A Handful of Dust

John Constantine and the Family Endless are the respective properties of Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman. "Twilight Time" lyrics were penned in 1944 by Al & Morty Nevins and Buck Ram.

It's a Thursday that feels like a Saturday in a December that feels like a February. John Constantine cracks open a bleary eye. The room is steeped in velvet shadows, sheltered in a slumber over which wisps of stale smoke and even staler incense hover like weary, anorectic wraiths. But John's nose is still buried beneath the bedspread and John's eye only registers the familiar: the wrinkled shirt, the puddle of trousers, and the mound of trench coat thrown over a nearby chair. He does not see darkness crouching in the corner, he cannot hear its sinews tightening before it springs, he cannot feel its chary clawing upon his counterpane.

John senses none of these things, because he's been dreaming. Dreaming again to put a finer point on it, only this particular dream's not a return engagement of one of his usual nightmares. Something has whisked away those dark, dreadful things as easily as sweeping cobwebs from a ceiling corner. His dream is not his past come to haunt him nor is it the jumble of sepia tints and garbled sounds that have recently replaced those other, more unpleasant things. This is the first, real dream he's had in months, the first time when he can actually recall more than flashes of color and snatches of ethereal music. This is the proverbial manna from Heaven, the soaking rain that ends a long drought, the signal he's been waiting and hoping, if not hungering for: a sign his mystical capacities have finally flown home to roost!

So he thinks.

'Whad'ya know,' he mumbles in his sleep that is not-quite-sleep, trying to stay in the dream as long as he can, desperate to recapture each fleeting fragment, as if piecing all of those together would form a complete, coherent picture, a totality from which deeper meaning and greater truths could be divined. It is a process that is roughly as effective as building a sand castle grain by grain (and every bit as efficient) but he doesn't know this yet. He only remembers a beautiful woman with moonlight skin and midnight hair. He can still see her mascara trickling towards one corner of her lopsided smile and the object she was holding in one, slender hand: a deck of cards.

Well, he thought they were tarot cards, at first, but when she began to lay them in a spiral formation on the small table that suddenly sprang up between them, he could see that face and back, the cards were white with outlines of purple boxes on them.

Every, last one of them…

Purple outlines?' He's mystified for only a moment, then half-laughs and half-coughs, as he remembers just where he's seen that particular color combination. 'Awful hard to divine the future with a pack of cigarettes,' he mumbles to shadows. 'More to that than just your pretty face, too, Toots, but what?

With a long, lazy yawn, he turns on his side and finds a warm pocket of sleep waiting, perhaps even prepared to answer, in the deep familiar hollow of his pillow.

She'd said something to him just as he bobbed to the surface of awakening, his card-playing pal. Something important. At least, it sounded important at the time…

As John struggles to remember, the vestiges of the dream tendril around him, trying to lure him back down, deeper and deeper in slumber's sweet surrender.

"Come back to me, Toots…Tell me again."

As soon as he says that, something cold, something demanding full attention slips into the back of his head. As John tries to toss and turn his way back to dreamland, it pries away sleep's clinging coils one by one, until his blankets are knotted wads and his pillow's gone cold in all the wrong places. When he clears his throat and coughs again, his chest feels like he's been held underwater for too long. Blue sparks, twin fireballs of impossible blue, burst behind his eyes. Sundering a perfect curtain of darkness, they blaze, suspended, boring into his mind and soul like a pair of-

John Constantine opens his eyes.

He can't put his finger on it at first. It's more of a feeling he can't shake, but it's one he knows better than to ignore. It starts with a prickling in his scalp, but spreads like wildfire until his tattoos are itching and every hair on his body's standing at attention, screaming, Yes, sir!

He scans the room with wary eyes. He's knows he's not alone. That in itself is not the problem, however. It's the room. Something about his room is just...off...wrong...

Realization hits him like a bucket of ice water. Dark! Why's it so damned dark?

Groaning, he props himself up on one arm and glances toward the cluttered nightstand. The clock on the nightstand christens the moment in lurid scarlet:

4:17

Though noon is his usual dawn, he can't believe he's overslept so long. He stares at time's digital face until his eyes water. When he pulls himself into a sit that's more of a hunch and turns his head, he sees a vapor trail the color of rare meat on the flocked beige wallpaper. As John rubs his disbelieving eyes, a vision of the woman floats back to him. Her loose curls gleam with hidden sapphires and her eyes sparkle like summer stars, but when she opens her mouth, when she tries to speak, her voice is unfathomable as a burbling stream and her laughter bursts like bubbles breaching its surface.

No stranger to the enigmatic messengers of sleep, John massages one temple while he wrestles with memory. What the hell had she been trying to say to him?

4:17 burns in the corner of his eye. A glare so blood harsh, it tattooes itself on the inside of his eyelids. The numbers remain even after he closes his eyes. He counts to sixty before he opens them again but they're still there on the sour beige wall, commemorating a moment's ghost, an eidetic, limey afterburn, a shadowy distortion of what was.

He reaches for his cigarettes. The pack on the nightstand, next to the clock. A sudden draught that's more of a gust upsets the tired draperies and sets the broken blinds rattling like old bones. The shadow numbers dissipate until there is only a tense darkened space between John's eyes and the wall, a tangible absence created by something that was never there at all. The vision of the woman also fades into shadow. Another disappearance, another tangible absence…

He shrugs and shakes the crumpled pack; a few tobacco crumbs tumble out. I just bought these yesterday. What the fuck? He tears away the foil top. The empty pack gapes at him, a raggedy-edged, tinsel-lipped, lopsided, Ohhhh!

And that's when it hits him, what the woman-

What he thinks was a woman but what I said-

The world is full of holes.

Because you don't call Us-any of us. We come where and when we choose.

"Holes? Aw, shit! Should'a known!" He flings the crumpled pack into the corner before lurching into the closet-sized bathroom. In the dusk-shrouded mirror, only for a moment, eyes flash back at him like bitter azure.

"Hey, old tall, dark, and moody, you got yer damned bag back, your handful of dust! Think that came easy-or cheap? You got your precious sand and I got squat! What's stuck in your craw now, you old dreamwalker?" He smacks the mirror with an open palm, but only his fractured shadow twin stares back, its eye sockets empty as starless skies before it falls, shard by shard, into the sink.

"Seven years of bad luck, now, ain't that just great," John says, staring into the empty frame.
"That's your idea of a joke, I suppose?"

Five minutes later, when he leaves his flat, he fails to notice the clock still reads 4:17.

It's no joke, John Constantine: the world is full of holes.

…o0o…

Sunset's copper smudge tints the lowest clouds pale verdigris. Earth and sky meld together, the air stales, thickens, and the receding hours settle like a quiescent veil over the city streets. As the moment creeps from lavender to submerged emerald, even the most caustic crimsons and citrines of traffic lights seem rendered in soft focus. A shred of song wafts through John's mind:

Heavenly shades of night are falling, it's twilight time
Out of the mist your voice is calling, 'tis twilight time…

Surveying the street, John runs a hand through a hank of unruly, unwashed straw-and-pepper hair and chuckles, thinking that whoever penned that sappy old ditty, sure got it right. It iis/i another world, the netherworld between day and night…a hazy chimera where nothing's ever what it seems to be.

Here, in the afterglow of day, we keep our rendezvous…

He digs deep in his trench pockets for buried treasure, grateful to discover a couple butt ends of bacon-flavored respite and a little spark for that tinder. He's also grateful that at least this dream of the Endless or whateverthehellitis isn't still unspooling itself from the 'Non-Smoking' section of his subconscious.

Leaning against a lamppost, he blows silver rings through rings at the low-slung sky. "Good evening, London," he says, "even if you're only in my mind."

"Those things'll kill you, ya know," says a passerby, a chick that's too perky for her black lipstick and the purple tear tattooed in the corner of one eye.

John's looking but not really seeing, when he winks at her and says, "Sister, they've already tri-" But shadows and the jostling crowd swallow her before he's finished.

A noticeable chill, a void of cold in the ether-

A hole-

Hangs in the space she left behind and John, still being John for the time being, doesn't want to think too long or too much about what that really means-or how much that chick resembled the one from his dream.

No, not 'resembled,' was...

Is.

A horn blares. A woman screams. A taxi screeches to a halt. A crowd of looky-loos gathers while a single hubcap rolls down the street and settles next to him on the asphalt. This time, John doesn't need to look at his watch.

Together at last at Twilight Time!

Wondering if Leigh has that one on the old jukebox and if this just might be his last meal, John sets off for the Diner.

…o0o…

When he turns the corner, the wind is brisk and stale bread crisp. It stings his teeth and leaves a flat, metallic tang upon his tongue. A light rain, more of a persistent mist verging upon a half-assed sleet by London standards, stipples the dirty sidewalk. Thin fingers of steam stretch from the sewer grates and tattered rainbows ripple inside every greasy puddle.

John Constantine rubs the five o'clock shadow on his jaw and stares in disbelief.

The street is empty. The Easy Diner is gone. Not burned-out or torn down: gone. Just gone. The wind moans through the curiously small space between two, now-adjacent buildings.

"Holes, right," he says to the empty space. "Now, do you crawl out or do I crawl in? Some things can't be found with a map and a pendulum, you know."

Absence answers with a tug on his sleeve. "Hey, Mister? Urhm.. Have I been here before?"

An urchin, equal parts Raggedy Ann and Rainbow Brite, smiles up at him. An earful of baubles and gilt jingles as she cocks her lopsided locks to one side. "I came here for something, I think… I'm not sure… I reached out to it, just now, 'cause it was standing right there beside you, but then it all went Foof!" A cloud of yellow butterflies skitters from her fingers as she flops down on the curb.

Waving a hand toward the vacancy across the street, John says, "Well, Sister, if you were lookin' for a hot meal, I think we're both outta luck."

She twirls a length of grimy string with a foil loop at one end and shrugs. "Yeah, uh… I think that's kinda my fault, being here and all...then again, maybe not."

John flicks a fleck of tobacco off a tooth and says, "Oh, yeah?"

"It's like that French guy, you know? The one who painted all those people standing in the park?"

Unsure where this is about to go or why, he nods.

"Like that one. See?" .

A grassy knoll sprouts in the space where the Diner used to be. Hemmed by gold fencing and paved in Moonstones, its walkways shimmer beside serried hedges and oddly pruned topiary.

Looking into that vision of summer and sunshine, once more, John shakes his head in disbelief. The sifting rain around him turns to a languid, spiralling snow.

Continuing her explanation that's anything but, the girl scrambles to her feet as if all this is the most normal thing in the world. "And sure, all those people there-"

There are people in the park. He sees them now. A few people but even more…things. Unworldly and ungodly, innumerable entities ooze from every crack between the paving stones and seethe within the indigo-patterned shadows beneath every tree. Pallid and grasping, grotesquely misshapen, each shrills a ghastly, blasphemous litany that makes John shudder to his marrow but goes seemingly unnoticed by two women walking side by side through the park's maleficent melee.

"All those people in the picture, they look fine in their frame but just try to get close to them, really see what's so interesting in there-INSIDE- and Poof! They turn into instant confetti!" Plaid mushrooms sprout in a fairy ring around the girl's feet.

He knows he's going to regret this next observation. "People don't just...Poof!"

"It happens all the time! Don't get me wrong, it's a swell trick..."

In the park, one of the women turns to look at him, and then, the other. All John can do is stare across the street. He cannot move, cannot speak.

One of the women is Rachel.

The other is Astra.

He is barely conscious of the girl's voice as it trails into wistful singsong, "But then, you're stuck with all the big-little pockets Poof-Gone! leaves behind."

His tattered companion rises, takes three steps towards them, and the park collapses. Disintegrates in a shower of musical sparks.

It's gone but not entirely: a dark pause, like a lost and brooding shadow, hovers in the space where the park used to be. John feels it piercing him with invisible, eternal eyes.

"Man, that thing, whatever the hell it is there, sure is pissed at me!"

Nodding, Rainbow Girl says, "It hurts. I've done it before. Gone so far, way far, too far inside… At least I think that's how I know. You know?" She pirouettes back to him, cocks her cotton candy head with another jingle-jangle.

Strangely enough, he does. John Constantine is no stranger to the spaces left behind. He nods and says, "The world is full of holes." As he says it, something heavy catches in his throat.

Across the street and through his threatening tears, the bank's clock screams 4:17 in bitter heliotrope.

…o0o…

"Deedums! There you are!"

This sudden and familiar female voice is followed by one gruffer, and several feet due south. "I thought we'd really lost you this time!"

John turns into the wind to find the latter voice's owner is an almost-black German shepherd. Accompanying him is the anthracite-attired girl from his dream and John is not at all surprised when the Pale Sister fishes a slim, rectangular packet from her cargo pants. A familiar shape in white and purple.

As in that dream, so in this, though whether this is the above or below to that equation is beyond him.

"Here, John, if you still want them," she says, extending the small box. "Looks like you could use one."

Silk Cuts! He does want one and the way things are taking shape, he thinks it may well be his last. The squirrelly-girl and the dog vanish as he taps the pack against his palm. "What? No blindfold?" John takes a welcome drag and blows a trail of tiny rings that the wind whisks back at him. Oddly, though not unpleasantly, the smoke smells like Tamarind.

"Blindfold? I like that!" The woman stuffs her hands in her leather coat, rocks back on her high-heeled boots and laughs. "Naw, relax, would'ya!" She tucks a spidery wisp of hair behind one ear, winks at him, and whispers, sotto voce, "That's not my call this time."

John stabs at the empty-space-that-isn't with his ember. "So, this has been his thing all along?"

She shrugs. "You took something of his."

Smoke turns to tin on his tongue. He throws the cigarette down and mashes it with one foot. "Semantics, sister. I didn't steal the damn pouch, I bought it, fair and square! I also gave it back, you know!"

"I know, I know!" She leans against the lamppost. "He took something of yours, too, if memory serves."

"As a favor!"

"Something you'd fed for a long, long time."

"Newcastle was more like a numinous tumor tryin' to eat-" John stops mid-rant, hands in the air, as if posing for a statue. "Waiiit a minute! I fed it? How?"

"Had any good dreams lately, John?" She makes a wry face as she gestures between them. "Any good nightmares? Any visions at all?"

John shakes his head. "Not since we - I mean he..." he follows his trail of thought into a confused silence, measured only by the lengthening of the dark sigil on Death's alabaster cheek. Patient as ever, she waits for John's thoughts to sort themselves, sink in way down deep, until the only sound is the soft shush of wind between them.

Finally, John says, "So you're saying -"

She nods. "Taking that away, the act of excision..."

"Exorcizing is more like!"

"Whatever you call it, he didn't know at the time. Weak as he was, he couldn't have known by taking that away, he accidentally created something else."

John scratches his head. "You mean, like a kind of astral scar tissue or nightmare void with a life of its own?"

"Mmm…kinda…yeah," she shrugs. "That's as good a way to say it as any."

"A hole that's not a hole, but still getting bigger all the time - and one that I could still fall inside?"

She cocks a finger at him. "Bull's-eye!"

"And I thought he had no sense of humor!" John wants to laugh, but he can't. Not yet, anyway. "Gonna take something awfully powerful to fill that void- if something like that can be filled at all. Matter meeting anti-matter, cosmic or otherwise, if that's what we're talking here, equals 'Poof-Gone,' after all." Tapping another cigarette from the pack, John says, "Some things you just can't pack with rock salt and gufu dust, sister."

"Well, John Constantine, if anyone can find the answer to that riddle, I'm sure it's you." She mock-punches his arm and smiles.

God, how she smiles! She's absolutely gorgeous when she does it, too. Gal's got a grin that out-sparkles starlight-and those eyes of hers, damn! Dark and deep and silent as oceans of night. John sidles up beside her and whispers, "You know, it's getting cold and my flat's not far from here. Maybe you and I could…"

Waggling a finger as she backs away, she says, "I think it's time to sweep the sand out of your eyes now, John! Besides, the Jury still is deliberating on that one!"

"Whadd'ya mean, 'The Jury?'"

But she slips between sighing curtains of night, leaving John to ponder and nothing of herself behind.

…o0o...

Before opening his eyes, he gropes this time.

Lumpy mattress beneath him?

Check.

Rumpled sheets above?

Check.

He listens.

The wind throwing rain or sleet against a window that won't lock and a door that won't stay closed unless it's locked?

Score!

It's his dingy flat, alright! Hovel Sweet Hovel. Home.

John Constantine takes a deep breath, opens his eyes, and stares at the ceiling. A constellation of miniature stars, a scattering of azure, aquamarine, and golden pixie dust, the product of some previous tenant's sparkle paint job, or maybe, just a certain Dream Weaver's idea of a joke, winks back at him. He whispers, "So, tell me, Morpheus, was I dreaming you or are you dreaming this? I bet you knew all along this was gonna happen, didn't you, you sneaky sonofabitch!"

In his newly refurbished kingdom, the Dream Weaver in question, who is contemplating a more concrete form for all nightmares, not just John Constantine's, holds a fresh handful of sand and grins.

"Now, what kind of cosmic dippity-doo am I supposed to use to fill that hole?"

In John's near darkness, the lighter blackness by the bed, there's a soft click.

John lays his hand over the clock radio and unveils the numbers, one by one.

4

"Aw, come on!"

1

"Fuck!"

Last one! His hand's shaking like tremolo and his mouth is the desert. It's a Thursday going-on-Saturday in a December going-on-February. John's hand drops.

"Oh, sweet Sisters of Mercy, it's-it's-"

It's 4:18.