It's A Bird! It's A Plane!

by Steve Beaulieu

  Mason. The sweet face of her ten-year old neighbor gazed back at her. She opened the door, feeling a little foolish for being afraid. He buzzed in with a handful of bright petunias.

  “Hey Granny, I brought you these!”

  In the summer, Mason brought her flowers every afternoon. Sure, they were picked from her own garden, and sure, he knew she’d give him a chance at the cookie jar, but the gesture was sweet anyway. She looked forward to seeing his inquisitive brown eyes peering around her into the living room. She looked forward to the myriad questions he asked: where did she get the umbrella with the parrot on the handle? How did Pirate lose his eye? Why did the skin on her face fold like that? He was open and honest and direct, and she found it refreshing.

  She taught him things, too. He’d become a pretty good little cribbage player under her guidance. And sometimes he helped her bake, or weed, or sew a button on. He never stopped talking from the moment he came in, and his voice was a welcome change from the ever-present silence of her house.

  Today Mason was excited about a new scooter, so he talked twice as fast as usual. His parents were out and he was in no hurry to get home. He and Charlotte made macaroni and played go fish.

  “Got any twos, Granny?” he asked, for the tenth time.

  Charlotte was about to send him fishing when Pirate interrupted her with a flurry of barking at the kitchen sink.

  “Settle down!” she reprimanded him. But Pirate barked on, moving along the cupboard doors and finally bristling near the hallway.

  “Silly dog,” she said, “go fish.”

  It was then that she felt it. Another fade was coming. She had just enough time to lay her cards down and and grip the edge of the table when the kitchen and Mason and Pirate dimmed around her and she saw a dark figure ahead. She felt pain and fear. The kitchen came back into focus, but its weird, shifting colors told her she was seeing it in the fade. The death would happen here. She heard a cry and focused on its origin. And then, more than ever before, Charlotte felt agony. It was not just the fader’s pain. It was her own anguish, too, as she saw that the fader was Mason.

  “Granny, Granny. It’s your turn!”

  She slipped back out of the fade and sat looking at him. His big eyes, his round cheeks. She wanted to throw her arms around him. He was alive. He was safe.

  Not for long. Within the hour, he would be lifeless on the worn linoleum of her kitchen floor.

  Charlotte stood. She didn’t want to scare him, but he had to leave.

  “Time to go home, Honey,” she said.

  “But it’s only seven thirty!” he protested, “My folks won’t even be home for another hour.”

  Charlotte thought of him alone in the big colonial next door. She hesitated.

  During that moment, when she stilled and tried to think what to do, she heard the squeak from the back bedroom door. She knew who would be there before she turned to look at the hallway, but a jolt still shook her when she saw him.

  Tall and lean, with a maniac’s darting eyes, the man from the fade stood in her kitchen archway. He was neatly dressed in casual slacks and a polo shirt. Not at all the scruffy type of man she’d been watching out for all day. He was startlingly pale, as if he had never spent time outdoors.

  “Sorry to barge in,” he said, his voice smooth and confident, “but from the way you bolted that front door I didn’t think you’d let me in the usual way.”

  Charlotte pulled Mason to his feet. She stepped in front of him and spoke to the stranger, “Get out of here.” She’d used the tone before, with stray dogs, and it usually worked.

  Not this time. It seemed to amuse the intruder, in fact. His youthful face creased in a smile.

  “You’re spunky,” he said. His voice was smoky and too heavy for his years.

  Charlotte glanced around at the counters. They were, as always, tidy. No knife, no mallet, not even a frying pan she might grab for a weapon. She glanced at the high cupboard by the sink, but reaching it meant going directly toward the madman. “Why are you here?”

  He took a step toward her, “you’ve been going around undoing my work. Did you think there would be no consequences for that? Did you think I’d never figure out what you were doing?”

  “Honestly, I wasn’t thinking of you at all.”

  “Well,” he replied, “I suspect that is about to change.” He advanced smoothly, and Charlotte scooted around the table, trying to keep it between them. Pirate hopped onto one of the chairs—his usual seat—and stood growling at the intruder.

  “But before I finish this, I have to know how you’re doing it. Are you messing with time?”

  “Excuse me?” She motioned Mason to move behind her.

  “Are you changing the timeline? Because if that’s it, this is going to be much harder.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Who can mess with time? Time is relentless, unchangeable. Believe me.” She waved an arthritic hand at her wrinkled face.

  “Well good. You’re not a reeler, then. See, that’s what everybody thinks about time. But it’s more flexible than most people realize.”

  Charlotte kept him talking, “Tell me one example of when time wasn’t rigid. I can’t think of any, and I’ve been around a long time.”

  “Everyone has felt time slippage, Granny. You look at your watch and you have an hour before your kid’s done with practice, so you sit down to read the paper. When you look again, the hour has passed and you’re late. Or a meeting has only two agenda items, and it should be over quickly, but every time you look at the clock it has only moved bare minutes. That’s not your imagination. That’s a time reeler. Somewhere nearby, a reeler is manipulating time.”

  “Reeler?”

  “Like a string on a spool, time can be played out or reeled in.”

  Charlotte was only half listening. A few more feet and she could make a break for the back door. Mason was moving stealthily behind her, his eyes wide and scared. She took his hand and squeezed it in what she hoped was a reassuring way.

  “But I’ve been on guard for slippage, and I haven’t felt it recently. I didn’t feel it at Pete Valay’s apartment building this morning when you went in and made a joke of all my planning and work.”

  “You saw me?”

  “I saw you leave. And I saw your cute little mutt.”

  So this was who Pirate had been barking at. The thought chilled her blood. This monster had killed those people, and now he had followed her here. She had led him to Mason.

  Charlotte couldn’t help herself, “Why are you doing this? What did those people do to you?” She really wanted to know. She’d never met anyone who would willingly take a life, and she couldn’t fathom what he must be thinking. Perhaps if she could understand, she could convince him to spare the child.

  “That’s none of your business,” he said.

  She made her tone conciliatory. “You’re right,” she said, “But you just have a very unique,” she glanced at Mason, “style, that I’ve never seen before.”

  “Because you’ve never met a reeler.”

  “And I’ve never felt the kind of damage you did to those people’s brains.”

  He didn’t smile. His jaw tightened, in fact. He wasn’t pleased at what he had done, but behind his eyes there was a certain pride in how he did it. She appealed to that.

  “It must be a particular gift you have, with time. And you must have figured out a new way to use it. Like I said, I’ve never seen it before.”

  “It is new. Most reelers just manipulate time. But the people around them don’t know what’s going on. They just sense the slippage. Because, well, do you know what the striatum is?”

  Charlotte inched past another chair, shaking her head just to keep him talking.

  “It’s a part of your brain. It does many important things, and one of them is that it helps us know when time is passing, and makes us aware of how much time has passed. Most people sense it in an abstract, peripheral way. Essentially, all I do i
s make people keenly aware of the reeling of time. It causes an overload of the striatum, a surge of temporal power that shorts out the circuitry. It’s quick. Not that painful.”

  Charlotte was shaking now. He spoke of killing so casually. “Why? Why would you do that?”

  He seemed to consider, then answered her question with another question. “You’re like me, aren’t you? A phenom? Special? Gifted? Super?”

  But Charlotte had learned early not to divulge that information.

  He nodded knowingly. “You were of that era. Where people wanted us fixed. Where whole branches of medicine and psychology formed to figure out what had gone wrong and how to set the human race right again. The special schools, the drugs, the labs,” his eyes closed briefly and Charlotte almost pitied him, “they all started then. And decades later, we still haven’t progressed that much. We’re still hiding out, still covering up what we can do. That’s what this is all about, Granny. It’s about finding a place, no, carving a place for us in society. I’m working on that. Working on setting the balance right and bringing the phenoms into power for the first time in history, as we should be. It’ll come too late for you, but maybe it gives you some comfort to know that a better day is coming.”

  “How am I supposed to feel comfort that you’re killing people?”

  “I wouldn’t if they didn’t interfere,” he said simply. She sensed he was talking about her.

  “Don’t fool yourself. I wasn’t interfering. You came to my house. I was just playing Go Fish.”

  The reeler slammed his hand on the table. His patience was running out. “You have been interfering for weeks! You can’t keep bringing them back, lady. Didn’t you ever think I killed them for a reason?”

  “What reason could you possibly have for that?”

  His words tumbled out, falling over each other, “They know who I am. They could ruin everything. If anyone finds me, I’ll have to go back to the lab.” His voice dropped low, “And I won’t go back to the lab.”

  He rubbed a hand across his forehead, “And see, you know now, too. So you’ve got to go.” Charlotte saw his eyes slide away from her face, to the face of the child behind her, “Both of you.”

  She opened her mouth to argue, but the reeler cut her off.

  “But first you have to answer my question. Are you a reeler? Can you manipulate time? Or are you some sort of death angel?”

  Her surprise must have tipped him off. She hadn’t heard that term for a long time.

  “Ahhh. That’s it. But don’t you have it backward? Are you supposed to be bringing people back?”

  It was her turn to talk. She stepped back from the table as she did. “There’s no ‘supposed to’ with phenoms. Not these days. When my parents took me to the doctors, they were told I had a neurological disorder. They were supposed to sedate me. But they didn’t. They took me to the country and I grew up free, learning about my powers only from loving parents and careful experimentation. Nobody used me to do their bidding. Nobody stopped me or told me what I could do was bad or scary.” She saw in his eyes that their experiences had been very different. “I’m sorry for what you’ve been through. But have you ever thought what good you could do with your control over time? What remarkable gifts you could give the world?”

  Anger flared in his eyes, “It doesn’t deserve my gifts!” With the agility of youth, the reeler charged around the table. Charlotte threw herself at him, pushing with all her strength.

  The reeler staggered. Her momentum moved them back into the kitchen, away from Mason. But the man recovered, and shoved her to the floor. Charlotte felt pain shoot along her left side.

  “Leave her alone!” Mason lunged forward, throwing himself at the attacker. Charlotte tried to stand, but her leg wouldn’t support her.

  The reeler reached out and put one hand to the boy’s forehead, as if holding him off.

  Charlotte felt the world sliding by. She knew now what was happening. This was time slippage.

  Mason fell. His lifeless body crumpled to the floor, and in front of her was the image from the fade, only this time in full color.

  She heard herself screaming. The reeler walked toward her. Pirate leaped onto the table from his chair, then from the table toward the reeler, jaws snapping. Cards fell in a flurry of colors and suits, fluttering to the floor beside her. Pirate received a forceful blow that sent him flying to the corner of the kitchen, where he sat whimpering.

  “Stop! Stop!” Charlotte begged, clawing her way toward Mason. She had to reach him in time.

  The reeler was reaching out. She felt his hand on her head, the grip of his iron fingers, and she couldn’t move away from it. She wondered if her skull would fracture, wondered who would find her here, on the kitchen floor, and when.

  She grabbed the reeler’s powerful arm, wrenched at him, felt a white-hot pain in her head as time began to slide again.

  The reeler didn’t seem to even notice her grip. His stared at her, unseeing, and the pain grew more intense. The world itself began to fade, like her visions had been reversed. Through the pain, she became aware of brilliance—an intense light that washed out the everyday world. She was alone in it only a second before she saw someone. The pain grew less as she focused. It was Arthur.

  Charlotte reached for him. He looked so good. So happy. She wanted more than anything to be enfolded in his strong arms again. But Arthur didn’t reach for her. He shook his head and spoke. Though she couldn’t hear him, the three words were as clear to her as if he had shouted.

  “Not yet. Fight.”

  She didn’t know how to fight. The reeler was much stronger than she was. All she knew anymore was mending. Without thinking, Charlotte began to use her power. Just like when she was mending, the warmth flowed to her fingers. Arthur and the light began to disappear. The kitchen eased back into focus. The reeler, his hand, the pain, all came back. She tried to think around the agony. He was stronger than she was. She had no hope of loosening his grip or pulling away.

  But if she could mend bodies, could she not tear them, too? Death angel. She concentrated, pulling the warmth and energy that flowed through her hands backward, pulling the stitches out opposite the way she would have put them in. She imagined the muscles and tendons and bones under her fingers, and she pictured them ripping. It was just as easy as she had envisioned it would be.

  The reeler flinched, then cried out. His arm dropped, useless to his side and he scrambled backward away from her. Charlotte fell back onto her elbow, breathing out the pain—her own as well as his.

  “What was that?” he cried. “You’re no phenom I’ve ever seen before.”

  “No,” she spat up at him, “I’m not.”

  He advanced again, rubbed his injured arm, and retreated. He paced, pain and confusion evident on his face.

  “I can’t let you touch me. But, but, you have to die,” he said. His voice was less sure, less proud, than before. His hand flitted around like an agitated bird. Suddenly, he paused and looked her in the eye, “Unless, unless—you’d join me? Be a part of the revolution?”

  Charlotte blinked through the ache growing in her bones. How could he even think she’d consider it? “There are other ways to bring about the changes you want,” she choked, “I’ll help you find other—“

  “No. I don’t need any more help. I’ve had more than enough help.”

  “I understand,” she began, but she didn’t get to finish. The reeler was lifting one of the heavy oak chairs.

  “You’d rather die than join me? Well, okay. But first, you need to be neutralized. You can’t hurt me if you’re not conscious.”

  Charlotte had never wanted to hurt anything before, but now a swelling need for survival overtook her. She waited. As the reeler stepped closer, she gathered all her strength. As he raised the chair above her, Charlotte reached out and seized his leg.

  All her fear, all her pain, all her anguish over Mason, were wrapped up in that single gesture, and the instant her hands closed arou
nd the reeler’s ankle, she was tearing loose the knot that held him to mortality.

  He cried out and the leg gave way under him. The chair crashed onto the linoleum beside Charlotte as he fell, twisting toward his pain. She pulled back and dodged a blow, then grasped his shoulder as he came at her again.

  This time, as she ripped at the structures beneath the surface, she found her way to his heart. She felt time swirling around her—not the smooth whoosh of slippage she had just felt, but a desperate churning of the timeline. He was trying to rewind, trying to move back before she had reached for him. But her grip on him seemed to move her out of time as well. Time spun around her, backward, then forward, then, seemingly sideways. The effect was terrifying. In the vortex, she barely noticed as his breathing slowed.

  And then the world returned to its normal pace. She felt his heart stop, felt him slump back onto the floor, felt him writhe away from her and grow still.

  Charlotte was left with the body beside her and the reality of what she had done. It was a dark feeling, a smothering pain.

  Death angel. She had only heard the term once before tonight. When her parents had taken her to the phenom psychologist. She hadn’t known what he meant when he diagnosed that, and when she’d asked, her mother had brushed it off as a mistake.

  But this was it. Charlotte had carried with her all this time the power to bring death. She had been using her gift backwards. She didn’t know yet how this changed her, and she didn’t have time to think of it. She found some strength and, using the upturned chair the reeler had dropped beside her, struggled to her feet.

  Mason’s eyes were open, but she knew he couldn’t see her leaning over him, couldn’t hear her speaking to him. She laid her trembling hands on the child’s head. She bit back her cry of horror at the realization that she was too late. Her struggle with the reeler had taken more than three minutes. She couldn’t bring her young friend back.

  Charlotte stood and leaned heavily against the sink. She had once asked her mother if this power was a curse.

  “No, no,” her mother had reassured her, “it’s a gift.” And yet, Charlotte had never been able to save the people closest to her. Time and fate seemed always to intervene, and there was no defeating them. They were the constants, the fixed features of her world.