Powerless

by Matthew Cody

  Licorice drops? “Nothing, I promise! Can I please go see Mr. Plunkett now?”

  “Fine, go on, go on. He’s in the reading room, this way. But don’t let him bribe you into sneaking him in any treats. He knows better!”

  The reading room turned out to be a small annex off the main building, and through the large glass doors were rows and rows of books, newspapers and magazines. Several comfortable, overstuffed chairs dotted the room, each equipped with its own reading lamp. In the chair closest to the window sat a shriveled little man wearing an old sweater and bulky glasses. He was so small that his feet barely touched the floor, and his face was buried in an old paperback. Despite the thick glasses, he had the book pressed so close to his face that it almost touched his nose. On the book’s cover was an illustration of a spaceman jet-packing toward an exploding rocket.

  This had to be Herman Plunkett.

  As Daniel opened the door, Plunkett’s head popped up from behind his book, his beady eyes peering over the edge of his glasses.

  “Eh? Who’s there?”

  The old man was surprisingly skittish—like a turtle ready to pop back into his shell.

  “Excuse me, sir, but are you Herman Plunkett?”

  “Who’s asking?”

  “My name is Daniel Corrigan. I think your nurse told you I was here.”

  “Eh? Oh, the boy with the comic books!”

  “Yes, sir,” said Daniel.

  Plunkett slid down out of his chair and began cleaning a stack of newspapers off a nearby footstool. He shuffled the pile of papers onto a coffee table already weighted down with heaps of old encyclopedias and other reference books.

  “Here you are, then,” he said, patting the seat of the footstool.

  Daniel let the reading-room door close behind him and sat down, his backpack held tightly in his good arm. Plunkett hopped back into his chair and folded his hands neatly in his lap.

  “So, young man. Fancy yourself a comic-book aficionado, eh?”

  “You bet,” Daniel lied. “Actually, Mr. Plunkett, I’m really more interested in the classics. I’m a Golden Age fan.”

  “You don’t say? Funny to find a boy your age who gives a darn about such things. Most youngsters these days are too interested in their video games, full of explosions and the like. No time for real stories.”

  Plunkett leaned in close and winked conspiratorially. “Say, you don’t have any sweets in that little backpack of yours, do you? Maybe a licorice drop or two?”

  “Uh, no, sir. I’m sorry.”

  “Shame. I sure could go for a licorice drop.”

  Daniel smiled uncomfortably at the old man and then looked around at the reading room that Herman Plunkett had constructed for himself. The stacks seemed to be made up almost entirely of old pulp novels and hardback adventure anthologies from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, all in mint condition. It was like walking into a library out of time. This Plunkett fellow was a man who had found his niche and stuck with it. One book in particular caught Daniel’s eye—a brown leather-bound volume propped up alone on a side shelf. Although the gold lettering of the title was faded, Daniel could still make out the author—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

  “Sherlock Holmes, The Final Problem,” said Plunkett, noticing Daniel’s interest. “You a Sherlockian, young man?”

  “A what?” Daniel asked.

  “A Sherlockian. A devotee of the world’s greatest detective.”

  Daniel thought about it. He had never heard the term before, but he liked the sound of it.

  “Yeah, I guess so. But I haven’t read that one. It looks pretty old.”

  Plunkett hopped down from his chair and grabbed the volume off its shelf. For a little old man, he was surprisingly spry.

  “The Final Problem, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, first published in 1893,” said Plunkett, dusting off the spine. “This here is a later edition, but still valuable. One of the few books in my library not meant for reading. The death of Sherlock Holmes. Careful with it, now.”

  Plunkett handed the book to Daniel, who set it down gently on an empty table (it was too hard to hold with only one good arm). He carefully lifted the cover and reverently flipped through the first few pages. On the title page was an illustration of two men wrestling on a bridge, overlooking an ominous waterfall.

  “It’s a drawing of Holmes fighting his archenemy, Professor Moriarty, at Reichenbach Falls,” Plunkett explained. “Their fighting pushes them both over the bridge, and they tumble over the falls to their shared doom. A grand death, very dramatic.

  “Of course, Doyle brought him back eventually,” Plunkett said with a smile. “No one stays dead for long in adventure stories.”

  Daniel studied the illustration in detail—the ominous scenery, the expressions of desperation on the faces of the two men. Daniel found it upsetting really, looking at the moment before the death of his hero. It took him a minute or so to find the artist’s signature. There, hidden in the fine pencil work of the rushing waterfall, were the initials H.P.

  “You drew this?” Daniel asked.

  “I did! Back when I was a young freelancer. Back then I’d accept any hack job with a paycheck, but that one I’d have done for free. That was a labor of love.”

  Daniel closed the book and reached inside his backpack. He pulled out the bundle of plastic-bagged comics and set them in front of Mr. Plunkett.

  “Did you also draw these?”

  Plunkett squinted behind his thick glasses and held one of the comics up to his nose. Daniel watched as his wrinkled face spread into a wide grin.

  “Well, what do you know?” he said, thumbing through the other issues. “Hello there, Johnny!”

  Plunkett settled back into his chair and, with great gentleness, began to turn the pages. He was drinking in every panel, every page.

  “I haven’t seen one of these in good condition in … well, I can’t tell you, it’s been so long. Where’d you get them?”

  “A friend gave them to me. They were passed down in his family.”

  “Must be some friend! He know these babies are worth a pretty penny?”

  “Yeah, but we’re not interested in selling them.”

  “Good boy. Wow, will you look at how well the color held up? You know, I still have the pencils to some of these, but I haven’t seen one printed in color in a long time. A long time.”

  Daniel had obviously gotten on Plunkett’s good side with the revelation of a nearly full run of comic books written and drawn by Herman Plunkett. Right now, Plunkett was busy basking in the glow of his own fandom. Daniel didn’t let the moment pass.

  “So is it true that you wrote them all yourself? And you did the art?”

  “It is. I was a young man when I did these, still chasing the dream of being a real artist. That was before I gave it all up and got a real job. I was always good at drawing and numbers, but there’s a lot more money in numbers, as you can see.” Plunkett gestured to the luxurious surroundings and Daniel nodded appreciatively. Daniel wasn’t sure exactly what “numbers” he was referring to, but they obviously paid well.

  “But this,” said Plunkett, his attention back on the comics. “Well … this was my passion! I was working on Fantastic Futures back when it was just a science-fiction magazine. Then the world went crazy for superheroes and we started using Johnny as our lead story. Unfortunately, by the time we got rolling, the market had started to fill up. It’s amazing that the book lasted as long as it did, really.”

  “How’d you come up with the character? I mean, was he based on anyone …” Daniel hesitated, unsure whether to warm up the old guy some more or plunge right in.

  Plunkett gave Daniel a sideways look and sucked on his teeth. “I know what you’re driving at. You think I stole Johnny from the folk stories, threw a mask on him and called him mine, don’t you?”

  Daniel opened his mouth to come up with an excuse, but nothing came out.

  Unexpectedly, Plunkett just laughed. “Guilty as charg
ed. But you gotta understand that it was just what folks did back then. Comics became a big business practically overnight, and there was a craziness to get in on the action. And being that I was from Noble’s Green, I felt that I had some right to tell stories about him.”

  Daniel nodded. So it was true. Johnny Noble was just a stolen legend—the moneymaking scheme of a desperate young artist. The comics weren’t the true-life accounts of a secret hero or the hidden clues to the mystery of a small group of super-children. Daniel’s only lead had just hit a dead end.

  Plunkett must have mistaken Daniel’s obvious dejection for something else, because he reached up to the same shelf that the Sherlock Holmes book had rested on and brought down a dusty old folder.

  “Tell you what, son. Since you came all this way, and since I’m impressed that anyone even remembers Johnny Noble in this day and age, I’m going to give you a present.”

  He used the sleeve of his sweater to dust off the portfolio and handed it to Daniel. Inside, neatly laminated, were original penciled pages from Fantastic Futures, Starring Johnny Noble. There was no ink or color and the dialogue was missing in places, but Plunkett’s original pencil drawings were still breathtaking. His talent was undeniable, even back then. This was quite a treasure, and even though Daniel didn’t find the answers he was looking for, this gift still touched him.

  “Thank you,” he said, and he meant it.

  “Now if I see those popping up for sale on that Internet of yours, I’ll be mighty disappointed!” said Plunkett, wagging his finger.

  “They won’t. I promise.”

  “All right, then, you better run along now. It’s past my nap time, and old Nurse Hard-Butt out there gets mean when I miss my nap. But I’m glad you came by, my boy. You gave an old man a nice walk down memory lane. And remember, enjoy those sketches. Those are one-of-a-kinds!”

  Back in his room, Daniel lay on his bed and stared at the ceiling, depressed. The trip to Plunkett’s house had been a failure, and Daniel would have to report back to Rohan that all his detecting had turned up nothing more than some cool sketches. He had to admit it—he was stumped.

  After a time the boredom finally got to Daniel and he went to his desk and opened Plunkett’s portfolio. As he flipped through the pages of Johnny in action, he comforted himself with the knowledge that Eric, at least, would love this stuff. Here were the original drawings of Johnny lifting tanks, dodging bullets in midair and fighting for honesty and decency. Eric would treasure them, at least for the few weeks that he had left to be a kid….

  He was about a third of the way through the sketches when he saw it—the cover illustration of issue number seventy-seven. Heart pounding, hands shaking, he went to his backpack and searched through his stack of comics. Seventy-four, seventy-five, seventy-six …

  Daniel went back and looked again at the cover of issue seventy-seven, the first of the missing magazines, laid out before him.

  The cover featured a nighttime scene, a sleeping boy next to an open window. Outside the window, Johnny Noble was swooping down out of the sky. In the room, reaching for the boy’s sleeping form, was a shadow. A shadow that Daniel had seen before. A shadow with a heart of fire. The banner across the top of the page read:

  INTRODUCING JOHNNY NOBLE’S TRUSTY NEW SIDEKICK AND HIS DIABOLICAL ARCHENEMY, BOTH IN THIS ONE FANTASTIC ISSUE! BUT WILL JOHNNY BE TOO LATE TO SAVE HIS NEW FRIEND FROM THE TERRIBLE HANDS OF … THE SHROUD?

  The Shroud.

  Breathless, Daniel sat back in his chair. Their enemy now had a name.

  Chapter Twelve

  Mollie’s New Plan

  That night Daniel could barely sleep. He kept replaying the day over and over in his head—the meeting with Herman Plunkett, the drawings of the Shroud. It was the same shadow that had taken Simon’s powers away, the same shadow that had looked Daniel in the face, he was sure of it. Daniel suspected that he was the only boy in the history of Noble’s Green who could remember seeing that shadow.

  But what did it mean? Somehow Herman Plunkett had drawn the face of their enemy over half a century ago and today the only surviving pictures of the Shroud were Herman’s own sketches. He’d said himself they were one of a kind. A crazy thought took root in Daniel’s head—could Herman Plunkett, that shriveled old man, in fact be the Shroud?

  Looking back on it now, he found that things that once had seemed mundane took on sinister meanings. What had Plunkett really meant with all that stuff about the death of Sherlock Holmes? Was he trying to warn Daniel? To threaten him? In stories the villain often liked to toy with the hero, to play a game of cat and mouse before the final pounce. But that was in stories, and stories could not be trusted. In stories good always triumphed over evil, and like so many other children, Daniel had seen enough of the real world to know that wasn’t always true.

  The next morning he awoke groggy, and his bad arm stayed asleep. Once he started to move around, the blood came back to his arm and he winced as a thousand little needles pricked his skin. Because of the cast, he couldn’t even massage the life back into it. All he could do was pound his fist into his pillow and say a bad word or two (which he did very, very quietly).

  He finished his breakfast quickly and was ready to leave earlier than usual. His mother was already at the hospital visiting Gram, and his father was running late for work while trying to get Georgie ready for day care, so Daniel didn’t linger. Consequently, he was early to the bus stop (a first). While he waited for the others to show up, he rehearsed what he might say to Mollie. If the shoe were on the other foot, she would probably start off with the silent treatment, but Daniel didn’t have the patience for that. For once, he would do the talking and she would listen. He had risked his own life for her plan, and she hadn’t even had the decency to come by and say thank you. He would need to cut to the chase, before she could accuse him of whatever crazy thing that, in her mind, he had done wrong. He would need to talk fast and loud, and he planned on gesturing to his broken arm a lot, for effect. After he had put Mollie in her place, then he would tell Rohan about Herman Plunkett and the Shroud. He might, might, let Mollie listen in.

  As it happened, Mollie and Rohan arrived at the stop together. As soon as he saw them approaching, he made a big show of looking the other way—after all, he didn’t want Mollie to think he had been waiting for her. He made sure that his broken arm was facing her as well, just for good measure.

  “Hey, Daniel.” It was Mollie’s voice, which surprised him. He expected her to let Rohan do the talking, at first anyway.

  Daniel tried to look surprised. “Oh, I didn’t see you guys coming….”

  And that was as far as Daniel got, because when he turned around, he saw the one thing he never expected—Mollie was shamefaced.

  She wasn’t bawling—there were no heaving sobs or anything. But her face was red, and there were definitely the early signs of tears in her eyes and a slight quiver in her lip.

  Daniel stole a glance at Rohan, who just gave one of his “What do I know?” shrugs.

  “Uh,” said Daniel. Not part of his planned speech.

  “I’m sorry,” whimpered Mollie. “Your arm, and Simon … it’s all my fault and I am so, so sorry. I wasn’t even brave enough to come and visit you….”

  “No, hey. It’s okay! It’s not your fault, really not at all,” said Daniel. Man, I’m a pushover, he thought. All it takes is a couple of tears.

  Crud, he thought, but he knew what he had to do next. Awkwardly, he put his one good arm around her.

  “It’s not your fault, Mollie, really it’s not. And I think I know whose fault it is, because I’ve met him. Twice now.”

  Mollie wiped at her nose with the back of her hand. Daniel watched as she pulled herself together and the old Mollie came back to life. The Mollie that was itching for a fight with someone.

  As for Rohan, he just smiled with pride. “Well, what do you know? That’s our detective for you!”

  On the bus ride to school, Daniel filled them
in on his meeting with Herman Plunkett and his discovery of the Shroud. He had Plunkett’s portfolio in his backpack, and both Mollie and Rohan practically shuddered when they saw the cover of issue seventy-seven. Daniel described again the shadow he had seen in Simon’s bedroom, and no one could deny the eerie similarity to the image depicted in Plunkett’s drawing.

  Selling them on the idea that this little old man might in fact be the Shroud was another matter. And Daniel accepted that they had a right to be skeptical. After all, he wasn’t sure what he believed himself. But Plunkett was the only lead they had, and Daniel couldn’t shake the feeling that there was more to the old artist than he let on.

  As usual, Mollie pointed out the obvious—if Plunkett was somehow in league with this Shroud, then it didn’t make much sense to just hand his portfolio, the only real piece of evidence they had, over to Daniel. Rohan agreed that it was an odd move, but he was more concerned with why Plunkett would be terrorizing the children of Noble’s Green. What could an old comic-book illustrator gain from it? To put it in detective terms—they had a suspect but no motive.

  Whoever the Shroud was, whatever it was, it had stolen the powers of hundreds of children over the years, and it had taken their memories … memories of times spent with their friends, memories of doing remarkable things, of helping people. It was a kind of violence, what it did—of that Daniel was certain.

  As they arrived at school, they were confronted with another problem—what to do about Eric. His birthday was just a few weeks away, and the plan had been to keep him in the dark until they had enough proof to convince him. But now, even with Plunkett’s drawings in hand, they couldn’t be sure how Eric would react. He believed in the legend of Johnny so strongly, with such conviction. To him the old stories and the comic books revealed a greater purpose to their powers, to their lives. The story of Johnny Noble promised a future—that they could all grow up to be heroes if they just tried hard enough. The bright, shining legacy of Johnny Noble was a way of life to Eric. How would he take the news that the truth might be something far darker—a thing shrouded in shadow?