Story Rating: Starts at T- M. The rating M is for later chapters. This fic contains a lot of swearing, strong violence, and sexual content as well as implied nudity and drug use.
Summary: It all began with an exorcism, the return of a childhood friend, and the possibility that demons have found another door in the mortal world. It's all coming clear that someone's playing games, someone wants revenge, someone wants to get even...but it has nothing to do with Mammon, not this time. It looks like John may be in for yet another hell ride in Los Angeles, the city of screaming souls...but this time, it's different.
Disclaimer: Nothing's mine, I'm just a fan writing a story that will hopefully be entertaining. lol.
PROLOGUE:
I'm alone again; beside myself in this cold, empty apartment I call home. The only sound I hear is the bowling balls crashing against the pins downstairs, or footsteps outside the hall followed by whispers; whispers of people I don't even know. They just live here like myself.
The most company I have is the pigeons outside my window, which is pretty pathetic when I think about it.
Beeman's bowling alley is now managed by his brother. Which isn't good for me since the rent's gone up twenty fucking dollars…doesn't matter anyhow…
Hennessey's gone, so I mainly find myself working alongside jack asses from the catholic church; the damn hypocrites.
Somehow I can't believe it's been three months since I last saw or heard from Angela, well, I did see her once, but I just couldn't talk to her. I've seen Midnite on a few occasions…
Now it's 5:31 am. I'm sitting on the edge of my bed, staring down the hole of an almost empty vodka bottle. I've been drinking this stuff for years…somehow, it washes away the pain, the memories.
I sure could use the humor of an annoying apprentice right about now…the kid died before his time.
CHAPTER I: Demon Takes Child
The ticking of his wrist watch could almost be heard beneath the crashing sound of the pins downstairs in the bowling hall.
His brown eyes were fixated on the world outside the window, the world hugged between the old wooden shutters that often hid him within the tattered walls of this old place.
The people of his past, the people he somewhat considered friends, it seemed like they always ended up as ghosts, trailing in his shadow.
The phone started ringing, slowly breaking his mind from his thoughts, thoughts that had his face painted with expressions of the unhappy type.
He pulled himself up straight, leaving the softness of his bed, making his way over to the wall phone.
He picked it up.
"What?" his voice gruff, deepened and uncaring. Since his last parting with Angela; it seemed he had grown hard again…hard like a shot of whisky.
"John, this is Father Garret. I'm calling on behalf of a family."
"Let me guess; someone's been possessed and none of you know what to do about it."
The Father hesitated at first.
"…well, yes." was his reply. "I need you to go over and see what you can do."
"I'm not working this weekend. I need to rest."
"John, this is urgent. Please."
John sighed.
"Where do they live?"
After arrival, he stepped out of the cab, tipping the driver and watching him drive away from the old hidden suburb.
His shoes clacked against the sidewalk, leading up to the brick, 1970's ranch style house.
The exorcist nearly stumbled over a large rock that he hadn't noticed while making his way to the door, but he managed to catch himself.
He was standing before the door, reaching into his coat pocket for some gum; nicoderm.
He tossed it into his mouth, readying himself to knock.
He clutched his fist, knocking it steadily against the wood door. He could see a figure coming down the hall through the small window cut-out.
The fellow opened the door, a young stoutly built man. He had a buzz cut, clean face, flannel shirt.
"Can I help you?" he asked.
"I'm John Constantine. Father Garret said you needed help with an exorcism."
"Oh, please come inside."
John stepped in. The house seemed like a decent family home inside but there was an essence about it that wasn't of this world.
On the couch sat a young woman, her short brow hair neatly placed behind her ears. Her baggy hooded sweat shirt draped over her with her blue jeans.
"Mom, we've got company." she said.
John soon saw a middle aged woman enter the room, a casual woman, but her face read: Terror. As did everyone else here.
"I'm Howard Livingston, this is my wife Sandra…" said the young man.
"And I'm Mrs. Fairfax." said the older woman. "I'm Sandra's mother."
"Father Garret mentioned something to me about a kid being terrorized by some supernatural force." John said, his eyes looking about the room, searching for a child rather than an adult.
"That would be my little boy, Jake." stated Mrs. Fairfax. "No one at the catholic church will grant us an exorcism…"
"That's why they call me. Can I see the boy?"
"Wait there." The woman left the den, not taking long to return with a pale, almost ghostly-like boy of about ten. His sandy brown hair was un-maintained and his eyes said: Exhaustion.
"Jake, this is Mr. um…." his mother paused, waiting for John to repeat his name.
"Constantine." John said.
Jake gazed at him grimly.
He didn't see a little boy. No, he saw a demon within those dark eyes, those eyes that seemed to be growing blacker.
The boy clutched his fists, his eyes set upon the exorcist, somehow knowing that he was trouble, for the demon.
"Jake, can you say hello? Mr. Constantine is here to help."
"…He shouldn't be here. He needs to leave." was what he uttered angrily before returning to his bedroom.
"I'm very sorry, Jake has always been a kind boy... before it happened."
John took a seat on the couch.
"So tell me…what's this all about? What's wrong with the kid exactly?"
"I'll explain." Howard offered. He clutched his hands together as they dangled between his knees as he sat edged on the couch.
"It all started happening when Sandra and I rented a house. My mother was actually going to live with us for a while. On our moving day, we took Jake along because he wanted to help…he's always been so good about being the little helper of the house…we even had a spare room for him, so that he could spend the night sometimes along with my Mother in-law."
"Go on." John told him.
"That day, as Sandra and I were moving furniture in, Jake had been in the house; exploring. And just as we were carrying the couch to the front door, he came running out as if something was after him."
Sandra then cut in.
"We stopped everything and walked over to see what was up. He was huddled beneath a tree like some beaten dog… it terrified me to see my little brother in this state. I asked him what was wrong and he immediately began telling us that there was a monster in the house, and that it was going to kill him…Mr. Constantine, I know you don't know Jake, but he would never lie…not like that. Afterwards he refused to go back inside, and that's when Howard and I decided that something had to be wrong with the house. We haven't been back since."
Mrs. Fairfax then told her part of the story.
"After they came home that night, Jake began acting strange, like someone was out to get him. He kept speaking of this old man and how he was going to punish Jake for finding his secret hiding place. We've asked Jake what he means by this secret, but he refuses to speak of it anymore."
The woman began to break out in tears.
"Whatever this thing is, it keeps beating my baby. Sometimes he wakes up screaming for help, and we find him literally being thrown and punched by this invisible force…and I feel so helpless!" she threw her face into her palms.
Sandra put her arms around her grieving mother.
John stood up from the sofa.
"What are you going to do, to help Jake I mean?" Howard asked.
"I'm gonna wait it out.."
John found his way to Jake's room where he saw the boy sitting on the floor, huddled and staring blankly at a toy car. He seemed numb to John's presence.
The exorcist glanced him, tilting his head somewhat to the left as he studied the boy's face, taking in the essence of the room at the same time.
The air seemed still, thick somehow, and cold. It was typical of a demonic invasion and John suspected nothing less than a possible demon, and this worried him.
"The balance, how could it be broken? Again?" he thought.
He stepped out of the bedroom, a decision had nestled itself within his mind: Wait.
That night, Mrs. Fairfax had prepared a fine casserole for everyone, including their strange guest.
Sandra had finally convinced Jake to leave his room and join everyone for a hot meal.
John pulled out the chair and sat himself down, almost never leaving his gaze upon the boy, who seemed fixated upon John just as well.
Their glare upon each other made Howard, Sandra and especially Mrs. Fairfax uneasy.
"Shall we bless the food?" asked the nervous mother.
"No. It would be a bad ideal to mention God here." Jake growled at her, his eyes still fixed on John.
"Jake that's not like you at all, usually you're the one reminding us." Sandra said.
Jake didn't reply, but John did.
"Say the blessing." he told Mrs. Fairfax.
"The old man will get angry." Jake said. Now he was slowly changing his tone; he seemed more fearful than before, like he was the victim again.
"I don't give a damn what the old man does." John said, challenging the presence he could feel around them.
"The old man is more powerful than you think. He knew the whole time you were coming…he knows about you. You drabble in the occult, exorcisms…he's heard other things about you too." Jake confessed. "…That's why you almost tripped over that rock when you got out of the cab."
John looked at him with bewildered eyes.
"Let me ask you something kid, is he always an old man? Or is that just a disguise to hide what he really is?"
"…sometimes." Jake swallowed.
"Tell me about his hiding place."
"No! I can't!"
Mrs. Fairfax then cut in, seeing her son was becoming upset.
"Let's eat, the food is getting cold." she said.
But John ignored her. He leaned forward over the table, gazing into Jake's pale face.
"You know what? I don't think the old man is all that tough."
"You don't understand; he's very powerful." Jake replied.
"Prove it then. Tell the old man to make the table shake." John provoked.
Jake shook his head.
"I can't….he…."
But sure enough, the table began to vibrate, the shaking becoming more violent by the moment as if someone was beneath it, trying to prove some point. John knew it was the demon.
When John moved away from his seat at the table, it stopped shaking. He rolled up his sleeves, placing his arms together to form the symbol marked upon his skin.
Everyone watched in silence.
"Into the light I command thee!" he said, his knees bending slowly to the floor.
The room began to waver, everything grew dark.
"Into the light, I command thee!" he repeated.
"No…no! Stop it! Stop it!" Jake yelled, running over and pulling John's arms apart.
"What the hell are you doing?" John demanded.
Howard went to take the boy up in his arms as the child kicked and screamed.
The room rekindled it's light. And the air was warmer again.
John stood to his feet, his eyes said: Frustration.
"Why the hell did you do that?"
"He'll kill us! He told me that if you tried anything, he'd kill us all!" Jake cried. His mother placed her arms around him.
"What was that you just did there?" Howard asked. Everyone was clearly freaked out by whatever it was that the exorcist had done.
"It's just a way to force a demon to reveal itself…if there's one present."
John leaned himself against the wall, he was stressed, confused, wondering how he would solve this mystery.
"I think we should all just go to bed now." Mrs. Fairfax suggested. "Mr. Constantine, if you like, you can sleep on the couch."
"I won't be sleeping tonight. But I'll remain in the den until something comes up." John knew this demon was toying with him, hiding itself to avoid being caught.
The hours seemed to pass by slowly, as if time was being purposely stubborn…and within those slow hours of the night, nothing ever happened. John's tired eyes finally defeated his restless mind, forcing him to catch at least a little sleep.
"Mr. Constantine? Mr. Constantine?" It was the young man, shaking him from within his rest.
"What? What?" John opened his eyes, seeing that the clock on the wall now read 6:02 am.
"I'm heading out for work. Are you going to stay the rest of the day?"
"I can't leave until I take care of this demon…" John was trying to remember this man's name. God, he was terrible at remembering the names of random victims.
"Well,"
He could tell this young man didn't like the ideal of leaving two women and a child alone with a stranger.
"If something happens with the kid, I'm sure your wife will call you."
"Uh, yeah…right. Well good luck."
The young man, Howard, stepped out of the house, getting into his red truck and sitting there for a while, just thinking.
Then, within seconds, his eyes glanced towards the woods behind the house, and he saw something that frightened him, and at the same time, filled him with rage; rage for all of the hell that this thing had been putting the whole family through.
"You bastard! You wanna pick on someone? You pick on me!"
The creature stood there, almost grinning at him with it's fangs.
He cranked the truck up, slammed his foot on the peddle and began driving towards the beast.
But this was a mistake, the demon was clever, vanishing from the scene and giving lead way for Howard to drive into a ditch.
Within seconds, everyone had raced out of the house to see the accident, even neighbors had gathered around.
John climbed carefully down the ditch to the open window of Howard's door.
"What happened?" he asked, seeing that Howard was still conscious, though somewhat shocked.
His eyes slowly found their way to John's face.
"The creature, I saw it…it was demon-like. I tried to run over it."
"That was a stupid move. Can't you see it's trying to get rid of all of you one by one?"
Before long, an ambulance had pulled up, and everyone watched as Howard was taken away after being carefully removed from the bent up pick up.
"Is he going to be alright?" Sandra asked, her heart skipping a beat.
"I think he'll be fine." said one of the neighbors. "I think he's just stunned more than anything."
John paced back up to the house, opening the door and stepping back inside with Mrs. Fairfax and Sandra behind him.
For the first few moments, the house was so quiet, and everyone knew Jake was still in his room, but then the thumping sounds came from within the walls and there were sounds of breaking glass and screams of a little boy.
John broke into the room with the two women behind him.
There they saw Jake being thrown and tossed, punched and then strangled.
"JAKE!!" screamed his mother.
John rolled up his sleeves, this time it would have to work.
"Into the light, I command thee!" The house began to grow dark, the walls almost felt as if they could close in on everyone, and the demon was revealed.
There on the boy was this gangly creature, similar to the one John had once flushed out of a teenage Hispanic girl.
The creature knew it had been exposed, and it tried it's best to leap up onto the wall, but John quickly tossed a holy water ampoule on it, apparently one that Beeman had given him.
The creature's skin seemed to be slowly burning off as it still struggled to escape John's grasp, though, within seconds, he had it pushed to the floor.
The family watched in horror, overwhelmed by what they were seeing. Jake remained tucked behind his mother.
"Alright," John pulled the crucifix out from his coat pocket. "Now tell me, how'd you get into the mortal world, asshole?"
The demon spoke the black tongue; giving John nothing but refusal.
"I said, tell me how you got here!" he placed the crucifix to it's head, the demon bellowing like a boar during slaughter. "Tell me now!"
The beast vibrated in his arms, and he briefly released it of the crucifix.
"Tell me!"
"The well!" Jake said.
The demon eyed the boy, snarling at him like a hungry beast, longing to kill.
John placed the crucifix to it's head once more, intending to rid the family and the world of this trespasser.
He held the beast firmly with his knees and his free hand as he began chanting biblical words, commanding the beast to go back to whence it came.
Sandra, Mrs. Fairfax and Jake stood in the doorway, wanting to flee the room but somehow unable to move, and when the beast's eyes moved over to where they stood once more, John remembered...
"GET OUT! DON'T LOOK AT IT!" He yelled.
The family fled at last after his demand, and John was left to finish off this demon, this creature that slowly vanquished into nothingness.
The exorcist climbed back to his feet, but he wasn't quite done yet; he needed a favor.
"It's gone? Isn't it?" Sandra asked after he had re-joined them in the den.
"Yeah. But I need someone to drive me to the rental house. I need Jake to show me the well."
Sandra and her mother exchanged glances and Jake swallowed nervously.
Sandra and Mrs. Fairfax sat up front while Sandra drove. Jake and Howard, who had his arm in a sling, sat beside John who was squeezed in the middle of the backseat of the old car.
They had been driving for five hours now, going down the busy freeway called San Bernardino heading east out into the country. If not for the traffic, and waiting for Howard to be released from the hospital, they might have arrived at least a little sooner.
Sandra finally turned off on a country road leading to small farms, and a few houses.
Eventually she turned into a large open lot, surrounded by woods where a small vinyl sided house sat.
It didn't look haunted, just your average little starter home nestled in the California country side.
They all stepped out of the car.
"The rest of you stay here. Jake, show me where this well you mentioned is."
"I'll go with you." Howard insisted.
"Fine." John said.
They followed the boy around the back of the little house, stepping over garbage and old fallen branches.
He took them inside a barn and there he pointed his finger to the floor.
The barn was old, tattered and in a state of possibly falling down upon them, or so it seemed with it's widely cracked wall boards and it's numerous roof holes, not to mention the small holes in the squeeky flooring.
"Have you been in here before?" John asked the boy.
He nodded.
John followed the direction of Jake's finger, kneeling down over the old planks and finding a brass handle. He studied the floor around him, seeing the faded marking of a pentagram.
"Satanists…it's a possibility." He uttered, gliding his finger across the surface where the symbol had been drawn.
"What?" Howard questioned, not quite making out the words.
"A pentagram. It's possible there were Satan worshipers here. They might have used the well as a portal."
John gripped the brass handle, jerking up the stubborn wood hatch that hid a deep hole inside; an old well.
He stared down into it's darkness for a moment, his ears almost making out the faint sound of something crawling and snarling beneath…or so he thought.
The three of them suddenly jumped at the sound of wings over head, but to John's relief, it was only a barn owl, startled by the presence of humans.
"Now I know what the old guy meant; the guy I rented this place from." Howard commented.
"What?" John closed the hatch, turning himself around to face him.
"He said that six months ago he rented this place to some weird couple. He said they were literally run out of the area by the locals."
"I see, it all makes sense now."
"So what are you going to do?" Howard asked.
"I'm thinking about it. Let's head on back…I don't need any of your assistance now; except to give me a drive back to L.A."
It was late one night, a black sedan had pulled up in front of the rental house.
John Constantine stepped out of the passenger side and Father Garret stepped out of the driver's.
They both approached the trunk of the large Lincoln, where they both began to carry what appeared to be a large cross to the old barn.
John nailed the hatch shut, while Father Garret began to use a chemical cleaner to remove the pentagram. They both worked under the light of their flashlights.
At last the job was done, and the two men carefully laid the large sculpted cross over the hatch.
Father Garret screwed the cross, with it's carving of Jesus, to the floor, insuring that no one would be able to remove it, at least for a while.
When they exited from the barn, they boarded up the doors with some lumber that Garret had strapped to the roof of the car, and at last their work was done.
"I still think we should burn the barn down." Garret said.
"No, it'll be useless. The cross should do for now." John said. "Until I can do something to close the portal off completely."
On the way back to the car, a curious question had arisen from the exorcist.
"Have you spoken to Angela lately?"
He knew that Father Garret had, in the past, little talks with Dodson.
"…No, I can't say that I have." Garret lifted his brows, not too eager to speak of such a woman with such a man.
"Well when did you see her last?" John asked.
Garret was becoming annoyed by the questioning.
"John, let me say this;" they both eased their way back into the car.
"Angela, needs to seek salvation…she is, gifted, special, unique."
"I know this." John snapped, knowing that he had been the one to remind her of her gift.
"I know. But what I'm saying is that, Angela needs to stay close to God…she shouldn't get mixed up with…"
John silenced him.
"I know what you're getting at…don't worry, I don't plan on barging in on her life."
"I meant no offense, John. But we all know you're a man with many demons. If anyone knows anything about the occult and how it works, you do."
"…Just get us back to L.A.. I'm tired."
Garret cranked up the car. Neither of them spoke during the drive.
John was worried…he wondered if any other demons had escaped the gateway in the barn.
TO BE CONTINUED…
This first chapter was inspired by an episode of "A Haunting" on discovery...real good show. And I'd like to give a special shout out to KrisEleven. Thanks so much for pointing out the errors, I'll fix the rest along and along. lol!
