Constantine - The Novelization - Whoa is (Not)

seconds?"Satan thought about it....TWENTYDetective Xavier closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. Then he looked again atthe back entrance to this wing of the hospital, past the patrol cars pulled up, lights flashing.The situation was still the same. He wasn't seeing things. There were two patrolmenfrozen like statues, partway through the broken-open doors. Hard to discern in the murky air, thetwo cops looked like stills printed out from the tape of a surveillance camera, arms swingingimpossibly at their sides - their arms never dropping at the end of the swings, though each carrieda big flashlight. Nobody could hold their arms up completely motionless like that for this long.But that's what they were doing.He looked at the night sky; a few stars gleamed blue-white through a break of cloud.This had something to do with that guy Constantine who'd been hanging around DetectiveDodson. Just an educated guess - but he'd been doing some checking on Constantine...A young, Asian-American officer, Patrolman Yee, trotted up from reconnoitering the entrance.Xavier found himself watching the big silver flashlight swinging at Yee's side, half expecting it tofreeze there in front of him."I found the nurse, the Filipino lady who reported all this," Yee said. The young cop lickedhis lips, not sure how to tell it. "She, uh... she says she heard gunshots, screams from this wing,says it was, you know, closed down for repair, no one supposed to be there. She thought maybe itwas a patient run off from the lunatic part of the hospital smashing things up. So she went tohave a look.""Nervy lady," Xavier remarked."Yeah. Figured she'd seen it all anyway, I guess. But she hadn't seen this - people in therecaught up in some kind of... like a time loop or something."A year ago, Xavier would have said that the nurse had been smoking pot while watching StarTrek reruns on her break, or something. But with the things that had been happening lately aroundtown - and those two cops frozen in the doorway - he was inclined to believe the story."So - time loop. Fine. Whatever. And?""And... she found some dead... creatures. All half melted. Like... 'devils,' she said. What wasleft of them. And that was, I guess, the end of her nerviness. Hightailed it out of there.""And those two in the doorway?""Yeah, that's Officers Morrisey and Garcia, answered the call from the nurse. I shouted atthem - no response. I started to get closer and I got a strange feeling. Like... things were slowingdown. I took a step back and the feeling went away. So, well...""So you decided not to go any farther. Sensible, Officer Yee. You'll make sergeant yet."Xavier was not at all sure what to do. He was sure only that he didn't want to push things too fartill he knew what the hell was going on."Detective..." Yee turned and looked at the hospital. The two frozen cops hadn't moved. "It'slike something's got a some kind of wall of... I don't know how to say it like time is frozen thereand you get a sense that it's like a kind of warning. Like the incident tape we use. Like...""Like don't go in there.""Yeah. But somebody's in there. I heard sounds. I don't know how to describe it. But,uh… you know the other day, that little girl... ""I think I get the idea. Constantine's behind this somehow."