Superhero Universe: Tesseracts Nineteen

by Claude Lalumiere

  “Hellhounds?”

  “Demons summoned by warlocks of the Thule SS. We have been unable to find anyone else with a sufficient mastery of Kabbalah for the job; most of the other possibilities have already been captured or murdered by the enemy. The Nazis fear the Golem like nothing else, you see. Which means we’ve had to improvise.”

  “Improvise?”

  “If we can’t awaken the Golem’s spirit, perhaps we can place another spirit inside its body, drive it like a car.”

  “Place another spirit in— you want me to do that?”

  “That’s right, Corporal Druker. We will bind you to the Golem so that you can make it move, make it fight.”

  “But—”

  “Do you know that Nazi soldiers are already on Canadian soil? They came over the North Pole with a coven of warlocks, searching beneath the ice for some primeval weapon. Our agents tell us they’re close to awakening something very potent and when they do… So much occult power has been gathered there, far more power than my own forces can repel. If they are to be stopped, we need the Golem. We need you.”

  “Couldn’t you have summoned your rabbi’s ghost, have him deliver the rites that way?”

  “No,” King sighed. “His spirit could not be reached; it went too quickly into the Light.”

  “But why choose me?” I asked. “What makes me so special?”

  “You died fighting for your country. You showed courage, loyalty, and self-discipline in battle.” The Prime Minister smiled. “Also, you’re Jewish. We’re not certain if that would make a difference to the Golem but we conjecture that it’s a safer bet. So that’s it, Corporal Druker. This is what your country is asking of you. Will you answer the call?”

  * * *

  A boat dropped me off on the Arctic island where the Nazis were located, though we were on the opposite shore, hidden by some hills. Around my neck I wore a little wooden amulet carved into the shape of an eye sewn shut. The Prime Minister had assured me that it would keep me hidden from both psychic and mechanical detection, so the enemy would have no warning before I struck.

  I moved fast for a man made of clay, fast without ever tiring. I was in the Arctic, dressed only in a simple white shirt and pants, and I didn’t feel cold at all. I didn’t feel anything except excited anticipation.

  The Prime Minister and his associates had chanted some stuff back at HQ— I hadn’t been able to make out what they were saying but with each word I had been drawn closer and closer to the Golem until I was inside it. For a moment everything had been black, and then King had put one hand against the Golem’s forehead and another against its chest while continuing to chant, and suddenly— I was seeing through the Golem’s eyes. I could see everything clearly like I had when I was alive. Then I had made the Golem’s arms lift and its legs rise up from their chair. I was inside the Golem! I was the Golem! The Golem was me!

  I loved adventure comics and their costumed heroes. I’d joined the army because I wanted to fight the bad guys, and Hitler was the biggest bad guy of them all, especially to a Jewish boy from Hamilton like me. I’d dreamed of having superpowers. And now I did.

  I saw the first Nazis as I skirted the hills, just regular soldiers with regular guns. I wanted to say something as I ran toward them, some quip to show who I was and that I wasn’t scared of them. But the Golem cannot speak.

  I nevertheless made a big impression. My first blow sent one of the Nazis flying like a football, my next smashed two of them into the ground. The surviving soldiers were screaming and I knew enough German to understand the words: “God in Heaven, it’s the Golem! Golem!”

  More and more guns fired, a whole unit of soldiers stormed toward me. But they couldn’t do anything except shred my clothes. I was invulnerable, unstoppable— the soldiers’ bullets were like raindrops, their bodies as breakable as bone china in my hands. I was a one-man battalion— no, a one-man army.

  Another group stood on the ice at the island’s edge. They wore sky-blue fur-lined cloaks with black hoods that kept their faces in shadow. Big leather pouches hung from their belts and their necks were festooned with amulets of feathers, bones, and coloured stones. Each warlock also wore a heavy swastika of bronze on a chain, hanging directly over his heart. In their hands they gripped stone knives and gnarled staves, all pointed at me.

  The language of the warlocks’ chant sounded similar to the soldiers’ shouts, but older, rougher… more primitive. I’d run almost naked across the Canadian Arctic and through a hail of bullets and I’d felt nothing, but those sorcerous words made this clay man shiver.

  A howling wind rose up, a wind that caused the snow around me to swirl, that made the ice under my feet shake and crack. The swirling snow formed into the shapes of huge beasts that howled, growled, and barked. “Hellhounds” the Prime Minister had called them, the hellhounds that had murdered Rabbi Agron. I had imagined that such fiends would be scorching hot, like an inferno, like little fiery dragons in canine form. Not these creatures, though. They were monstrous wolves formed from frost and snow and frigid wind, a ravenous pack that swarmed over me and tried to rend me with claws and teeth of jagged ice.

  I pounded the hellhounds with my fists of clay. Though they were spectral, I could still hurt them as if they were of flesh and bone. In a few moments the demon wolves were nothing but shattered ice. I strode from the wreckage toward the warlocks, and they took a few steps back in horror. They spit guttural words at one another, and then, as one, they all reached into their leather bags, threw handfuls of blue dust onto the ice, and resumed chanting.

  The ice cracked, shifted, bubbled, and then rose up, higher and higher. A huge figure towered over me, a giant of ice taller than a church steeple, its face devoid of features save for a wide toothless mouth and two burning red eyes.

  The ice giant stared down, strangely curious about what I was. Then the warlocks pointed their weapons at me and spoke a command in unison. The giant bellowed and stamped its feet like a child having a tantrum, seeking to crush me underfoot.

  I dodged the first stamp, then the second and the third! The giant was fast but I was faster!

  Then I tripped! I fell backward into the snow as the giant’s foot once again descended. But the Golem’s body reacted faster than I could think, leaping upright, grabbing the ice giant’s foot and pushing back with irresistible mystic strength!

  The giant roared all the way down as it toppled onto the screaming warlocks. When the warlocks died, their spell died with them. Only their mangled bodies remained, crushed under scattered blocks of ice.

  But one warlock was still alive, standing at the edge of the ice, right beside the frigid waters of the Arctic Ocean. He was different from his companions— his swastika was gold and his staff ended in a curved steel hook, like a giant fishhook. In his other hand he gripped a stone dagger dripping with blood. Germanic runes were carved in the ice at his feet, and around them were little piles of ash, bloodstains, scattered fish bones, and the eviscerated, headless corpse of a large black bull.

  “Golem, hear my words,” the warlock said in German. “I know a wandering spirit makes your Jew clay move; your Prime Minister put your spirit into it. Clever. I speak now to that spirit in the clay. You scattered my men. You destroyed my seidrmen and their spirits. But they accomplished their task— their task was not to destroy you but to give me time. Time to awaken the Great One. The ritual is done, the offering is cast. I have caught the Great One on a hook just as the god Donar did long ago. The Great One is hooked! The Great One awakes! It will swallow Canada! Swallow America! Swallow the Jews and all the enemies of the Reich! The Reich will last a thousand years! The Great One awakens through me!” His voice rose to a shriek as he thrust his hook into the water.

  While the warlock had been screaming, I’d been running, running toward him as fast as my clay legs could propel me. Whatever he was trying to summon, this must have been why the Nazis were here. This was what I’d come to stop!

  As I got close to my
enemy, I reached for him— to grab him, break him, anything to stop him from completing his ritual. Just before my fingers touched him, he shrieked “The Great One is here!” and then something grabbed the warlock’s hook. He was yanked off the ice and pulled into the ocean depths!

  The water began to churn, the waves rose, the ice split. A huge something —a giant undulating hill of shining greenish-black — thrust itself out of the ocean. Then another hill and another! I stared at them in horrified confusion— what was I seeing?

  I made out a huge reptilian head larger than a tank, covered in greenish-black scales and with blazing yellow eyes. The head rose higher and higher on what at first I took to be the creature’s neck, until I realized it was not merely a neck but an impossibly long body. A sea serpent had been awakened, a sea serpent unimaginably vast, unimaginably old, unimaginably malevolent. Those furious, monstrous hills were its coils! Coils large enough to crush the entire Canadian Navy in one destructive embrace!

  The monster roared, a roar far louder than the ice giant’s, an endless roar that reverberated all around me. Perhaps a roar loud enough for Prime Minister King to hear back in Ottawa. I’d failed! This Nazi-summoned god-creature was going to devour Canada, the United States, and make the Nazis the masters of the world. The monster was beyond gigantic, beyond evil. It was vaster, stronger, and more malevolent than anything I could have ever imagined. How could I, a mere thing of clay, fight it, let alone defeat it?

  But I had to try. How could I not? If I was going to die — if the dead could die for a second time — then I was going to go down fighting!

  The serpent exhaled, enveloping me in a huge cloud of greenish mist. The fumes were almost certainly poisonous, enough poison to kill an entire platoon of soldiers, but the Golem didn’t breathe, couldn’t be poisoned, perhaps couldn’t be killed.

  I smashed my fists hard against the monster’s side, the fists that had already smashed through soldiers and hellhounds. I pounded again and again, but couldn’t make so much as a dent in those impervious scales!

  The sea serpent seemed to sense that its poison couldn’t hurt me and I was much too small to entwine in its coils. So it opened its mouth wide, each fang longer than my body, and it struck!

  I leaped out of the way. Once. Twice. The serpent howled in frustration and struck again. I tried to punch it in the eye as the ghastly head rushed by, but my enemy blinked and my fist clanged harmlessly against its eyelid. Even the eyelid was invulnerable! How could I fight this monster? The whole world was depending on me, but I had no idea what I should do.

  Then I knew. I trembled a little as I realized what I had to do, a course of action alarming enough to make even a ghost afraid. I stood on the ice and held up my hands. The serpent opened its jaws wide and I leaped into its mouth!

  In darkness I tumbled down that terrible, never-ending throat. I tumbled for a long time, but eventually I grabbed hold and dug deep into the serpent’s soft interior flesh. I pounded, I ripped, I tore again and again. I couldn’t see; I didn’t know exactly where in its body I was. Was I destroying the lining of the neck or some vital organ? All I knew was that I wouldn’t stop, couldn’t stop until my enemy was destroyed!

  Even inside its body, I heard the serpent’s scream, its desperate cry of agony. I didn’t stop! I kept on pounding! Again and again and again! Never stop! Never surrender!

  * * *

  I awoke to find myself lying on my back. Above me were shifting patterns of light and shadow. Where was I? What had happened to the sea serpent? Was I dead again? Had I won?

  I could feel my body rising toward the light, the light bright like the sun yet I could stare at it without hurting my eyes. In fact, the more I stared at the light, the more at peace I felt. It was getting bigger and bigger— no, I was getting closer. I was going into the light. I was going… home— wait! It wasn’t time for me to go! It wasn’t time! If I crossed over now, who would protect Canada from the next occult attack? From the next monster? I had to stay!

  The light faded. I was in darkness.

  Three seals swam over my head, dancing together as I lay below them. No, I had not died again; I was at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean. I slowly pushed myself to my feet. It was weird to be underwater and yet not worry about holding my breath. Then again, was this any weirder than anything else that had happened to me that day?

  I tried to swim up but I couldn’t. Couldn’t swim at all. That was something else the Golem couldn’t do. But even if I couldn’t swim, I could walk. Hopefully I’d be able to climb back to the island, pull myself to the surface, get picked up by the boat once it returned.

  Somehow, in my heart (did I still have a heart?), I knew that the sea monster had been defeated. Had it dissolved? Had it vomited me up? I wasn’t sure, but I knew it was gone, at least for now. The Nazis would still have more monsters in reserve, maybe ones much mightier than this serpent, ones that would love to swallow Canada whole and the world soon after, but I was not afraid. I would stand against them. Thanks to Prime Minister King, I was no longer merely Daniel Druker.

  I was the Golem.

  * * *

  Bevan Thomas, a driving force of the Cloudscape Comics Society, writes and edits comics and fiction in Vancouver.

  BLACK FALCON SAVES CITY, WORLD

  Sacha A. Howells

  There should be noise when he comes down from the sky, like a jet or one of those Apache helicopters. It’s that awesome. But there’s nothing, maybe his cape flapping if it’s windy. He’s like god. Blue Titan doesn’t float— he stands in the air like gravity does not exist.

  “Near disaster today when the Prince Edward Viaduct almost collapsed,” the man head said on TV.

  “But Toronto’s own Blue Titan was there to save the day,” the woman head said. “Again.” What’s with the pink stripes in her hair? She’s a news anchor. It’s all over the place, checkout girls at the market with utility belts and teenagers on the bus wearing capes.

  The Channel 2 Eye in the Sky showed Blue Titan holding up the bridge like it was balsa. “Someone calling himself Mantarr the Invincible has claimed responsibility,” she said. “Be sure to vote in our online poll: supervillain or crank?”

  “Mantarr,” man head said. “Let’s hope it’s not too late to go back to the drawing board on that one.”

  “Phil, you are terrible.”

  They don’t get it, this life. It’s not about names and costumes and perfect physiques. It’s about work. And our sacred duty, and accomplishing something in life, and helping humanity.

  Maria’s fat lazy ass came in the room about three feet after her fat lazy front. “Jesus, Manny. Where’s the remote? I’m not watching the stupid news.”

  I tucked it under my back. “Like I’m suddenly chief of remotes?”

  She stood there with her hand on her waist and looked at the TV. “Always with this. Electroman, Dog Girl. Pigeon Lady. Gimme, my show is on.” The couch groaned when she sat.

  “I’m watching,” I said. The people were safe off the bridge, and you could see red beams of heat from Blue Titan’s eyes, welding the girders back together.

  “Blue Freak they should call him. Electrofreak for sure. The Comet says there’s like three Kid Sparks a year.”

  “Ha ha ha. They save people every day when you’re doing whatever, answering phones at the dentist.”

  “Oh, the bad stupid dentist that pays for the rent and the food and the cable and your dumb karate.”

  I stood up and threw the remote across the room. “It’s jujitsu!”

  “Maybe if you had a better job than at a pet store, you could get out of my apartment.”

  “It’s not a pet store. Birds, exotic birds. And maybe it’s my apartment and I let you live here.”

  She snorted. “Yeah, and maybe you pay less than a third of the rent. You think you’re all set, the creepy little brother I’m going to float for life. Guess what? It ain’t happening.”

  “I’m putting fifty dollars more to the rent
starting next month. A hundred.” I had some money saved up, but I wanted to save it for equipment. Maybe a scuba tank, I was thinking I probably needed an underwater suit. Just in case.

  I went into my room and slammed the door, hard. I’d taped headlines from the Star on the wall, floor to ceiling: BLUE TITAN SAVES GRADE SCHOOL. SOLON GIVEN KEY TO CITY. LEAGUE OF RECTITUDE FOILS MOLEMEN. When it was me, I’d buy the whole stack of papers.

  “Almost twenty-one years old,” she yelled through the door. “Twenty-one years old, living off your sister and working at the pet store.”

  Living with a secret identity is a special hell. But those closest to you, the people you love, even when they’re being a bitch and won’t let you watch a major operation on the national news, they can never know. For their protection.

  “Exotic birds.”

  * * *

  Valkyrie, the Red Veil, I don’t know what they do. Los Fantomas. Mostly, when I’m in the field I carry my equipment in a backpack, go by a dumpster to change and just hide my clothes and hope they’re there when I get back. I carried a little bag for my street clothes for a while, but you could tell it wasn’t part of the suit, it just looked stupid.

  I’ve lost a couple pairs of jeans.

  I walked fast down 46th Street. I was late for my class at Ken’s Academy of Jujitsu, my dojo. Ken wasn’t somebody who waited, and I was supposed to practice katas for my blue belt.

  A roar ripped the air overhead. I cupped my hands over my eyes. A yellow slash of light snapped through the sky, maybe a hundred feet up, and the sonic boom rolled down the corridor of buildings and shook in my lungs.

  A woman in a business suit jumped and spilled coffee down her blouse. “Well shit,” she said, and threw the paper cup on the sidewalk.

  “The Bolt,” I said. I tapped her on the shoulder. “That’s the Bolt.” I took off running. The trail hung in the air like vapor, the smell of burning hair and electricity, and I followed it for four, six blocks. In the wake people ducked into doorways and hid under bus benches. An old lady was crying with a magazine held over her head, like she was keeping out of the rain.