The Midnight Men and Other Stories

by Lee Moan

  “What?” said Carl, stifling a laugh.

  “You can’t go,” Travis told him, the words devoid of any power. “I don’t want you to.”

  “Travis,” said Carl, “I have to go. The flight leaves at six.”

  “The plane,” Travis said. “There’s something wrong with the plane.”

  The look of bemused pity left Carl’s face, and irritation appeared. “How do you know that, Travis? You’re just being paranoid.”

  Carl shook his head and then stepped out the front door. A white-hot pain burned in Travis’s chest. He stumbled after his parents into the driveway.

  “Carl!” he shouted. “If you love me, you won’t go.”

  Carl turned back and looked at his brother, an angry frown darkening his features. “Travis, I can’t believe you’re doing this,” he said.

  His parents looked totally perplexed by his behaviour.

  “Travis,” his mother said, “you know how much this means to your brother. Don’t spoil it for him.”

  “Yes, Travis,” his father said, “what’s got into you?”

  “He’s jealous, that’s what,” Carl seethed, throwing his bags into the boot of his car. “Same old Travis.”

  Travis shook his head, desperate to explain himself, but he knew with a depressing certainty that he never could. He watched his big brother climb into his Ford Fiesta, kiss his mother goodbye through the open driver’s window, and offer his dad a big thumbs-up. As he started the engine, Carl viewed Travis in the rear-view mirror and shook his head before driving away. Mum and Dad waved until the car was out of sight. Then, as they made their way back into the house, they regarded Travis with exasperation. They didn’t say anything, and Travis made no effort to apologise. After they’d gone inside, Travis sat on the front doorstep and cried until his tears dried up.

  He didn’t sleep that night.

  He lay in his bed staring at the ceiling.

  Waiting . . .

  At two o’clock in the morning, the phone rang, shattering the silence of the house like a klaxon. Travis didn’t move. He had expected this. He heard his father stumbling about in the bedroom, looking for his slippers, his dressing gown. Then he heard him plodding down the stairs and into the living room. The ringing stopped abruptly when his father picked up the receiver.

  “Hello?”

  Silence.

  “Yes, this is he. What-”

  More silence. The worst silence of all.

  “Oh, dear God.”

  Travis heard his mother appear on the landing, the banister creaking as she leaned over. “Jim, what is it?”

  To the person on the phone he was saying: “Oh, dear sweet Jesus, no.”

  “Jim!” Mum was screaming now. “What’s happening?”

  But a part of her already knew the answer.

  That was why she was screaming.

  ***

  After the loss of his brother, Travis’s ability lay dormant for four years.

  It came back just as Travis was beginning to think it was a one-off aberration.

  It came back big time.

  He was studying Media at Exeter Royal University when it happened again. After Carl’s death, Travis began to feel an unspoken pressure to somehow try and fill the huge vacuum that Carl’s absence had left in the family. Believing himself to be the worst student ever inflicted upon a campus, Travis was amazed to find himself in the final year of his degree, and getting some pretty tidy grades to boot. By then he was able to stop telling himself he was doing it for his parents. He was enjoying it.

  Just before Easter break, there was a great deal of excitement on the Exeter Royal campus when it was announced that a very special speaker was coming to the University. Leroy Defoe was a peace protester from the States who had risen to public attention over the past few years for getting arrested a record number of times. The Establishment regarded him as a menace, but students got his vibe—the dude was telling the truth. Leroy Defoe was already being spoken of in the same breath as Martin Luther King—hell, even Gandhi. And he was young, not some old guy telling the young kids how to get happy. With his head of dreads and gangsta rapper dress-style, he was down with the kids and no politician in the world could compete with that. To anyone under twenty-one, Leroy Defoe was a god.

  “He’s coming here?” Travis said.

  “Yeah, tomorrow morning,” said Shelley, his roommate. “It’s all last minute. Leroy doesn’t like to advertise when or where he’s gonna be next. You understand?”

  “Of course. Are you going?”

  “You bet your ass!” said Shelley, changing her t-shirt behind the bathroom door. Travis didn’t know why she was being so coy. Most of the time she walked around their shared quarters either topless or completely starkers, behaviour which she obviously felt comfortable with - and he wasn’t complaining about it, either. If it hadn’t been for her long-term boyfriend, Jed, (a rather bullish lorry driver who she was fiercely loyal to) he would probably have tried it on with her a long time ago. She stepped back into the room in a tight crop top, and struck a provocative pose.

  “What d’you think?” she said.

  Travis looked up from his course books and offered her a pantomime leer.

  “Perv,” she said, but her smile told him that she was pleased by his reaction. “Are you going to come with me tomorrow, then?” she said. “We can go together.”

  “I’ll think about it,” he said, feigning indifference.

  “Okay,” she said. “But if you do come, don’t bring any weed with you. Tomorrow morning, this place is gonna be crawling with cops.”

  ***

  Shelley was pretty good at predictions. By 9am the next morning, the campus was awash with Devon and Cornwall Constabulary. As the students went about their morning routines, there was a good deal of taunting from some of the idiots on campus, and two students got arrested before Defoe even arrived.

  When Shelley found Travis preparing his books for the morning lectures she told him he was a certified loon.

  “Travis!” she said. “How could you even contemplate going to some boring old lecture about Truffaut when Leroy Defoe is visiting the campus?”

  Travis stared back humourlessly. “I made a promise three years ago,” he said, feeling heat rise in his cheeks. “To my brother. To myself.”

  Her features softened. “Missing one lecture won’t hurt, dummy! Now, come on.”

  As she dragged him out of the halls of residence and down the slope to join the heaving mass of students lining the route, Travis tried to explain to her Truffaut’s innovative use of jump-cutting in Jules et Jim, but her attention was fixed on the parade of big black American cars gliding up the winding road.

  “Come on,” said Shelley. “Let’s get to the front of the queue. I wanna shake the guy’s hand.”

  Shelley muscled her way through the throng and Travis rode along in her wake until the two of them were clutching one of the parade barriers and cheering like delirious pop fans. The leading black Sedan came to a stop and an army of African-American security men climbed out. They checked everything from behind their gleaming sunglasses, before allowing Defoe to step into view. The noise of the crowd reached fever pitch, chanting his name at the top of their lungs.

  Leroy Defoe! Leroy Defoe! Leroy Defoe!

  The big man greeted the crowds with a grin and then started moving along the barriers, clutching the sea of hands and flashing the peace sign.

  “Peace is power!” he was shouting. “Are you at peace with yourself?”

  People were holding out things to sign, but the security guards urged Defoe on. Travis was caught up in the delirium. His heart was beating faster as Defoe came up to Shelley who was screaming his name louder than all the rest.

  When he paused in front of them, Shelley cried out, “Leroy! Like my t-shirt?” And then she lifted it up to reveal her bare breasts. Leroy let out a whoop. Shelley offered him a marker pen. “Sign me!” she yelled.

  Leroy looked at the
chief security guy who gave a curt nod. Leroy smiled, took the marker pen and signed his name on Shelley’s left breast. When he’d finished, she grabbed both sides of his face and kissed him full on the lips. The security men jumped in immediately and yanked her off. Travis held out his hand to try and get one last handshake. Their palms had barely touched when—

  It happened just like before.

  One second Leroy Defoe was smiling, laughing at Shelley’s extrovert stunt, his big head of dreadlocks caught in the sun like Medusa’s snakes, the next moment Travis found himself looking into a death’s head. Once more the skull, ringed with fire, stared back with its hollow, soulless eyes, a dream of death given life in the waking light. And in his head, the echo of a single gunshot.

  Travis retracted his hand and let out a yelp of horror, a cry that was swallowed by the noise of the crowd. Travis stood rooted to the spot, letting the wave of shock cascade across his senses. Shelley was still bouncing up and down next to him.

  “Travis! Did you see what I did? Did you see it?”

  He dared to look back at Defoe now, and was partially relieved to find that the death’s head was gone.

  But the fact was, he had seen it. And he knew what it meant. Sometime soon - anytime soon - Leroy Defoe was going to die.

  “Travis?” Shelley was shouting, concern in her voice now. “Are you okay?”

  He looked up at her, his head moving on his neck painfully slowly. “He’s in danger,” he told her.

  “What?” she said.

  “Someone’s going to try and kill Defoe. Here. Today.”

  “What are you talking about, Travis?” she said, her excitement quashed. “How do you know that?”

  “I don’t know. I just . . . feel it.” He began looking around the campus now, his eyes darting from one block to another, from the halls of residence to the refectory building.

  “Travis,” she said. “You’re scaring me.”

  The police had made sure that there were no open windows anywhere on campus during the visit. They seemed to have done a good job, as every window was shut-

  Except for one.

  “Oh my God,” he said. Without further deliberation, Travis turned and pushed his way through the crowd, desperately trying to catch up with the group surrounding Defoe.

  “Hey!” he was bellowing. “Listen to me! Let me through!”

  But the crowd would not yield where Leroy was present and Travis was squeezed out the rear of the mob. He saw a policeman standing alone on the bank and ran over.

  “Hey,” he said, breathless and slick with sweat. “There’s a window open up there!”

  The cop didn’t seem to see Travis, his attention fixed on the moving crowd.

  “Listen to me, dammit! Fourth floor of the Jessup Building! Look!”

  “Don’t worry about it,” the cop shouted, moving Travis out of his line of sight.

  “Don’t worry about it?” Travis screamed back. “There could be an assassin up there!”

  The cop waved him away. “Very funny, son. Everyone’s a comedian today.”

  “I’m not joking. I think Defoe’s in danger! You have to believe me! You have to do something!”

  The cop suddenly grabbed Travis by the shoulders. “Listen, smartarse, there’s no bloody assassin up there! There’s only the faculty on that floor. If you must know, they have an armed police officer with them. It’s common practice. Now if there is an open window up there, it’ll be the lookout position for that armed officer.” He raised his voice even louder at the last: “Don’t worry about it!”

  Travis wrestled his way out of the officer’s grip and stumbled away, angry and delirious with fear. An armed police officer? An open window? Travis was a big follower of the great conspiracy theories of the Twentieth Century. Who was to say that an armed police officer wasn’t the one about to pull the trigger on Defoe? He looked down at the press of bodies surrounding Defoe, then looked up at that solitary open window. Then he started to run.

  When he reached the front doors of the Jessup building, there was no one to stop him. All the police were lining the route, and Travis was free to sprint across the lobby to the elevators. He hit all three call buttons, but--just his luck!--none of the elevators were waiting on the ground floor. They were all resting on the fourth floor - where the faculty were watching.

  Where the open window was.

  The death’s head flashed in his mind for a moment, vivid in its detail, terrifying to behold. Deep in his subconscious, he could still hear the echo of a single gunshot.

  The last time he’d suffered this premonition, he had lost his brother, even though he’d had the power to save him.

  But what is possible to change the future? Could he alter events? Could he have saved his brother if he’d tried hard enough?

  He had to believe that he could. Otherwise, he reasoned, why was he given this power of precognition? What use would a power like that be if not to change futures?

  Cursing the elevators, he ran for the stairs, taking them three at a time, his heart pumping like a piston.

  All this time, he’d felt that following in his brother’s footsteps was the road to redemption, but now he wondered if fate had put him on this road only to bring him to this day, this hour, this moment.

  Was this his chance to make up for his former failure?

  He decided it was. He would not let Defoe down.

  He forced himself to climb the steps faster, his mind fixed on the singular purpose of trying to avert this tragedy.

  He staggered onto the fourth floor landing and paused momentarily for breath. His legs were on fire after climbing four huge flights of stairs at a sprint. He performed a quick mental calculation to work out that the window which was open belonged to the male student’s toilets between lecture rooms 4.2 and 4.3. He was jogging down the hall towards them when a terrible guttural shriek filled the corridors.

  His heart seized in his chest. The scream had come from the other side of the male toilet door. A voice in his head, the voice of survival, told him to turn around and run. But the other voice, the voice that was chasing redemption propelled him on. He kicked the door inward and quickly assessed the scene.

  Slumped in the nearest open cubicle was the body of a police officer. His throat had been cut and his dead eyes were staring glassily into the toilet bowl beside him.

  Travis saw no death’s head vision.

  It was too late for that.

  Another man was crouching at the window. He was wearing a janitor’s boiler suit, but it was definitely not the grey-haired janitor they all knew as Reggie. This man was holding a police-issue rifle, and Travis could see that it was trained on the car park below. The man turned to face Travis, anger flashing like fire in his ice-blue eyes. His face was slick with sweat, and the John Lennon glasses he wore had slipped to the very end of his nose.

  In those few seconds, Travis read the man’s mind. He was thinking he could probably get off the fatal kill-shot before Travis crossed the room. He would have to deal with Travis after.

  Accordingly, he turned back to the rifle, hastily relocating his target in the scope. Travis pounced, but not quick enough to stop him pulling the trigger. The single shot filled the room like an explosion and Travis felt sharp stabbing pains in both ears. He fell on top of the man, and they struggled together for an eternity, before the shooter sent Travis skidding across the damp tiles. The assassin whirled around, pointing the smoking rifle in his direction. Somehow, Travis managed to grab the end of it, forcing it downward. He found himself wrestling with the man in a silent dance, their grunts and curses echoing noisily around the tiled walls, the dead policeman looking on, unconcerned with their life and death struggle. It became a battle of wills, as both men sought to raise the end of the rifle to point at the other. Holding the barrel of the rifle at arms length, they pulled and shoved, wheeling round and round in a giddy dance and then—

  The killer’s face transformed into a bleeding skull. Empty sockets
, purple and blue-green flames, death.

  Travis lashed out at the grim spectre with all his strength. The man stumbled back into the window frame, tripping on the booted feet of the dead police officer, and losing his grip on the rifle. Travis watched as the grim death’s head vision vanished, to be replaced by the gaunt features of the assassin. He hung in mid-air for a protracted moment, fear in his eyes, then disappeared from view.

  Travis rushed to the window ledge and watched the man fall. He dropped four storeys, never making a sound, and hit the concrete floor of the foyer with a sickening thud.

  Travis had to look away, feeling suddenly weak, sick, exhausted. Below, people were rushing to the bloody, broken body. A woman was shrieking like a banshee. And amidst all this, a small voice in the back of his mind was trying to congratulate him.

  He had succeeded. He had stopped the assassin.

  But had he?

  The killer had managed to get off that single shot . . .

  In the car park below, Travis surveyed the chaos that the assassin’s bullet had caused. Students were running wildly in all directions, leaving lines of scattered policemen in their wake. The direction of movement was away from the small group of security guards surrounding Leroy Defoe. Travis felt a hollow sensation in the pit of his stomach. Defoe had to be dead.

  He had failed again . . .

  But then, Defoe’s hand thrust up from the cluster of black suits, offering a defiant peace salute to the world.

  Travis’s heart soared. Leroy Defoe was alive!

  He shut his eyes now, and tears came—bitter-sweet tears of relief, sorrow, and salvation. He collapsed against the window frame, utterly exhausted.

  “I did it, Carl,” he whispered. “I did it.”

  Then he heard the raised voices in the corridor, on the other side of the toilet door. The cops and the security people would no doubt be heading straight for the one room with the open window.

  He turned then, and caught his reflection in the long panelled mirror which ran across the entire wall above the sinks. His face was gaunt, a pallid hue, but what shocked him most was the sight of the rifle clutched in his hands. He looked down at it numbly, then back at the mirror, in time to see his reflection change.