Strangers In Boston: Tales from a Strange World Book 1 (The Strange World Series)

by T. S. Mann

  Luke just shrugged. John worried about his moodiness sometimes. Amazing that a pair of twins could be so different.

  “Okay, I tell you what. It’s not Opening Day, but how about tickets for Saturday against Oakland. It’s an afternoon game, so we can catch it and then maybe go for a movie later. Luke, since we’re dragging you to a baseball game, you get to pick the movie. Deal?”

  Luke looked up at him, apparently surprised that he was getting to pick the activity for a change. For the first time, John wondered if the moodiness he’d been complaining about was because he’d been unconsciously favoring the more outgoing and athletic Matt over his bookish brother.

  It was funny in a way – John privately thought that Luke reminded him more of himself at that age. Afraid of showing a preference for Luke, he had actively tried to stay involved as much as possible in Matt’s ever-growing list of after-school sports, none of which seemed to interest his brother in the slightest. Growing up a Southie, John had naturally been a Red Sox fan, but he’d never played baseball himself, and while he’d left nerdhood behind along with his braces and his acne, he remembered what it was like to be the quiet one. He resolved to do a better job of finding out what Luke was into.

  “Deal,” Luke said brightly. “Can we go see Final Destination?”

  John laughed. So that's what he was into. They were even more alike than he’d realized.

  “No! Your mother will kill me. Rated PG-13 or less.”

  Luke made a face of mock disappointment, but he was plainly happy to get to pick the movie. As for John, he mostly just wanted to keep the kids out of Ellie’s hair as much as possible without either of them feeling abandoned. She was entering a difficult rotation in her residency -- the ER at St. Elizabeth's -- and was under a lot of stress.

  Accordingly, John had stepped up as primary caregiver as much as possible. While it was rough right now, if he made partner and Ellie started pulling down a surgeon’s salary, the family would be financially set.

  Having neatly sidestepped his paternal crisis of the day, John dropped the boys off at school before heading in to work. As he walked up from the nearby parking garage, he looked up at the office building as it gleamed in the April sun. Falcone & Edwards took up three-quarters of the fourteenth floor of the Prudential Tower, one of Boston’s ugliest historical landmarks.

  The rest of the floor was occupied by an antique store called Montessi’s Cabinet. John had been in once, looking for something for Ellie’s birthday, but the staff had been completely disinterested in showing him anything, and the gaudy Rococo furniture in the showroom was hardly to Ellie’s taste – she wasn’t the type for a purple velvet fainting couch.

  John passed through the lobby, barely paying attention to his surroundings. Mentally, he was still in “my day off” mode, and he was having trouble getting geared up for work. He and a handful of his fellow corporate drones crowded into a waiting elevator. Just as it was about to close, a meaty hand reached in to grab the elevator door and push it back open. Standing before John was something he never thought he’d see in Boston, Massachusetts: an honest-to-god cowboy.

  He stood six-foot-seven with easily 250 pounds of muscle. He wore a dingy felt cowboy hat, jeans, a faded plaid shirt with a bolo tie, a pale gray duster coat, and a pair of dirty, shit-kicker boots. Black shades concealed his eyes, and he looked to have three days growth of his chin. In his left hand, he carried a large metal briefcase, the kind you used for transporting valuables ... or possibly disassembled sniper rifles.

  The cowboy silently entered the elevator, and despite himself, John swallowed and moved to one side. Something about the cowboy’s demeanor was extremely unnerving, and the whistling theme from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly played through John’s head.

  A few seconds later, the bell dinged for the fourteenth floor, and to John’s surprise, the cowboy got off first. To his even greater surprise, the cowboy turned left and headed down the hall towards Montessi’s Cabinet, the overpriced antique store with the lousy service.

  John laughed at his earlier nervousness. To think he’d honestly been intimidated by this hulking cowboy who had apparently come to the big city just to do a little antiquing. John headed into Falcone & Edwards and made his way to his small office in the back corner.

  The file for the deposition was already on his desk, and he spent about ten minutes reviewing it. It was every bit the pointless waste of time he had expected. Once he’d familiarized himself with the case, he started catching up on paperwork and emails. He had been at his desk for about half an hour when Frank Edwards came into his office, closing the door behind him. He sat down and looked at John across the desk.

  “So, ready for this afternoon?”

  “I’ve reviewed the file. It seems simple enough.”

  “Perhaps, but however simple it may, this is an important client for us, and it is important to keep important clients happy. That’s something you’re going to have to accept if you plan on becoming a partner here, John."

  Frank’s tone darkened a bit. "I’d also recommend you not make it a habit of telling me that I owe you something just for asking you to do your job.”

  John’s stomach knotted at his boss’s tone. “Look, I’m sorry about this morning, Frank. It’s just frustrating to make plans with your family and then scrap them on a few hours’ notice like this.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Frank replied coolly. “I don’t have custody.”

  John winced. He had forgotten that Frank’s most recent and least amicable divorce had just finalized a month before. Obviously, he was still touchy about it.

  “Be that as it may,” Frank continued, “you’re going to have to start getting your priorities in order. I know your kids are young, and you want to be there for them, but you also have to ask yourself whether you want to be able to provide for their futures or whether you’d rather just get credit for perfect attendance.”

  John looked at the senior attorney levelly. “My family is my life, Frank. Everything I do is for them.”

  Frank reached over and adjusted the nameplate on John’s desk, avoiding eye contact.

  “I understand that. I’m just saying you need to think carefully about how best to handle your responsibilities to them. How to balance being there whenever your wife and kids want you versus being in a position to provide them with financial stability.”

  Frank rose and walked to the window. As the most senior of the associates, John had a private office, albeit in the rear corner of the firm’s office space, and while his view of Boston was not as panoramic as those of the partners’ offices, at least he did have a window of his own.

  “I tell you this because we’ll be making a decision on partnerships soon, and we have to balance the value of the work you’ve done for us, which has been exemplary, against our concerns about your long-term commitment to the firm. I’m not talking about skipping your son’s birthday or graduation, John. You were upset earlier about missing a Red Sox game.”

  As he spoke, Frank nodded meaningfully to the shelf behind John. On it was a bust of Oliver Wendell Holmes ... with a Red Sox cap perched on his head. John smiled.

  “What can I say? I’m a proud citizen of Red Sox Nation. Look, Frank, as I said, I wasn’t angry about just missing a game. I was frustrated that I’d made plans to be with my boys and had to change them abruptly. I’m taking them out this weekend so everything’s fine. I’ll be ready to go at the deposition and bill us all a few grand just for sitting there and looking professional.”

  Frank walked back to the center of the room, stopping in front of John’s desk.

  “Good, good. And I’m sorry to come down on you. Honestly, in a way, I’m a bit jealous of you. I’ve been married three times and divorced three times."

  The older man suddenly seemed wistful. “But I suppose I’m really just married to the firm. I helped found it. I’ve been here for almost thirty years. Honestly, I imagine that someday I’ll probably die at this office.” />
  At the time, John found Frank’s admission poignant. Later, as he recalled the conversation, he would wonder if Frank’s last words had also been prophetic or merely ironic -- barely two seconds later, the wall behind him exploded, knocking the older attorney hard to the floor.

  The force also knocked John out of his chair, and after a second, he sat up, dazed. His first thought was that he must have a concussion and was now hallucinating. The wall was not destroyed by any explosive. Instead, it had been shattered into splinters by the massive and plainly inhuman figure who stepped through the hole that now connected John’s office to the antique shop next door.

  It was hunched over but would have easily been twelve feet tall if it had room to stand. It looked like a winged gargoyle with Hebrew symbols etched all over its body. It also looked familiar – in his one foray into Montessi’s Cabinet, John had noticed the gargoyle in the corner, but at the time, it had been only two feet tall and missing an arm. Now, it was gigantic, its missing arm had been restored, and its head was wreathed in flames that poured from its mouth and eyes.

  Frank looked up in horror at the gargoyle which loomed over him. He tried to crawl away, stammering madly. The gargoyle growled deeply and then snatched him up and hurled him like a rag doll. John ducked down as Frank’s body smashed against the window, leaving a spider web of cracks along with a smear of the older man’s blood. Frank slumped to the ground, his eyes open and unblinking and his head bent unnaturally.

  Breathing heavily, John slowly eased himself up into a crouch, with an eye towards sneaking behind his desk and then bolting for door. He knew he’d never get it open and be outside before the creature was upon him, but he had to try.

  Unfortunately, he only made it three feet before the monster grabbed his desk with a massive paw and hurled it towards the window that Frank’s skull had just cracked. The desk completed the work Frank had started, blasting through the window and falling fourteen stories to the courtyard below. A brisk wind whipped into the office through the broken window.

  With a terrified yell, John jumped up and bolted for the door. It was no good; the creature was too fast. It seized him in a grip of steel, and John screamed as he heard some of his ribs crack under the strain.

  The gargoyle opened its mouth wide, flames pouring from it like furnace. John didn’t know whether the beast planned to bite his head off or blast him with fire from its hellish mouth, and luckily, he never found out. Instead, the creature was suddenly distracted by the pain of bullets ricocheting off its stony hide.

  Behind it, on the other side of the hole it had made, was the cowboy from the elevator, now brandishing a pair of Colt Peacemakers straight out of an old Western. The gargoyle roared its fury and whipped around to face its attacker. In the process, it flung John aside like an old shoe ... straight towards the open fourteenth-floor window.

  As he passed headfirst through the opening, John’s world fell into slow motion. His head was facing up and he could see the sun reflecting off the glass windows above him, though its light seemed to have a strangely reddish hue. High above, John marveled at the perfect blue sky of a perfect April morning. But while he was looking up, he knew all too well what was below him: a 200-foot drop to the granite and limestone courtyard below.

  In an instant, John's life literally flashed before his eyes. But to his surprise, it was not just his own life, but somehow all the lives he'd never led as well. Every choice both taken and rejected that led to this moment played out in his mind, all bathed in a vivid red light

  .

  When he was nine, and the measles kept him from going to summer camp and getting bad-touched by a counselor.

  When he was thirteen and he signed up for band instead of art and never learned how good a painter he could have been.

  When he was sixteen and decided that he didn’t care what the Pope said about abstinence and condoms and so avoided getting his first girlfriend pregnant.

  When he was seventeen and he punched Brad Collins in the face for what he'd done.

  When he was nineteen and cheated on his College Algebra final so that he wouldn't lose his scholarship.

  When he was twenty-one and he forgave Ellie when he could have walked away.

  When he was twenty-two and he told his pregnant wife that she would go to medical school no matter how many hours he had to work to pay for it.

  When he was twenty-five and skipped the law school party where he would have met the cute 1L who would have tempted him into adultery.

  When he was twenty-six and he politely smiled and said no to the JAG recruiter.

  When he was twenty-nine and he decided to take a cab home.

  When he was thirty-three and he let Ellie talk him out of buying a gun for “protection.”

  This morning, when he put his fancy job ahead of the promise he made to his sons.

  Along with every choice made and every road taken came every possible outcome, nearly overwhelming John with the infinite tapestry of Fate. He saw himself as a politician, a criminal, a doctor, a truck driver, a priest, a vagrant, a cop, a garbage man, and a million other roles as well. His mind reeled under the onslaught of possible pasts, presents, and futures. But for all those possible lives not lived, the one inescapable reality was that right now, he was just a man falling out of a fourteenth-story window.

  Yet even that certain fate was less frightening than a dark and cloudy possible future he could neither see nor understand but which was somehow more terrifying than the pavement so far below. John squeezed his eyes shut as he felt the weight of a momentous choice between certain death and an unknown but terrible fate, but then one instant of clarity pierced the kaleidoscope of fractured destinies playing out in his mind:

  “I will see my family again!”

  The kaleidoscope shattered, the eerie light faded, time sped up, and John Sullivan, still screaming, fell ... right onto the hanging platform that had been left behind by some lazy absentee window cleaner a mere five feet below his office window. He continued screaming for several seconds before realizing that he was no longer falling.

  Then, his heart racing, he climbed unsteadily to his feet and looked around in amazement. Directly above him was the open window, and through it, he could hear the roar of the gargoyle and the sound of the cowboy’s gunshots. He looked down at the washer’s platform in confusion and shook his head.

  “This ... wasn’t here before! The washers came last week!”

  That was, of course, exactly the wrong thing to say in response to an improbable miracle. Instantly, the platform began to glow with the same reddish light John saw earlier. Instinctively, he jumped up and grabbed the ledge below his office window just as the platform dissolved in a mass of glowing red embers, leaving him to hang by his fingertips fourteen stories above where the smashed remains of his mahogany desk had landed.

  Gritting his teeth, he pulled himself up so that he could see into the office. Then, with an expletive, he dropped back down as the whole window exploded outward. The gargoyle hurled itself through the opening it had made and took flight, spreading a pair of bat-like wings with a span of thirty feet. The cowboy was hanging onto its back for dear life, still firing madly with his free hand, as the two combatants flew off over the Boston skyline.

  Pure survival instinct allowed John to keep his tenuous hold on the ledge, and he pulled himself up again to the window and back into the office. He collapsed onto the floor, exhausted, just next to the stiffening corpse of Frank Edwards. The rest of the office furniture had been smashed by the fight between the cowboy and the gargoyle. Lying next to him on the floor was the broken bust of Justice Holmes and his lucky Red Sox cap. Gingerly, he picked up the cap and clutched it next to his chest in relief.

  Then, the door burst open, and Karen, his secretary, entered, followed closely by a half-dozen other staff members. She looked around the blasted office in astonishment. When she saw Frank, she gasped and covered her mouth with her hand. Still breathing hard, John looked
up at her sadly.

  “Call 911. I don’t know what happened here exactly, but we need to call the police right now.”

  She just looked back and forth between John and Frank mutely. Finally, she said in an accusing tone: “Who are you?!?”

  He stared back at her, not fully comprehending the question.

  “It’s John, Karen, John Sullivan, remember? You know, your boss?”

  She was silent for several seconds, and her face became a mask of disgust. She turned to one of the other secretaries next to her.

  “Get security, right now! And then call the police!”

  Then she turned back to John. Her voice was cold, and her words stuck a knife in his soul.

  “I don’t know who you are, Mister, but John Sullivan was killed in a car wreck on his way in to work this morning!”

  John could only stare up at her in shock and clutch the Red Sox cap tightly to his chest just next to his racing heart. He didn’t know what had happened. No one was yet on hand to use words like Stranger, Axioms, Arbiter, or karmic magic. But the look on Karen’s face, on all their faces, was one of both unfamiliarity and disgust. And the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach warned that the faces of his wife and children would probably look the same.

  After a few minutes, one of the building’s security guards entered the office and came over to kneel by his side. It was someone John didn’t recognize, an older black man.

  “What’s your name, friend?”

  John swallowed hard. “My name is John Sullivan.”

  At that, Karen interrupted angrily. “He’s lying! Mr. Sullivan is dead!”

  The guard turned to her and spoke firmly. “Please don’t interrupt, Miss.”

  Then, he turned back to John and put his hand over the baseball cap, which John was still clutching tightly next to his heart.

  “Listen to me, okay. Right here, right now, your name is Mickey. Remember that. Mickey. Saint. Angel.”

  The guard spoke with a quiet intensity, and as he did, John’s eyes fluttered, and he looked around in confusion. Karen and the rest of the staff were suddenly gone, and the office beyond the door was empty. Frank’s body had also vanished, and when John looked down, he was wearing his pea coat and ratty jeans, the crumpled baseball cap still in his hands. John looked back at the guard for a second, and recognition dawned, followed closely by relief.