by Jesse Jordan
So, no, James told him, no questions now. But he’d let Ezra know when he did.
Ezra seemed to not want the lunch to end, prodding James with little questions about his dreams and what specifically he’d heard or seen, and finally he outright asked if James knew Morning Star’s true name yet. James, his mouth full of salami, capicola, bread, and cheese, just shook his head. He’d assumed Ezra knew how and when he was supposed to learn the name. Ezra’s ignorance about how this was all going to proceed was apparently not the act James had supposed the morning before.
They both left the lunch with an uncomfortable uncertainty nesting in their heads, each disappointed by every aspect of the lunch except the sandwiches and the Cherry Cokes.
Then, after the final bell, as James slumped toward the back doors, he saw three freshmen wrestling a smaller freshman into a locker. At first he stopped, thinking he should say something, but then he noticed the kid in the locker laughing as he was stuffed in, kicking awkwardly out at his friends. It reminded James of the shimmering behind the walls of his dream, and as he turned back to the door and grabbed the handle, it happened. Just as his hand touched the warm corrugated metal of the door and the sunlight flashed into his eyes, he had it.
46. Two of those new-Messiah cults got into a firefight in Jerusalem, there was a mass suicide in Argentina, trees in the Black Forest were mysteriously rotting, and a representative from Kansas died of what appeared to be spontaneous combustion.
47. Nick wouldn’t let her go this time, wouldn’t be flippant or cool. He’d realized that he only really felt happy and at ease around her, and he began to create long, detailed fantasies about the two of them leaving town together (getting him out of that goddamned house), maybe even dropping out of school and just taking off. He wasn’t sure what they’d do (and he hadn’t discussed any of this with her), but he knew he was going to love her completely and hold on to her so tight that she could never, ever get away.
9½1/2½. Interlude: Eliza & Erik—First Issue
James ran home. The ecstasy of the breakthrough propelled him, and he thought of nothing but the idea as he ran, feeling no burn or resistance, only fluidity and speed.
After all this time, he finally had it. And it had come to him complete, fully formed, this story unfolding like a flower in his mind, so natural, as if there was no other way it could happen. He stormed into the house and climbed the little mountain of stairs, pulling himself on the rail even as he bounded up and forward. Into the room and straight to his desk, where he sat down and expelled the story for the debut of Fearless like it was an organic excretion.
Eliza and Erik have escaped their initial capture with only one piece of information: a sheet of paper with two sets of coordinates on it. One set of coordinates is the base where they were held. They do not know what the other is. But we don’t know any of this at the beginning. The issue starts off with a big house—not like a mansion, but more like a big Northeast family house/cottage. See, it’s night, and we’re in Maine. There’s the house by the edge of a cliff, beautiful, overlooking the ocean (on a cliff), but it has to be really creepy Maine, too. (Think about the images you get when you read Stephen King—that Maine!) Dark, fog, etc. We see the house, and it looks like a totally normal house, but then the images get closer (bunch of frames, closer, closer, like zooming in) and you can see like laser fences and hidden artillery and all that. Then we see the sheet of paper with the coordinates and Eliza holding it, along with binoculars, and Erik’s with her (maybe they’re coming in on a boat, or maybe further down the cliff) and the coordinates for this place are circled in red, and she tells Erik, “Yeah, this is definitely the place.”
“Just looks like a house.”
“That’s what it’s supposed to look like.”
So then they try to sneak in, but at some point they miss a trip wire or sensor or something and the alarms go off and all the soldiers come and they have to fight their way through this house, which, just like Eliza said, is waaaaay more than a house. Below the ground is a massive laboratory complex, and they have to fight their way into and through it. Finally there’s a final door—a major like steel vault door—and somehow Eliza gets them through it (need to think of something really cool for that—she has to use her smarts mostly for this task, like a puzzle, code-breaker kind of thing). Inside they find a small nothing sort of room. It’s all steel, with no—what are those things called—rivets? There’s a steel column about waist-high, and on it there’s a big glass (bulletproof) case. Inside is something that looks like one of those gold teardrop things from the dream. And behind it, standing like a teacher, is an old, frail (Japanese?) scientist.
The scientist says, “That was very impressive. Who are you?” Eliza asks him what this place is and where’s Sam, but he just sort of tilts his head. “I’ll tell you what, you tell me who you are and I’ll tell you what I know.” Eliza says she could just have Erik rip his arms off and he says yes, and then I’d be dead, and you’d know nothing. Fine—Eliza gives him a short version of what happened to them (the outline, basic origin story, give details bit by bit later). Then the scientist says that the two of them—Eliza and Erik—have become very famous and that the government is looking everywhere for them. He says that Sam is not here (Eliza starts to freak out), but he says they have come to the right place. He says this program is a sister program to Project: Awaken, which was theirs. He’s acting like a parent, and he says it’s inhuman what they did to them. He says that what they need to find and take back Sam is right here, in this room.
Then the scientist goes over to the pedestal and presses a button, and the glass slides back. He reaches in and picks up the gold teardrop, and immediately Eliza and Erik freeze. It’s like their brains are filled with wet sand. The thing pulses light and energy and heat.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” the scientist says. “It’s alien. We don’t know from where or when, though. We’ve been studying it, and the only thing we’ve been able to ascertain so far is that whoever holds it can control the minds and bodies of others.” Then he makes Erik dance, and it terrifies Erik that he can’t stop himself and he starts to cry and Eliza screams at the scientist. He compliments her revealing little outfit and has her pull the zipper down a little to show more cleavage.
Then he says, “Enough play, I suppose. They’ll be quite pleased with me for taking care of this problem all by myself. Might even get some extra funding next year.” He says that they’ll want Erik for further testing and studies but that Eliza is not needed. Then Erik walks over and puts his hands around Eliza’s throat—he’s screaming and sobbing, she’s telling him to stop, arms pinned at her side—and then he starts to choke her. He resists some and there are bits of words she can get out. Her face is turning purple and she says, “s’okay . . . not you . . . don’t . . . blame . . . y’self . . . love y—” Erik screams and somehow pulls his hands apart (his will momentarily destroys the thing’s power), and the scientist’s eyes get big and scared, but before he can do a thing Erik has leapt across the room, and in one fluid motion he grabs the scientist by the throat and breaks his neck.
Eliza tries to yell, “No!” but it barely comes out. She rubs at her throat as the alien thing clatters to the floor, and she scampers across the room to the scientist. “We needed to question him.” Erik says sorry as she lifts the scientist’s head. He is barely alive, gasping his last breaths.
“Give me something!” she screams, and the scientist whispers something. Don’t know what. Maybe the name of the main bad guy, like the general in charge or maybe where they should check next. Then he dies.
Erik says sorry again, and she goes to him and hugs him and says he never has to say sorry and that he saved them both and she’s so proud of him. Then he’s like, “What now?” and Eliza goes, “They take Sam, we take from them.” She picks up the lamp/golden teardrop thing and says, “And we burn the rest.”
The end of the issue is them walking away, along the cliff, as the cottage bu
rns in the night behind them.
James put the manuscript aside and pulled up a fresh piece of drawing paper. He wanted to get the image of the burning cottage down before he lost it. But just as his pen touched the heavy, threaded paper, a thought stopped him—This will never happen. You’ll never make this comic. That life—the dream of that life—was not his future anymore.
The sensation activated a memory: Nick punching him in the stomach earlier this year, the immediate emptying of all his body’s energy, along with his will and breath—he’d never known a thought could do the same. This will never happen.
Why? Why couldn’t it happen? Ezra says you’re gonna be this superpowerful sorta leader, so, so why can’t you . . . ?
The pen clattered onto the desk, and the paper, marred by a single black line, was dimpled, plop by plop.
Something which James felt as if he’d known for a while, something which had been hiding in the back of his brain, where he didn’t want to look, stepped out into the light. This War would be his everything.
9. End of (School) Days (rejoin)
Only 1 Days of School Left!!!
The sign read,
George Washington High School was a pulsing heart of joyful anticipation that day, noise and smell and motion all wordlessly communicating the group’s barely contained exuberance. The teachers hid smiles and whispered to each other; they laughed louder and barely watched the students who walked below their gazes. You could feel that they were already somewhere else. They had plans. Maybe a barbeque at one of their houses or drinks and hors d’oeuvres at Senor Salsa’s Hacienda. Sighs and laughs and margaritas and God-am-I-glad-to-be-rid-of-that-class-I-thought-they’d-kill-me and Oh-that-Gail-what-a-little . . .
The kids were racehorses bucking against the starting gate. They gyrated on their seats, leaning forward, eyes to the clock, then to whoever was talking loudest, out the window (blue-blue sky on a perfect 84-degree day), and around and around. Their legs shook, feet tapped, gym shoes trying to dig through asbestos48 floors. They were like runners at the starting block, tense with anticipation. There would be no lessons today. Only anxious fun, waiting for that glorious moment: final bell, rushing out into warmth and freedom.
They received their yearbooks first hour. A sloppy, red cardinal on the front, apparently painted by a girl in an AP art class; glossed pages between hard covers. James looked first for Dorian’s picture—painfully beautiful even in this tiny low-quality photo—then his own—Had worse.
Then the strangest thing happened. His yearbook was snatched from his hands. And not by Nick or Colin so they could rub it on their balls or draw a dick on it, but by Kevin Martinez, a quiet kid who was the backup point guard on the basketball team. He smiled and handed James his own yearbook and began to write.
James was stunned. He peeked at what Kevin was doing, but unless it was a very subtle dig, it appeared to be genuine. He was at a loss. He took one of his drawing pens and wrote: Kevin, Have a cool summer. James—and he immediately wanted it back. He wanted to cross it out and write something else, because that was too lame for words. But before he had a chance, that book was pulled from his hands as well, replaced by another. The books came and went, around and around, and he saw his own moving from hand to hand.
At the end of class his yearbook was returned, and while he didn’t have time to thoroughly examine it, a cursory glance revealed no dicks, dongs, splooge, or giant middle fingers. Second hour began, and it was more of the same. His book was plucked from his grasp and replaced with another. This class, though, was significant because he shared it with Dorian. He tried to watch for his yearbook as it entered the phalanx of girls, but it was like three-card monte, and eventually he gave up and set himself to waiting.
When the class ended, he went to the nearest bathroom and locked himself in the stall. He opened to the inside of the cover: Nice punch, Leo; Have a kick-ass summer, but don’t kick any more ass; To James, I wish I’d got to know you better, B kewl dis SUmmER!!! From, Mike D.; Have a nice summer—Ken. Jess Gerber had drawn a heart around her own picture along with *JG*.
He flipped the pages, and there, at the bottom, was the signature he’d been looking for: To James—My weirdest friend, who just might be my most interesting one 2—Dorian.
James sat on the toilet as the bell rang, and the atmosphere around him quieted to almost nothing, and he read her words over and over and over.
The echo of the final bell was still hanging in the air when the freshmen went by screaming like the first wave of a crazed, castrated Viking horde. They ran for the front doors, which banged open with a shuttering slam so mighty it was hard to believe they remained attached. The older kids had the sense of cool to walk out, as much as they wanted to stampede their younger classmates, screeching their glee right along with them.
As they hit the sunlight, notebooks and papers flew, fluttering down in a wall of white. It reminded James of a distant cousin’s wedding last summer—that explosion of party favors as they appeared from the church. He’d been pressed close to the walkway and stood as it all cascaded over him. He remembered loving the sensation and wanting them to do it again, though the party had already moved on.
48. Scheduled asbestos abatement having been postponed since just after the ChocoMalt closing.
10. Down the Dark Descent
The room is dark. Shadows move all around me, but when I turn to look at them, they disappear. The floor flows like water. The light changes colors—blue to black to gray to white to blue . . . and there go the shadows, but I can’t actually see them. There’s something in front of me. I can’t really see it, but I can feel it in the partial dark, like it’s a magnet that attracts whatever my insides are made of. I feel pulled toward it, but I don’t want to go. I try to press my feet into the ground, but I don’t feel any ground, and I’m still being pulled—pulled towards it—and I can sorta make out an outline. I can sorta see places where the darkness shifts—and a whisper . . . something.
Someone is speaking to me—and I know it’s to me—but I can’t hear them, can’t make it out—but the whispering is coming from the Shape in the darkness, and I can see it now, and all at once I don’t want to hear what it has to say. I don’t—No! Get away! I kick back—away—and my feet find floor and I turn to run and that thing—the Shape—screams like nothing I’ve heard, like the shriek of a bird and the howl of a dying pig and metal scraping against metal all in one, and I scream back. I stop and cover my ears and collapse and scream because oh my god I’m going to die. I’m going to die.
James’s eyes opened to a dark bedroom. He was still seated at his desk, though he was bathtub wet with sweat. He sat up, and there was a thwuuck as his wet cheek came unstuck from the desktop.
It was then that James noticed the pen gripped tightly in his right hand. The nail of his middle finger dug into his thumb, a drop of blood pooled just under the surface. And there, on the paper, was the shape from his dream.
James washed most of the fear off in the shower and spent the rest of the morning online. He had to know. The dreams were awful and growing worse. Maybe if he knew the name, whatever name it was, then he could say it and release whoever was locked in that—you have to say it. You have to admit it to yourself. If not out loud, man, okay, okay, I get it. Calm down, calm down. Go outside and have a smoke. C’mon, c’mon, Mom’s carton. Out, out, out . . . ah. Breathe. Sun. Breathe. Smoke. Who’s in the cage? Who is it? Who? You know; just say it.
“Satan,” James whispered, looking around. Nothing changed. Nothing happened. He took a long drag that seared his throat.
Right, okay. So Ezra says the story’s wrong and it’s not all good and evil and Satan and The Exorcist, so be cool. You gotta find out the real, true name of Satan so that you can set him free. Okay? I’m sure we can find this. Satan’s real name.
Check Wikipedia.
James’s morning dissolved in the acid of fruitless searching. He sat with his hands resting on the keys for a while before
typing Satan into the Wikipedia search bar. His list began to grow: Satan, the Beast, Shaitan, the Adversary, the Devil, the Serpent, the Snake, the Diabolical, the Slanderer, Beelzebub, the Dragon, the Deceiver, the Great Deceiver, Prince of Darkness, Lucifer, Iblis, the Accuser, Angel of the Bottomless Pit—Angel of the Bottomless Pit!—Destroyer, Father of Lies, the Evil One, the Little Horn, Son of Perdition, the Wicked One. He searched for the name of the beast because that sounded familiar, but Google returned the number of the beast, and he did have to admit that actually did sound right.
Could that be it? The true name is 666? Does 666 stand for something?
James wrote all the names down and read through them, but nothing struck him. It felt like the name would be more . . . obvious, that somehow when he heard it he’d know it. Plus, none of these sounded like names, except for maybe Iblis. Iblis, James found, was Satan’s original name in Islam. The jinn named Iblis had been filled with hubris and cast down by God, just like with the Christians. This story keeps coming up everywhere. Iblis could be the real name. Maybe. James clicked through the windows he had open on his browser, but when he reached the Wikipedia entry for Lucifer, he stopped. There it was, three lines down. Lucifer meant “light-bringer” or “Morning Star.” That’s it! Morning Star. Lucifer is the true name!
James’s joy lasted roughly 1.25 seconds. It was put to death by a hard realization: they would know that already. They would know any of these.
Damn it. The answer isn’t here.
James considered returning to his research, but it felt silly now. You have no idea what to do. He just wanted someone to tell him what it was he should do next. How was he supposed to know where to find the name? How was he supposed to . . . ? And then he remembered Dink.