Hellblazer 2 - Subterranean Read Free Page A

smoke the green that Bosky got from his cousin in London here, and many of the stones were marked with their graffiti.
    “You reckon any of those mushrooms could be magic, like?” Finn asked, kicking at the circle of toadstools around the great tumble of gray stones. “I mean—ya know—psychedelic shrooms.”
    “Oh you’d hallucinate a treat, right before you died!” Bosky hooted. “Those aren’t shrooms, you git, they’re toadstools. Here . . .” He passed the little brass pipe to Finn, a pale, athletic boy—or he had been, once—with white-blond hair, nicknamed for his Finnish ancestry.
    “Shite you’ve crammed a lot of old joint-ends in there—we’re smoking paper. Too harsh—”
    “Oh stop your whining, Finn,” Bosky said, climbing up on the rocks. “Hey—there’s someone’s coat laid over one of these rocks! Crikey that’s a fine coat too!”
    “Here, this big rock’s been moved—” Geoff called. He was a bespectacled boy with pale skin, freckles, red-brown hair trailing over his collar—the one who’d excelled in school before they’d given all that up. “Look—a tunnel!”
    “Stay away from that tunnel you little fools!” a voice croaked from the edge of the clearing.
    Startled, they turned to see Old Duff swaying in the waist-high weeds just this side of the screen of ash trees. “Ha! Old Duff!” Bosky crowed. “Is this your coat, then?”
    “Not a chance it’s his!” Geoff snorted. “It doesn’t smell like whiskey—and it’s too fine for him. Someone with money left that coat there!”
    “Money? You reckon?” Bosky picked the coat up and immediately began poking through its pockets. But he found nothing much—only a meerschaum pipe and a leather pouch of tobacco.
    “I should put that coat down immediately, but gently, if I were you,” said a rumblingly silky voice from the tunnel’s mouth. Stooped over, MacCrawley emerged, dusting himself off. Cobwebs clung to his elbows. He stepped away from the tunnel and to one side—rather hastily—putting out his hand toward Bosky, who silently handed the coat over. And then the pipe and tobacco.
    There was a raspy, breathy sound coming from the tunnel now. And an unpleasant smell. Like nothing Bosky’d ever smelled before. Something that smelled dead—but not.
    “Run boy, get away from there!” Old Duff shouted.
    “What has he to fear, Old Duff?” MacCrawley asked, lofting his eyebrows theatrically. “That tunnel leads to a glorious sight—some might call it Shambhala! ’Course some might call it Sheol too!” He chuckled creakily.
    Never taking his eyes off Bosky, MacCrawley put the coat back on and then pointed—while still staring at Bosky—at the Finn. “You, boy! Come here!”
    “Sod off, you old poof!” Finn said to MacCrawley. “I’m not going to—”
    “Oh but you will, my lad!” MacCrawley interrupted, turning toward Finn and making a curious hand motion, as if he were reeling something invisible toward him. Finn’s eyes glazed, and he stumbled toward MacCrawley.
    Bosky stared. “Finn?”
    The raspy sound from the low tunnel entrance became a whipping noise, and Bosky turned to see a long, hairless, gray-black, rope-muscled arm stretching out. There were only four fingers on the hand, fingers shaped like those of a toad but longer than a man’s, and they tapped at the ground as if tasting, sniffing it. On and on the arm stretched . . . impossibly far, two yards, and three. And still it stretched out, with a crackling sound, its elbow switching back and forth double-jointedly, the fingers trembling as it reached for Finn’s ankle—
    “Finn! Get back!” Geoff yelled, climbing up toward him. But Duff was there then, dragging both Geoff and Bosky back with surprising strength.
    Finn came out of his trance as the long prehensile gray fingers closed around his ankle—he screamed as it jerked him off his feet and dragged him as fast as a frog sucking in a fly, down into the tunnel. In a moment he