by Rhys Thomas
“Sam?”
He turned to his friends and sat down. “Friday night,” he said. Now he was wondering if the girl with red hair was looking at him. He needed to act cool, which meant not speaking too much. “I don’t know,” he said, and leaned back in his chair. “How can you run a sweepstake on something like that?”
The way the firelight hit the lager made it look like magma. Sam gulped down a third of his pint and it made him feel better. He wondered what she was reading. The book looked secondhand, with yellowing pages and a crumpled cover. Was she struggling to concentrate on the words, just as he was struggling to follow the thread of the conversation? He considered where she lived and why he’d never seen her wandering around town before. Perhaps she had just moved here and that was why she was trying to talk to him, to find friends. He should go over and ask her to join them. But would she really want to be privy to a conversation about a weird trip to the country on Friday night to look for meteors when most people his age were in the city getting wasted?
“What are you writing at the moment?” said Blotchy to Tango.
Across the table, his face a thin rectangle, his short brown hair wiry, Tango said, “I’ve got this idea in my head of a spaceship, and the crew on it start falling deeply asleep at night, all at the same time. And after a while they realize the ship isn’t working so great, and one of the engineers finds that parts are being removed and replaced while they sleep. But they notice that, no matter how good the copies replacing the originals, they’re never good enough to allow the ship to run smoothly.”
Sam listened, consciously pretending to forget the girl with red-and-black hair.
“But then the crew start getting nosebleeds. And then they get sick.” He stopped and opened the cheese and onion crisps, ripping the pack along its seam to open it out fully, as if on a plate. “The ship’s doctor examines the crew and they discover that it’s not just the ship that’s being replaced, it’s them too. Their organs are not their own but perfect copies inserted into their bodies when they sleep by some strange force. But despite their perfection, there’s something too complex about the way things work in the universe, and the new bodies are failing.”
Perhaps it was the effect of the girl, but the thought of being replaced sent a shiver through Sam. If I was replaced, piece by piece, would I still be me?
“So what’s it all about?” said Blotchy, quietly.
Sam turned in his chair and thought about going home tonight and checking his voice mail on his other mobile phone, which he kept in the drawer of his bedside table, just as he did every single night. He could feel the heat coming from the fire across the room, an uneven, unpleasant sensation now. He turned around farther in his chair to see her, the girl with red hair, in the seat in the stone alcove, but she wasn’t there. All that remained was a half-finished pint of murky black Guinness, the foam making strange shapes on the sides, as he heard Tango say, “...slow invasion.”
THE PHANTASM #003
The Tragedy of Mr. Ho
The rain falls in drenching sheets. A small child out in this weather? Why? At a guess the child is twelve, thirteen, maybe eleven. It is hard to tell these days, when children grow up so fast, are taught the World so early.
The child is spying on a bus shelter, looking down on it from the top of a grassy slope. All of this is seen through the light-giving magic of night-vision goggles. Our masked crusader is hiding in a tree again. An old lady is in the shelter, which is lit by a single bulb. A classic setup: the predator, the prey, the protector.
One thing is for sure: this punk is up to no good. The Phantasm can feel it in his bones. Innocent until proven guilty might be all well and good in the comfort of the courtroom, but when you’re out in the jungle you get a sixth sense for danger. And you act on the agent, or the agent acts upon you.
Sure enough, it happens. The boy picks up a stone and lobs it at the shelter. In the night vision its arc is like tracer fire. The rain hammers down. The missile misses the roof by inches and the little old lady with her old-person shopping bag on wheels continues her wait for the bus without knowing she is under attack. But somebody knows. A man in a tree with night-vision goggles knows.
Only in darkness can a hero be born, and tonight it is very dark. In his heart he sings an elegy for the loss of respect.
Coming up the hill now is a new savior. The number 49 bus. It glows in the night like a beacon of hope as it splits the rainstorm in two, its windows bright yellow rectangles of light, the streaks of rain slanting like arrows in the headlights. It hisses to a stop and the elderly lady gets on, to be conveyed to some safer destination.
Game on.
He is out of the tree before the bus is in second gear. Over the road he goes. The rain hits him hard and is cold, but this is no ordinary person. There will be no umbrellas here. He lifts his arm toward the child and points the finger of justice.
“You!” he calls.
He hopes the child will run in fear, but he does not. Instead, he spies the champion of the night and brings himself to full height, which isn’t very tall. The distance from the bus shelter to the top of the grassy slope is little more than ten feet. Such bravado in one so young.
“Fuck off!” the child calls.
“Charming! You kiss your mother with that mouth?”
“I kiss your mother with this mouth,” he says.
This kid has got some moxie. There’s a bin next to the boy and he’s found something. From the dark cavern of the bin’s maw he produces what looks like a discarded bag of chips. He throws one at the Phantasm, but the masked warrior is too fast and ducks inside the shelter. The chip impacts the Perspex wall with a dull thud and slides down.
The hero pokes his head out.
“What are you doing?”
The boy throws another chip. Twenty-first-century thugs often require a twenty-first-century solution. The hero takes his Phantfone from his utility belt and makes a show of taking a photo of the child. But his hood is up and there’s a scarf covering the lower part of his face.
“Taking photos of little kids, are you, pedo?”
“I’m not a pedo!”
“Yeah, you are.”
Another chip, which flies past the Phantasm’s head. Instinct kicks in and he throws out an arm. The chip is caught. The avenger swings 360 and hurls the chip back at the kid. It hits him on the chest. But doesn’t knock him over. Not that a chip would. Incredibly impressive though what just happened was, Newtonian mechanics alter for no man.
Now the boy has come back with a pot of curry sauce.
“Stop right there!” shouts the hero. “You throw that and I’ll—”
SPLAT!
He can taste it. It’s still warm. Hmm. He knows this curry sauce. Golden Boat Chinese Restaurant. Mr. Ho would be devastated to know his fine produce has been weaponized like this. He wipes the sauce from his eyes and fixes his gaze on the boy.
Yes, you sense it too. I. Am. Pissed.
He chases the kid up the hill. The boy throws the whole bag of chips, but the Phantasm knocks them away as if they’re nothing. Suddenly, the child stops and turns. He’s shorter than he first appeared, and younger. What the heck is a kid his age doing out so late?
“You going to assault me? Fuck off,” says the kid.
His eyes are fierce, there is a terrific anger here. His whole tragic future pans out in the Phantasm’s mind. And then a puddle pans out before him, which the hoodlum has kicked up off the street in an almost impossible sweep, drenching the dark guardian.
“Right.” He stares the boy down.
“Delete the photo,” the kid says.
“What?” He is sopping wet.
“The photo,” the kid says. “That you took of me. Delete it or I’m telling the police.”
“You threw curry sauce at me!”
“So? You’re a fr
eak dressed up like a gimp—whose side they gonna be on?”
The masked avenger narrows his eyes.
Under his breath he grumbles and shows the screen of the phone to the child. His gloves are touch-screen sensitive, future gloves, as he presses the symbol of the little bin on the screen and the photo is vaporized in the myriad streams of the information superhighway.
“There. Happy?”
The kid nods begrudgingly but doesn’t go to move away.
“What are you doing out in the rain, son?” says the hero.
The boy shrugs.
“Come on.”
They move into a shop doorway.
“Look at you, you’re soaking,” the Phantasm says. In his backpack he has a foil blanket, which he wraps around the boy.
“Are you naughty in school?”
The boy shrugs and the Phantasm is aware that they are now on a level playing field.
“Let me ask you something. Do you like sports cars?”
“What?”
“And big houses?”
“I guess.”
The Phantasm puts his hands on the boy’s shoulders.
“Everybody wants to do well in life. You can have those things. No matter what anyone tells you. You’ve got a quick mind, kid. But you need to focus it. I’m telling you this. I don’t know you, but if your teachers are mean, or even if your parents are mean, you need to believe in yourself, okay? You can do anything you want. But nothing comes from nothing—you have to work for it. And that starts with school. You know what an astronaut from NASA once said to me? He came to my school, when I was around your age. He told me the secret of achieving anything you want. And it’s easy. Wanna know what it is?”
The kid looks up at the avenger. And nods.
“It’s way simpler than you think. He said you need to read for thirty minutes every day. Doesn’t matter what. But you need to do it. No music, no TV, no phones. You read for thirty minutes. Then you spend five minutes thinking back about what you’ve read, and if you can’t remember something you go back and check it. You do this, every day, and by the time you’re an adult everyone will think you’re a genius. And, here’s the thing—you will be. Your brain will be a finely tuned machine. You believe me?”
The kid has fixed him with a stare. He nods again, quickly.
“You don’t even need to tell anyone you’re doing it. Nobody needs to know you’re reading.” He smiles. “Hey, I see a Spar across the road there. You hungry? What’s your favorite chocolate bar?”
“Dunno.”
“Come on, you gotta have a favorite chocolate bar.”
“I like Twirls.”
The Phantasm nods.
“Good choice. Twirls are great. There used to be something called a Spira. Ever heard of them? They had two fingers too. But they had this hole through the middle so you could use them as a straw. They were pretty great. Right.” He takes a ten-pound note from his utility belt. “Let’s do a deal. You promise me you’re gonna try better in school, and I’ll shout you a Twirl and a Cherry Coke.”
The boy thinks. “Okay,” he says.
The Phantasm hands over the money. “Get me a Cherry Coke too. And a Wispa.”
“Serious?”
“Serious.”
The kid runs across the road to the Spar and the masked avenger waits in the shop doorway. He has no idea if the kid will come back, but he waits and watches. After a few minutes, the boy emerges into the night. He could make good his escape now if he so wished. The hero will not pursue him. There is a moment’s pause. And then the Phantasm smiles to himself, as the boy trots back across the street toward him.
3
THE CREATION OF the costume and the utility belt is of the utmost importance to a superhero. The costume is the main barrier between him (or her) and the world. It is the costume that sets a hero apart and is often the one thing that can save his life.
Sam had purchased most of his equipment online, ordering everything over a period of six weeks from different sites to avoid suspicion. He’d bought a tactical assault vest from Amazon. Black, with lots of pouches for holding magazine clips, it brought with its wearing a sense of enormous security and strength. Light and well ventilated, it allowed full mobility. He kept the vest light, using the pouches to hold nothing but a few chocolate bars, small bottles of water or Cherry Coke, and a coffee flask for when it got cold. He wore it on top of an Odlo Ninja Shirt, a thin thermal layer with a hood to pull over your head, designed originally to keep biting wind from a cyclist’s face but which doubled superbly as a base layer for twenty-first-century heroes. It also utilized silver ions to reduce body odor. A simple pair of men’s running tights, with small shin pads beneath, and a pair of New Balance 507 trainers made up his lower half, with a sports cup in his underwear. To cover his eyes he wore a black sleeping mask with holes cut out and he painted the exposed flesh around his eyelids with dark eyeliner. A black scrum cap to protect his skull, all-weather cycling gloves with touch-sensitive fingertips for his hands, lightweight Kevlar elbow pads (not only for protection but also to hit enemies, instead of punching with his fists—not that he’d ever hit anyone in his life), a shoulder, chest and biceps protection complex (worn over his Ninja Shirt and beneath the assault vest). Sam had purchased everything for less than a week’s wages. It was all about striking a balance between safety and mobility, and Sam was happy with the trade-off he’d chosen.
The utility belt was the favorite part of his costume. The belt itself had come from eBay, was padded for comfort and could clip onto his assault vest as well as around his waist. It had seven pouches for, as the product description said: pistol, double pistol, magazine clips, baton and handcuffs. Instead, Sam had: length of twine, smoke bombs, compass, notepad and pen, hand warmer, tape measure, laser pointer, £100 cash, cat treats, torch, asthma pump, rape alarm. To the clips of his belt he attached more expensive equipment: binoculars, night-vision goggles (these were a late addition and actually not as expensive as one might think, though he’d broken his first set) and a small digital camera for not only photographing crimes but videoing them in HD as well. Sometimes the expensive things would go in the backpack, sometimes they stayed at home altogether. The Phantfone he’d bought anonymously for cash—it was sturdy and practical and had £50 of credit on it. He never took his personal phone out patrolling. And that was his kit. He had toyed with the idea of wearing a cape, and had bought a waterproof one online, but he never wore it. When it came to it, a cape would be grabbed by an enemy and thrown over his head, ice hockey–style, leaving Sam blind and exposed. Moreover, a cape in real life simply does not look as good as they do in comic books, and so it remained folded neatly at the bottom of the locked fireproof chest in his wardrobe. Other things left in the chest: £5,000, $1,000 and €1,000 in cash, passport, birth certificate, National Insurance card, emergency overnight bag, twelve cans of baked beans with sausages, and a big pack with a tent and other survival gear inside.
Before having the designs put on his costume, he wore it up to the forestry and went for several long runs to be sure he could comfortably carry everything, utility belt included, for long periods and distances. It was hard work at first, but as his core strength improved it got easier.
The logo had arrived in his head the exact same time as the idea to become a superhero. It was just there, the insignia, simple and true, and so clean he knew it was right.
He drew it on a computer, sent it to a large embroidery firm who would never remember it, and when the results came back he held the patch in his hand and knew that what he was doing had become something inevitable. When something is right, it becomes immutable. He stitched the insignia to the assault vest, and then he was standing in front of his bedroom mirror, just looking and looking at the masked figure before him, the April sunlight coming through the window, the sound of a lawn mower somewhere down the street. T
here, in the middle of this perfect, pristine suburbia, a new force in the world was born.
It had been a feeling of despair mixed with elation. The costume was amazing and awful; it was insane. There in the spring evening something was badly wrong with the grand plan that had been his life. How ridiculous it was, and yet the elation—the feeling of being cocooned in another person—was intoxicating and, more than this, it was easy. It felt easy. Since donning the mask, he had finally achieved an inner peace. Insane or no, it was what he needed to do. This was his calling, his Special Purpose. Whatever others might think of a twentysomething man doing this, the Phantasm was Sam’s answer to the Event that had slammed into his life like a freight train all those years ago. And it was the only answer he could find.
* * *
Now his discarded costume lay on the floor. He stared at it from his bed, one arm dangling over the edge. It was Thursday already and he pondered how a week off work can slip by so quickly.
He drove to a café on the edge of town and ordered a full English breakfast. He liked this place because the furniture was solid, the tables always clean and the breakfast was in perfect proportion: two eggs, two sausages, two rashers of bacon, two hash browns, a slice of black pudding, beans, tomatoes and toast.
Sam took a week off work once every twelve weeks. Entitled to five weeks’ annual leave, he liked to split the year by quarters, saving that extra week for emergencies. And each segment of time off would follow roughly the same routine. On day one he went to the coast, on day two he liked to drive around the lanes of the countryside, stopping off at a pub for lunch. Day three was a tour of the local industrial estates that he used to cycle around as a teenager. Sam liked industrial estates. He liked the neat grass verges and simple roads with well-made curbs. He liked the brooks that often ran under small bridges and the signs at the entrance with little maps showing what business could be located where, everything nice and simple and organized. He would just park up and walk around, an anonymous human in an anonymous space.
