Chapter 10: The Darkness beneath Part 2

AN: So sorry this took so long… I'm leaving who says what up for you to decide. Well most of it anyway…

An artist is drawing with charcoal, with some intensity, an impressionistic rendering of John Constantine. His expression quiet and contemplative.

"That is quite good Zed. Where'd you learn to draw like that?"

"I didn't learn, it comes naturally."

"Either way, it is very good."

John walks down the sidewalk of a small main street. He has the same expression on his face as the picture. John takes in a town that's barely holding on. Shops are closed and boarded up. Grim faces on those around.

"Depressing place." Sara notes.

"Nowhere to rob…" Mick grunts as he leaned back. Snart rolled his eyes at his partner.

The artist continues to draw John, filling out his body, which is walking, backlit by rising sun. The artist is revealed, dressed in a long man's shirt and shorts. Seated on a stool. We're seeing her fully for the first time. Her name is Zed Martin, mid-20s, Latina, a face full of spirit and intelligence and innate curiosity. She's drawing almost by compulsion.

John continues down the sidewalk and slows down, because headed his way he sees a casket, carried by a cluster of miners. They move somberly down the middle of the street.

It's a perfect John Constantine image and a very close match to Zed's drawing, further along now. It's a charcoal rendering of the same scene of Constantine staring at a casket passing in front of him. There's no distinct background, just John, a casket, and mourners. Zed pauses. Considers the drawing, addresses the image of John in her drawing. "You're really starting to piss me off…" She speaks to the image. She takes it and a number of other drawings and leaves the room.

"John does that to a lot of people."

John curiously follows the casket procession, hanging back a respectful distance. John watches the mourners carry the casket into the door of a pub ahead. He picks up his step to join them, when a door in front of him bursts open and John collides with Zed, knocking the heavy bag out of her hands, spilling trash around them. John rubs his scalp, semi-obscuring his face. Zed kneels to gather the refuse, embarrassed.

"I'm so sorry. I was in a rush. The bag was splitting." Zed quickly explains.

"As is my head." John decides to join her in policing the debris. "Apologies are mine, luv. Let's get you sorted. If there's one thing I know my way around, it's rubbish." As John heaves a handful into a nearby trash can, Zed glances at him for the first time and recognizes... the man from her drawings. She stops and stares in disbelief.

"Wait for it…"

"It's... him. You're you." She breathes.

"That observation always ends the same way and it's never in my favor." John comes upon a crumpled sketch of Zed's. Smooths it out. It's a close up sketch of his face. Cigarette in lips. Like a charcoal mirror. John tilts his head, studies it, surprised.

"I can't - I don't - I dream of you. I had no idea who you were... I started to think you're not real." She says as she reaches for his face, quite overwhelmed.

"Now who sounds like a stalker?" Constantine joked as he remembered last episode.

"John!" The artist exclaimed.

John removes her hand, wary. He looks at Zed, then at the flats above them, and senses a con. "Some kind of carnival quick draw artist, are you? Perched and peeping from your window. Scratch out the visage of some poor lonely sod, then bump into him as his long lost love. Tongue in his ear, hand in his pockets, I'll bet. Nice play, luv, but this is a match I'll be sitting out." John stands to leave.

Zed grabs his sleeve, holding him back. "You don't understand. The dirty blond hair. The curled lips. The bad posture."

"I have brilliant posture."

"I have brilliant posture." The man in question exclaims, slightly offended.

"No, you don't."

"I beg to differ!"

"I've seen it all."

"Not well apparently." John plucks a pencil protruding from Zed's purse and pokes holes in the eyes of his sketch, then hands both back to Zed. "There we are. Much darker around the eyes, this one." John sees the last of the mourners disappear into the pub, his chance to follow them inside disappearing with them. As John starts off once again, Zed waves the sketch in his face, a final desperate plea.

"Please. You can't go. I don't know who you are, but I need to know." John stops at her call.

"Fair enough. You want answers." he pulls Zed in close. Almost too close. Eyes locked. Faces inches apart. John lifts Zed's arm, holds the close up sketch to the sky, and looks at it, whispering in her ear "One artist to another, in light, I always find mine..."

Zed squints, blinded, searching for her answer as the sun peeks through the two gouged eyes of John, directly into her eyes. When Zed looks away, however, vision blurry. Her mystery man's gone. He ditched her. Point John. Zed angrily tosses the drawing in the trash can with one hand and with the other reveals that she's holding John's wallet. He won't get away that easy. Point Zed.

"Nice one. But ho—"

"She will not be joining your crew, Snart."

"Protective much?"

A working man's bar. No fancy cocktails here. Just beer and whiskey with and plenty of each. John watches as the casket is placed on a low stage where local bands might perform. A photo of Lannis Cadogan sits on an easel. This is a Heddwichstyle wake. As mourners swap stories and raise glasses to the departed, John spots Ellis Mcgee drinking alone, with his back to the proceedings. John takes a stool next to Ellis, signals to the bartender.

"Stout." Ellis doesn't acknowledge John, just downs his drink and nods to the bartender for another. "Irony like that's hard to ignore." Ellis briefly glances at John, who indicates the shield above the bar, which features a Red Dragon. "Town's symbol is a dragon and the sorry soul over there was burned alive. Coincidence?"

The Legends considered it. Based on what they had already seen, it wouldn't surprise them too much. Mick's interest was piqued. He'd love to see a dragon.

"Don't believe in coincidences."

"What do you believe in?" The Bartender slides John his beer and Ellis a fresh whiskey.

"I believe we worship at the same alter." Ellis downs the shot. Like the town, Ellis harbors his share of bitterness. John shifts his gaze back to the shield.

"What's your take on what happened?"

"Fire through the pipes? Rare, but it happens in mining towns."

"Maybe if there's fracking. Isn't this the land of hardrock mining?"

"What do you know about it?"

"Grew up in Liverpool. Breathed in more coal dust than fresh air as a lad." A round of "Hear, hear!" rings across the bar. John glances back to see the miners toasting the dead. "Must've been a good bloke."

"I wouldn't use good to describe the guy."

"Lannis was a bastard. But they closed the mine for the day and not too many fellas in these parts need an invitation to get a skin full."

A big-shouldered miner named Ed steps to the bar.

"Have you considered actual dragons as the guilty party? There's no natural explanation for what happened to poor Lannis." Clocking a miner next to him, John speaks a little louder than necessary to bait him. He falls for it and replies.

"You got that right. But it weren't no dragon that took Lannis and the others."

"Others?"

"There were more who got burned?"

"Nine others. All in the last year."

"They died like this bloke?"

"Mining accidents. Some of the boys are saying we've dug too deep. We knocked on the door of Hell, and now Hell's knocking back."

"How ominous. I can understand why people are threatening to quit."

"Someone heard knocking?" John asked. He was definitely interested now. Ed doesn't answer and promptly returns to the wake. John sees Zed enter and scan the pub, presumably for John. "Gotta run. Thanks for the beer. Next time it's on me, mate." Before Zed can spot him, John ducks out the back door.

"That was rude. You could've paid yourself."

"I had to go."

Zed followed the conversation

A stunning quarry. Sheer granite walls, fringed with a lush treeline. A turquoise green lake below. At the bottom of the deep quarry, a dramatic mine entrance sits near the water line, like a portal to inner earth. John is watching the guard on duty. Looking around, John spots a Front End Loader, its scoop high in the air and full of rocks. John ducks low and scurries to the tractor. He turns on the ignition, pushes a button, and then runs. The scoop slowly starts to tip forward. Hearing the noise, the Guard turns to see the heavy rock load dump down and roll down a grade. John grins to himself. As the Guard runs over to investigate, John sneaks into the unguarded mine entrance.

"I love doing that…"

Relentless. Foreboding. String lights casting eerie pools of light and shadow. John moves through the eerie space. He turns down a new tunnel to find a new construction area, marked by warning and hazard signs, with minimal lighting. John grabs a mining helmet lying about, switches on the headlamp, and cautiously ducks under the tape to enter.

As John moves deeper into the abysmal depths, the mine shaft grows narrower and the ceiling lower. The walls are rougher, dug by shovels and picks. There are few support beams here and rivulets of water trickles down in spots. It's intensely claustrophobic and every fiber of our being is screaming to turn tail and run. As his flashlight illuminates patches of the pitch black shaft, John catches movement among the shadows on the edges of his vision. But when he turns nothing is there. And then John reaches the end. Literally. The deepest bowel of the mine. John places his hand over the working face, where the new coal is cut. Feeling for... what? Oddly, he leans forward and places his ear against the wall, listening. Silence. Looking around, John spots a hand pic. He turns the pick around, grasping the wood handle, and taps the butt of the handle against the mine wall. Three times.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

"Get out of there…"

He waits a beat. A tense beat. And then…

KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK!

"Creepy…"

It's distant, subterranean, but magnified by rock and booming in volume and the narrow shaft trembles, dislodging dust and debris, which falls on John's head. Without a second's thought, John does what we wanted to - he turns tail and runs for safety under a shower of billowing dust.