Free Hellblazer 2 - Subterranean by John Shirley

streets.
    He had no difficulty eluding the loud, clumsy men in uniforms—this was his turf, and he knew it like the back of his hand. But he was surprised when Constantine’s tracks by the stream led to a hill, and a crevice in the side of that hill. Long had a spring run from the hill here, but the opening? Never in his time. The crevice fairly oozed magic—the magic of nature, from the mind of the world.
    “Constantine?” he called, approaching it.
    But the crevice shuddered, then it rumbled within itself—and then the stone closed over the opening like a garage door coming down. The way was blocked.
    He shook his head ferociously and declared, “There’s a part for me yet! I will not forget Tonsell-by-the-Stream, village of my youth, which I protected these many years. I have failed you—and I will make it up, or die in the trying!”
    But first he had to cross the fields to the inn at Quinbury, where a man might get a drink.
    ~
    “It’s obvious where we are,” said Garth, tugging his coat more closely about him in the subterranean chill. His face flickered in the guttering of the candles Skupper was using to improve on the thin blue light given off by the phosphorescent roof of the great cavern. “We’re in Hell. Or on the edge of it—purgatory, like. I reckon they’ll come for us here, and take us to be judged, soon enough.” He looked up through the ragged gap in the ceiling of the pub, to the almost mist-shrouded ceiling of natural stone arching over the village.
    “That’s all shite, Granddad,” said Bosky, coming into the pub’s half-fallen main room. “Hell is hot—it’s cold here.” He had on a sweater under his hoody and it showed at the bottom; his hood was up.
    “What are you doing here, boy?” Skupper demanded, tucking his cold fingers in his armpits.
    “Are you going to call the coppers, Skupper, and say I’m breaking the law, coming in the pub?” Bosky asked, shaking his head and picking up the fallen dartboard from the rubble, setting it thoughtfully up against a broken section of wall. “I’ve heard of being ‘above the law’—but we’re a good thousand feet or more beneath the law here. You think you risk getting a fine down here, do you?”
    “Tell you what the risk is,” said Geoff, coming after Bosky, picking up a dart from the rubble. “That the bloody ceiling’ll fall in on this pub.”
    Much of the village had come through the lowering remarkably intact. It was as if the town had been lowered carefully, by something, or someone, who had a use for it—or its inhabitants.
    It was true that St. Leonard’s church was leaning badly, and a couple of brick buildings, standing alone near the edge of town, had crumbled. Old Mrs. Galway was buried under the bricks of her house, all but her feet, making Bosky think of the witch in that Oz movie. They’d dug her out, working in the eerie blue light from the distant ceiling, but found her dead. No one thought there was much point in trying CPR. Why revive her—so she could face this apocalyptic horror, a slow death of starvation or worse? There were rumors of worse, in the twenty-four hours since the village had sunk into the crust of the Earth . . .
    “It’s strange,” Bosky said, looking up through the hole in the ceiling. “I mean—it’s all strange. But one thing is—there’s stalactites on that cave ceiling up there. Them things take thousands of years to grow. I saw it on the telly. But that ceiling’s only been up there a day.”
    “Devil’s magic doesn’t follow natural laws,” said Garth. “When we came down, I saw that roof come from the side, like, pushed from someplace else. And by what? By devil’s magic.”
    Geoff threw the dart at the board; it struck, wobbled, and fell off. “Bugger. Yeah—so it’s like Bosky says—what difference does anything make now?”
    “Right, boy, what difference indeed,” said Skupper, surprising Bosky. “Here, have a drink.”
    He poured out two glasses of