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matrixrefugeeAs promised yesterday...
+J.M.J.+
The Smoke of Satan in Your House -- Chapter One
by "Matrix Refugee"
Rating: PG-13/mild R (language)
Warnings: Nothing major, aside from some strong language.
Author's Note: This was a tough chapter to write, especially in lieu of recent events. Thus, I'm dedicating this chapter to the late, great Pope John Paul II (born Karol Wojtyla), a great leader of the Catholic Church, who has gone on to a greater commission in the next world.
Disclaimer: I don't own "Constantine", its characters, concepts and other indicia, which are the property of Francis Lawrence, Village Roadshow, Warner Brothers, DC Comics/Vertigo, et al. And I certainly don't own any of the demons.
"The line between Good and Evil runs not between nations, or parties, or physical armies, but down the middle of every human soul" -- Peter Kreeft, paraphrasing Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Chapter One: Chapter One: Contractors and Commissions
The 3:03 pm flight from LAX to Manchester had to circle the runway three times before it could land, thanks to the mix of snow, sleet and rain falling that day. That caused too much of a delay for the tall, dark-haired man in economy class, who sat silently cursing whatever airline policy had put the clamps on smoking in that section.
Once the plane finally landed, an announcement came that they'd have to wait again, since a runway crew had to clear ice off their landing dock. The dark man cursed under his breath, eliciting a scolding glare from the primly dressed older woman sitting in the seat next to his.
At length, the plane taxied to the loading ramp and the passengers were allowed to disembark. The tall man hefted his carry-on down from the overhead comparment and slung its strap onto his shoulder before following the rest of the crowd to the airport check-out and to collect his suitcase.
Naturally, it didn't turn up on the baggage carousel. The dark man found one of the baggage clerks and demanded that they double-check for it.
The clerk consulted a bill of lading on her terminal screen. "I'm sorry, Mr. Considine, but your bag seems to have been misdirected. We'll try to locate it and have it sent to you as soon as possible."
"Constantine," the tall, dark man said.
"Excuse me?"
"My name. It's John Constantine."
"Oh, I see now," the clerk said. She rummaged for a form and pushed it across the counter to him, "If you'll just fill out Form #13-66F, Mr. Considine..."
A few moments, later, as he passed through the airport metal detectors, something in Constantine's jacket pocket set it off. The guard made him step aside and turn out his pockets before patting him down. As Constantine removed his antique cigarette lighter and his keyring, the guard eyed the Latin inscriptions crudely etched on the casing of the lighter and the large St. Anthony and St. Benedict medals on the keyring with barely veiled suspicion. Constantine ignored the glare, but a small part of him started to wonder if there just might be some modicum of truth to the blatherings of the Christian fundamentalist wack-jobs who claimed the plane hijackers of 9-11-2001 were doing the work of the devils. Between that and the heightened security, it dragged just a bit more of hell onto the human plane.
He finally made it to the entryway of the terminal. As he stepped through the automatic sliding doors, a gust of cold air hurled a wave of snowflakes and horizontal rain into his face. Constantine turned the collar of his jacket up around his neck. "Fucking snow," he muttered under his breath: he'd packed his trenchcoat in the now-missing suitcase when he should have packed it into his carry-on.
At that point, an ancient, rust-brown Chevy Cavalier clattered up to the curb in front of him: the body of the car had gone so badly to rust he couldn't tell where the paint color left off and the rust spots started. The passenger side door opened and Father Crowley leaned his head out. "Sorry I'm a bit late, John: I was trying to find a parking space."
"Hell, it fits in with the rest of the day," Constantine replied, stuffing his carry-on into the back seat before climbing into the front. As he pulled the door shut behind him, he discovered it had a warp in it that caused it to shut crooked; at Crowley's prompting, he had to open it and slam it -- twice -- to get it to close right.
"Nice car," Constantine said, fumbling in his shirt pocket for the packet of Lucky Strikes there.
"It's a gift from a friend," Crowley said. "At least it runs good."
"A friend who likes gag gifts as much as your boss does?" Constantine said, taking out a cigarette, replacing the pack in his pocket and cracking the window open an inch or two before he lit up.
Crowley replied with a wry smile of amusement, as they pulled out of the lot and onto the access road leading to the highway.
After a long moment, Constantine broke the stillness. "So what have you got for me this time that you couldn't go into detail over the phone?"
"It's a long story, John," Crowley said, gazing past the wipers slapping across the windshield, knocking away the slush that splotched the glass. "Bishop Mallegant's got himself into a mess, and it's not just over that deal with the embezzlement: I counted at least three demons in him and there's probably more."
"So what do you need me for? Why not pull them out yourself?" Constantine said, blowing a plume of smoke out the window.
"I can't: My hands are tied. Mallegant would throw me out on my ear if I so much as hinted he might have a devil, and we know what kind of fireworks I'd have to deal with if I approached him with a Ritualis in my hand."
Constantine snorted. "Would that be the demons doing it or Mallegant?"
"Between you and me, John, there's times I can't tell the difference. The man's such a tight-fisted prick..." The older man dropped his gaze a fraction of an inch, a slightly embarassed smile showing on his lips.
Constantine ignored this peccadillo. "Go on."
"Okay... I wasn't the one who found this out: a woman from one of the parishes Mallegant wants closed to 'reconfigure' the diocease was at a meeting with Mallegant, and she claims she smelled something odd about him. She spoke with Father Henry from St. Antony's Parish, who put me in touch with her."
"Which parish is she with? There's, what, ten parishes they're closing?"
"Fifteen, and they already shut down three in the last month. She's with Sankt Maria Magdalena's, the old German parish in the east end of Houlton."
Somehow that seemed fitting: a woman would sense demons in a bishop who was trying to shut down a parish named for a woman Jesus had pulled seven demons out of. He flicked the burned-down stub of his cigarette out into the snow and closed the window. There had to be something to this: these things didn't just *happen* on their own, without someone nudging together the pieces of a much bigger puzzle around, to twig the feelers of those who had an idea of how the universe really worked.
He'd think more about this later: right now, he needed something warm inside him and a roof over his head that had more insulation than the bare metal of the car roof.
They pulled off the highway onto a secondary road into Houlton, then pulled off it onto another street. They slowed in front of a three-story building of granite blocks, which looked like it might have been part of a private school at one point, but which now housed members of the diocesan chancery, the priests who served in the administrative positions. It didn't surprise Constantine when he saw a large sign on wooden posts reading "FOR SALE", outside the wrought-iron fence that surrounded the lawn before the residency.
Crowley must have divined his thoughts. "I've been looking for another place to live; depending on how long you're out here, don't be surprised if we get evicted at a minute's notice," he said, pulling the car into the parking lot in back of the building.
"I'll keep my bags packed, in that case," Constantine said. "...If the airline coughs up my other bag."
"Mm, you'll be needing a coat in this weather," Crowley said. "You can borrow some of my civvies, then: we're about the same size."
They entered by a side door, clearly trying to be discreet, but they nearly walked into a husky, charmless woman in her mid-fifties, who glared up at Constantine.
"All right, Father Martin: who's this young man?" she asked.
"This is my sister's son, John," Crowley said, without batting an eyelash. "He's in from the West Coast for a few days, running research for a case he's working."
The housekeeper... jail matron... whatever she was, glared at Constantine. "What kind of case are we talkin' about? You better not be a lawyer."
"It's part of a private investigation," Constantine replied, calmly.
"So why didn't you find yourself a hotel to stay in?" the housekeeper demanded, making a move like she'd haul him out into the rain herself.
"John's new to the area, and it's been a while since he and I saw much of each other," Crowley said.
The housekeeper muttered something under her breath. "All right, young man: as long as you don't keep strange hours or bring anyone in who doesn't belong here, you can stay." With that, she turned and started to walk away.
Before she got too far out of his range, Constantine let his awareness reach out and explore the old woman's aura. Nope, nothing dangerous or suspicious about her, just a crabby old woman with a shrivelled soul, but she could still be a problem: she'd weakened her defenses and the demons might thus be able to use her to get at him, or use her to interfere with his work.
"Don't mind Ursula: she's a bit of a bear, but she's mostly like that because she might be losing her job," Crowley said, and lead the way up a twisting staircase to the second floor. He approached a door at the far end of the hallway and unlocked first a deadbolt, then the lock on the latch before pushing the door open.
The room inside had a lived-in look: papers scattered in some odd filing arrangement on the desk, books piled on chairs and the floor, old-fashioned colored etchings of saints and the Blessed Virgin in cheap frames on the walls, verses in Latin written in chalk on the mouldings of the doorframe and the windowframes, even on some of the furniture.
"You want anything, John?" Crowley asked, closing the door behind them. "Coffee? Tea? I've got some Irish whiskey my aunt Bridget sent, if I could find it in this mess... Or I could scare up a meal from the refectory."
"Coffee'll do: I ate on the plane," Constantine lied.
Crowley scanned the younger man's face knowingly, as he cleared some books off the couch, but he said, "Is the jet lag getting to you?"
"Could be," Constantine said, dumping his bag on the floor in the corner and collapsing on the couch. He looked up at Crowley and asked, "Your sister's son?"
Crowley shrugged. "Not a lie: we're all children of the same first parents, or members of the same race, however you look at it." He headed for the small kitchen area rigged up on a tall bench in one corner with a tiny refridgerator, a wooden cupboard on the wall, a hot plate he probably wasn't supposed to have, and a coffeemaker. Lowering his voice as he puttered about the coffeemaker, he added, "Ursula partly does and partly doesn't have a right to know who you are, but since I know she's the sort who'd throw you out because she thought you were a crank, but there's some here who'd throw you out for being the real thing."
"Any other house rules I need to know about?" Constantine asked.
"Not especially."
"What about this woman who tipped you off? She'd better not be one of these jittery schoolgirl types, seein' spooks everywhere."
"As I told you, John, this is the real thing: I saw it with my own eyes. Do you want me to put her in touch with you?"
"I'll meet with her, but I haven't taken the job yet. It sounds like a tough one."
"Those are usually the most rewarding," Crowley said. "I'll call her and ask her up here, let you decide after you've spoken with her."
"You're the one with the collar and the commission: it's your case, I'm just a contractor," Constantine said, closing his eyes.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The phone rang on Natalie's desk in the main office of Catholic Charities in Houlton rang. She minimized the window of the form she had been entering and turned to answer it. "Hello?"
"Hello, Natalie? It's Father Crowley," the exorcist's voice said, on the other end of the line. "I'm just calling to ask you if it might be possible for us to meet again, regarding your case." He sounded more business-like than he had when he spoke to her face to face, but she set aside all concern over it: he might just be less than comfortable with phones.
"Oh, certainly: and the sooner the better. I'm free tonight, if that's all right with you," she said.
"Are you sure? It's still a mess out there."
"I'll manage."
"All right then, I'll meet with you in the sitting room here at the residency, around eight."
"I'll be there," Natalie said, hope rising in her soul, as she made a notation on her planner.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
At a quarter past eight, a cab dropped Natalie off at the gates of the residency. She hurried up the gravelled walk to the three stone steps to the front door. Once under the portico sheltering the doorway, she lowered her umbrella and reached up to pull on the chain for the doorbell.
Somewhere inside the building, a bell clanked. Several moments later, she heard a bolt rattle, and one leaf of the door opened. A young seminarian looked out.
"Can I help you, miss?" he asked.
"Yes, I'm hear to speak with Father Martin Crowley," she said.
"He's expecting you," the seminarian said, stepping aside and letting her enter. She took off the black scarf that covered her head. The seminarian closed the door behind her, then took her damp scarf and coat to a cloak room off the foyer before he led her down a short corridor to a combination sitting room and library, a large, high-ceiling room lined with bookcases. Here and there were small clusters of armchairs and couches, some seperated from the rest of the room with privacy screens. The air smelled slightly of old leather, floor wax and woodsmoke from the fire in a fireplace at the head of the room, toward which the seminarian led her.
Before the fire stood two high-backed wooden benches, one occupied by Father Crowley; in the other, a youngish man sat hunched close to the fire. As she approached, Father Crowley looked up. "Natalie, thank God. I hope it wasn't too much of a hazard for you, coming out here in the rain," he said, rising.
"It's all right: it had to be done," Natalie said. "I'm used to this weather: I'm New England-bred and born."
"Probably the only way you can take the damn cold," the young man said, without rising.
She got a second look at Father Crowley's companion: the newcomer was reasonably good-looking, though he could have used a shave, and the loose-cut black suit he wore looked like he'd slept in it.
"Which leads me to introduce the young fellow I asked to come out here to help you," Father Crowley said, turning toward his companion.
"Pleased to meet you, Mr. Constantine," Natalie said, extending her hand towards him.
Constantine glanced at her hand, then flicked the filter tip of a cigarette he'd been discreetly smoking into the fireplace. "John or Constantine will do: I'm not much for formalities," he said.
"I see," she said. "That's quite all right." Natalie sat down on the bench facing him, letting her hand relax in her lap.
"In that case, I'll leave you two in privacy to talk this over," Father Crowley said, and stepped away. Constantine watched the priest without turning his head; Natalie followed his gaze to a couch at some distance away, where Father Crowley seated himself, close enough that he wouldn't overhear, but clearly keeping an eye out to warn off any would-be interlopers.
"So... how long have you known Father Crowley?" Natalie asked.
"It's probably upwards of fifteen years now," Constantine asked. "Why, is that important?"
"I'm just curious," she said. She got the feeling Constantine was older than he looked, and probably much older through experience than most people.
"Curious..." he said, with a trace of mild scorn, "You shouldn't get curious around someone like me: it's not healthy. You wind up finding out shit you'd rather not know, if you manage to come away with your mind still glued together, or with your life's blood where it belongs inside you."
That gave her reason to pause; she caught herself feeling inwardly glad Father Crowley had warned her about his friend's "abrasive" personality.
"Okay, I'll put it another way: as they say in the old movies, 'just give me the facts, ma'am'."
"How much did he tell you? I don't want to repeat anything," she said.
"He'd told me he picked a vibe from Bishop Mallegant, that he might have some houseguests of the hellish sort, and he said that he'd been tipped off by a woman in the diocease, but he couldn't tell me more, other than he can't pull the demons out himself, or else he'll get canned for it."
"Did he tell you about how I found this out?"
"He mentioned something about you being at some meeting with Mallegant. He didn't give me the specifics, said you'd have to tell me that."
"I was there with a group of people from my parish, Sankt Maria Magdalena's; Bishop Mallegant wants to close the church and have the land sold to the developers. The thing is, it can't be worth much: it's right in the middle of a rough neighborhood... well, not *that* rough. You wouldn't need a machine gun to walk down the street at night without getting bothered, but you'd at least need a few rocks in your pockets."
Constantine shrugged and fumbled in his breast pocket, taking out a pack of cigarettes. "Wish I could help you there, but keeping churches from getting shut up permanently is no more in my range than it is in yours."
"True... but you see, this church... it's more than just a building or a sacred space for me: it's kind of my home."
Constantine shrugged and shook a cigarette out of the pack. "So, I take it they'll find another church for your parish to occupy."
"It's not that easy for me: I've got a bit of an autism spectrum condition, so it isn't easy for me to move to a new place, especially when I've been forced there."
"Look, don't give me any of that psychobabble bullshit. What do you want from me?" He didn't raise his voice, but he was clearly losing a little of his patience.
Natalie forced herself *not* to turn inward, the way she did when someone got impatient with her. She looked around, making sure no one other than Father Crowley was listening, then she leaned closer to Constantine. "Back to that meeting with Bishop Mallegant. I saw something about him that didn't belong.
Constantine tamped the filter tip of the cigarette on the lens of his wristwatch. "Something like what?"
"It was his eyes: they didn't look right. It was like something was looking out through them that didn't belong there. And there was this odd smell around him."
"He could have forgotten his roll-on."
"I take public transportation: I know what unwashed bodies smell like... this was worse, like rotten eggs in the sun, and an open sewer on a hot day."
He looked at her directly. "Has this ever happened to you before?"
"No... well, not as strongly as this. It used to happen to me more when I was in my teens. I'd sense things around people: A man in our building who sold his daughter. A woman who was dealing drugs."
He looked her up and down. "You don't strike me as the sort who'd hang with people like that."
"My dad's a social worker at Catholic Charities. I've been working there as a filing clerk the past few years: I'm usually in the back office, but I've seen a few things that shouldn't have to happen to anyone."
"In more ways than one," Constantine said.
"But is that even possible? For a priest or a bishop to become possessed?"
"It's just as possible for a priest to be possessed as it is for anyone else: they're humans like the rest of us, and the demons can use them to try getting through just as much as the next guy. It all depends on if he makes himself vulnerable to it."
She nodded. "I've read a little bit about this... You're what they call a sensitive, you've got the gift of discerning spirits."
Constantine cut her off with a mildy cynical laugh that quickly turned into a coughing fit. Recovering after a few minutes, and visibly catching his breath, he said, "'Sensitive' is the last word anyone who knows me would dare to use to describe a bastard like me. If you've got the 'gift'," -- he made quotation marks around the word, with two fingers of both hands -- "You haven't got it as bad as some, and you especially don't have it as bad as I do, because you wouldn't be calling it a gift."
"Maybe, if I do have it, I just carry it more lightly than you do."
"If you had any amount of this talent, you'd be as fucked in the head as I am."
"Please... are you going to help us out at all?" she asked, nearly snapping from desperation. Just as soon as the words were out, she wished she'd phrased them differently: a thoroughly annoyed light had come into Constantine's eyes, but he made no move to dismiss her or to get up and leave.
"Hey, I only just got here and I'm trying to figure out what the hell is going on before I get too involved," he said.
She drew in a long breath, settling her mind as best as she could. "I'm sorry I snapped at you: I'm just horribly upset by everything that's happening. I just feel like we're in this on our own, fighting this by ourselves, and no one will help us. I didn't mean to take it out on you."
"Don't sweat it: I've had a lot worse done to me and a lot worse things said to my face," he said. "You just let me find my way around this: last thing I need is getting someone needlessly over-involved. If this is the real thing, it's gonna be hardcore shit and I don't need someone too close to it getting underfoot."
"In other words, 'Do not attempt this yourself: you are a professional'."
He cracked a small smile. "You got it," he said, relaxing his face.
She rose. "I guess I'd better not take any more of your time," she said. "Thanks... for listening."
He took a pack of cigarettes from his breast pocket and shook one out, thrusting it between his lips. "Part of the job: listening to people's stories, getting the facts so I know what I'm up against."
"Kinda like a detective?"
He shrugged, lighting up the cigarette. "One way of looking at it."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"How well do you know that girl?" Constantine asked, later, as he sat in Crowley's room, on the couch that would be his bed for as long as he stayed here.
The water in the small closet of a bathroom shut off. "Not very well, I'm afraid: Father Prewitt could tell you more about her. Why d'you ask?"
"Nothing, it's just, if you didn't have an eye on this case, I'd say she was buggy and leave it at that."
"She didn't make a very good first impression."
"Hell, no." He wasn't about to turn his back on this yet. He was getting too many vibes. "So this church is in the middle of the rough part of town?"
The older man emerged from the bathroom, clad in a fraying terry bathrobe over well-mended flannel pyjamas. "Yeah, a lot of the tough kids I knew growing up came from that parish."
"I suppose I oughta pay the place a visit, see what I'm getting myself into," Constantine said.
Crowley sat down on his narrow cot of a bed, reaching for and opening the box of sleeping pills on the nightstand-bookcase near the head of the bed. "Well, tomorrow's Sunday: I'm offering Mass in the home of a woman recently delivered from the old grappin. I could drop you off at Sankt Maria's on my way there."
"That'll work," Constantine said, laying down on the couch and pulling the blankets over himself.
"I'd better warn you: I'd be dropping you off around eleven in the morning, just in time for the Tridentine Latin Mass. The folks that attend it can be a sticky lot: they aren't as nasty as the crowd that's messed up with the Society of St. Pius X cell that's been floating around the diocese, but they can be a little edgy around newcomers."
"And I take it that includes newcomers who don't quite meet their idea of a nice Catholic man," Constantine said, with a touch of sarcasm. "That might be a good thing: they might leave me alone to do my work."
A thought occurred to him, which made him chuckle tersely, careful not to set off a coughing fit.
"Something funny?" Crowley asked, over the rim of a glass of water.
"Yeah... straight-laced folks in a parish named after a whore who'd had seven demons clawing at her insides."
"Talk about cosmic irony," Crowley said with a grin, setting the glass on the nightstand and thrusting his legs under his lone blanket before reaching up to switch out the light over the bed.
"Damn right," Constantine replied.
To Be Continued...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Literary Easter Eggs:
Considine - A little bit of a joke on myself: I kept running across the name "Considine" somewhere, recently, so naturally my somewhat obsessive brain kept trying to scramble it into "Constantine".
Father Crowley's car - My ex-fiance owned a car a lot like it: in fact, it had belonged to a newly-ordained priest-friend of his, who'd given it to my ex after a member of his friend's first parish gave him a newer car.
"a sensitive" - For more about this, read Gabriel Amorth's "An Exorcist Tells His Story" and "An Exorcist: More Stories".
the Society of St. Pius X - The quickest way to define this is a fundamentalist Catholic group which stirred up a lot of contraversy in the Catholic Church back in the 1980s, one of their hallmarks being their yelling that the Tridentine Latin Mass is the only valid Mass. Unfortunately, they attracted so much attention that now a lot of people in and out of the Church have unfortunately gotten the notion that all Catholics who are fond of the Latin Mass (even ones who, like myself, are fine with the vernacular Mass) are also fundamentalist wack-jobs. There's a few people who are of that bend at my parish, but the majority of the group that attends the Latin Mass there are, like myself, moderate/orthodox people.
+J.M.J.+
The Smoke of Satan in Your House -- Chapter One
by "Matrix Refugee"
Rating: PG-13/mild R (language)
Warnings: Nothing major, aside from some strong language.
Author's Note: This was a tough chapter to write, especially in lieu of recent events. Thus, I'm dedicating this chapter to the late, great Pope John Paul II (born Karol Wojtyla), a great leader of the Catholic Church, who has gone on to a greater commission in the next world.
Disclaimer: I don't own "Constantine", its characters, concepts and other indicia, which are the property of Francis Lawrence, Village Roadshow, Warner Brothers, DC Comics/Vertigo, et al. And I certainly don't own any of the demons.
"The line between Good and Evil runs not between nations, or parties, or physical armies, but down the middle of every human soul" -- Peter Kreeft, paraphrasing Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Chapter One: Chapter One: Contractors and Commissions
The 3:03 pm flight from LAX to Manchester had to circle the runway three times before it could land, thanks to the mix of snow, sleet and rain falling that day. That caused too much of a delay for the tall, dark-haired man in economy class, who sat silently cursing whatever airline policy had put the clamps on smoking in that section.
Once the plane finally landed, an announcement came that they'd have to wait again, since a runway crew had to clear ice off their landing dock. The dark man cursed under his breath, eliciting a scolding glare from the primly dressed older woman sitting in the seat next to his.
At length, the plane taxied to the loading ramp and the passengers were allowed to disembark. The tall man hefted his carry-on down from the overhead comparment and slung its strap onto his shoulder before following the rest of the crowd to the airport check-out and to collect his suitcase.
Naturally, it didn't turn up on the baggage carousel. The dark man found one of the baggage clerks and demanded that they double-check for it.
The clerk consulted a bill of lading on her terminal screen. "I'm sorry, Mr. Considine, but your bag seems to have been misdirected. We'll try to locate it and have it sent to you as soon as possible."
"Constantine," the tall, dark man said.
"Excuse me?"
"My name. It's John Constantine."
"Oh, I see now," the clerk said. She rummaged for a form and pushed it across the counter to him, "If you'll just fill out Form #13-66F, Mr. Considine..."
A few moments, later, as he passed through the airport metal detectors, something in Constantine's jacket pocket set it off. The guard made him step aside and turn out his pockets before patting him down. As Constantine removed his antique cigarette lighter and his keyring, the guard eyed the Latin inscriptions crudely etched on the casing of the lighter and the large St. Anthony and St. Benedict medals on the keyring with barely veiled suspicion. Constantine ignored the glare, but a small part of him started to wonder if there just might be some modicum of truth to the blatherings of the Christian fundamentalist wack-jobs who claimed the plane hijackers of 9-11-2001 were doing the work of the devils. Between that and the heightened security, it dragged just a bit more of hell onto the human plane.
He finally made it to the entryway of the terminal. As he stepped through the automatic sliding doors, a gust of cold air hurled a wave of snowflakes and horizontal rain into his face. Constantine turned the collar of his jacket up around his neck. "Fucking snow," he muttered under his breath: he'd packed his trenchcoat in the now-missing suitcase when he should have packed it into his carry-on.
At that point, an ancient, rust-brown Chevy Cavalier clattered up to the curb in front of him: the body of the car had gone so badly to rust he couldn't tell where the paint color left off and the rust spots started. The passenger side door opened and Father Crowley leaned his head out. "Sorry I'm a bit late, John: I was trying to find a parking space."
"Hell, it fits in with the rest of the day," Constantine replied, stuffing his carry-on into the back seat before climbing into the front. As he pulled the door shut behind him, he discovered it had a warp in it that caused it to shut crooked; at Crowley's prompting, he had to open it and slam it -- twice -- to get it to close right.
"Nice car," Constantine said, fumbling in his shirt pocket for the packet of Lucky Strikes there.
"It's a gift from a friend," Crowley said. "At least it runs good."
"A friend who likes gag gifts as much as your boss does?" Constantine said, taking out a cigarette, replacing the pack in his pocket and cracking the window open an inch or two before he lit up.
Crowley replied with a wry smile of amusement, as they pulled out of the lot and onto the access road leading to the highway.
After a long moment, Constantine broke the stillness. "So what have you got for me this time that you couldn't go into detail over the phone?"
"It's a long story, John," Crowley said, gazing past the wipers slapping across the windshield, knocking away the slush that splotched the glass. "Bishop Mallegant's got himself into a mess, and it's not just over that deal with the embezzlement: I counted at least three demons in him and there's probably more."
"So what do you need me for? Why not pull them out yourself?" Constantine said, blowing a plume of smoke out the window.
"I can't: My hands are tied. Mallegant would throw me out on my ear if I so much as hinted he might have a devil, and we know what kind of fireworks I'd have to deal with if I approached him with a Ritualis in my hand."
Constantine snorted. "Would that be the demons doing it or Mallegant?"
"Between you and me, John, there's times I can't tell the difference. The man's such a tight-fisted prick..." The older man dropped his gaze a fraction of an inch, a slightly embarassed smile showing on his lips.
Constantine ignored this peccadillo. "Go on."
"Okay... I wasn't the one who found this out: a woman from one of the parishes Mallegant wants closed to 'reconfigure' the diocease was at a meeting with Mallegant, and she claims she smelled something odd about him. She spoke with Father Henry from St. Antony's Parish, who put me in touch with her."
"Which parish is she with? There's, what, ten parishes they're closing?"
"Fifteen, and they already shut down three in the last month. She's with Sankt Maria Magdalena's, the old German parish in the east end of Houlton."
Somehow that seemed fitting: a woman would sense demons in a bishop who was trying to shut down a parish named for a woman Jesus had pulled seven demons out of. He flicked the burned-down stub of his cigarette out into the snow and closed the window. There had to be something to this: these things didn't just *happen* on their own, without someone nudging together the pieces of a much bigger puzzle around, to twig the feelers of those who had an idea of how the universe really worked.
He'd think more about this later: right now, he needed something warm inside him and a roof over his head that had more insulation than the bare metal of the car roof.
They pulled off the highway onto a secondary road into Houlton, then pulled off it onto another street. They slowed in front of a three-story building of granite blocks, which looked like it might have been part of a private school at one point, but which now housed members of the diocesan chancery, the priests who served in the administrative positions. It didn't surprise Constantine when he saw a large sign on wooden posts reading "FOR SALE", outside the wrought-iron fence that surrounded the lawn before the residency.
Crowley must have divined his thoughts. "I've been looking for another place to live; depending on how long you're out here, don't be surprised if we get evicted at a minute's notice," he said, pulling the car into the parking lot in back of the building.
"I'll keep my bags packed, in that case," Constantine said. "...If the airline coughs up my other bag."
"Mm, you'll be needing a coat in this weather," Crowley said. "You can borrow some of my civvies, then: we're about the same size."
They entered by a side door, clearly trying to be discreet, but they nearly walked into a husky, charmless woman in her mid-fifties, who glared up at Constantine.
"All right, Father Martin: who's this young man?" she asked.
"This is my sister's son, John," Crowley said, without batting an eyelash. "He's in from the West Coast for a few days, running research for a case he's working."
The housekeeper... jail matron... whatever she was, glared at Constantine. "What kind of case are we talkin' about? You better not be a lawyer."
"It's part of a private investigation," Constantine replied, calmly.
"So why didn't you find yourself a hotel to stay in?" the housekeeper demanded, making a move like she'd haul him out into the rain herself.
"John's new to the area, and it's been a while since he and I saw much of each other," Crowley said.
The housekeeper muttered something under her breath. "All right, young man: as long as you don't keep strange hours or bring anyone in who doesn't belong here, you can stay." With that, she turned and started to walk away.
Before she got too far out of his range, Constantine let his awareness reach out and explore the old woman's aura. Nope, nothing dangerous or suspicious about her, just a crabby old woman with a shrivelled soul, but she could still be a problem: she'd weakened her defenses and the demons might thus be able to use her to get at him, or use her to interfere with his work.
"Don't mind Ursula: she's a bit of a bear, but she's mostly like that because she might be losing her job," Crowley said, and lead the way up a twisting staircase to the second floor. He approached a door at the far end of the hallway and unlocked first a deadbolt, then the lock on the latch before pushing the door open.
The room inside had a lived-in look: papers scattered in some odd filing arrangement on the desk, books piled on chairs and the floor, old-fashioned colored etchings of saints and the Blessed Virgin in cheap frames on the walls, verses in Latin written in chalk on the mouldings of the doorframe and the windowframes, even on some of the furniture.
"You want anything, John?" Crowley asked, closing the door behind them. "Coffee? Tea? I've got some Irish whiskey my aunt Bridget sent, if I could find it in this mess... Or I could scare up a meal from the refectory."
"Coffee'll do: I ate on the plane," Constantine lied.
Crowley scanned the younger man's face knowingly, as he cleared some books off the couch, but he said, "Is the jet lag getting to you?"
"Could be," Constantine said, dumping his bag on the floor in the corner and collapsing on the couch. He looked up at Crowley and asked, "Your sister's son?"
Crowley shrugged. "Not a lie: we're all children of the same first parents, or members of the same race, however you look at it." He headed for the small kitchen area rigged up on a tall bench in one corner with a tiny refridgerator, a wooden cupboard on the wall, a hot plate he probably wasn't supposed to have, and a coffeemaker. Lowering his voice as he puttered about the coffeemaker, he added, "Ursula partly does and partly doesn't have a right to know who you are, but since I know she's the sort who'd throw you out because she thought you were a crank, but there's some here who'd throw you out for being the real thing."
"Any other house rules I need to know about?" Constantine asked.
"Not especially."
"What about this woman who tipped you off? She'd better not be one of these jittery schoolgirl types, seein' spooks everywhere."
"As I told you, John, this is the real thing: I saw it with my own eyes. Do you want me to put her in touch with you?"
"I'll meet with her, but I haven't taken the job yet. It sounds like a tough one."
"Those are usually the most rewarding," Crowley said. "I'll call her and ask her up here, let you decide after you've spoken with her."
"You're the one with the collar and the commission: it's your case, I'm just a contractor," Constantine said, closing his eyes.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The phone rang on Natalie's desk in the main office of Catholic Charities in Houlton rang. She minimized the window of the form she had been entering and turned to answer it. "Hello?"
"Hello, Natalie? It's Father Crowley," the exorcist's voice said, on the other end of the line. "I'm just calling to ask you if it might be possible for us to meet again, regarding your case." He sounded more business-like than he had when he spoke to her face to face, but she set aside all concern over it: he might just be less than comfortable with phones.
"Oh, certainly: and the sooner the better. I'm free tonight, if that's all right with you," she said.
"Are you sure? It's still a mess out there."
"I'll manage."
"All right then, I'll meet with you in the sitting room here at the residency, around eight."
"I'll be there," Natalie said, hope rising in her soul, as she made a notation on her planner.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
At a quarter past eight, a cab dropped Natalie off at the gates of the residency. She hurried up the gravelled walk to the three stone steps to the front door. Once under the portico sheltering the doorway, she lowered her umbrella and reached up to pull on the chain for the doorbell.
Somewhere inside the building, a bell clanked. Several moments later, she heard a bolt rattle, and one leaf of the door opened. A young seminarian looked out.
"Can I help you, miss?" he asked.
"Yes, I'm hear to speak with Father Martin Crowley," she said.
"He's expecting you," the seminarian said, stepping aside and letting her enter. She took off the black scarf that covered her head. The seminarian closed the door behind her, then took her damp scarf and coat to a cloak room off the foyer before he led her down a short corridor to a combination sitting room and library, a large, high-ceiling room lined with bookcases. Here and there were small clusters of armchairs and couches, some seperated from the rest of the room with privacy screens. The air smelled slightly of old leather, floor wax and woodsmoke from the fire in a fireplace at the head of the room, toward which the seminarian led her.
Before the fire stood two high-backed wooden benches, one occupied by Father Crowley; in the other, a youngish man sat hunched close to the fire. As she approached, Father Crowley looked up. "Natalie, thank God. I hope it wasn't too much of a hazard for you, coming out here in the rain," he said, rising.
"It's all right: it had to be done," Natalie said. "I'm used to this weather: I'm New England-bred and born."
"Probably the only way you can take the damn cold," the young man said, without rising.
She got a second look at Father Crowley's companion: the newcomer was reasonably good-looking, though he could have used a shave, and the loose-cut black suit he wore looked like he'd slept in it.
"Which leads me to introduce the young fellow I asked to come out here to help you," Father Crowley said, turning toward his companion.
"Pleased to meet you, Mr. Constantine," Natalie said, extending her hand towards him.
Constantine glanced at her hand, then flicked the filter tip of a cigarette he'd been discreetly smoking into the fireplace. "John or Constantine will do: I'm not much for formalities," he said.
"I see," she said. "That's quite all right." Natalie sat down on the bench facing him, letting her hand relax in her lap.
"In that case, I'll leave you two in privacy to talk this over," Father Crowley said, and stepped away. Constantine watched the priest without turning his head; Natalie followed his gaze to a couch at some distance away, where Father Crowley seated himself, close enough that he wouldn't overhear, but clearly keeping an eye out to warn off any would-be interlopers.
"So... how long have you known Father Crowley?" Natalie asked.
"It's probably upwards of fifteen years now," Constantine asked. "Why, is that important?"
"I'm just curious," she said. She got the feeling Constantine was older than he looked, and probably much older through experience than most people.
"Curious..." he said, with a trace of mild scorn, "You shouldn't get curious around someone like me: it's not healthy. You wind up finding out shit you'd rather not know, if you manage to come away with your mind still glued together, or with your life's blood where it belongs inside you."
That gave her reason to pause; she caught herself feeling inwardly glad Father Crowley had warned her about his friend's "abrasive" personality.
"Okay, I'll put it another way: as they say in the old movies, 'just give me the facts, ma'am'."
"How much did he tell you? I don't want to repeat anything," she said.
"He'd told me he picked a vibe from Bishop Mallegant, that he might have some houseguests of the hellish sort, and he said that he'd been tipped off by a woman in the diocease, but he couldn't tell me more, other than he can't pull the demons out himself, or else he'll get canned for it."
"Did he tell you about how I found this out?"
"He mentioned something about you being at some meeting with Mallegant. He didn't give me the specifics, said you'd have to tell me that."
"I was there with a group of people from my parish, Sankt Maria Magdalena's; Bishop Mallegant wants to close the church and have the land sold to the developers. The thing is, it can't be worth much: it's right in the middle of a rough neighborhood... well, not *that* rough. You wouldn't need a machine gun to walk down the street at night without getting bothered, but you'd at least need a few rocks in your pockets."
Constantine shrugged and fumbled in his breast pocket, taking out a pack of cigarettes. "Wish I could help you there, but keeping churches from getting shut up permanently is no more in my range than it is in yours."
"True... but you see, this church... it's more than just a building or a sacred space for me: it's kind of my home."
Constantine shrugged and shook a cigarette out of the pack. "So, I take it they'll find another church for your parish to occupy."
"It's not that easy for me: I've got a bit of an autism spectrum condition, so it isn't easy for me to move to a new place, especially when I've been forced there."
"Look, don't give me any of that psychobabble bullshit. What do you want from me?" He didn't raise his voice, but he was clearly losing a little of his patience.
Natalie forced herself *not* to turn inward, the way she did when someone got impatient with her. She looked around, making sure no one other than Father Crowley was listening, then she leaned closer to Constantine. "Back to that meeting with Bishop Mallegant. I saw something about him that didn't belong.
Constantine tamped the filter tip of the cigarette on the lens of his wristwatch. "Something like what?"
"It was his eyes: they didn't look right. It was like something was looking out through them that didn't belong there. And there was this odd smell around him."
"He could have forgotten his roll-on."
"I take public transportation: I know what unwashed bodies smell like... this was worse, like rotten eggs in the sun, and an open sewer on a hot day."
He looked at her directly. "Has this ever happened to you before?"
"No... well, not as strongly as this. It used to happen to me more when I was in my teens. I'd sense things around people: A man in our building who sold his daughter. A woman who was dealing drugs."
He looked her up and down. "You don't strike me as the sort who'd hang with people like that."
"My dad's a social worker at Catholic Charities. I've been working there as a filing clerk the past few years: I'm usually in the back office, but I've seen a few things that shouldn't have to happen to anyone."
"In more ways than one," Constantine said.
"But is that even possible? For a priest or a bishop to become possessed?"
"It's just as possible for a priest to be possessed as it is for anyone else: they're humans like the rest of us, and the demons can use them to try getting through just as much as the next guy. It all depends on if he makes himself vulnerable to it."
She nodded. "I've read a little bit about this... You're what they call a sensitive, you've got the gift of discerning spirits."
Constantine cut her off with a mildy cynical laugh that quickly turned into a coughing fit. Recovering after a few minutes, and visibly catching his breath, he said, "'Sensitive' is the last word anyone who knows me would dare to use to describe a bastard like me. If you've got the 'gift'," -- he made quotation marks around the word, with two fingers of both hands -- "You haven't got it as bad as some, and you especially don't have it as bad as I do, because you wouldn't be calling it a gift."
"Maybe, if I do have it, I just carry it more lightly than you do."
"If you had any amount of this talent, you'd be as fucked in the head as I am."
"Please... are you going to help us out at all?" she asked, nearly snapping from desperation. Just as soon as the words were out, she wished she'd phrased them differently: a thoroughly annoyed light had come into Constantine's eyes, but he made no move to dismiss her or to get up and leave.
"Hey, I only just got here and I'm trying to figure out what the hell is going on before I get too involved," he said.
She drew in a long breath, settling her mind as best as she could. "I'm sorry I snapped at you: I'm just horribly upset by everything that's happening. I just feel like we're in this on our own, fighting this by ourselves, and no one will help us. I didn't mean to take it out on you."
"Don't sweat it: I've had a lot worse done to me and a lot worse things said to my face," he said. "You just let me find my way around this: last thing I need is getting someone needlessly over-involved. If this is the real thing, it's gonna be hardcore shit and I don't need someone too close to it getting underfoot."
"In other words, 'Do not attempt this yourself: you are a professional'."
He cracked a small smile. "You got it," he said, relaxing his face.
She rose. "I guess I'd better not take any more of your time," she said. "Thanks... for listening."
He took a pack of cigarettes from his breast pocket and shook one out, thrusting it between his lips. "Part of the job: listening to people's stories, getting the facts so I know what I'm up against."
"Kinda like a detective?"
He shrugged, lighting up the cigarette. "One way of looking at it."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"How well do you know that girl?" Constantine asked, later, as he sat in Crowley's room, on the couch that would be his bed for as long as he stayed here.
The water in the small closet of a bathroom shut off. "Not very well, I'm afraid: Father Prewitt could tell you more about her. Why d'you ask?"
"Nothing, it's just, if you didn't have an eye on this case, I'd say she was buggy and leave it at that."
"She didn't make a very good first impression."
"Hell, no." He wasn't about to turn his back on this yet. He was getting too many vibes. "So this church is in the middle of the rough part of town?"
The older man emerged from the bathroom, clad in a fraying terry bathrobe over well-mended flannel pyjamas. "Yeah, a lot of the tough kids I knew growing up came from that parish."
"I suppose I oughta pay the place a visit, see what I'm getting myself into," Constantine said.
Crowley sat down on his narrow cot of a bed, reaching for and opening the box of sleeping pills on the nightstand-bookcase near the head of the bed. "Well, tomorrow's Sunday: I'm offering Mass in the home of a woman recently delivered from the old grappin. I could drop you off at Sankt Maria's on my way there."
"That'll work," Constantine said, laying down on the couch and pulling the blankets over himself.
"I'd better warn you: I'd be dropping you off around eleven in the morning, just in time for the Tridentine Latin Mass. The folks that attend it can be a sticky lot: they aren't as nasty as the crowd that's messed up with the Society of St. Pius X cell that's been floating around the diocese, but they can be a little edgy around newcomers."
"And I take it that includes newcomers who don't quite meet their idea of a nice Catholic man," Constantine said, with a touch of sarcasm. "That might be a good thing: they might leave me alone to do my work."
A thought occurred to him, which made him chuckle tersely, careful not to set off a coughing fit.
"Something funny?" Crowley asked, over the rim of a glass of water.
"Yeah... straight-laced folks in a parish named after a whore who'd had seven demons clawing at her insides."
"Talk about cosmic irony," Crowley said with a grin, setting the glass on the nightstand and thrusting his legs under his lone blanket before reaching up to switch out the light over the bed.
"Damn right," Constantine replied.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Literary Easter Eggs:
Considine - A little bit of a joke on myself: I kept running across the name "Considine" somewhere, recently, so naturally my somewhat obsessive brain kept trying to scramble it into "Constantine".
Father Crowley's car - My ex-fiance owned a car a lot like it: in fact, it had belonged to a newly-ordained priest-friend of his, who'd given it to my ex after a member of his friend's first parish gave him a newer car.
"a sensitive" - For more about this, read Gabriel Amorth's "An Exorcist Tells His Story" and "An Exorcist: More Stories".
the Society of St. Pius X - The quickest way to define this is a fundamentalist Catholic group which stirred up a lot of contraversy in the Catholic Church back in the 1980s, one of their hallmarks being their yelling that the Tridentine Latin Mass is the only valid Mass. Unfortunately, they attracted so much attention that now a lot of people in and out of the Church have unfortunately gotten the notion that all Catholics who are fond of the Latin Mass (even ones who, like myself, are fine with the vernacular Mass) are also fundamentalist wack-jobs. There's a few people who are of that bend at my parish, but the majority of the group that attends the Latin Mass there are, like myself, moderate/orthodox people.
