“Hold onto your fucking hat, ye wee fuck,” he said as he stumbled to the door, half-cut from his late night at the pub and awakened way too early in the sodding morning by whoever-the-fuck was knocking on his door.  Ann had already left for church, maybe she’d locked herself out again?

Sean near fell down the stairs, tripping on his pink bathrobe - pink, mind you, because it was in truth his wife’s bathrobe - but caught himself on the handrail after a tumble down to the base of the steps.  The rapping on the door continued steadily, each knock sounding like a jackhammer in his sobering head.  Sean, forty-five years old with a paunch as large as his ego, reached for the door handle with thoughts of murder running through his mind.

“Piss off!” he shouted as he threw open the door, spittle flying from his mouth.  He didn’t see the fist coming at him until it had already landed across the bridge of his nose.  He fell down in the foyer with a resounding thud, dropped and stunned by the unexpected blow to his face. 

“Bloody hell...kick yer arse...” he rambled as the attacker entered the house, stepping over Sean’s slumped body.  As he passed, his hand grabbed a hunk of Sean’s blonde hair (which Ann had constantly been asking him to cut, but was a part of his youth he just couldn’t bear to let go) and pulled, dragging the heavy man across the tile floor.  Sean’s yelp of pain was sustained the length of the drag, stopping when the stranger released his grip upon reaching the kitchen.

“Listen, mate,” the stranger, definitely male and definitely not Irish - not with that accent - began as he pulled a chair from the kitchen table and took a seat in front of Sean, who remained on the floor, “I’m in a bit of a rush, not to mention how much I hate fucking Belfast.  You tell me what I want to know, sharpish, and maybe I’ll leave enough of you intact for your family to hold an open casket funeral.”

Sean was recovering from the first punch, which had the added benefit of sobering him up rather quickly, and his blood was beginning to boil with rage.  His temper, he had been told, was one of his least-charming attributes, but it had its advantages.  “Prick!” he snarled as he leapt to his feet, fists swinging for the fences.  The intruder remained in his seat, sighed, and raised his hands, catching both of Sean’s fists in his palms.

“Have it your way,” the attacker remarked.  He squeezed his fists, crushing the bones in Sean’s hands with an unnatural amount of pressure.  Sean screamed and fell back onto the floor, holding his broken fingers under his armpits while he cried.

“What d’you want?” Sean sobbed.  The stranger paused for a moment, lighting a cigarette, milking the drama of his pregnant pause.

“I’m looking for your sister-in-law,” he finally answered, “I’m here for Kit Ryan...”

Children of the Grave: Part Three

"Hell Is Where the Heart Is"

Hellblazer #13 January, Year Two Written by Chris Munn


Three women walked down the wind-swept January streets of Belfast, Ireland.  The three, sisters all, wrapped their coats to hug across their arms, fighting back the chill, and conversed amongst themselves.  They ignored the tank that lurched by, as commonplace a sight in the city as a taxi, and continued on their way.  Ann, Claire, and Katherine Ryan were making their way home from church, unaware that their lives would be descending into Hell as the day drew on.

“Who’s bloody idea was it to have a piss-up the night before Sunday mass?” Claire asked as she rubbed fingers across her temples, massaging away the headache rumbling behind her eyes. 

“That would be our brother’s grand plan, eh?” Katherine answered.  “Fucking moron, that one is, but not as much as we are for listening to him.”

“Kathy!” Ann, ever the demure older sister, chastised.  “Language.”

“Aye,” Claire agreed with a giggle, “wouldn’t do to come out of God’s house with mouths like sailors.  Could make the angels think we’re not taking the fate of our mortal souls serious like.”

“Claire!”

Kathy giggled herself as she wrapped her arm around Ann’s shoulders.  “Ann, love, you go on home and see if Sean’s passed out on the bog again, won’t you?  God loves you, but not as much as we do.”

Ann smiled and returned the hug before making her way down the street toward her car.  Claire and Kathy watched their older sister depart, waving at her as she left, before they turned direction and started the walk toward their own house.  “I feel like my head’s been smashed in by a great big piece of steel,” Claire remarked, “you?”

“Aye,” Kathy answered, “though not as badly as last Sunday.  That was a piss-up for the ages, that was.”

“Doesn’t it ever worry you,” Claire continued, her tone having changed ever-so-slightly from humorous to serious, “that we’re two unmarried middle-aged women that spend nearly every night in the pub?  You’ve lived in my house for ten years, Kathy, and you know I don’t mind - you know that, right? - but is this going to be our lives for the rest of time?  Should we not, I dunno, aspire or have goals or something?”

Katherine laughed, though she knew her sister was being sincere.  “Oh, that’s just what I want: shit out a few wee brats and spend my remaining mortal years subservient to some oul’ git that works down the way.  Compared to that, Claire, I think we live like bleedin’ royalty.”

“Oh, and aren’t you little miss cynicism,” Claire replied, the smile returned to her lips, “and correct me if I’m wrong, but weren’t you the one all ready to settle down with someone not long ago?”

“That was a long time ago,” Kathy said, her tone indicating the abrupt end of the conversation, at least if Claire knew what was good for her.  The two came upon their house, halfway up a steep incline of a street, and noticed someone sitting on the steps of their porch. 

“Who’s this?” Claire asked as they neared.

Katherine’s face grew white when they got close enough to see their caller’s face.  Sitting on the step in a rumpled brown duster, blonde hair unkempt and a half-smoked fag hanging between his fingers was a man she had tried hard to forget over the past decade.  “Speak of the fucking Devil,” she whispered.

“Kit,” John Constantine greeted, unable to hide the affectionate smile on his face, “you look like you’ve just spied a ghost...”


Ann Ryan whistled a half-forgotten church hymn as she dug through her purse for the keys to the house.  Ryan was her maiden surname, of course, but her married name didn’t matter.  Not anymore.

“Sean, love?” she asked as she entered the home, tossing her purse atop the table in the foyer.  She stepped across the tile but gasped when her foot slid out from under her.  Falling with a crash, her head smacked hard against the ceramic surface, sending sparks of electricity through her brain from the impact.  She lay there, stunned, for several long moments until her hands finally began to pat the floor beneath her.

She choked back a scream when her hands came back sticky and wet with blood.

Ann scrambled to her feet, shoes still slipping on the blood coating the floor, and clumsily ran into the kitchen.  All she could think about was reaching the phone, not thinking of the cellular in her purse back near the door.  Where was Sean?  So much blood!  Phone in the kitchen!

She skidded to a stop on the hardwood floor when she reached the kitchen.  Her husband Sean was tied to a chair, the trail of blood leading from the front door to directly beneath his seat.  He was slumped forward, held by the cords wrapping around his body and the chair, and his eyes...his eyes were deep, black holes, with the edges charred and burned.  Someone had put out Sean’s eyes with a cigarette; Ann could smell the cigarette smoke in the air, nauseatingly mixed with the stench of burned flesh.

She backed slowly out of the room, unable to cross past her husband’s corpse to reach the phone on the far wall.  She had to get out of the house; maybe her neighbor Mr. Phelps was home and could help her?  She had to get out of the house, because whoever had killed her husband could still be inside.  She’d backed out into the hallway, unable to turn her eyes away from Sean’s mutilated body.

She shrieked when the hand slapped down on her shoulder.  “Sorry, darling,” a woman’s voice apologized, her grip keeping Ann from turning around, “but we can’t have you alerting anyone.” Another hand was placed on Ann’s opposite shoulder, exquisitely manicured fingers slipping up onto her neck.

The woman twisted Ann’s head on her shoulders, wrenching it a near 180 degrees, then allowed the body to fall to the floor.

“That would ruin the surprise...”


Claire was trying not to eavesdrop on the conversation being held in the next room, attempting instead to focus on the kettle whistling atop the stove.  She’d seen how just a few simple words from the man on their stoop had affected her sister, and she’d seen something in Kathy that she’d never seen before.

This man had frightened her sister.

So she’d left the two of them alone to have their reunion, Kathy and the mysterious man from London that she’d loved a decade past.  Some sister Claire had turned out to be, making tea instead of stepping up to this bastard and letting him know just how much damage he’d caused to Kathy’s life.  “Sod it,” she said as she moved closer to the kitchen door, ears tuning in to the conversation.

“Kit, luv,” Constantine said, sitting across the room from the woman that had walked out of his life so long ago, “I know you weren’t expecting this, but believe me when I say I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t deadly urgent.”

Katherine folded her arms across her chest and slouched back into the couch.  “You realize that I haven’t been called “Kit” since the last time we spoke?”

“Something’s happening,” John continued, choosing not to engage the tangent in the conversation, “and I’ve come here to warn - and, if needs be, protect - you.”

Kit’s eyes narrowed.  “Protect me from what, John?”

Constantine hesitated, sighing as he rubbed his eyes with thumb and forefinger.  Kit examined him, taking note of how weary and tired he looked, like the world had beaten the spark of life from his body.  Strange though, she wondered, he didn’t look a day older than the last time she’d seen him fourteen years ago.  “Out with it,” she ordered, “or take a walk out the door.”

John nodded, but still fought to find the words.  “Kit, just, look,” he stammered, “fuck it.  There’s some mad bastard out there murdering girls….”

“Girls are murdered every day, John,” she interjected.

“No, see, there’s a pattern to it,” he explained.  He paused to light a cigarette, shaking nervous hands trying to spark the cheap disposable lighter until finally, on the fourth try, he achieved a flame.  “The women being killed are connected by a bad decision each one of ‘em made during their lives.”

Kit scowled, starting to understand just where the conversation was heading.

“They all made the mistake of loving me, Kit,” he finally admitted, “and now some fuck is killing them for it.  There have been five deaths so far…”

“Are you trying to tell me that I’m number six on some serial killer’s hit list, John?” Kit asked, with a tone as cold as ice.

John looked up at her, wincing, like a child whose hand had been caught stealing from a cookie jar.  “Aye.  Sorry, luv.”

It was at that moment that Claire kicked open the swinging door to the kitchen, a tray gripped in her hands and a nervous smile on her face.  She motioned down with her eyes toward the three steaming cups on the tray.  “Either of you fancy a cuppa tea?”


John sat on the concrete stoop of the house, watching as afternoon slowly changed into evening, the skies darkening little by little as time marched forward.  He inhaled on his cigarette and ruminated, thinking about the woman he’d traveled so far to see, and the mission he had been tasked to complete.  “Bollocks,” he muttered before lighting a fresh fag off the dying embers of the one last smoked.

He’d met Kit in 1980, when she was 18 years old and the live-in girl of his best mate Brendan Finn.  He fell in love with her immediately, entranced by her raven-hued tresses and spitfire attitude.  She was one of the few, the very few, around whom Constantine could be himself sans the mystique.  She read him like a book, even back then, and immediately knew why he and Brendan were such close friends.  Brendan Finn was an alcoholic that knew, for a fact, that the drink would be his death yet refused to stop right up until the end.  John was like that, though his addiction ran deeper than booze (not to say he hadn’t had his own problems with alcoholism, that is).  No, he was addicted to danger, to violence and magic. 

John Constantine was addicted to death.

And that, ultimately, was why she left him fourteen years ago: he’d never be able to fight back his addictions, not even for her.  Of course, she had no idea what effect her leaving had on him.  How he spiraled into despair and curled up inside the comforts of the bottle.  For months he lived homeless on the streets of London, frantically spending his time trying to kill his sobriety, for sober thoughts brought back memories of her. 

All that pain he’d carried around inside him for the better part of a decade, delivered up as a mark on his tainted soul.  The memories of Kit had been given as a gift, but he’d gladly have given them back.  They were certainly good motivation, however, that much he could not deny.  But still, the other girls meant little in comparison to Kit Ryan, the one true love of his life over and above the rest.

That’s what made all of this so fucking hard.

“John,” Kit said from the door behind him.  He immediately noticed the pain in her voice, the quiver that meant she was fighting back tears and losing the battle.  He turned at the waist and caught her face, twisted into a mask of hurt and confusion.  “It’s my sister, Ann, an’ her husband…”

John stood up, realizing that whatever happened must have been serious.  “They weren’t answering the phone, so our brother Peter went over to check on ‘em.  Afraid Sean might have got rough with ‘er again, y’know?  Jaysis, John, someone’s bloody murdered them.”

John moved closer, arms open wide to embrace his woman, offering comfort and solace in her time of need and tragedy.  He would be her rock, her knight in tarnished armor there to protect her and make all the bad things go away.  He could stay in Belfast, as much as he hated the place, and live with Kit until the end of days.  Everything was going to be okay.

And then she slapped the ever-loving shite out of him.

“This is all your bleedin’ fault, isn’t it?” she screamed while Constantine took a step back, shocked at her reaction.  He held a hand up to his cheek, scratched by her nails, but no blood came from the cuts.

“Kit, come on now,” he attempted, only to get slapped again.

“This is why no one stays with you, John!” she continued, letting him again nurse his face from her slap.  “Everywhere you go turns into a fucking trauma ward!  Your life is a sodding great wound around you, and you go on not caring as usual!  How many people have to die before you realize a night down the pub isn’t going to fix things?”

John stood silent, mouth agape. The initial shock was beginning to settle, rapidly turning from surprise to anger.

“The day you come back into my life – the same sodding day – my sister gets fucking chopped,” she continued to shout, stabbing an accusatory finger into John’s chest, “tell me that’s a coincidence!  Tell me you ‘ad nothing to do with it, you miserable cocksucker!”

“You act like I killed ‘em meself!” Constantine shouted back.  It was at this point that Claire emerged in the doorway behind Kit, tears streaming down her face.  What would the neighbors think of such a scene playing out on her front stoop?

Kit sighed loudly and closed her eyes in an attempt to calm down.  “Don’t you understand, John?” she asked softly.  “Even if you didn’t do the deed personally, you’re still responsible.  You said so yourself, or am I to believe this arsehole’s killing your ex-girlfriends for some reason other than revenge of some sort against you?”

“Piss off!” John retaliated, flicking up a two-fingered gesture as he turned to walk down the steps.  He wasn’t going to stand there and take such abuse, not with his kind of power and attitude.  He was angered, furious at the cheeky bitch that was staring a hole through his back still when he hit the sidewalk.  There was at least an upside to all this, he decided.

The bitch had just made a difficult decision into a sodding easy one.


Constantine had been sitting on the barstool for hours, his coat draped over the back of his seat, nursing the latest in a long line of lager pints.  The barkeep had attempted to strike up a conversation with the scouse, but John let him know that he wasn’t up for a cheery spell of chit-chat.  His plan for the evening was to drink himself near to death, wait for darkness to fall, get done what he’d come to do, and then get the fuck out of Ireland.  He had a soft spot in his cold, dead heart for Dublin due to Brendan, but Belfast was a pit that deserved to be bombed back to the Stone Age - something the city’s citizenry were all-too-willing to do to themselves, it seemed.

He threw up the glass and allowed the last of the stout to glide down his throat.  He could barely taste it anymore, and no matter how much he drank he couldn’t wipe away the dark thoughts that constantly crept through his mind.  Normal people didn’t dwell on things like demons and murder...but then again, this John was far from a normal person.

“Oi, John Constantine?”

Constantine turned around in the stool, swinging his feet into the legs of the man that had addressed him.  He was middle-aged but still had a glint of youth twinkling in his eye, a beard that covered his face like a shag carpet, and a face that immediately struck John as familiar.  “Do I know you, mate?”

The man-boy stepped up to the bar beside John and slapped his hand down on the wood to get the tender’s attention.  “Whiskey and stout for me and my mate here,” he ordered, getting a nod from the bar man.  Turning back to face Constantine, he leaned against the bar and scratched at his beard.  “Name’s Peter Ryan,” he said, “seems you’re familiar like with my sister Kathy?”

“Ah,” John said after striking up a fag, “that’s why you look so familiar, innit?  You’re a twin with Claire, right?”  Peter nodded and then turned to accept his pint.  Constantine waved his to the table, the bartender agreed by sitting the glass on the table in front of him.  “So what’s the word, squire?  You come down here to protect your sister’s honour or some other chivalrous bollocks?”

“Look, Kathy never really liked to talk about her time with you,” Peter said, trying to match the cold stare given by Constantine, “but she mentioned some of the mad shite you were involved with.”

“Mad shite for a mad bastard,” John warned, holding his stare as he sucked on his cigarette.  Peter held on as long as he could before inevitably turning his gaze down to look at the bar top.  Peter wasn’t a brave man, more of the class comedian than the bad-ass, and it showed like a signal flare.

“I need t’ know,” Peter admitted, “Did you have anything to do with Ann’s death like Kathy said?  I can’t accuse a man o’ murder without asking him myself, y’know?”

Constantine said nothing, making no attempt to answer Peter’s heartfelt question.  He took a slow drag on his cigarette and took the first drink out of the pint ordered for him.  When he lowered the glass, he exhaled the smoke from his mouth into the air, causing Peter to cough.  John stood up and removed his coat from the back of the chair while Peter watched, getting angrier with each passing moment of insulting silence.

“Come with me,” Constantine ordered before making his way through the crowd, toward the door, “and I’ll tell you everything.”

Peter hesitated, wondering if he should follow.  John turned back and flashed a grin.  “Trust me...”


“Fucking useless!” Katherine Ryan slammed the phone onto the coffee table, hanging up on the inspector on the other side of the call in her own interminable way.  She’d been in cooperation with the coppers for the entire evening, and nothing had been concluded on her sister and brother-in-law’s murders.  She sighed and nicked a cigarette from the pack John had left on the table, desperately needing something to calm her nerves.  Claire had gone to bed nearly an hour prior, though the only way she was able to sleep was due to the sedative Kathy had slipped into her tea.  Let Claire get some rest while she took care of business being the strong one, as per usual.

Kathy walked to the front door, holding off on lighting the cigarette inside per her sister’s wishes.  When she opened the door, John Constantine stood wavering on his feet, teetering over before she’d had time to react.  Constantine pushed himself inside the house as he fell, landing hard on his knees so he could continue his path via the crawl.  Kit slipped backward on her heels, barely missed by the toppling Englishman that she assumed was too pissed to think, let alone walk correctly.  Constantine crawled as far into the living room as he could, then rolled over onto his back, convulsing from a fit of nervous coughs.

“Looks like you had the piss-up of all piss-ups, eh?” Kit said with a half-sustained chuckle.

“Would yer give me a hand, luv,” John choked out, “or d’you prefer me bottom down on the shag here?”

Kit laughed, despite her hatred of the man still seething in the back of her mind, and offered up a hand to assist him.  John laughed as well as he grasped onto her helping hand, allowing her to assist in pulling him to his feet.  She couldn’t help but notice the red stains on the cuffs of his coat and the tips of his fingers, and that sense of uneasiness again crept up her spine.

“John,” Kit began while Constantine took a fall onto the nearest couch opposite the front door, “I had a bit of a row with Peter, my wee brother.”

“About what?” John asked.

“About you, and Ann, and all of the mad shite you’d been involved in over the years.”  She paused and decided to light that cigarette inside after all, fuck off t’ Claire’s house rules.  “Peter wanted to go find you, to talk with you about the supernatural and horror bollocks, to see if you had a theory about what had happened to our Ann.”

She looked over at John, who had followed her lead and was sparking up a smoke of his own.  “Peter found me down the local,” Constantine admitted, “and I have to say that I wasn’t in much of a state to help meself, let alone anyone else.  He bought me a pint and whiskey, then followed me outside to the pisser...”

“And then...?” Kit questioned after a few moments of silence.

John sighed, but allowed the prompting to keep him going.  “I passed out mid-stream; woke up in a puddle of me own piss an hour later.”

“And where did Peter go?” Kit continued to question.

“Fuck, luv, I was barely conscious enough to make my way here without any major catastrophes,” John whined, “odds are yer brother realized how useless I am and either scooted back home or went back in the bar to drown his sorrows.”

Kit leaned her back against the door, directly across from the sitting Constantine.  “Where’d the blood come from, then?”

A puzzled look came over John’s face as he looked down on his clothes, searching until he finally came across the still-fresh bloodstains on the cuffs of his coat.  “Ah, this...” His expression turned from puzzled to smug “...this starts the next chapter of the story, I’m afraid. In fact, we could even call it a change from one genre to another.”

Kit grew nervous, aware that she was blocking the only exit out of the house.  If John did something, would she have enough time to open the door and get through before he caught her?  Sod it, she decided, she could bash the shite out of Constantine if he tried anything, a fighter that man was not.

“Before this, we were stuck in one of those predictable “chick flicks” that the birds all seem t’ like, with a dash of murder involved to get the “suspenseful thriller” crowd in the seats.”  As he spoke, John made no effort to leave his seat, in fact he enjoyed settling himself in deeper on the sofa.  “Now, well, we’ve just come to the twist in the plot, where everything we thought we knew has suddenly gone tits-up all over the place.”

Kit jumped and very nearly screamed when a series of knocks pounded on the door behind her.  She looked at the door, then turned back to look at Constantine.  “I thought I was going to have more time for this,” he remarked, “but again, I should’ve finished this long ago, so it’s no one’s fault but me own.  Open the door.”

Kit threw open the door, startling the two people - a young woman and a black man - so much so that they backpedaled down the steps. “Merc, Shocka,” a man’s voice said from the sidewalk, “mind yer fuckin’ manners, kids!”  Kit motioned past the two youths, having immediately recognized the man’s voice.  Her eyes widened, like deer caught in headlights.  “What’s the matter, Kit me luv?” John Constantine asked.  “Looks like you just spied a ghost or summink...”

Kit’s voice was frozen, unable to choke out a single word as she frantically turned back inside the house.  Constantine was still sitting on her couch, but he had changed dramatically.  Never mind the butcher’s knife balanced on his index finger, John’s skin had turned a sickly hue of green.  Pieces of flesh had rotted away, particularly on his right cheek where a colony of white maggots squirmed out for freedom.  She met his eyes, which were now colored the deepest red of blood.  Finally he smiled, revealing rows of razored fangs - a mouth like a shark.

“What’s the matter, doll?” he hissed.

“What the fuck are you,” Kit asked through clenched teeth, “a demon?”

John Constantine entered from behind, placing a hand on Kit’s shoulder.  “Not just a demon, my dear.”

The creature sparked up a Silk Cut between fingers like flick-knives.

“He’s the bloody Demon Constantine...”

To be continued…

Voices From Beyond

No new letters this month (c’mon, people, you can do better than that!), so I’m not going to bore you with anything long-winded.  Below you’ll find continuity notes for this issue, and come back next month for the conclusion to “Children of the Grave”!

- Kit Ryan was Constantine’s love interest during Garth Ennis’ run on the series.  She broke up with John and moved back to Belfast after she was attacked by neo-Nazi thugs that John had pissed off in the “Fear and Loathing” story.  She and her siblings were last seen in the “Heartland” one-shot produced by Ennis and Steve Dillon.
- The Demon Constantine was first introduced in the “Critical Mass” story by Paul Jenkins and Sean Phillips.  John was caught in a trap by the First of the Fallen and a demon named Buer that would quickly end with John’s soul being dragged down to Hell.  In order to escape this fate, John created a doppelganger of himself via earth and magic, into which he poured all of the negative aspects of his personality, the demon blood injected into him by Nergal, and the one shining light: his love for Kit Ryan.  This doppelganger was taken to Hell in Constantine’s stead, but due to John’s spells the double remained in Hell unharmed.  When John later discovered that he needed to reunite with his double to regain a sense of balance to his self, he found the double had advanced to a demonic state.  The newly demonic Constantine refused to reunite with John and the two parted ways.

Chris Munn
12/16/08

Story © 2008 Chris Munn and may not be reproduced without permission.