Hellblazer 2 - Subterranean Read Online Free

to keep under control till that moment, and they both turned and ran, wordlessly, toward home . . . into the village.
    ~
    Old Duff stopped to catch his breath in the middle of the bridge. He leaned against the rail, wiping his forehead where sweat was replacing rain, and squinted at the stakes. When had MacCrawley put them up? He had accomplices, maybe Lord Smithson himself, or Smithson’s man Pinch.
    A cracking sound came then, and just beyond the stakes the ground was splitting open.
    The earth shook, the bridge beginning to splinter and split under Duff; stones fell from its balustrades to crash into the river. He had to cling to the bridge to keep his footing as the sundering ground split in a lightning-shaped crack between the shallow river and the edge of the village, all the way around—cutting the village out from the rest of the world the way a man cuts the core from an apple. The crack opened wider, becoming a crevice, then a ravine—one that traveled all the way around Tonsell.
    Screams and plaintive calls rose up from his hometown. Trees and houses swayed. Dust plumed—an old yellow pickup truck, attempting to drive from the village, pitched into the widening abyss, blaring its horn, the sound diminishing pitifully as the truck vanished into the darkness. Old Duff could only watch helplessly as the ground supporting the village shuddered and slipped, down, down, not rapidly and not slowly, inexorably lowering the village into the earth, as if it was on a giant, unstable freight elevator of bedrock. Down went the rows of cottages and brick houses; down went the pub and the village hall; down went the gift shops and market; down went St. Leonard’s church, its steeple the tallest structure in the village. Last to vanish was the cross atop the steeple—shadow drew over it like a dark blanket drawn up over a dead man’s face. Down the village went—and out of sight.
    Where the village had been was a great yawning pit, rimmed in dirt and rock, sending up dust and smoke. Birds, once part of the village life, now abandoned it, pigeons and sparrows and others, flapping up in their panic to escape, and they fled just in time, for in a moment even the pit was gone as sheets of bedrock shrugged and crept forward from both sides of the opening to close it up. The bedrock came together like clasping hands, but crunching into one another, closing the pit off from above, sealing the lost village away deep underground . . .
    There was only a great roughly round patch of raw earth and gray stone then, where the village of Tonsell-by-the-Stream had been.
    The ground ceased trembling; the bridge had cracked and crumbled at the edges but substantially held together. Old Duff still clung to its stone sides so hard his fingertips bled. He gazed at what was now a great stony scar in the ground where the village had been removed . . .
    Smithson Manor still stood, on the far side of the scarred earth. It was a sprawling eighteenth-century structure of stone and timber, the double-peaked main hall three stories high. Its many windows seemed to gaze down in shocked silence at the convergence of roads once meeting at Tonsell-on-the-Stream, now ending abruptly in a raw field of stone and dirt.
    All was silence, except for the unconcerned gurgling of the Hillcrease River, and the squawking of ravens wheeling overhead.

2
    ANOTHER GHASTLY COCK-UP? MUST BE CONSTANTINE DONE IT
    “S o Kit won’t have you back?” Chas said, annoying Constantine by saying it with a certain serves you right in his voice.
    Constantine signaled the barman for another drink. “G and T, mate,” he said. Mention Kit, and he instantly needed a fresh drink. Why had he sought her out in Ireland? At the sight of her . . . it had all come rushing back. Maybe not his love for her, entirely—but a heart-wringing affection, and a profound nostalgia for the time they’d spent together.
    I don’t mind a man who comes with baggage. They all do. But your bags . . .
    It