Constantine - The Novelization - Whoa is (Not)

dragged it out as long as possible, sucking every last drop of denial, before surrendering to theinevitable.Stunned by death, identifying with their material lives, and without the reasoning facultiesprovided by an actual brain - since spiritual intelligence was something that had to be spirituallybuilt up - the dead would gape for days at a time at their corpses, trying to understand, to grasptheir separation from what was, after all, just a kind of garment. There were as many stupid deadpeople as there were stupid living ones.You could, he reflected, actually fail at being dead....Some of these spiritual imbeciles were hovering near as he opened the shiny stainless steeldoor and stepped into the chill of the morgue, his breath visibly pluming the air, the telltaleexudation of Early Times bourbon mixing prophetically with the smell of decay andformaldehyde. Just one of many such vaults, this was the one where intuition had led him.It was an old-fashioned morgue, with shelves on the wall crowded by sheet-covered bodies.He raised a hand, extending his astral senses from his palm... thinking the name he'd found in thepaper.Isabel ... Isabel Dodson...He felt a tug pulling him across the room to a slim shape under a sheet - and then someonestood in his way.It was a scowling old woman in her funeral best.One of those tediously stubborn ghosts. Her lips moved - but he heard the voice in his mind:"Stay away from me, don't you put your rapist's hands on my body!""Lady," he murmured, "let your body go. It wasn't much to brag about in the first place. Justaccept it, cause you sure as... as the dickens can't change it. You're dead. Ask God forforgiveness and move on...."And he walked right through her - did it on purpose to discourage her from annoying him anyfurther. He felt her prissy indignation as she vanished.Hennessy stepped up to Isabel's body, pulled the sheet back. Bluing skin, sunken, closed eyes.Tag in her ear like an earring.The poor girl, he thought. So young. And here an old, walking booze-sponge like me is stillaround.He reached out, placed his hand on her forehead.He sensed nothing special. Just a husk, abandoned by a soul. He picked up some vagueflutterings vibratorily associated with the body's life, but nothing telling. He did a series ofpasses over her body - and suddenly stopped over her right wrist.There. Very distinct. Almost painfully sharp... a connection to Hell itself... a symbol. Hesaw it in his mind's eye...."Hey, what the fuck're you doing in here?" came the strident voice from behind him. "Getyour hands away from that body, ya fucking perv!"He turned to tell a ghost to fuck off - and saw a solid, living, breathing human being: a burlysecurity guard. He smiled - then lunged for the door, shoving the man aside as hard as he could.Sprinting through the door and out.The guard fell, striking his head. Just stunned.For a moment the security guard seemed to see an old lady in her Sunday best, looking downat him and pointing at a sheet-covered body."He tried to rape me! Get him! I'm naked under this sheet, you know!" And she began togiggle. "Naked! Quite naked!"Then she faded away. Funny the things you imagined when you got a knock on the head.The guard got stiffly to his feet and went to look for the guy who'd broken into the morgue.But by the time he was up and had called for backup, Father Hennessy was long gone.--