by Gann, Myles
‘What time is graduation next week?’
Caleb stood up, infuriated at his own inability to focus, and cranked up his power to force his emotions and thoughts deeper down. His eyes glowed brighter, and as he looked up, he saw three guns pointing at him from ten feet away. He took in the scene again, taking priority note of the man he was after standing behind the firing squad, and took in a deep breath. Without fear, Caleb spread his hands as he saw the three trigger fingers tighten. ‘I stopped a car for Carol. That’s how we met….’
The guns fired and Caleb pushed out a wall of energy, feeling the heavy wavelengths vibrating from the gun barrels unto his semi-sphere. This all distracted Caleb as the bullets penetrated about a half-inch into the floated shape, and stopped dead in the blue before noisily clattering to the tile floor, the echoes fanning out and distorting the hopeless thugs as they slowly lowered their guns. From behind them Caleb heard the smashing of glass and astutely noticed his target flying out of the building in a small blur of motion. The other five men were further incensed and rushed. They never saw him coming; Caleb crouched and sprinted, bulldozing the first two of them into the ground before using his energy to slide on his knees up to the next two, whom he lifted at the same time and threw onto the floor. He rose slowly with the final one charging headlong, but was stopped quickly by Caleb’s elbow in his gut. They were left in a moaning fetal position in less than three seconds.
His movements only slowed enough to fit through the window and land inside the construction site. He didn’t have to look far as the man, frantically trying to climb out of a finished corner of the building opposite of Caleb, fell off a loose part in the wall. The entire site was about forty yards across, and Caleb instantly expanded his energy further and fuller than he ever had. It was a semi-solid blue marble: a radiance and purity that would only be rivaled by the sun was under a blue filter. The man turned around and shielded his eyes from the dazzling sight, and Caleb—cold, indifferent, and untouchable—shouted, “This ends now. You’ll pay for what you’ve done to my family!”
“Was that my voice?”
His thoughts sounded aloud within the orb, but nothing changed. The man across from him was saying something beneath the same type of mask, but all Caleb could hear was his own world. Drive totally consumed him and his power continued its eruption; every bit of his being exploded with his scream as his feet slowly moved him forward—
“No, wait.”
Nothing mattered; the moon came out from behind a cloud, the girl he cared for woke up in a cold sweat, another breeze blew through a tree down the street, but the only thing that mattered was cornered by steel and brick, about thirty yards in front of him. Any loose object caught in the whirlwind of his radical influence was snatched up and held within the globe of his energy—
“No, it shouldn’t be like this. Stop.”
Step after step brought him closer to the dead end. He was the executioner, bringing the electric chair to the inmate’s cell, and, as the world of light and energy drew closer, Caleb saw the man’s eyes light up with a palpable horror that would stain a mirror—
“No! This isn’t right! Stop now!”
Every time the man attempted to run again, Caleb slammed his energy against the wall, cutting off his escape until there was a bubble barely big enough for the man to flinch without feeling Caleb’s searing field. The man was soon cowering as Caleb brought all of the loose objects—nails, drill bits, a hammer—right to the edge of the man’s shrinking space. All the tides of his energy suddenly stopped and—
“No!”
—every loose object shot out and straight into the man’s chest.
Caleb felt his energy completely disperse and fell to his knees. His thoughts finally broke through his power, his emotions following close behind. ‘What just happened? Do you realize what you just did?’ A fire began raging through his skin and sweat soaked the ski mask. ‘Take off this damn mask! Can’t breathe, can’t breathe. Calm down, it’s over now. Everything’s over.’
“Caleb?”
All pain and exhaustion was turned down. Caleb, seeing the spreading blood pool and hearing the rasping breath, moved his eyes quickly upwards. The bits, nails, and back of the hammer sticking out of the torso and arms only held his interest for a second as his eyes moved swiftly up. By the time his eyes finally made it to the upper chest, the man’s breathing had completely stopped and his chin had come to rest. A sudden fear hit him as he looked towards the masked face that held speckles of blood across both cheeks. Caleb’s hand reached towards and pulled the mask off without actually looking at his face. Still staring at his chest, Caleb let the mask drop to the cement, and his eyes dared a glance. They first saw a chiseled jaw line covered in dark hair, then a strong nose between two eyes, as grey as the most overcast days, and Caleb fell backwards. Every trait Caleb had ever admired about his father was now staring him in the face.
Caleb’s hands couldn’t hold his weight anymore; his anxious clamoring pulled him to his feet and ran him to a near-by girder. The mixture of the intense heat and his body’s confusion caused him to vomit. A few sobs crashed through any sense of resistance to his sadness he had left. Caleb’s tears crunched against the cement. Nearly a minute passed before Caleb stood from his wallowing spiral and heard the distant wail of a siren. He unsteadily wavered back towards the building and climbed back into the bank. The closest of the grumbling gangsters was stirred up to his knees, and Caleb lashed out. Without any power, he kicked the man’s ribs as hard as he could. It was enough to gain another grunt and to roll the unmasked man over. Caleb grabbed the man’s shirt collar. “Did my father kill my mother? Did he?”
‘Guy from the living room. Same tattoo as everyone else here.’ “What the hell are you doing here, kid?”
“You talk again without an answer, you go through a wall. Answer!”
“Hell no. He never touched your mom, kid. The asshole that killed her was a disgruntled ex-employee of your dad’s. Richard sent him down the river last week after torturing his ass for another week. What are you doing here?”
Caleb didn’t answer. The sirens were close now, and an intense fear overtook him again. His legs pushed him back outside as the sirens stopped moving, but they’d never catch him. Those legs that carried him to everything carried him forward until the light rose over the horizon the next morning.
Chapter 6
Kain Lawrence let his shoulder bag fall to the wooden floor and threw his keys in the general vicinity of the key hook. The sun cut across his path in dusty tendrils, perhaps offering its warming caress as a comfort, and was violently broken by Kain’s swift stride. The boxy living room gave way, through means of a wide hallway beyond a curved staircase, to the marbled kitchen. Everything he touched slammed open and closed, drawing attention from the two occupants of the adjacent dining room. One of which placed her hand on her belly to calm it while the other labored his joints to lower the newspaper he was reading and glowered over the edge of his glasses. Kain leaned heavily on the countertop and closed his eyes, facing his inner anger. The older man sitting at the head of the brown table folded the paper haphazardly and slapped it to the placemat. “What kind of father did you have that would allow things to be slammed and thrown around in his own house? Because it sure as hell wasn’t me.”
Kain looked up at the rich mahogany cabinets and felt the castrating, raspy voice of the older man swash throughout his head, scattering the more intense of his angry thoughts. He turned and rubbed at his head while still looking down. “Sorry, I…I had another lead…forget it. I’m sorry, Dad.”
He knew his father was drilling into his cranium with his eyes, attempting to unearth a real answer, but Kain needed his own clarity before he could share any. He found his way to the fridge and quickly snatched a soda, breaking his arbitrary vow to lower his sugar intake. The tab popped open while he spun again to his family at the table: his father—folded hands and stern look—and Kain’s radiant wife—slouching
to relieve the pressure on her abdomen. Her figure melted away his enduring annoyance; her permanently tanned skin lightened his when they were together, and a raised hump added a new dimension to her landscape—made it real for Kain, and the depth of her mocha eyes hypnotized more men than any potent drug. The sun came out from behind a short cloud and permeated the glass door across from the table, a single wide ray splashing off the table and reflecting a wave unto her stomach. Her hand moved there again, surely feeling the nearly new-born kicking in response to the gentle heat, and she smiled with pride.
Kain didn’t smile. The loving woman and the small miracle made his recent failures more magnified, and it was that magnification that brought his family more pain. He walked over to the table, giving his wife a kiss on the side of the head, and taking the seat open by his curious father. The old man playfully punched Kain on the shoulder and turned back to the table. “You’ll get one every thirty seconds you don’t spill the beans.”
The flustered son finally cracked a half-smile and attempted to simplify the situation. “Just graduate school. The topic for my thesis isn’t coming along at all and I’m supposed to be nearly done.”
His wife, who had almost as extensive knowledge as he in his own field, spoke up. “Leads not leading you anywhere?
“Not even blind-alley leads. Nothing. Nobody knows a thing about the biggest mystery man in the city.”
“What are the initials he leaves again?”
“Always a fake name, then C.W. Those letters are etched into my brain for…life.” He made sure to omit the curse he was instinctively thinking in front of his father.
Another punch rocked Kain’s shoulder before his father spoke. “You never did explain what this important-ass project was all about.”
Kain rubbed at his shoulder. “It’s my Doctorate project I told you.”
“No I mean the topic, the content. What’s the blasted thing about?”
“Oh…,” Kain was a little unprepared for his father’s true interest. He had always held a slight resent ever since Kain changed majors, colleges, and lifestyle away from the cloth and into mainstream media. Psychology called him with a voice that sounded like God’s, but after switching and adjusting, Kain never heard God’s voice again. “The official assignment is ‘do what makes you look good for your final project,’ but I chose to pick a hidden, local hero, interview him, and showcase all my ‘talents’ in one session. Of course, I picked the one guy who really, really doesn’t want to be found.”
His father assumed his thinking posture. “C.W.,” he grumbled. The older man suddenly smiled and laughed loudly, drawing worried stares from Kain and his wife. His laughter finally tapered off as his lungs were surely exhausted from the effort. He posed another question. “What events is this person responsible for?”
“Eight or nine different things. They range from opening an orphanage to supposedly saving a couple from losing their home by donating money for their mortgage.”
The old Padre’s smile grew again, showing off his long-stained teeth before closing his eyes in concentration. “St. Margaret’s Mental Hospital: about ten minutes up seventy-three, exit twelve, left off the exit, right at the stop sign, left at the next stop sign, four blocks up on the right. Ask for Caleb Whitmor. If you head out now, you’ll have plenty of time to get what you need.”
- - -
A few loose rocks rolled across the flattened surface until they fell into the remaining crevices as a nearly invisible field spread across the rooftop. It, with only the slightest hint of blue separating its outline from the thick summer air, seeped over the tiled roof border and sprung out to its very limits at each end—over a mile-and-a-half away. Everything inside the tinted globe felt its tug; it let everything move while never letting anything free. A swift breeze permeated the outer crust and all sub-layers until its very core, Caleb, felt the goose bumps of cool electricity slink across every nerve his spine could offer.
Something moved into his soft membrane of thinly veiled power.
“Someone’s here.”
Caleb opened his eyes and quickly sent them from the roof, over the field of grass and people, and right to the side of the encroaching automobile, all in under a second. He used it to look through the window, noting the black driver, and a high-school picture of Caleb. His outline of energy flew back as Caleb refocused; his sigh echoed throughout the dome on a level only he could hear.
“Someone’s here, for you.”
Caleb stood up and pulled it all inside of his body, letting a final breeze stave off the inevitable time when the wind would stop.
---
“Um, yeah hello. I’m looking for a man named Caleb Whitmor.”
“All right then,” the small clerical assistant behind the rounded desk—nearly a fortress with the high sides and bars keeping her safely tucked away—cheerfully cooed. “Are you a family member?”
Her coo did nothing to calm Kain’s raised hackles. “Do I look like a family member?”
“All right then,” she emulated her original tone perfectly. “I’ll need you to fill this out and check in all metallic objects.”
“Well, I’m just here to ask him a few questions and I’ll need a pen or pencil.”
“I’m sorry, but it’s for your own safety. The inmates don’t like new faces and could be violent.”
Her telephone operator voice bothered him much more than it should have. “Thanks.” He pinned the clipboard against one of the high walls and sped through the common questions. His scribbles ended with his signature and the clipboard finding the jailbird’s countertop. Car keys, two pens, a notepad, and his tiny pocket knife covered the sign-in sheet as the cheery girl dragged them behind the bars. “All right then. I’ve already called ahead to the orderlies to retrieve him and if you’ll just follow the light blue line on the floor, you’ll come to the cafeteria and he’ll be waiting. Light blue remember. The dark blue will have you in laundry.”
“Light blue got it.” Kain slipped the picture into his hand and internally prayed for the ability to remember everything he’d need for his topic. A loud buzz opened two doors that revealed a nexus of colored lines splitting into their respective oblivions on the white tile. The walls were more colorful than the floors, various areas showing scribbles and obviously hand-drawn figures while others had everything from Tic-Tac-Toe to a small corner mural. His feet treaded as closely to the blue—light blue—line as possible while dodging the slower, jumpier occupants of the hall. His careful journey finally brought him to two open doors with two men in white sitting at a table, talking rather merrily to a bald man with an amused look on his face. The picture fell into its hands, and Kain found himself looking back and forth, noticing more and more quickly that the only difference between the two images was the lack of hair in the present version of Mr. Whitmor.
Kain walked forward and waved slightly to get the attention of all three. “Caleb Whitmor?”
The bald one in the middle looked up—two oceans of torment and radiance looking out where eyes should’ve been—and nodded to the men on either side of him. They vacated the table and posted by the doorway while Caleb stood and wiped his hands on his shabby sweatpants. He extended his hand as Kain closed the distance, and stared in astonishment. Kain’s father had assured him that he’d known the boy when he was in high school. If that was the case, Kain had equated Caleb as being at least thirty-eight years old. Even with that mathematical certainty, the picture of eighteen-year-old Caleb looked nearly identical to the one in front of him. He shook Caleb’s hand firmly. “That’s me. Should I recognize you?”
His voice was calm: not medically calm but as if peace had undone some grip of darkness on the man’s soul recently. “No, no you knew my father, Lawrence.”
A tiny grunt escaped the taller, slightly broader man while his endless gaze dropped in thought. They both let the flexible plastic chairs catch them while Caleb continued to think and Kain twiddled his thumbs. He looked at the man’s han
d as it rubbed at his chin, noticing very little in the way of wrinkles or other signs of age. “I haven’t seen the good Padre in a long time.” His eyes finally refocused a little further towards Kain’s face. “Well, what can I do for you, son-of-a-Father?”
He smiled. “Just Kain will do, and I’m not entirely sure I know what I’m doing here. He sent me here because he thinks you’ll be able to help me with a project I’m working on.”
Both corners of Caleb’s mouth rose to reveal his front teeth, nearly flawlessly white. “I figured the old man would send someone my way sooner or later. See, he’s hell-bent on keeping what little soul I have out of the bottom of the oven. He’s trying to recruit me now with his own son?”
“Not exactly.” He brought out the picture. “Sorry, but you look exactly like you did back when this picture was taken.”
He slid the picture across the table.
“Heh, yeah,” was all Caleb could retort.
“You haven’t aged at all since this picture was taken. You must use some serious products.”
Caleb smiled and laughed a few short chortles. “Age isn’t exactly what I do best.” The short show of personality gave way to an entrancement. He shook his head. “I was eighteen here. The year you were born as a matter of fact. I’ll assume you knew that and have done the math, so how old should I look?”
He added quickly in his head again. “Thirty-eight or thirty-nine by my count.”
“The former is closer for another few months. I told you I sucked at aging.”
‘What the hell is he talking about?’ Kain sat back and quickly dropped whatever riddle he was trying to convey. ‘He is in an insane asylum….’ “Anyways, I guess I’m here to ask you if you know anything about these events.” He pulled a small slip of paper from his pocket, drawing no attention at all from the orderlies.