Hellblazer 2 - Subterranean by John Shirley Page B

grub any time soon! Think of it as sausages. ‘Bony sausages,’ we call them!”
    “Where do you come from?” Constantine asked, to change the subject. “I mean, you know—originally.”
    “Me? Why . . . I . . .” There was a meditative chewing sound. “Oh it’s so long since I thought of it . . . I almost forgot . . . but of course it’s Boston I’m from.”
    “In America?”
    “Where else? A Boston bean, the other sailors called me, when I was pressed into the Royal Navy. Stepped off an American merchant ship in Portsmouth, got myself drunk, punched a bailiff in the beezer, and they condemned me to be pressed. Some had steam engines on their ships—perhaps you’ve seen them, they’re all the thing in the shipyards—but we had none, and a storm smashed us on a lee shore. We all found ourselves clawing for a hold in the sea cave, glad to be able to breathe. The rising tide trapped us and we went more deeply into the cave and there was nowhere to go but down. We soon encountered the gripplers—and then the King’s soldiers. They brought us before the palace . . . Oh, what a glorious sight! The King Underneath, the one you call the Gloomlord, declared us trespassers, but said we might work off our crime and receive a great reward. Some, of course, were eaten—but there are a few left from that crew . . . See here, are you going to eat that?”
    “Ah, no, I ate just before I . . . signed on. I was just wondering if you had any notion when you’ll be . . .” He broke off, feeling a hand on his ankle. This one was still attached to an arm, for it was feeling its way up his leg. Constantine jerked away from the probing touch. “Here! Is that you clutching at me, Arfur! We’ll have less of that!”
    “No, ’tisn’t me. Lord but this whiner had a tender palm . . . No, ’twasn’t me; there are those here who look for fresher meat. Give him a swift kick and he’ll sheer off.”
    Constantine kicked out, but two more hands clamped on to his legs, others his arms, and he felt a long tongue rasping at his right ankle, and another—reeking sickeningly—on his neck, and someone muttering foully, “I wants to suck out his eyeballs. Do but hold him and I’ll suck out his eyeballs while he yet lives . . . that’s the delicacy, the texture, the fresh warm softness of them . . .”
    Constantine began to shout a spell of illumination—but a big horny hand clamped over his mouth, gagging him. A long rough tongue lapped at his eyes . . .
    “Avast, there, let my friend go!” shouted Arfur. “If anyone’s to eat him it’s me, and I’ve not decided!”
    There was a scrabbling, a struggle in the darkness, and Constantine felt his right hand set free. He reached into his inner coat pocket, fumbled out his lighter, terrified he would drop it, opened it with a practiced flip of his thumb, flicked it alight—
    Their screams at the sudden light were piteous, like small girls with their skirts afire. His captors released him and backed hastily away.
    Constantine saw a dozen figures in a ragged ring around him. They were only roughly in the shape of men, though he could see that they’d once been human, for within the scabrous gray-green growths of fungus coating them were bits of uncovered human flesh; here a nose, there an ear, there a partial chin, a few threadbare rag ends of clothing. For the most part they were covered with the growth, like barnacles on the hull of a ship but rougher, more uniform. They looked almost like figures of stone. Many had one eye covered by the growth. Their remaining eyes peered at him, blinking, half blinded.
    The nearest, probably Arfur, still had a human finger stuck in the corner of his mouth which he worked at like a child slowly chewing up a long piece of candy. There were wooden bowls on the floor here and there, with ragged bits of a person in them, along with what looked like sections of mushrooms. In one of the bowls was the partly gnawed head of what might’ve been a