divide up the cash between himself and Castiel, but Castiel just snatches it all away when he notices a half-empty bottle of scotch hidden in the pocket of Zachariah’s coat.
“I should take it all, save you from yourself,” he scowls, gesturing at the alcohol. “Going to a lot of meetings, I see.”
Zachariah just shrugs. “Keeps the voices out so I can sleep,” he says simply. “I have to sleep, Cas.”
Castiel observes the other man for a moment, saying nothing, just staring at his pathetic friend with a mixture of pity and incomprehension, though given the cigarettes in his hand it’s not like he doesn’t understand the compulsion towards self-destruction. His eyes are calm and intense, but after too long Zachariah begins to squirm beneath his scrutiny, and Castiel relents and peels off a few bills with a sigh. He hands them over and Zachariah practically bubbles with gratitude; but when he tries to follow, Castiel simply holds out a hand and walks out of the apartment alone. Zachariah watches him go.
Rounding the corner into the alleyway outside the building, Castiel finds Chuck muttering to himself and attempting to punch dents out from under the taxi’s hood. Shards of glass go flying at his aggression and join the others surrounding the car. When Chuck sees Castiel, his blue eyes narrow into a scowl.
“I told you to move it,” Castiel reminds him blithely, before Chuck can say anything.
A strangled sound emerges from Chuck’s throat, and this is obviously just another incarnation of a conversation they’ve had a few hundred times already. “Well maybe if you had told me you were dropping a three hundred pound mirror with a pissed-off demon in it, I would have moved it further, Cas.” He folds his arms across his chest in a way he seems slightly too old for, but when Castiel doesn’t respond except to stare him down, he sighs and slams down the hood.
They both slide into the front of the car.
“Well?” says Chuck, when Castiel remains silent.
“Well, what?” counters Castiel.
Scowl once again in place, Chuck reaches into the front pocket of Castiel’s coat, and pulls out Zachariah’s wad of cash. Slowly, as if daring Castiel to say something, he slips off a few bills and tucks them into his jeans, before returning the money to Castiel’s jacket. “Shouldn’t have cut your stay in the land of enlightenment short,” he says lightly, refusing to flinch under Castiel’s look, the sardonically arched eyebrow. “You were so close to growing a conscience.”
After a moment, Castiel grins. He pulls out his special lighter, lights a cigarette, and sits back into the seat as Chuck shakes his head affectionately and starts the engine. They can hear pieces of glass rattling around beneath the hood like an erratic, staccato drumbeat.
“Los Angeles,” says Castiel, and glances back up at the apartment with a puzzled set to his face. “Never ceases to entertain.”
Chuck sighs, and drives off. Castiel hacks a cough around the cancer stick like it isn’t the source of the problem.
An hour later, they pull up in front of the 20 Lanes Bowling Alley, a trip that, even with Chuck’s terrible driving skills, would have taken twenty minutes in any other city except maybe New York. While the building is a complete dump, it's no worse off than any of the other aging dinosaurs in this dying neighbourhood, bricks crumbling, the once-colourful sign faded and half its lights blown out. The streets are nearly empty save for the odd drunk stumbling about in the late-afternoon sunlight, and Chuck has no problem finding room enough for his cab to pull up right in front of the entrance.
Flicking his fourth cigarette out the window, Castiel climbs out of the car while Chuck goes round the back and pulls out two suitcases stamped with ‘AIR INDIA’. His small frame sags under their weight, and there are two more where those came from, but Castiel just starts inside and doesn’t look back.
With exasperated quickly starting to resemble his natural state, Chuck yells, “Hey, there are four bags. I have two hands. This give you any ideas?”
At first, Castiel doesn’t even turn around, but just when Chuck is ready to explode his footsteps slow and he glances over his shoulder, expression thoughtful. “Make two trips?” he suggests. Apparently out of ideas, Castiel shoves his hands into the pocket of his trench and continues on inside.
Predictably, Chuck curses, but for once he doesn’t bother to hide it under his breath. Castiel lets the heavy door of the bowling alley slam shut behind him, a few feet in front of Chuck’s face.
Chapter Two
AUTHOR: nanoochka
RATING: R for violence, gore, swearing, and UST
PAIRINGS: Dean/Castiel
SPOILERS: None, unless you mean Constantine, in which case… all of it.
WARNINGS: Constantine-AU, pre-slash, violence, blasphemous themes, multiple character deaths (sometimes repeatedly!), borderline crack given the nature of the work.
WORD COUNT: This part 3,981; overall WIP, but prolly more than 30k, since the screenplay is almost 25.
SUMMARY: Castiel Constantine, an irreverent supernatural detective, has literally been to Hell and back. When Constantine teams up with skeptical police detective Dean Winchester to solve the mystery of the death of Sam, Dean’s brother, their investigation takes them through the world of demons and angels that exists just beneath the landscape of contemporary Los Angeles. Caught in a catastrophic series of otherworldly events, the two become inextricably involved and seek to find their own peace at whatever cost.
DISCLAIMER: Because I’m basically doing twice the stealing here, extra disclaimer is required. The characters from Supernatural or Constantine: Hellblazer do not belong to me, and the dialogue/story taken from Constantine is the property of Jamie Delano and Garth Ennis (comic), and Kevin Brodbin and Frank A. Cappello (screenplay). No infringement intended.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: I have a confession to make: in spite of my (usually) good taste, Constantine is one of my favourite movies. It is, for the most part, horribly clichéd and terribly acted (no one’s looking at you, Rachel and Tilda), but I’ve seen it a bazillion times and still manage to squeal with glee through most of it. I suppose that’s owing mostly to the strength of the comics upon which the movie was based, but the film manages to pack quite the punch, too, especially in the latter half. Anyway, my point is that I love it to bits, and had a conniption fit upon my last viewing when I realized HOW FREAKING PERFECTLY the movie could overlap with the SPN-verse. It’s kind of scary. The Castiel/Constantine jokes have been flying fast and furious in the fandom on account of that damn trenchcoat, but no one, as far as I know, has actually attempted an AU/crossover. This is basically my way of saying, “See? See? TOLD YOU!” But for what it's worth, while I've tried to follow the screenplay as close as possible (as opposed to the movie), I do on occasion follow some scenes from the film where they differ wildly (moreso towards the end).
“Hellblazer” - Chapter 1 by nanoochka
Though the building is practically falling down, the apartment wasn’t hard to find; Father Zachariah simply followed the girl’s screams to the seventh floor. Her entire family and half of the neighbours had been waiting for him in the hallway when he arrived, sweating and out of breath from climbing so many flights of stairs in the interminable Los Angeles heat. It would have been a trial even for a man half his size, one in better shape than his portly, fifty-year-old body, and Zachariah was praying fervently for strength by the time he burst from the stairwell, reddening further when his exhaustion was met by the curious, frightened stares of almost a dozen people. He’d heard the girl, Jeanie, wailing from somewhere inside apartment 7B, and was ushered through the door by her terrified mother before he could catch his breath. It seemed like half the building came with them.
He found Jeanie perched, à la Spider-Man, in the corner of her room between wall and ceiling, hissing and spitting like a cat, making noises no human child should ever make. It took Zachariah and four grown men to pull the girl down and restrain her on the bed, where her small body contorted in agony, covered in several days’ worth of sweat. As if he hadn’t seen enough already, upon glimpsing her twisted face, eyes rolling around in her skull like 8-balls spinning across a billiard green, Zachariah unpacked his exorcism kit without hesitation, heart hammering like a tympani in his chest.
It’s been over twenty minutes since he began the ritual, though, and he might as well be reading the First Amendment in Esperanto for all his words affect the spirit inside Jeanie’s body. She’s twelve, thirteen years old, maybe, but even a young girl’s boundless energy isn’t enough to withstand this kind of torment over such an extended period. Growls and animal noises escape from her throat as she thrashes on the mattress, rattling the old bedframe against the wall in a way that might pass for ironic if not for the terrible screams coming from Jeanie and the horrified onlookers. Not for a long, long time has Zachariah found himself so blindly out of his depth, confronted by possession so insistent and so severe that even the most potent incantations of the Christian faith are useless. He can’t imagine what her mother is thinking right now, or if any of the other tenants even thought that such a thing as demons and evil spirits truly existed before today.
The supply of holy water is starting to run low, but Zachariah splashes her again, clothing already soaked through. Jeanie’s scream is so loud and so tortured that her mother whimpers from the doorway and crosses herself yet again, body jostled by the multitude of concerned friends and family crowding the door. Zachariah begins the incantation again.
“Et separatur a plasmate tuo, ut num quam laedatur amorsu antiqui serpentes!” he shouts for what seems like the fiftieth time, voice ragged. In response, Jeanie convulses as though hooked up to electricity, pulling against the bandages that constrict her hands and feet with more violence than so small a body ought to possess. With a sickening lurch of his stomach, Zachariah notices that Jeanie’s fingernails have turned almost black, stained darker than ink against the bloodless white of her fingers. Jeanie howls again. Zachariah’s hands are shaking so hard that his entire body vibrates with the force of it.
This exorcism just went bad.
Only in West Hollywood could a building this run-down and dilapidated compete with the scions of wealth and prosperity of downtown Los Angeles, looking for all intents and purposes like a slice of the Third World smack in the centre of one of America’s richest cities. The sparkling high-rises in the distance and the flashy billboards selling sex, fast cars and malt liquor make for an interesting backdrop as a battered yellow taxi screeches to a halt in the alleyway beside the apartment building, half in shadow, half out. Without irony, it reads Angel City Cab Co. across the side in thick, black letters, but no one cares, or stops long enough to notice.
From the back window, a cigarette butt flicks onto the sidewalk before the door opens and a man emerges after it, the heel of one glossy leather shoe grinding it to ash on the pavement as he pulls himself out of the car. Saying nothing to the driver, he pops the door shut and rounds the corner, enters the building without needing to check that he’s in the right place. Screams are faintly audible even from the ground floor, bleeding into the heat of the day like a mirage most people won’t give a second thought in this part of town. In the foyer, the squints to adjust his eyes to the sudden dimness, the light seeming to recede and disappear into the cracked, faded paint job like a television set gone wonky and desaturated. He pulls an ornate gold lighter from the pocket of his coat, lights a cigarette. For a second he just stands there and puffs away, appearing thoughtful, but then the moment passes and he’s at the stairs, mounting them two at a time. The tenants take one look at his game face and billowing trenchcoat, and move the fuck out of the way. He isn’t even breathing heavy when he reaches the seventh floor, cigarette clamped between his teeth like a vice.
The hallway is still lined with people, all bumping and jostling to steal a glance at the unexplainable, but the man just pushes through, scowling to get people out of his path. Most of them look at him suspiciously, but those that don’t step aside without a word, even the gangbangers deferring to his presence. Elsewhere, there are grown men crying. It might be his lack of patience, the lack of tact or politeness, but they all take a step back when they look at his face and the total lack of fear in his expression. Someone recognizes him, says, “Constantine,” but he doesn’t bother to acknowledge his own name, and slips into apartment 7B with no outward change in his demeanour. Dark-haired and blue-eyed, he’s attractive to the point of obnoxiousness, even despite the permascowl painted across his features.
In the bedroom, Father Zachariah visibly relaxes when he sees Constantine, though his panic over the child and the situation is very apparent. His face is red and streaked with grimy sweat, soaking into the collar of his shirt.
“Castiel,” he pants, rushing over. “Thank God you’re here…”
At Castiel’s disgusted look, Zachariah steps back and gives him as wide a berth as possible, looking nervously between the younger man and the child on the bed. Jeanie continues to convulse and writhe against the tangle of blankets. Having assessed the scene the moment he walked through the door, Castiel sweeps by the hysterical mother without even a glance and, setting his still-burning cigarette down at the edge of a dresser, heads straight for the window. Jeanie, or the thing inside her, has taken notice of him long enough to go still, but when Castiel sweeps the curtains down from the window in a single unhurried motion, the scream that wrenches from her mouth is not a sound any person could make.
He returns to the bed and climbs right on top of the mattress, dipping down into a crouch so low that he is almost straddling the girl’s body. Leaning close, he whispers, “This is Constantine. Castiel Constantine, asshole,” and pulls back with a smirk when Jeanie gives a violent jolt and her eyes snap back open, glaring through him at something that isn’t visible to the eye. Castiel smiles, smug. “How ya doing?”
Spitting, Jeanie snarls, “Vamos juntos a matarla,” jerking against the restraints, but the only response it elicits is another smirk from Castiel, who withdraws a keychain from his pocket, the metal loop crammed with medallions in silver and gold.
“Sure,” he says cheerfully, and begins holding them up against the sunlight, one at a time, fingers flicking quickly through each medallion as it casts a shadow onto the girl’s face. “Let’s see who we got here.”
Each one is unique, bearing the symbol of the different saints, and he continues flipping through them until Jeanie suddenly reacts to one in the shape of a sun, gasping in pain and struggling in her effort to look away. Castiel stares at the saint responsible, and seems genuinely puzzled for a second before he swoops back down and presses it to Jeanie’s forehead. It sizzles, burning through the skin in a wet bubble, and the girl goes berserk, bucking and growling so viciously that Castiel’s body rocks with it. Through it all, he continues to hold the medallion to her forehead, gripping the bedframe for balance until the body underneath him goes completely and abruptly still.
Brow furrowed, Castiel stares at her prone form with a muttered What the hell? before withdrawing the medallion from her skin. Dozens of angry, reddish veins are visible through the delicate skin of Jeanie’s neck and cheeks, a sure sign that whatever crawled beneath the girl’s skin is only playing possum; though to what end, Castiel isn’t sure. Still frowning, Castiel hesitates for a split second before putting his hear to her mouth, listening for breath. Almost instantly, a muzzle like an angry dog’s leaps from Jeanie’s throat, stretching the skin grotesquely far in its attempt to bite at Castiel’s face. Unceremoniously, he punches it; the mouth withdraws.
When Castiel turns his gaze towards Zachariah and the girl’s mother, his face betrays the first sign of real concern he’s shown since he arrived.
“I need a mirror,” he says urgently, face dark. “Now.”
As he leaps down from the bed, Jeanie’s mother produces a small compact mirror from the pocket of her robe, but Castiel pushes it away with impatience. “No,” he growls, shaking his head. He gestures at the crowd of people still gawping from the doorway. Gesturing, he instructs, “A large mirror.” After sizing up the child, he adds, “At least three feet high.” When no one moves, he barks, “Move!”
The men scatter.
With them gone, Castiel jolts into action, saying nothing to address Zachariah’s worried look as he proceeds to rip a television cable from the wall, before shattering the glass in the windowframe with a wooden chair. Ignoring the broken glass around him, Castiel pushes his body through the window and out onto the fire escape, looking down into the alley where the yellow taxi is still parked.
“CHUCK!” he bellows, gravelly voice echoing in the narrow space between the buildings.
From the window of the taxi, a scruffy, twentysomething face emerges, betraying all of the disgruntled frustration of a man who would very much love to be up there killing the bad things, rather than keeping the engine running. Eyes taking a moment to find Castiel on the fire escape, Chuck yells, “What?”
“Move the car,” Castiel bites out, looping the television cable over the rungs of the ladder one flight up.
This accomplished, he starts to move inside, but Chuck grunts, asking, “Why?”
“Move the damn car!” Despite the venom in his voice, Castiel ducks back into the apartment without another word, and without further explanation, taking the remaining length of television cable with him.
Inside the taxi, Chuck shakes his head and shifts the car into reverse, muttering to himself the whole time. “Park the car… move the car…” The taxi rolls backwards all of three feet. “There,” he grumbles, acidic, slamming the transmission back into ‘PARK’. “I moved the damn car.”
Meanwhile, a handful of the tenants return to apartment 7B carrying a massive mirror in a ornate iron frame, as Castiel grabs the foot of the bed and shoves Zachariah aside. He swings the bed around so that it faces towards the window, legs gouging deep gashes in the hardwood all the way. Sunlight falls directly over Jeanie’s body, and the thing in her neck continues to convulse and struggle for freedom, but Castiel ignores it in favour of looping the television cable over the ceiling fan above their heads. Climbing back onto the bed, once again straddling the child who is shaking badly as though succumbing to shock, obviously not strong enough to withstand whatever has taken her over, Castiel sets his face back into a scowl and slaps her clean across the mouth, forcing her eyes back open. They are dark and dilated, the whites of her eyes completely overtaken by black.
“Zachariah,” he says, gesturing for the him and the men holding the mirror to come forward. “Lift it. Over the bed. Up,” he instructs, and to Zachariah he says, “Tie it off.” Happy to finally be called upon, Zachariah does so, grasping the free end as Castiel says, “Over the top.” Zachariah repositions himself at the foot of the bed, and Castiel, exhaling heavily as he turns to focus back on Jeanie, addresses the men, muscles tense under the weight of the massive frame. “Close your eyes,” he tells them, voice grave. “Whatever happens, don’t look.”
His hand descends over Jeanie’s eyes and clamps down, hard. She growls as he begins muttering at her in Aramaic and English, voice growing steadily louder as he intones, “Amar natash bow basar! Rescind from the flesh, I command thee-” and Jeanie chokes as though ready to spit. Again Castiel says, “Amar natash bow basar! Rescind from the flesh, I command thee!”
Jeanie reacts, and the shape in her body reappears once more, contorting the young body so far out of proportion that she is almost undiscernibly human. Unblocking the mirror, Castiel shifts to one side to allow Jeanie’s reflection to become visible, and the image is no longer that of a young girl, but of something else entirely, and certainly not human.
The surface of the mirror begins to flex and shift in the hands of the men; one of them looks, and in his shock his hair and beard turn immediately grey, and he drops his corner of the mirror in his hasty recoil. “No!” growls Castiel, but in that instant Jeanie screams and breaks free of her restraints, rising up off the bed with unnatural speed to grab Castiel about the throat, nails digging in deep and tight.
“Castiel?!” Zachariah shouts nervously, but the man shakes his head and tries to glance back into the mirror.
“Not yet!”
Castiel struggles, hands fumbling and desperate to stay firmly against the girl’s eyes while whatever’s inside her wracks her body, pushing her into every possible contortion in its fury. The creature fighting for escape seems close to breaking through skin now, thrashing visibly against her throat in the most gruesome birthing process imaginable. In a split-second decision, Castiel heaves himself to the side, dropping low against Jeanie’s body.
“Smile pretty, you vain prick,” he sneers, and pulls his hand away from Jeanie’s eyes so that she is looking directly up into her own reflection.
The two of them are visible, except that instead of Castiel and Jeanie alone in the mirror, the brown, wizened body of a demon, skeletal and missing the topmost half of its skull, has leapt into the picture, fighting against the confines of the frame like a caged animal. It is furious, trapped, shaking the mirror wildly in the men’s grip, rippling the glass in its outrage. The reflection begins to warp and bend outward, three-dimensional, and the demon’s stinking, green-tinged breath mists up the glass.
“For your boss,” Castiel tells it, glaring over his shoulder. He extends the full middle finger, and then shouts, “Now, Zachariah. Now!”
The older man pulls, putting every ounce of his overweight frame into it, grunting with the effort as the mirror swings towards the window. The demon leaps against the glass in angry anticipation, fist rending cracks everywhere, but the mirror catches against the windowframe and refuses to budge. Splinters of glass begin to rain down, the surface crackling like thin ice, and at this Castiel leaps for the television cord and pulls, helping Zachariah push it the remaining few inches free. The mirror explodes through the window and tumbles end over end in the sunlight, plummeting seven stories down until all three hundred pounds of iron and glass come crashing down upon the taxi’s hood.
Inside the car, Chuck jumps and yells, “SHIT!” as the demon’s image shatters on impact, the glass splintering into a million fragments and choking the air. Looking up, Chuck blanches when he sees that he missed dying by about two feet, give or take. He falls back against his seat, breathing heavily and clutching at his hat.
Upstairs, Jeanie gasps and takes her first breath as a child again. Within moments she is crying, great, wrenching sobs that convulse her thin frame almost as much as it did when possessed, but her fingernails have faded to a normal shade of pink; all traces of the ugly veins in her throat have receded, and her mother is there pulling her into a hug without hesitation, shoving past Castiel in her haste.
The exorcist, body slumping slightly in exhaustion, pushes himself up off the bed with a glare at Zachariah as he approaches the mother. “Now about the fee…” Zach says, from the insistence in his voice it’s like his earlier panic never was.
Scowling, Castiel reclaims the cigarette stub that’s still burning on the edge of the dresser, and fumbles it with his shaking fingers for a second before he regains control and takes a drag. The kitchenette is as far as he can make it before he must lean against the doorframe for balance, trying to catch his breath even between pulls off the cigarette. He’s aged ten years in about twenty minutes, and finds himself looking around the grimy kitchen as he attempts to rediscover his composure and find his legs again. A child’s crayon drawing mounted to the fridge catches his eye; it’s of a figure stabbing another in the side with what could be a stick, or a spear, the image repeated over and over again in the same childish lines. Eyes narrowing, Castiel considers it a moment longer before he snatches it free of the magnet, and tucks it away into the inside pocket of his trenchcoat.
He leaves the apartment without waiting for thanks, or for Zachariah. The remaining tenants in the hallway cross themselves as he walks by, but some reach out to him, wanting to shake his hand or touch his coat. Castiel sweeps by with a stare that keeps most of the people back at a safe distance.
After a few minutes, Zachariah catches up to him in the stairwell, breathing hard from the short run between the apartment and Castiel’s descending figure on the stairs. Castiel ignores him as they tromp down towards the foyer, and neither man catches the figure that watches them from two floors up, clad in a slick suit and polished veneer that appears untouchable even in these grungy surroundings. Castiel pauses, gazing upwards through the stairwell as if sensing something; but when he sees no one there, they continue on down.
In the foyer of the building, Zachariah almost runs into Castiel’s heels when he stops dead. “Zachariah,” says Castiel, voice tense and annoyed. At the look on the older man’s face, he sighs and rips the white priest’s collar from Zachariah’s neck.
The man deflates. “I know, I know,” he sighs, “but I didn’t think she was really possessed, not like that.”
Castiel is pissed, staring the fake priest down. “I’m not back in the city an hour and you drag me into-”
“Don’t be mad, Castiel, don’t be-” Zachariah is interrupted by Castiel’s angry search through the pockets of his jacket. “On the left side,” he offers, but Castiel keeps searching, growing more annoyed when whatever he’s looking for fails to turn up. “Vest pocket,” Zachariah adds.
Withdrawing a crumpled package of cigarettes, Castiel levels Zachariah with a look that is caught halfway between impressed and exasperated. “Don’t do that shit on me,” he warns, and Zachariah mumbles, “Sorry, sorry.”
He pulls a wad of crumpled bills from his pocket. “Here, you can have half,” he says, beginning to divide up the cash between himself and Castiel, but Castiel just snatches it all away when he notices a half-empty bottle of scotch hidden in the pocket of Zachariah’s coat.
“I should take it all, save you from yourself,” he scowls, gesturing at the alcohol. “Going to a lot of meetings, I see.”
Zachariah just shrugs. “Keeps the voices out so I can sleep,” he says simply. “I have to sleep, Cas.”
Castiel observes the other man for a moment, saying nothing, just staring at his pathetic friend with a mixture of pity and incomprehension, though given the cigarettes in his hand it’s not like he doesn’t understand the compulsion towards self-destruction. His eyes are calm and intense, but after too long Zachariah begins to squirm beneath his scrutiny, and Castiel relents and peels off a few bills with a sigh. He hands them over and Zachariah practically bubbles with gratitude; but when he tries to follow, Castiel simply holds out a hand and walks out of the apartment alone. Zachariah watches him go.
Rounding the corner into the alleyway outside the building, Castiel finds Chuck muttering to himself and attempting to punch dents out from under the taxi’s hood. Shards of glass go flying at his aggression and join the others surrounding the car. When Chuck sees Castiel, his blue eyes narrow into a scowl.
“I told you to move it,” Castiel reminds him blithely, before Chuck can say anything.
A strangled sound emerges from Chuck’s throat, and this is obviously just another incarnation of a conversation they’ve had a few hundred times already. “Well maybe if you had told me you were dropping a three hundred pound mirror with a pissed-off demon in it, I would have moved it further, Cas.” He folds his arms across his chest in a way he seems slightly too old for, but when Castiel doesn’t respond except to stare him down, he sighs and slams down the hood.
They both slide into the front of the car.
“Well?” says Chuck, when Castiel remains silent.
“Well, what?” counters Castiel.
Scowl once again in place, Chuck reaches into the front pocket of Castiel’s coat, and pulls out Zachariah’s wad of cash. Slowly, as if daring Castiel to say something, he slips off a few bills and tucks them into his jeans, before returning the money to Castiel’s jacket. “Shouldn’t have cut your stay in the land of enlightenment short,” he says lightly, refusing to flinch under Castiel’s look, the sardonically arched eyebrow. “You were so close to growing a conscience.”
After a moment, Castiel grins. He pulls out his special lighter, lights a cigarette, and sits back into the seat as Chuck shakes his head affectionately and starts the engine. They can hear pieces of glass rattling around beneath the hood like an erratic, staccato drumbeat.
“Los Angeles,” says Castiel, and glances back up at the apartment with a puzzled set to his face. “Never ceases to entertain.”
Chuck sighs, and drives off. Castiel hacks a cough around the cancer stick like it isn’t the source of the problem.
An hour later, they pull up in front of the 20 Lanes Bowling Alley, a trip that, even with Chuck’s terrible driving skills, would have taken twenty minutes in any other city except maybe New York. While the building is a complete dump, it's no worse off than any of the other aging dinosaurs in this dying neighbourhood, bricks crumbling, the once-colourful sign faded and half its lights blown out. The streets are nearly empty save for the odd drunk stumbling about in the late-afternoon sunlight, and Chuck has no problem finding room enough for his cab to pull up right in front of the entrance.
Flicking his fourth cigarette out the window, Castiel climbs out of the car while Chuck goes round the back and pulls out two suitcases stamped with ‘AIR INDIA’. His small frame sags under their weight, and there are two more where those came from, but Castiel just starts inside and doesn’t look back.
With exasperated quickly starting to resemble his natural state, Chuck yells, “Hey, there are four bags. I have two hands. This give you any ideas?”
At first, Castiel doesn’t even turn around, but just when Chuck is ready to explode his footsteps slow and he glances over his shoulder, expression thoughtful. “Make two trips?” he suggests. Apparently out of ideas, Castiel shoves his hands into the pocket of his trench and continues on inside.
Predictably, Chuck curses, but for once he doesn’t bother to hide it under his breath. Castiel lets the heavy door of the bowling alley slam shut behind him, a few feet in front of Chuck’s face.
Chapter Two