by Rhys Thomas
The assistant shrugged and Sam paid.
“Okay, well, I’m going to go now,” Sam called to Gloria, who was pouring copious amounts of sugar into her coffee.
She didn’t even look up.
“It was nice to meet you,” he said.
But Gloria was no longer interested in him.
He turned to leave and almost bumped into a girl behind him. “Oops, sorry,” he said.
The girl smiled. She had dyed red hair and glasses and had clearly been listening to the exchange, because she gave him a big smile.
His heart thumped with the shock of her prettiness, his face turned beetroot and he left the shop.
THE PHANTASM #002
A Hero Acts
This is the moment he has trained for. For many months he has patrolled the night and, at last, his vigilance has paid off. This is the real deal, the big cahoney. He is watching a burglary in progress. The house alarm alerted him to the crime, and now, from the eaves of a grand old oak tree, the hero records the event in crisp HD.
The pair of thugs at the back of the house act fast. A window has been smashed and one man, wearing a bobble hat, is outside, while his friend inside, shaved head, passes through a laptop before clambering out.
They hightail it over the back fence, passing the laptop again like a baton in a relay race, and sprint off down the street.
The hero follows. He jumps fifteen feet from his elevated position to the communal lawn below, bends his knees on impact and maneuvers into an Olympic-standard roly-poly. And he’s off.
His bicycle is propped up against a tree trunk and he’s on it within seconds, powering down the street after the targets in perfect silence. He can’t believe this is happening, but it is.
Just as a fish swims calmly along in the warm ocean, unaware of the circling shark, so Bobble Hat and Shaved reach their car and calmly put the laptop on the back seat.
The hero stops. First and foremost, get the registration number. It’s a beat-up piece of scrap that makes a loud noise as the key is turned, and though they might get away this evening, they will be paid a visit by the boys in blue tomorrow. The camera is still recording.
The Phantasm watches the car pull into the road, his work done. But then he thinks: the laptop. What if they off-load it before morning? The poor people will have lost their computer, probably along with many irreplaceable photos and files. Yes, among the donuts and coffee the police do fantastic work, but how often do they actually get stolen goods returned?
He kicks off down the street, making a quick decision, and is in hot pursuit of the car. It’s late, the roads are empty, their taillights are easy to follow up the main street of town. His bike is no match for the power of a car, but perhaps the nation’s traffic lights will lend a hand.
They do. Rounding a bend, he sees the car is waiting, exhaust fumes spewing into the cold night. Legs moving like pistons, he hammers toward the car. He’s not exactly sure what he’s about to do.
The lights are changing.
Amber.
He speeds up, the car revs.
Green!
The car pulls away, but now the hero is alongside it. Shaved glances out the window and looks away. Then looks back again. Yes, you saw right, my good man, a superhero is here to bring you to justice. The car accelerates and is about to get away. In an instant the Phantasm veers the bicycle toward the metal beast and, using all his force, boots the driver’s door as hard as he can, putting a dent in it. He wobbles under the force of the blow, but somehow—possibly through some preternatural balance superpower hitherto unknown—he rights himself.
The car screeches to a halt.
Uh-oh.
The driver’s door swings open hard and Shaved is on the street. And he is exceptionally angry. He is shouting. The Phantasm puts some distance between him and the car. Bobble Hat is out now too.
“Give me the laptop,” demands the gladiator of the night.
“You’re gonna fucking pay for my car, you little prick.”
“Okay, okay,” he says, dismounting the bicycle and laying it on the blacktop. “How much do you want?”
“Why the fuck you dressed like that?”
The anger seems to have lessened momentarily, overtaken by bewilderment.
“I have damaged your car. It is only fair that I reimburse you. How much?”
“Hundred quid.”
“Seems pricey, but I accept.”
He goes into his utility belt. Bobble Hat joins Shaved and they both lean in to see the thing the superhero is withdrawing from his belt. But it is not money. It is just the middle finger of his glove, which he holds aloft before them. There is a moment, as they comprehend this display of bravado, before they pounce. The hero steps back, quick as a flash, swivels on his right foot, bringing his left leg round in a pirouetting 360—he has attempted a high-angle karate kick. He misses them both, his standing leg slips and he falls to the pavement.
In the distance the sound of the burglar alarm rings on.
“Come on, man, let’s just go,” he hears Bobble Hat plead. “The cops will be here any second.”
But Shaved is not interested. He has grabbed the Phantasm’s foot, but the avenger kicks at Shaved’s hands repeatedly and gets free. He jumps to his feet, but Shaved lunges at him. He is tall and skinny, with an intense, wiry strength.
“I’m gonna fuck you up,” he whispers.
Bobble Hat is coming round to the front and is lining up to kick him in the face. He ducks his head down as the stamp arrives, but he feels nothing, for his mask is also a protection, especially at the top of the skull.
The hero grabs Bobble Hat’s ankle and yanks. The icy road is slippery enough for Bobble Hat to lose his footing and he falls on top of them, a three-man pileup. The hero manages to scramble loose. He jumps to his feet just as the sound of approaching sirens drifts across on the air.
He’s been turned around, but sometimes fortune favors the brave and, somehow, the Phantasm has ended up back at the car. Bobble Hat and Shaved are in two minds. The flashing blue lights arrive as reflections on the walls of high office buildings a few blocks over.
But there is no hesitation in the mind of a hero and he is reaching into the back seat of the car. He retrieves the laptop and climbs on his bike. The thieves must now decide whether to go for their car and escape, or for the laptop and their nemesis. The force of justice takes a moment to watch the men from his position, a wry smile on his face, pleasure at their fury.
“Thanks for the merch,” the dark protector calls over his shoulder as he cycles away, waving the laptop in the air with one hand, before they slam their doors shut. He knows they are watching him, and he knows they can’t chase him, because they’ve got their own worries now. His mood ebullient, he rises up onto his back wheel in triumph and wheelies off into the infinite night.
2
SAM HAD BEEN a superhero for around five months. The reasons for anyone doing anything are myriad and diffuse, but Sam considered his own destiny as a superhero in twenty-first-century Britain a kind of inevitability. All the rivers of his life had led him to it.
He was an only child, born to two parents who were also only children, and so he found himself alone for great swathes of time in his early childhood. This loneliness was felt most keenly in the long summer holidays when his father was at work and his mother, a teacher, spent lots of time earning extra cash marking exam papers. It was on one of those long, lazy summer afternoons that his life changed forever, when his mother gave him a beaten-up copy of the first Harry Potter book. Having no idea what was about to happen to him, Sam took the book, went upstairs to his room and started reading. The only reason he came back down later on was because he was too hungry not to.
For Sam the magic of stories went far deeper than mere entertainment—they wove an alternate reality in which he could
feel less alone. When Harry and his friends went to Diagon Alley for sweets or wands or broomsticks, he was right there with them. He loved the world the author built, felt himself sliding off his bed and into the pages of the book, into another universe. This transporting experience, where he could be with other people, was immensely powerful and it was in books he found his first real friends.
When he was around nine or ten, his father took him to see a rerun matinee of Jurassic Park and afterward they went for ice cream, sat in a plaza watching people going about their exciting city lives. Perhaps it was more than mere coincidence that, on that perfect day, a second huge change occurred in Sam’s life. They called into WHSmith and his father bought him his very first Batman comic. Outside the shop, in the brilliant sunshine of the city’s high street, the gleaming buildings all around him and all the people whirling past, Sam held the comic in both his hands and stared at it, blinking out the brightness of the sun.
When he got home, he lay on his bed and flicked through the pages and his mind was opened up. Here was something he felt he shouldn’t be reading. Did his father know the stories were this violent? Cops were being shot, acid was a weapon of choice and the protagonist was not an innocent but an angry antihero, taking the law into his own hands.
But more than this, it was real. Bruce Wayne was a normal human being, flesh and blood. Sam was hooked. Like it was the most natural thing in the world, he started pretending he was Batman, cycling around the back alleys of his small housing estate in the hope of discovering a crime scene that needed investigation, though there never was.
He started exploring the large woods on the edge of town. The trees were big and old; there were hills and deep valleys and sheer cliff faces, something primal about its danger.
One winter day he discovered a weird basin filled with fallen leaves and there, up the far side, he saw a dark opening beneath the roots of a tree. Clambering up, he found himself inside. The ceiling was made up of hovering tree roots, and as he looked out across the autumn-leaved basin he had no idea just how important this place would become to him. He had found his Batcave. He didn’t know it at the time, but in the coming years that cave would become a place of great solace.
Because Sam remained a child late. A distance was growing between him and the other kids in his school. He wasn’t being invited to the parties at which boys and girls were experiencing their first kisses. He was smaller than most of the other kids. He didn’t excel at sports and, though certainly not stupid, he was nowhere near the top of his classes. At twelve he was given his first pair of glasses, at thirteen he got braces. He knew he was ugly but was powerless to do anything about it. He’d smile in the mirror and his braces looked like insects in his mouth. So he stopped smiling in public, and this created a greater degree of separation, like he was cut adrift.
He’d go to his Batcave regularly, crawling into his space, sitting there for hours on end reading his comics, even during winter when the land was brutal and cold. In summer he would scan the latticework of branches overhead, the vivid green leaves swaying in the breeze. He would gaze at the forest floor below, at the ferns and bushes, at the way a forest moves when nobody is there. Sometimes he felt like he might disappear entirely from the world, fall through some strange membrane and out of known existence.
He never once solved a crime, or prevented one, but he felt sure that, one day, his time to shine would come.
* * *
Sam’s local pub was traditional, with wooden chairs and tables, a flagstone floor and log fire.
“So everybody’s still on for Friday,” said Blotchy, a five o’clock shadow spread across the lower half of his large face and double chin, the small lenses of his round glasses reflecting the low light so you couldn’t see his eyes. His brow was bejeweled with droplets of sweat and his long hair, tied into a ponytail, looked lank. “I just need to let the guys know,” he said, taking a pull of his cider.
Sam’s right leg was shaking, as it often did. The room was warm, he was feeling proud about returning the stolen laptop to its owner, he had a fizzy beer in his hands and he was with his two best friends discussing plans for an upcoming astronomy project.
“We’re meeting here at seven, but some people are coming for food at six if you fancy it.”
“Will you be eating food?” Tango said.
“I shall.”
They laughed.
Blotchy leaned in and raised his hands. “The. Food. Here. Is. Nice.”
“I’m not being horrible, but you’ve got to get fit,” said Tango.
“I will, I will,” Blotchy said defensively. “I’m just stressed out at the minute.”
Blotchy got his nickname from the fact his face would often break out with red marks, and today they were particularly bad. At twenty-six, on bad days he looked ten years older.
“Some of us have to work and don’t have time to go running every day.”
“I do work,” said Tango.
“Writing novels is not work, unless you get paid.”
“I work at Colin’s Books.”
“You get paid three pounds an hour!”
“So?”
“It’s not even legal.”
Sam had known Tango forever. His real name was Alan, or Al, and their parents had been friends. Whenever Sam spent time with kids outside of school as a toddler, Tango would always be there, and so now the foundations of their friendship ran so deep it was something they didn’t even think about. Blotchy they’d met in comprehensive school and had slowly accommodated him into their group because, over the years, they’d found themselves in the same lower section of the social hierarchy, not exactly popular but not strange enough to attract bullies. Ghosts, really; just numbers in the great mass of a school’s population. They liked the same films and television programs, shared a curiosity for the supernatural, for conspiracy theories, for what Freud called the uncanny.
It was Sam’s turn to buy the drinks, but before going to the bar he went over to the jukebox. He wondered if the police had caught up with the burglars he’d reported. It was one of those jukeboxes connected to the internet, and Sam typed into the search “(What’s So Funny ’Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding.”
His mum had introduced him to Elvis Costello and it was this song, also his mother’s favorite, that Sam had fallen in love with. The music came on and he closed his eyes for a second, saw her standing in the sunbeams on the mountainside, and then he was ready to go to the bar.
As he waited, his eyes drifted up to the mirror behind the spirits, and he noticed a bright flash of color behind him. When he turned to see, he was greeted by the sight of a girl with red hair, red like dark blood, with black streaks underneath. The cogs of recognition clicked into place. It was the girl he’d seen in the bakery, when he’d bought Gloria a meal.
She was small, even shorter than Sam, and she wore a black T-shirt with a picture of a robot on it, a short tartan skirt and a pair of cool-looking ankle boots. Her hair was cut into an austere bob; at the front two scimitars curled around either side of her face. A small nose and mouth, a clear complexion and two big eyes hidden behind a pair of thick-rimmed glasses.
“Hi,” she said to him, and she smiled.
All at once his heart started going crazy. Was she talking to him?
“How’s it going?” she said, and stepped closer to Sam.
“I’m good, thanks,” he said.
“Yes, mate?” The barman, in a short-sleeved shirt and tie, adopted an expectant look.
Sam found it hard to focus. “Two Red Stripes and a Strongbow, please,” he said, recovering. “One of the lagers with a dash of lemonade. And two packs of cheese and onion crisps.”
He felt her eyes on him.
“Who has the dash?” she said.
“Me.”
The lager came out of the tap interminably slowly. He wanted to g
et back to the safety of his friends.
“I like your T-shirt,” she said.
His T-shirt was gray with the word InGen stenciled on the front.
“It’s from—”
“Jurassic Park, I know.”
His heart lurched into another gear. This girl was wonderful.
“‘Creation is an act of sheer will,’” she quoted. The expression on her face was unchanged. He tried to take a mental photograph of her and wondered how old she was. Maybe twenty-two or twenty-three.
“Ten pounds twenty, please, mate.”
The drinks stood on the soggy beer mat with their bubbles rising.
“This is my favorite song,” she said, pointing at the air above her. The music swirled. “That was a nice thing you did yesterday. In the bakery.”
Oh jeez, he thought, I’m going red. He suddenly felt very hot.
“It was nothing,” he said, trying to laugh, before panicking, tucking the crisps under his arm and collecting up all three pints with his small hands, not without some frenzied spillage, nodding his goodbye and rushing back to his friends. Setting the drinks awkwardly on the table, he turned back toward the bar, but the girl with bloodred hair wasn’t looking. She had her arms flat on the bar and was rising up and down on her toes, talking to the barman.
“How many do you reckon we’ll see on Friday?” said Blotchy, but Sam wasn’t concentrating. The wonderful chemicals of excitement released through his blood, even though he’d been a complete idiot. He’d forgotten how they felt.
“Sam?”
He should go back and talk to her. This was her favorite song, and it was his too. How often did the universe throw such a coincidence at two people? And what were the odds of her seeing him in the bakery? It had to be a sign.
“Huh?”
“How many meteors do you think we’ll see Friday night? The guys are running a sweepstake.”
The girl collected her drink and Sam was surprised to see her carrying a pint of Guinness back to her table. She was tucked away in the alcove in the corner of the pub, next to the fireplace. She picked up a book, the title of which was obscured in the low light.
