by Rhys Thomas
And he’ll be damned if someone thinks they can destroy those streets with crime. A man is being pushy with a woman at the edge of the car park. Overbearing. He’s seen it a thousand times, how guys grind girls into submission. He checks the time: 1:46. He is warm in his suit. He feels invincible. Jerk is trying it on hard with Girl. She has her hands in front of her face and he is cradling each of her elbows. The great persuading tactic: begging. What is going through Girl’s mind? She is perhaps twenty-four, a few pounds overweight. She is making a cawing sound: laughter. Cabs arrive from the night, a caravan of them, headlight cones carving out the darkness. Our champion ensures no innocent pedestrians are in peril, and when he returns his gaze to the couple they are kissing in an appalling way. Jerk’s hands wander drunkenly and brazenly.
The cabs come and the cabs go and he is alone with the night. He lies there, on the top of the grassy bank in the shadow of a tree, and it no longer seems insane to be here in the mask, because this is good.
It is so quiet. He needs to move, to find action. From down the street a large artic truck pulls out of its depot and trundles along, probably heading back toward town. Don’t mind if I do. He hops onto the back as it passes.
Not like in the movies.
There is nothing to grab on to—his fingers fold at a right angle around the back corner. The ledge he’s on is only three inches wide, but the truck’s going too fast to jump off just yet, and it’s not so hard, holding on. The truck heads to town; he can jump off when he gets there. Beats walking, and what’s wrong with a little danger? It’s good for the soul. The wind in his face is an elixir. But boy is this thing moving.
There’s a left turn ahead, the route into town; the truck will slow and, like a cat, he will jump clear and land at a run, returning to the shadows from whence he came.
No, not a left turn but straight ahead. Toward the motorway. Should’ve known, really; a truck this size isn’t delivering milk to Spar. Panic does not rise in our hero. There are traffic lights and roundabouts on the long road to the mayhem and certain death of the motorway; he will save himself when they slow down.
The first traffic light approaches. Safety is not far away, but perhaps it won’t come immediately as he sees red, then amber, then green. The truck storms past, really getting up a head of steam. A car is coming the other way down the dual carriageway. It draws close, its headlights bright, a beacon of opportunity.
“Help me!” he wails, and for a second the driver of the car—male, midfifties—and the masked avenger lock eyes. The man looks away, then quickly looks back. That’s right, a superhero is in peril, good citizen, hurtling as he is on the back of a truck; please help.
Though how he might help is unknown as he’s already disappeared back into the night. Ah, the sweet tang of fear in the throat. The speed of the road thrashing beneath him. Terror blasting his eyes.
“Help!” he cries once more, to nobody.
At the roundabout there are no other cars and the truck hardly slows at all. Speed limits are there for a reason and this guy isn’t playing ball. Only two more sets of lights now and they’ll be at the motorway. The first set is green and they flash through, the speed of the lorry now truly petrifying. Our hero considers his life and its termination. Is this really all there is?
One set of traffic lights to go and, were the driver to glance in his mirror, he would see a masked vigilante peering out to check what lies ahead. Green, with a good distance to go. It will switch by the time he reaches the lights. Using every neuron of his brain, he wills the light to change. He closes his eyes and... Yes! Amber. Just relax now and wait for the truck to...speed up?
The lights. They have spurred the driver into a game of cat and mouse, and the only winner here is going to be the cat. The driver. The light turns red and a law-abiding citizen would have stopped, but this driver is not interested in the law. They power toward the river of speed and steel. If the driver heads west, he will have to circulate the large traffic-light-strewn roundabout. East will carry him directly to the motorway. The hero crouches. His hands are freezing, his legs are seizing, he just wants to have a nice stretch. Head west, head west, head west.
Heading east. No deceleration is picked up by his keen senses. This is it. Soon he will be hurtling at seventy miles an hour London bound. At least, the truck will be. Our hero will be thrown clear and destroyed.
Think. Quick.
No solutions present themselves. He looks at the river of rock. It is moving so, so fast.
“Aaaagh!” he war cries. And jumps. The Phantasm is airborne. For a second the wind seems to lift him and hurl him backward, but, of course, nothing is happening save for Newtonian physics—and what goes up must come down. He considers those Newtonian laws. If he pedals his legs in the air, when he lands, will he be able to run to an elegant stop? The answer is no. His legs hit concrete and he face-plants the deck, his body like a toy, bouncing down the slip road, round and round like a washing machine. There is a kind of awful bliss in the chaos. He is aware of things flying from his utility belt each time he lands. Then he is rolling through long grass. His mind tells him, You are not dead. He braces for each impact and wonders when it will stop, and thinks that maybe he’ll never stop. He spies the receding taillights of the truck as it continues on its way, and then, at last, all is still.
28
THE CAR ARRIVED and he saw the neon signs of the services in the windscreen. He guessed nothing was broken, as he’d managed to crawl through the grass to the slip road, and to the pay phone to make a reverse charges call, because his Phantfone was smashed to pieces all over the road.
“Sam? Is that you, my love? What’s the matter?” Blotchy’s mum had said in a sleepy voice.
By the time Blotchy arrived Sam had tried countless times to remove his mask, but it was stuck to his face with blood, and too painful to move. Slumped against a brick wall away from the main building, Sam raised a hand to wave. A bolt of pain shot up his arm.
Blotchy came over, wearing a bathrobe on top of his pajamas and his deerstalker hat, and the look of shock on his face was frightening.
“Sam?” he said.
Sam imagined being in Blotchy’s head, seeing his friend dressed like this, hurt like this.
“Please don’t tell anyone,” he said.
They stared at each other, Blotchy crouched before him.
“You’re the Phantasm?”
Through one eye Sam could see the cogs of thought turning.
“I’m calling an ambulance,” he said.
“No.” Sam shook his head.
“You do know you’re bleeding, right?”
Sam nodded. The sticky feeling of blood covered half his face and he could feel it sticking his clothes to his skin.
“Can you move?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
He groaned as he tried to lift himself. Blotchy came forward and helped him up and put him into the car. He was surprisingly tender.
The road was clear and the white lines moved under the car in a hypnotic rhythm. It was weird how quickly his friend had become good at driving.
“What were you doing?” Blotchy said, at last.
“Trying to... I don’t know.”
Sam laid his head against the window and told Blotchy the story of the truck. When he moved, there was blood all over the glass. Hands ten to two on the wheel, Blotchy considered the information.
“I meant why are you dressed like that?”
Sam put his head back against the window.
“I don’t know that either,” he said.
* * *
Back at Sam’s house Blotchy took him to the bathroom and they soon realized Sam was going to have to be cut out of his tactical assault vest and mask.
“This is like one of those scenes in a film,” said Blotchy. “But I can assure you—we are not about to start making out.�
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“Don’t,” said Sam, restraining a laugh. “It hurts.”
They got him out of his top.
“You’re going to need to have a shower. But I’m not going to help you with that either,” said Blotchy. “You’re on your own.”
The water was so painful his mind fogged with white, and when it came back the sight of all the blood rinsing off was shocking. So red against the white, it didn’t seem real. And there was so much of it. He thought about Sarah. This had to stop—though when he told himself this, he knew it was always going to be nothing more than an empty promise. He already wanted to get straight back out there.
When he finally managed to get out of the shower, he wiped the condensation off the mirror and paused. A huge red graze stretched from his left temple across his cheek. It seeped globules of blood and shone in the harsh light. The white of his eye was completely red. Secretly he thought he looked quite cool, but he tried to quash that thought.
It was an hour before he got out of the bathroom. Blotchy was dozing on a kitchen chair he’d brought from downstairs.
“I made you some hot chocolate, but it was going cold,” he said, indicating two empty cups on the floor.
“Thanks,” said Sam.
The landing was gloomy. The light from the bathroom reflected in Blotchy’s glasses as he looked up.
“Don’t tell Tango about this,” said Sam.
“I won’t. But you have to.”
Sam swallowed. His jaw ached.
“We’re all friends, Sam, even if you don’t think it as much as we do. We’re all looking out for each other. Does Sarah know?”
Sam shook his head and Blotchy tried to give him a friendly smile.
“Actually,” said Sam, “I think I do need to go to the hospital.”
* * *
“Holy shit,” said Sarah, when she saw him.
“Yeah,” he said, sheepishly, getting up from his seat in the coffeehouse to give her a kiss.
“How’s your bike?” she said, looking him up and down.
“Hardly a scratch on it.”
She made an over-the-top sad face that made Sam feel completely pathetic, because here was this girl he was in love with, and here he was lying to her.
“And what about the hedgehog?”
Sam’s eyes fell to his coffee. “He was fine. Just waddled off.” The ease with which he lied to her surprised him, and not in a good way, but rather in a way he didn’t recognize, as though there had been another level to him hiding away all this time.
“Aw, you’re a hero. But seriously, Sam, you’ve got to be careful. Why are boys so stupid?”
“I got you a gingerbread latte,” he said, pushing her drink across the table, grateful for how warm the place was so his bones didn’t hurt.
“Thanks. What did the doctor say?”
“I haven’t broken or fractured anything, so that’s good. Just a few stitches.”
At the hospital he’d told them he’d come off the bike while swerving to avoid a hedgehog too. Although they’d said he was fine, he swore he could feel blood in the cavities of his body from where his arteries had been crushed. The good thing was, he’d managed to get a day off work and now it was Friday night. He didn’t know if Rebecca believed him when he called, but she could see the proof on Monday.
“Your face is a mess,” Sarah said.
“Hey!”
She changed the angle of her head to get a better look.
“I’m meeting up with Zac in a couple of days,” she said.
“Oh,” said Sam, a new level of anxiety pouring in immediately.
“So I guess you’ll need to eat soup for a while?”
“You’re changing the subject again.”
“No, I’m not. There’s nothing more to say.”
Sam finished his coffee.
“Soup does sound good.”
He watched Sarah scoop up some of the froth from the top of her coffee, something carefree and innocent in the action, unaware of his eyes on her, of the thoughts chugging through his mind, the growing guilt of how she was open toward him but not the other way round, how he could just make up a lie and have her believe it, and how he was still holding back the biggest truth of all.
* * *
They lay in bed that night and watched the patterns the rain made on the window.
Sarah ran her fingers along the curve of Sam’s ear.
“Do you still miss them a lot?”
He sighed. “My family? I guess I never dealt with it properly. When I told you about them, it was the first time I’d ever spoken about it, and I thought I was going insane. But if I feel like I’m missing them, it’s weird, I can sort of sense them near me? I know it’s not real, they’re not like ghosts; just the sort of stuff they taught me about being a person. Any goodness in me comes from them. My dad used to say people will let you down. All the time they’ll let you down. But you must never let them down. I try to stick to that in work and things, and it helps. Don’t get me wrong. I’m making my parents out to be saints, but it wasn’t like that. They definitely weren’t perfect. God, they used to argue crazily sometimes, especially when I was younger. But all that stuff falls away over time and you just remember the best parts.”
She swung her legs off the bed to get up. When it was like this, nothing else mattered. The thought of his mistake in work dissolved into meaningless. It was like Zac didn’t exist. The only thing that still tugged was the secret.
“I like you,” she said.
“Thanks.”
The wind strengthened and whipped a pocket of raindrops against the window.
“Can I ask you something?” he said. “How come you never talk about your family?”
She turned to face him, then leaped back onto the bed.
“Tickle monster!”
He rolled away as she grabbed at him. He hated being tickled. That was why she loved doing it.
“Tickle monster attack on scab face!”
“Scab face?”
He got his arms under her and pushed her off in a surprising display of masculinity. But she had a preternatural strength and pushed up off the mattress and with the sole of her foot kicked him in the guts, winding him.
“Scab face must die!”
He buckled over, tried to speak but couldn’t, instead holding up a just-a-second finger. She laughed and her glasses ran down the bridge of her nose. He grabbed her wrists and a muscular pain shot right up the side of his body.
“Argh!”
She laughed really hard then and flopped down on her back, pulling the sheets over her.
“Why won’t you talk about your family?” he said.
“We don’t talk,” she said, breathless. “It’s no biggie.”
“Why not?”
“We just don’t, but I don’t care. We were never close, not like your family. I don’t think they even like each other.”
“Have they split up?”
“Nah. They’re just not happy together. They never were, not really. Not every family is close like yours. Some of us are just...different. It doesn’t matter.”
He felt like saying how much he would kill to have his family back and how she needed to speak to them. How could she not see that?
“Do you remember when you played that Elvis Costello song in the pub?” she said.
“Yeah,” he said, still panting from the pain.
“It’s weird. After what you did for that homeless woman in the bakery, I felt like I knew you. I watched you after you put that song on. You nodded your head a little bit and, I don’t know, I had this whole idea of who you were. And I was pretty much right, I think. And I fancied you. You had nice arms. Do you remember you were wearing that InGen T-shirt?”
“Yeah,” he said, looking at her and smiling.
&n
bsp; “Oh God, he’s smiling again.”
He smiled wider but was then hit by another shock of guilt about the superhero, and the smile faded.
“When I saw you again,” she said, “the shooting star night, I’d come to the pub hoping you were there. I don’t know... I couldn’t stop thinking about you. And I sometimes think—what if you hadn’t played that song?”
The rain outside stopped and the water sluicing down the windowpane made shifting ribbons on the wall.
“All of this from that one little moment. Isn’t that weird?”
He was suddenly hit by the sad thought that, if they stayed together for the rest of their lives, one of them would have to die first. He watched her lying next to him and wondered if she ever thought things like this. By that time they would have shared a large percentage of their lives together and grown into one soul. When death split that soul back into two, the one left behind would be shriveled and dry without the other. He imagined a scene where he died first and Sarah, as an old woman, was washing up a single plate and knife and fork, and it broke his heart. He thought of her dying first and him reaching nine o’clock at night quite easily but the next few hours before bed being crushing in their loneliness, the kind of end-of-life loneliness half of all people must face. And as he thought these things and myriad other scenarios of being alone again, he considered it was maybe a blessing the way his parents died. No time to ponder or worry, they had died in their prime, before the true cruelty of life had chance to dig in its claws.
Outside, just as abruptly as it had stopped, it started raining again.
29
WHEN SAM PULLED into work on Monday morning, there was no sign of Mr. Okamatsu’s gold Lexus, which was odd, but good. He exaggerated his limp as he went into the office and sat down.
“Bloody hell, it’s the walking dead,” said Linda from Quality.
Sam reached under his desk and switched on his computer. The office was still quiet. It was 8:56 a.m. so hardly anybody had shown up yet, and Rebecca had a chance to talk to him.
