Rise of Heroes

by Hayden Thorne

  I felt a hand press against my cheek to turn my face up. “No obvious injuries just like the others. Good.”

  “Look after him. I’m going back to the theater.”

  “I’ll join you there.”

  That voice—my eyes flew open instantly, and I found myself staring right into Magnifiman’s. He loomed above me, kneeling at my side, one hand cradling my face.

  Something soft cushioned my head, and I realized my jacket had been stripped off me and used as a pillow. With any luck, he’d done it.

  “What happened?” I asked, wincing at another wave of pain that swept through my head. “Oh, ouch…”

  His hand moved from my face to press down on my shoulder, forcing me not to move. “Easy, kid. You’re safe. Lie still until the medics reach you.”

  “Where am I?”

  “Outside City Hall with the others.”

  I stared at him. God, he was gorgeous. “City Hall? I was in the theater a minute ago!”

  “You mean two hours ago.” He paused, frowning. “You and the other kids from the theater tried to storm the mayor’s office. If it weren’t for security, you might have succeeded and done heaven knows what else.” He paused again, his frown deepening as he lost himself in thought. “Witnesses reported that you all fell unconscious—as though something wore off—in the middle of the skirmish with security. And you were strong—superhuman, almost. I’m sure you would’ve eventually overpowered armed men without weapons of your own.”

  I blinked. “What are you talking about? Is this a joke?”

  That seemed to snap him out of it. He looked at me as though startled; then he recovered, and I was once again staring at marble perfection. My gaze momentarily rested on his mouth. I swallowed. So close. So close. All I needed to do was to raise myself up on my elbows and…

  “It isn’t, I’m afraid,” he replied, his voice grave. “We’re up against something big—something more dangerous than what I first thought. You—”

  “Eric,” I blurted out in a desperate little voice. “My name’s Eric. Eric Plath.”

  “Thank you. You and the rest of the kids in the theater were pawns—maybe used as a test, even.” He straightened up though he stayed kneeling beside me and looked off in the distance, once again deep in thought. “Yes, that must be it,” he murmured. “A mastermind’s behind this. A true genius in evil.” As though on cue, a breeze picked up, blowing his hair. The effect was so silver screen. I wanted to throw myself against him and lick his Adam’s apple, but all I could do was cough and shift uncomfortably, praying that my boner wasn’t too obvious.

  Magnifiman had bigger things on his mind, though.

  “Thanks for helping,” I said. “I think I’m okay now. I can get up.”

  He turned to me and stretched out a hand, which I took with massive, massive pleasure, and he pulled me to my feet. “I have to go,” he said as I teetered a little. The dizziness was still there, apparently. “Be careful, young man.”

  “I will, thanks.”

  “Be sure to wait for a medic.”

  “Sure, sure.” I flashed him an easy smile.

  He stepped back, his gaze still meeting mine, and then he flew off. I forced myself to keep him in sight, but I kind of overestimated my strength and crumpled to the ground when another wave of dizziness swept over me.

  All around, kids from the theater were scattered within a police-protected section of the block. Some sat on the ground, some were being carried off on stretchers, and some huddled in little groups—rumpled, wild-eyed, and confused. Cops, paramedics, and firemen moved around us. I lay on the ground for a few more minutes. My mind was a painfully throbbing blank. Before long a paramedic appeared, and I was examined and questioned.

  I called home once I was cleared to leave. Mom picked me up several moments later, frantic and fussy. I didn’t have a minute’s peace from when she pushed her way through the crowd to the moment I crawled into bed with what seemed to be a hangover from hell.

  “I don’t understand this,” she said as she whipped back and forth in the kitchen, putting together something for me to drink while I sat at the dining table, slumped and moaning against Mom’s crocheted placemat. “Even theaters aren’t safe anymore! What’s this world coming to? Innocent kids are hypnotized into committing crimes against City Hall—”

  Hypnotized? How? If it weren’t for the crappy state of my head, I’d have basked in the surrealism of the afternoon.

  “—and I won’t be surprised if younger children are next.” She finally walked over to the table and set something down with some force. The thudding of a filled mug against an oak table nearly blew my skull apart, and I yelped. “How’s your head, honey?”

  I sat up, and Mom pressed a hand against my forehead.

  “Mom, I don’t have a fever.”

  “That’s for me to judge.” She fell silent, moving her hand to the side of my face and then to my neck. She sighed and straightened up, pushing the mug of hot apple cider to me. “No, you don’t have a fever. Here. Drink this, and then go to bed. Oh—take some aspirin, too.”

  I stared at the steaming concoction. “What’s this supposed to do?”

  “I don’t know, but it’s good for something. Anyway, we’re out of herbal tea. Now drink up.”

  I didn’t dream of Magnifiman that night, but I did have nightmares—pretty creepy ones, at that. I couldn’t remember anything significant other than the voice and how it affected me. It wasn’t Magnifiman’s, but it was a low, melodic one—sinister and seductive, murmuring something that sounded like a chant or a prayer. I couldn’t understand the words if there were any, but I felt their impact in my gut, and I was being pulled in different directions, not at all caring where I was going.

  “Just keep talking,” I said, “and don’t stop.”

  It never stopped. I felt as though I were being swept away in a river of words and sounds, and I offered myself to it. Kind of made me wonder afterward if gay porn dreams were like this.

  When I woke up the next morning, the headache was gone, but I was drained. I could barely move from my bed, but I forced myself to get up, anyway. I washed my face and gargled before going downstairs. In the dining room, everyone was assembled for breakfast. The table was set. Dad was reading the paper aloud in a steady yet mildly confused voice, with Mom and Liz listening in shock. No one even noticed me when I entered and made my way to my seat. Everyone—and everything—seemed frozen in time.

  I walked behind Dad’s chair and glanced at the page he was reading from. I didn’t see the news. The front page, rather than being crammed from edge to edge with several depressing reports all at once, only had one article, which filled every inch of space. I paused and leaned closer.

  It wasn’t an article, I realized. It was a manifesto—a smug introduction and declaration of war by some freaky nut job called The Devil’s Trill.

  Chapter 7

  The entire staff of the Elms Theater was found tied up, gagged, blindfolded, and crammed into the manager’s office. They could remember nothing of what happened leading up to their rescue—that was, other than getting stuck in the dark when the lights all went out while they were busy with the theater’s opening procedures.

  “Like, everything went dark,” the girl who usually ran the snack bar’s cash register said during an interview with one of the local TV stations. “And then I woke up in Mr. Sykes’s office, like, blindfolded and shit. Someone’s butt was in my face, and, you know, I’m like, that’s gross.”

  I watched the news, stunned. I tried to think back to the moment I’d arrived at the theater. I didn’t recognize any of the employees there, but then again, the theater paid such crappy-ass wages that the turnover there was pretty high. Besides, I hadn’t been there for two weeks. I didn’t expect to see the same people on my return.

  No, I never thought anything of it. I’d already been questioned by the cops, and I described everything to them—from the state of the theater to the other kids and the sta
ff. At least now they had physical descriptions.

  Considering the fact my brain was slowly oozing out of my ears when they questioned me, I hoped that what I said made some sense.

  The news reporter turned to the camera and proceeded. “Reports from the teenagers who were caught in the middle of this bizarre crime didn’t make any sense to the police.”

  Oh.

  “Victims’ physical descriptions of the staff conflicted with each other, and they ranged from strange to downright disturbing, with one young girl claiming that the man who filled her popcorn bucket looked like her uncle’s corpse. Another boy insisted that the theater manager’s nose was cut off. Sgt. Vitus Bone of the Vintage City Police Department is now convinced that the teenagers’ accounts were manipulated, maybe a deliberate effect of the strange hypnosis they were under.”

  Sgt. Bone appeared on camera, looking his usual grim self, his splotchy, bloodhound cheeks wobbling as he spoke and coughed and cleared his throat of perpetual phlegm.

  “The confused descriptions are obvious signs that point in the direction of a masterfully engineered mind-control drug— cough! —one that manipulated its user even to the final second, when its effects were supposed to be wearing off. Oh, no— hrrrum! —what little of it was left in these kids still had the same mind-altering intensity. No one knows what the imposter staff looked like. Whoever planned yesterday’s incident— hrrrum! —made sure that his tracks were perfectly covered, down to the last detail. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  I never thought him to be an eloquent speaker, but there it was. His secretary must have written his statement for him. At the same time, I wracked my brain in an effort to remember what descriptions I’d given the police. The bizarre thing is I couldn’t remember a single detail other than, yes, I had spoken to them.

  “Damn,” I breathed, staring at the TV. “Was that an effect as well?” Was I—and the other kids—manipulated into giving police all kinds of nonsensical information to throw them off the scent and then, once the “drug” wore off, into completely forgetting what it was we told them?

  It certainly made sense to me.

  Then all talk shifted to The Devil’s Trill, who’d confessed to the crime—his “delightful experiment,” as he claimed in his manifesto:

  I only regret, ladies and gentlemen, that my Noxious Nocturne didn’t last as long as I’d hoped. It is, however, still undergoing lab tests with obliging Ficus trees. I detest animal experimentations. Oh, and there’s no need to cheer for that temporary setback. I’m a patient maestro, and I believe in all good things to those who wait. I’ve other toys, which I’m sure Magnifiman will be pleased to play with. For the moment, I’m watching and waiting.

  Have a good day.

  He’d yet to show himself to everyone. For the moment, he was just this dangerous shadow that lurked around the fringes, waiting for the next perfect opportunity to strike, and an undercurrent of paranoia and unease settled over the city. Magnifiman and his partner behaved no differently. They remained in the shadows as well, the classic game of chess playing out with Vintage City serving as grimy bricked chessboard. Online role-playing games also exploded with activity, now the master villain had just identified himself.

  Peter sat beside me in Art Class a couple of days after, and he was, in a word, pissed.

  “Why the hell didn’t you call me? We could’ve done something together at your place or mine, and you’d have been safe!” he hissed, hiding behind his easel. His newsprint pad sat before him, completely untouched.

  Fifteen minutes of the class had already passed, and Peter had yet to set charcoal to paper. Instead, he ragged on me while I tried to keep my focus fixed on our project, which was to sketch the “still life” that Mr. Cleland attempted to put together: three old and discolored dictionaries, an abandoned Thermos bottle, a small pot of wilting begonias, and an economy-size bottle of antacids.

  “Remember last week’s lesson about light source,” Mr. Cleland said. “Don’t be afraid to capture shadows in your drawings, and for God’s sake, don’t try to be clever and pull another Cubist thing on me.”

  I couldn’t help but muse over the silliness of my earlier crush on Mr. Cleland. He was a good-looking guy, yes—tall, a bit bulky, with the loveliest green eyes I’d ever seen.

  I remembered falling hard for him on the first day of school, and my infatuation stayed pretty constant, which made me kind of proud. I half-killed myself working hard to please him, even go above and beyond what he asked and put out twice the work everyone else did. I was such a suck-up.

  He appreciated it, yes, and he rewarded me with extra credit. This endangered my status in my classmates’ eyes, considering how much of a Teacher’s Pet I was turning out to be. I didn’t give a rat’s ass what they all thought until Peter knocked me out of the stratosphere with a blunt, “Do you think all this sucking up will get you anywhere closer to college?”

  Now, I walked into the art room with an adult’s stride and an adult’s self-awareness type of thing. I stopped sneaking peeks at Mr. Cleland from where I sat. All the sad-eyed yearning faded, to be replaced with an objective and work-hungry mind. The extra credit work stopped, and I was finally in command of myself.

  Of course, that was because all that heartbroken yearning had shifted its direction from the good-looking Art teacher to a certain flying hero.

  “Eric, are you listening?”

  “What? Yeah, I am. Stop yelling.”

  “I’m not yelling. I’m trying to make you think.”

  “And what’s that supposed to do? It’s not going to change what happened two days ago. So I got restless and went to the movies. Big deal.”

  “Big deal? You could’ve gotten hurt. Hell, you were hurt!”

  I sighed and set my charcoal down and then faced him.

  Ignoring my charcoal-soiled hands, I rolled up my sleeves and stretched my arms out to Peter. “Do I look like I’m hurt? No bruises, see? Not a stitch or a body part missing anywhere. None. I had a hell of a hangover, but that was it.”

  Peter’s eyes narrowed. “That’s the whole point. You don’t get it, do you?”

  “What’s there to get? I’m okay! Man, what else do you want from me? A promise to call you every time I’m bored, signed in my blood? And even if we’d decided to do something together yesterday, what guarantee would we have had that we wouldn’t be victims in some other way?”

  I’d never seen Peter’s face turn so red. He glowered at me for a moment, looking as though he was about to take me by the collar and shake me hard or smack me upside the head. Instead, he turned his attention back to his work—that is, he finally began to sketch something—and said nothing back. I watched him try to create something, but it was pretty obvious his agitation was ruining things for him. He soldiered on, though, and marred his newsprint pad with this thing that reminded me too much of Geometry homework—something Cubist.

  Annoyed, I shook my head and returned to what I was doing. Peter reminded me of Mom in so many ways—those irritating, bullying demands for my sake—but at least Mom had a good reason. Peter wasn’t family, and he sure as hell wasn’t my parent.

  So I let him stew in his juices for the rest of the class.

  We didn’t exchange another word for the rest of the day, which was also pretty typical when we quarreled, but I figured it was always the best policy to give him and me as much space as possible. We could talk things out again once our heads cooled, and frankly, I wasn’t in any mood to put up with his nagging.

  Thank heaven Liz picked me up from school that day. I was so tired by the time the last bell rang I didn’t think I could have managed an eight-block bike ride back home.

  “I’m having girl issues, and I need a banana split,” she said while I laid my bike down on her truck’s bed. “Unfortunately, I can never finish one, so I’m sharing it with you.”

  “That’s cool,” I replied, hopping onto the passenger’s seat. “I kind of need something, too.”


  “Hmm. Boyfriend problems, huh?”

  “Best friend problems.”

  Liz merged into traffic in a smoky screeching of tires and a half-second glance at oncoming vehicles. A car’s horn blew behind us as we sped away, but Liz didn’t seem to notice. “I’m surprised you aren’t together—you and Peter. I mean, he’s gay, right? You’ve been best friends since grade school—”

  “Classmates since grade school, best friends since freshman year,” I corrected.

  “Well, I don’t know—like I said, I’m surprised you aren’t a couple. In fact, you might as well be married to each other, the way you’re joined at the hip.”

  I laughed, slumping in my seat. “I don’t like being joined at the hip. I think it’s offensive, to be honest with you. It’s almost like no one can think on his own unless the other person’s there.” I shuddered. “That’s creepy.”

  “Some people think that’s romantic.”

  “I don’t.”

  I felt Liz steal a glance at me. “So what happened today?”

  “Nothing.”

  She sighed, shifting gears and stepping hard on the gas. We ran a red light and nearly sideswiped a decrepit old truck piled high with gravel. We passed by the train tracks, and I glanced up. Construction was still going, and no one knew how long it would take before the aerial train would be up and running again. I’d yet to take the subway to go anywhere, but I expected it to be way too crowded now the other train was temporarily crippled. It was travel by foot or bike for me.

  For several minutes, there was nothing but silence in the truck. I didn’t want to think about Peter, Magnifiman, The Devil’s Trill or my Chemistry Lab. I expected to be royally chewed out by Mom and Dad for that last bit. Vintage City’s dreary charm kept my mind blissfully empty. Two-hundred-year-old brick walls looked more weathered. The grime appeared to have crept out by another inch in a span of twenty-four hours, eating uneven surfaces everywhere in their wake. Steam rising from grates on the pavement looked grayer and thicker than usual. Stagnant pools here and there gave the impression of black, bottomless wells of rank water. The occasional wasted face that peered out from the shadows of dingy alleys reminded me more and more of living corpses. Pedestrians in Italian suits or the latest hot trend from the Emporium Grande would completely cover these faces from my view.