by Jeff Hirsch
“You should go,” I said. “You don’t want to miss your dance.”
Mom looked into a mirror that hung by the window and smoothed her hair. When she was done, she crossed to the porch door, pausing there with her palm pressed against the glass.
“Do you remember a game called Monopoly?”
I nodded.
“We have a tournament every Monday night,” she said. “Fred and I and our friends. Maybe you could join us sometime. And then we could talk more. The three of us. I think I’d like that. I think we both would.”
A chant started up outside. “Sa-ra! Sa-ra! Sa-ra!”
She smiled. “Guess that’s my cue.”
“Don’t worry about the dance,” I said. “You’re going to be great.”
“Fingers crossed.”
The crowd cheered as Mom went out the porch door and waved regally. I watched from the window as she descended the stairs, and then she and Fred moved out to the middle of the yard. At first Mom clutched at Fred, resting her head on his chest as he turned them through the grass and whispered in her ear. But then something seemed to ease in her, and her long legs swept across the grass, her toes pointed. Her chest rose and her head and shoulders fell back, making her body into this perfect swanlike curve. Fred responded immediately. His body straightened and lifted. It was as if the music had moved through the air and into Mom and then, through her, into him. Their bodies melded together and whirled through space, perfectly unmoored, gliding. As they came near the window, Mom looked up at me and smiled a radiant, laughing smile. The strangeness of it was overwhelming. It was her, but not her. It was then. It was before.
There was a buzz behind me. I returned to the kitchen and took the phone from my backpack. A text from Gonzalez: Front gate. One hour.
I stood in the kitchen imagining all the different ways my future could branch out from that single point. Go to the gate and leave Black River. Stay here with Mom and Fred. I saw the three of us sitting at the kitchen table with the Monopoly board between us. We’d play deep into the night and end up draped over the furniture in the living room, talking.
But then how long would it be before Mom asked about our life before? And then, how long until I told her? What good would it do, I wondered, to bring that old world into this one? Would she be any happier? Would any of us?
The music surged. I turned back to the window. The rest of the crowd had joined in the dance, making the backyard into a universe of spinning bodies. I caught one last glimpse of Mom and Fred, and then they vanished into it. It was a future that belonged to them and them alone. I had no right to take it away.
My phone buzzed again. There was one last thing I had to do before I left Black River. I lifted the backpack onto my shoulder and walked out the front door.
A few minutes later I was standing on our front lawn. It didn’t surprise me. By then the house’s ability to draw me back seemed perfectly natural. I climbed the porch steps and went inside, letting the same invisible hand that had guided me across Black River lead me up the stairs, past your room and mine and Mom and Dad’s. I didn’t stop until I came to Dad’s office.
The door was closed. Covered in months of dust that turned the white wood an ashy gray. I took hold of the cool metal knob. The works inside it creaked as the bolt drew back into its housing. A crack of light appeared between the wall and the door. I let go and it swung open. There was a sigh as the air trapped inside the room was released.
I stepped into Dad’s office.
All his things were still there, exactly where he must have left them when he walked out the morning of the sixteenth. I ran my hand along the spines of the books on his shelves. Countless sci-fi and horror paperbacks, box-set DVDs, and comics in tall collected editions. All of them were set back from the edge to make room for the horde of souvenirs he’d picked up at various cons and festivals over the years. Day of the Dead skulls; toy cars; a set of juggling balls; the small, grim army of ceramic superheroes that guarded all of it. Batman. Superman. Captain America. Dr. Strange. Cardinal.
I went to a window and forced it open. A grass-scented breeze swept in, carrying the hum of distant voices. I leaned over the sill and took three slow breaths. When my head cleared, I stood up with my back to the room. I was positive that if I turned around, I’d find Dad bent over his desk like Smaug in his den, head down, his massive frame curled over the computer as he tapped out his scripts.
Of course, when I did turn, there was nothing but a black, armless chair tucked under a desk. Dad’s laptop was closed, and next to it was an empty Superman mug, an uncapped fountain pen, and the lumpy ceramic cup I’d made him in the third grade. It was filled with a bouquet of black pencils. The words FOR DAD were badly painted on one side in green and red. I’d given it to him for Christmas, wrapped in the pages of the Sunday comics. I remembered him unpacking it the day we moved to Black River and then filling it with great ceremony. His favorite pencils. A fistful of change. And something else. Something he drew from his pocket and dropped inside. Something that landed with a soft ping.
I dumped the pencils and the change out onto the desk and sorted through them until I found what I was looking for. A key. Thin and delicate. I turned it over in my fingers, then took it to the filing cabinet by the desk. My hands trembled as I slipped it into the lock. There was a click, and the top drawer popped open. It was empty except for a single brown folder labeled
THE BROTHERHOOD OF WINGS
—Volume 5—
THE HAUNTED PLAIN
There were six manila envelopes inside, one for each of the issues that would make up the final volume. The first two envelopes contained completed scripts and rough sketches. The next three had general notes and an outline. I sank to the floor, spread the papers out in front of me, and began to read.
Cardinal was bloody and battered, and his armor was falling to pieces when he was exiled to the Gardens of Null, but he didn’t give up. He knew that he had the only thing he needed—time. The Volanti wouldn’t arrive for another year, and he was determined to be ready for them. He spent the following months scavenging the Gardens for any piece of technology that might help him repair his armor, all the while fending off attacks by radiation-mad gangs of mutants and the vicious Hounds of Null.
As Cardinal toiled in his cave workshop, other exiles living in the Gardens drifted into the story. They were all funhouse versions of the Brotherhood. The fat and jolly, if slightly dim Brother Handcrank was clearly meant to be Goldfinch, and Jumpin’ Jerry Johnson was an even younger and more innocent take on Blue Jay. The others were there too—Black Eagle, Rex Raven—all except for Sally Sparrow. Her absence was like a dark hole in the center of the story.
Cardinal pushed the exiles away. He insisted that his work was too important to be interrupted, but it was obvious that their presence reminded him too much of his dead friends. One night, in the midst of a furious radiation storm, a gang of mutants raided the workshop. Cardinal was on the verge of defeat until Jumpin’ Jerry and his friends swarmed the cave and saved Cardinal’s life. Afterward, as they tended his wounds, Cardinal told them about his mission. In the end he was convinced that he couldn’t beat a force like the Volanti alone, and he agreed to make them into a new Brotherhood. The fourth issue ended with Cardinal sitting down at his workbench to begin construction of their armor.
After that, all that was left were notes and scraps of dialogue. The fifth issue was to take place on the day of the Volanti’s arrival.
“Gee whiz, Cardinal! What’s gonna happen to you when we win?” Jumpin’ Jerry asked in a bit of dialogue Dad had scratched out on a napkin. “I mean, when we knock the stuffing out of these jerks, Future You won’t have a reason to come back in time, which means you won’t be here to train us to beat the jerks in the first place!”
“Easy, Jerry,” Cardinal said. “You think about this stuff too much, you’ll break your brainpan. I think time has a way of sorting itself. As for me, when we win and the future is put right
again, I guess, well, I guess I’ll just . . . disappear.”
I opened the last envelope. Issue six. Inside, there was nothing but a single sheet of paper. Dad’s only note for the final issue was written in a scrawl so dark that it almost ripped through the page.
At the battle’s decisive moment Jerry Johnson is revealed to be an advance agent of the Volanti. He betrays Cardinal and the Brotherhood. All but Cardinal are killed. The Volanti land, and the transformation of Abaddon into Liberty City begins. Cardinal, barely clinging to life, lives out the rest of his days alone, trapped in the Gardens of Null.
The page fell out of my hands. It fluttered through the air and landed on the pile in front of me.
29
DR. LASSITER’S OFFICE takes up the top floor of a building so tall that when I stood at the windows in the lobby, I could see all the way to where the Hudson and the East River meet at the southern tip of Manhattan. Brooklyn was locked in fog on the opposite shore.
“Mr. Cassidy?”
The receptionist stood at her desk by an open door, a clipboard in her hands.
“This way, please.”
Lassiter’s private office was full of sunlight that streamed in through a window behind his desk. The receptionist said the doctor would be right with me, then closed the door. I took a seat. Muffled footsteps passed down the hallway outside. My fingers drummed against my leg. I unzipped my backpack and pulled out Dad’s folder.
I’d read every page of his notes a dozen times since I left Black River, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself from going over them again and again. I thought if I studied every word, every line of dialogue, every sketch, I might find some hint of the person Dad used to be. The one who’d trooped off to the diner with us on Sunday mornings and laughed as we all squeezed into the booth and paid for short stacks and bacon with handfuls of quarters. The one who wrote those early Brotherhood issues in the corner of the living room, while we played video games and Mom cheered us on.
No matter how hard I looked, that man wasn’t there. Maybe it was the unfairness of it that bothered me the most. Dad had dreamed about writing The Brotherhood of Wings ever since he’d been a little kid, dazzled by old Justice League and Legion of Super Heroes comics. It was his story. It wasn’t right that the last chapters were written by a complete stranger.
There was a hum as the air conditioning cycled on over my head. I slipped the folder into my pack, trading it for Freeman’s letter. Strange how heavy a couple sheets of paper and an envelope could be. I turned it over in my hands. What had Freeman called his library cards? Letters of transit? I guess this letter was that too. A passport to a different world. Another me.
I put the envelope back and went to the window. This one faced north, looking out over Central Park and Harlem and then past that to where the skyscrapers disappeared. I could just make out a few hills rising in the gray distance. Even though Black River was hours away, I picked out the tallest one and told myself it was Lucy’s Promise.
My hand went to the key hanging around my neck. It was cool and heavy. I closed my fingers around it and shut my eyes.
I was on the bridge over Black River Falls, looking up at Lucy’s Promise, its green lap and shoulders. And then I was in the camp, standing in the middle of the four cabins with the trail behind me and the woods all around. I could smell dark earth and rainwater and the papery scent of old leaves. Everything was just the way it used to be, except now it was all so empty and so quiet. The next thing I knew, I was flying off the mountain and over Black River. I saw everyone as they were in that moment. Freeman in his library, shuffling between stacks of books that weren’t really books but alternate realities cast in ink and paper. Mom kneeling in her garden, her hands in the earth, Fred by her side. I saw Hannah next. She was standing onstage, surrounded by velvety darkness, a silver crown circling her green hair. The kids were all around her. On the stage. In the wings. Watching from the front row, wide-eyed and grinning. I whispered their names one by one. Makela. Astrid. Tomiko. Isaac. Eliot. Ren. Crystal. Jenna. Carrie. DeShaun. Ricky. Margo. Benny.
Footsteps clicked down the hallway behind me and stopped on the other side of Dr. Lassiter’s door. Voices murmured. Someone laughed. I pulled Freeman’s journals out of my pack and stacked them on the desk. As the doorknob started to turn, I reached back in for Freeman’s letter. Dr. Lassiter stepped into the room. He was younger-looking than I expected. Tall and thin, with sandy hair and clear gray eyes that reminded me, with a jolt, of Greer’s.
“So,” he said, laying his hands flat on his desk. “What can I do for you, Mr. Cassidy?”
Dr. Lassiter smiled. The sky over his shoulder was a clear blue. Freeman’s letter slipped out of my fingers.
That was almost two weeks ago. Dr. Lassiter and I talked for a long time that first morning. I’m pretty sure he thought the whole thing was a prank until he read Freeman’s journals. He got excited after that and told me I needed to stay in town for a while so he could scan my brain and run all these tests on my blood. He keeps saying there aren’t any guarantees, but it’s clear he thinks he’s onto something.
Whatever happens, once he’s done with his work, we’re going to pack up all of Freeman’s journals and give them to this reporter he knows at the New York Times. Man, watching that bomb go off is going to be fun.
So how’s day-to-day life for a human test subject? Not too bad, actually. Lassiter got me a room on the very top floor of one of those midtown hotels that’s like a hundred stories tall and has all the cable TV and room service a guy could want. That’s where I am now, sitting at a desk by the window, looking out at the city and writing to you.
Every morning I leave the hotel and head to Lassiter’s office for whatever tests he’s come up with that day. When he’s done I go for a walk. I’ve probably walked the entire island of Manhattan at this point. It’s strange being surrounded by so many people again. Having concrete under my feet instead of dirt. Traffic lights and street signs instead of trees. More than once I’ve lost my bearings and turned to look for Lucy’s Promise—as if some part of me thinks I’ll find it towering over the Empire State Building or St. Patrick’s Cathedral—but of course it’s never there, and I have to find my way without it.
I always seem to end up in Brooklyn, at that park we went to the day Mom and Dad told us we were moving to Black River. I get an ice cream, grab a seat on a bench, and write to you. When I’m done, I take out Freeman’s letter and try to figure out why I haven’t given it to Lassiter yet. I mean to do it every morning, but then every afternoon I walk out of his office and it’s still sitting in my backpack. When I get to my hotel room, I put it on my nightstand and fall asleep staring at it.
When I haven’t been writing to you, or walking, or getting poked with needles by a mad scientist, I’ve been helping Gonzalez get ready for the big meeting he has with Marvel. Now that the Guard’s out of Black River he’s back to the usual one weekend of training a month. In between, he works on his comics and strives to be as civilian as humanly possible. His hair has gone a little shaggy, and he’s grown what he insists is a beard, but it’s really just these weird patches of stubble.
He flipped when I told him what he was going to be pitching to Marvel. I laid everything out for him not long after I got to the city. Dad’s notes and sketches for Volume Five, plus a few additions of my own. He got to work immediately and has barely taken a break since.
It’s a clear night and Manhattan is all lit up. I keep thinking about that time we went to see Mom dance—how the four of us walked to that restaurant afterward dressed up in our fancy clothes. Dad kept telling us to keep our eyes open because at any moment we might turn a corner and see Spiderman grappling with Dr. Octopus or Captain Marvel rocketing overhead. You and I both laughed, thinking we were too big for things like that, but we kept watch anyway, because who knew, maybe the world was just waiting to surprise us. I wouldn’t have thought I’d feel the same way after all these years, but even now, when I look down
at the lights of the city, they sometimes seem to flicker, like a dark form is passing between us, like a winged man is soaring through the sky.
Earlier tonight, I stopped by my nightstand and I picked up Freeman’s letter. I stood there a long time, turning it over and over in my hands.
I’d hoped that writing to you would help me make sense of everything, that it’d give me the guts to finally pull the envelope out of my bag and slide it across Lassiter’s desk. But it seems like just the opposite has happened. The idea of forgetting everything, even the worst things, scares me more than remembering.
The envelope tore easily enough. I did it once, and then I stacked the halves together and did it again. When I was done I let the pieces fall into the trash.
Anyway, I guess I better get going. I told Gonzalez I’d have dinner with him and his folks and then help him work on his pitch. I’d say I’ll write more later, but the truth is, there’s another letter I want to write. I think it’s about time I left you alone and got started on it.
Love you, brother,
Cardinal
Dear Hannah,
You wanted to know how my dad’s story ended. This is what I came up with.
Cardinal retreats to a cave at the summit of Ghost Mountain, a lone peak at the edge of the Gardens of Null. He watches as Abaddon slowly transforms into Liberty City. Its great towers rise and the burnt red skies turn blue. A canal is dug through the Gardens of Null and soon they become green and lush.
Decades pass. Cardinal turns seventy. Then eighty. Then ninety. He becomes stooped and frail. He rarely leaves his cave. He sees no one.
One day a family is picnicking in the meadow that lies at the foot of Ghost Mountain. A boy dares his little sister to climb it and seek out the crazy old hermit they say haunts the caves. He thinks she’ll be too scared to do it, but he doesn’t know his little sister very well.