Chapter 255: Ma Ma Zhaodi Felt He Still Had Too Many Principles

"All night long, that dead child lay on the bed with eyes open and mouth agape—by the time I regained consciousness, a swarm of flies and mosquitoes had already found the corpse, and other insects were gathering in ever greater numbers—I suppose it was a rare feast for them."

After finishing a cigarette, Lester casually tossed the butt onto the ground and crushed it out: "I held on for another day, but the voices in my head are getting louder and clearer. John, I can't handle that demon on my own; I'm about to break."

Hearing this, Constantine sighed: "Great, so that's why you came to find me. I truly f***ing regret having you as a friend—"

"I need your help, John," Lester emphasized. "I even hijacked a tourist for this, sold his passport, and used the money for a plane ticket."

Chase frowned at this moment: "You left that boy's corpse to rot in the house, and you might have even killed a passerby?"

"It was a hijacking, just a hijacking," Lester insisted again. "At worst, he lost his identification. But in a place like Tangier, you can survive even without ID."

"Really?" Ma Ma Zhaodi raised an eyebrow. "Then how did he buy a ticket to go back home?"

"That's his problem. Anyway—" Lester continued, "I went to Heathrow Airport. By then, I'd been suffering withdrawal for days; I was freezing, covered in goosebumps, yet the border guard didn't even look at me. I guess that was luck granted by the demon."

At this point, he actually became somewhat angry: "I kept forcing myself to hold on because I knew Constantine would have a way. But when I showed up at your door, you f***ing weren't there, right!"

"Yes, yes, friend, calm down," Constantine soothed. "I'm back now, aren't I? Don't be angry; go on."

"You should have come back earlier, even a day earlier would have done," Lester said resentfully. "This morning, I arrived here, tricked Mrs. M into opening the door, entered your room, and waited for you the whole time, but you never showed up—I had to go out to find medicine to clear my head."

"But?"

"But I couldn't find any medicine, and then this thing started messing with me again."

Lester clutched his head, his face showing despair and pain, as if that buzzing demonic voice was ringing in his skull again: "It spoke and spoke, sang and sang, without end. It promised me freedom, promised to release me from the fear and agony of withdrawal—on the condition that I give it freedom in return."

"I was nearly going mad, and insects suddenly started flying toward me inside the room. At first, just two or three, then five or six, then a dozen, dozens, hundreds!"

"I'm about to collapse, Constantine, I'm about to collapse! That thing wants to kill me. If I delay any longer, I'll die from being bitten to death by a swarm of insects—can you imagine being surrounded by hundreds of mosquitoes?"

Constantine looked at the dense marks covering his body, shrugged at his old friend, and said, "Not hundreds, at most a few dozen."

"F*** it. Anyway, that old Miss said you were in America, and I remembered too—you have a girlfriend there, Emma—so I asked her to mail that bottle's package over."

He murmured, "Constantine always knows what to do. Constantine will know."

Seeing that Lester's account had ended, Ma Ma Zhaodi took the hat off his head and handed it back to his coat—he had always known Constantine's friends lacked moral scruples, but he never expected Lester to be so irresponsible.

The death of that child had already annoyed him greatly, but that could at least be blamed on the demon's temptation; the tourist's passport being hijacked could be excused as a desperate measure; but mailing such a terrifying demon directly to his friend—rather than "trusting his friend could solve this," it was more like "let the other fellow die while I survive; let the tall one hold up the sky when it collapses."

His will to survive overcame everything. He knew that cursed package might never reach its destination, and that Constantine might be powerless against that evil spirit, but he did it anyway because it would keep him alive—even if this act might cause the deaths of others.

"Truly a friend of Constantine," Ma Ma Zhaodi shook his head. "Their conduct is exactly the same."

"Don't f***ing slander me," Constantine immediately retorted. "I'm far superior to this useless piece of trash. I don't take drugs—I know how to deal with this scumbag: kick his ass over, throw him out of the house, then take a nap."

Ma Ma Zhaodi stared at Constantine with wide eyes.

Unexpectedly, Chase, who had been sparing with words until now, immediately responded: "Um, I can take him away and, uh, find a place to dump him."

Ma Ma Zhaodi's eyes widened even further as he looked at Chase again.

No way, buddy?

"You're talking about your own friends, right?" he confirmed. "And you're sure you're exorcists, not gangsters?"

In front of Constantine, Ma Ma Zhaodi suddenly felt that his own past methods were still too principled.

"Forget it, there are too many damn problems," Constantine sighed. "Leaving this thing alone will cause trouble again. Actually, according to Old Ma, trouble has already started. We have to solve it—Chase, go get paper and a pen. Lester, listen to me: you'll be able to rest soon, but first you must draw that child—facial features, tattoos, bone structure, everything must be drawn."

Ma Ma Zhaodi sat aside, watching Lester sketch with a pencil on paper. In moments, an image of an African child with a huge skull, sunken cheekbones, and a large mouth and nose took shape under his pen. The patterns and tattoos on his face were truly dizzying to behold—so many cuts on a child's face; it was hard to imagine how agonizing that process must have been.

"Good drawing, Lester. I told you you should have graduated from art school instead of coming out to be some magic-wielding charlatan," Constantine said, taking the drawing with satisfaction. "Now, you can sleep."

Chase, standing nearby, shrugged: "So, is my mission complete?"

"Well," Constantine's face immediately wore an unkind smile: "Sorry, old friend, you'd better find enough food, cigarettes, and porn magazines for three days—you're staying here to babysit."

"But I—"

"Don't look at me." Seeing Chase look at him, Ma Ma Zhaodi immediately shifted the blame: "You know, I paid him to investigate this case with me. I have no intention of staying here waiting for news."

"Buddy, thanks for your hard work," Constantine laughed.

"You owe me this."

(End of this chapter)