The Erasable Man: Chronicles of Zachary Artemas

by Christopher Salch

  "Ah! That thing was barely sentient, barely coherent enough to hold a thought," said the Man in White. "It didn't realize what you are! It didn't know what the darkness hiding in the depths of your mind really is!"

  My body turned and climbed the last set of stairs to the roof under its own power. It kept moving no matter what I thought or tried to do, step-by-step as though I was a passenger riding behind someone else's eyes. All of my senses remained my own—I could smell, see, hear, and feel everything as though nothing had changed, but my muscles would not obey. I couldn't lift a finger anymore than I could flick my eyes to the side. The Man in White had disappeared, but I knew he was still there, walking step-for-step with my body, cooing to thousands of fractured voices screaming at the edges of my mind. They'd always been there—I knew their voices—screaming anguish every second of every day from just outside what my consciousness could perceive. They were the building blocks of this reality. The most basic particles that made up every material thing in Pocketville. The sand that grinds away living souls bit by tiny bit. Each an infinitesimal piece of someone that yearned to be made whole yet was doomed to never heal.

  Thousands upon thousands of voices, emanating from every atom of my body, from the walls around me, even from the pistol in my right hand. Only the Phantom's eye, sealed inside my left hand, was silent—a point of quiet stillness surrounded by a cacophony of pain. My mind surged towards that stillness, seeking to escape the insanity threatening to shatter it, only to find darkness baring its path. I tried to force my way through, pushing with all the strength left to me and bounced as though my efforts were nothing more than a child tossing a rubber ball at unyielding steel.

  "You won't escape that way," I heard the Man in White say through with my voice. "I'm not done with you yet."

  He pocketed my pistol and opened the rooftop door. I felt a wave of heat wash over me. Aden was standing there, enshrouded in pinkish blue flames that flowed over her body like a second skin. Her hair floated upwards, billowed by shifting currents of hot air like a tongue of flame on a candle. I could smell the stench of burning tar and hot metal as the roofing materials under Aden's feet burned away exposing structural beams. She had the matches—all of them wrapped into a bundle—held against the side of a matchbox, ready to go. There was panic in her eyes, and tension in every muscle. She saw me and smiled, relaxing a little but did not drop the matches.

  "Artemas! You're in the way!" she said. "He's coming …"

  My face was smiling. Aden frowned as she watched me draw the pistol and take careful aim at her.

  "What are you—"

  The Man in White squeezed ever so slightly, applying the four and a half pounds of pressure required for the pistol's trigger to break. The world slowed down. I felt the shock as burning powder sent one of Anne's special bullets rocketing out the barrel, then watched it travel the ten feet between us and vaporize against Aden's flames. She stumbled backward, and a second round was on its way toward her even before the empty shell casing of the first hit the ground. Her eyes went wide and her fire exploded outward engulfing the entire rooftop. I jerked my hand up, palm out—barely realizing that my body was listening to me again—just as Aden struck the matches. A sphere of searingly bright light burst from the match head, touching the others and joining with them to create an even brighter light, growing larger and more intense as inexorably as time. Aden disappeared inside the incandescent sphere. Then the roof top. The light touched the barrel of my pistol, evaporating it before enough heat could transfer to detonate the magazine. Then the light reached my hand …

  CRACK

  The flesh was awake and almost whole, testing chains which could no longer hold its growing strength, but we were no longer alone. We could feel the Other waiting patiently for a chance to strike—a chance to reclaim what had once been his. The Other moved, reaching for the flesh—reaching to tear us apart, to set my mind adrift in the Void. I could feel his desire, the hunger for life that pulsed through all those who had passed beyond. I felt his soul touch my own, tearing into me with rending claws like a ravenous beast taking hold of its prey.

  "No!" It was one word, nothing more. A thought formed in an instant, but with the entirety of my being behind it. The Other recoiled from my mind as though he'd touched burning coals. He rushed at me again, digging in ethereal teeth and claws, slicing deeper and deeper into my mind. There were glimpses of memory, clearer than anything I'd ever experienced in the Archive or my own past.

  A dark room, with stone walls, barely large enough for a short man to lay down on the floor. I knew it was deep underground without knowing how or why. I could taste the stale, dank air and feel the iron chains biting into my wrists as I fought to bring a piece of moldy bread to my mouth. Heavy iron bars—cold forged in a feeble attempt to protect them—barred the room's one door. There was a man standing just past the bars laughing at my futile efforts to eat. He wore a dark cloak—it looked black but there wasn't enough light to tell. I knew him to be my guard, and that I was in a prison, but not why.

  "I wonder how many times you've stood where I am," said the man. "Stood and watched. How many times? How many times have you done this? How many innocents!"

  Another memory, in another time and another place. I stood before an altar, surrounded by figures wearing dark grey robes that hid their faces. There was a naked man bound to the altar with iron chains and shackles—his muscles straining so hard against the bonds that they cut into his wrists and ankles. Thick leather straps—laced with threads of precious metals alloyed with lead—held his chest and head in place. I had pliers in one hand and a knife in the other. I watched as I cut out his tongue, scooped out his eyes, and deposited the organs in a stone basin just above his head. He screamed, trying in vain to curse us with an empty mouth, splattering my robes and those of the nearer figures with blood.

  "The foundation—quickly now!" I said.

  The others brought over a greyish-white marble mounted in an iron frame and placed it over the condemned man's mouth. "You have been condemned to the dissolution of body, mind, and …"

  My perspective changed, and I was blind. My face felt strangely empty—raw—and wet as though someone had splashed it with thick syrup. Liquid pooled in my throat, choking me, but I couldn't close my mouth to swallow or draw in enough air to spit it out. The back of my head was pressed against something hard and rough like sandpaper. I had to move, had to get away, to escape before it was too late.

  "… dissolution of body, mind, and soul," said a voice above me. I felt sharp pain as a punch pressed against the middle of my forehead and was hammered through my skull. I felt the edges of the wound burn as they poured the solvent—a boiling mixture of acids and potent venom—into my brain. I knew I had done the same to many others when I stood at the head of the altar. I could feel life pouring out of the flesh, my mind losing its tenuous grip on reality, and something else being drawn away—something precious and yet always forgotten.

  The images were moving faster now. So fast that I could no longer experience them as discrete scenes, but only as diffuse emotions and sensations that washed over me like raindrops in a torrential downpour. Academically, I knew that none of what I was seeing and feeling had actually happened to me—they were the memories of the flesh that had bonded itself to me and of the Other who was attacking me. Yet they threatened to overwhelm me, to replace my sense of self with the monster they portrayed.

  "You're in my way," said the Other. I recognized him now. He was the Man in White. The one whose memories I was reliving with every bite and slash of his mind. "You can't beat me. I will have what's mine!"

  "How …" I gasped out, marshaling what strength I could. "How did you survive?"

  "They didn't complete the ritual," he said. "The arrogant fools left my body intact so they could build your City from my soul. It cost them their lives."

  "It's started," I heard a female voice say, as cold and emotionless as I'd ever known Paige to be. She sounded
far away, almost too quiet to be heard.

  "Get ready," said Janus. "We only have one shot at this."

  "Your father thinks he can beat me," said the Man in White. The world around us slowly came into focus—the flesh was still bound to the altar by the same chains I'd seen in the memory, the leather straps having long since rotted to dust. Paige stood at one end of the altar, pointing a shotgun at our head. I couldn't see Janus, but felt him behind the flesh.

  "Watch," said the Man in White. "My flesh will deal with them."

  Cold metal touched the flesh's—my—throat and melted away like soft butter. Paige fired, aiming dead center for my—the flesh's—chest and sent shot scattering around the room as it ricocheted off its—our—skin. A deep breath and the flesh screamed. Paige flew backward, smashing into the cell's stone wall with a resounding crunch and didn't move. Janus cursed and jumped over the altar, slamming his knee into the flesh's chest to pin it down.

  "Alright, we'll do this the hard way!" he said and slammed his open palm down into the flesh's chest. I could feel his fingers penetrate its skin, shattering ancient bone, and wrapping around its—my—heart. The smell of burning meat assaulted my nose and Janus yanked back his hand, empty and limp, before jumping as far away from the altar as the room permitted.

  "You see what I mean?" said the Man in White, taking another swipe at my mind. "Even without a mind, my body can take care of itself!"

  He bored deep into my mind. Deeper than I'd ever been able to and deeper than any of Janus's attempts at probing had when I was a child. I was fading. The Man in White was squeezing on the very foundations of my mind—crushing what little of it was still with me. Something twitched in the darkness. It didn't belong. It wasn't a part of either the Man in White or me and didn't belong to the flesh. A small sphere of light appeared beside us, shining brighter than anything I'd ever seen before, burning away the storm of memories around us. The Man in White was so focused on destroying me, he didn't notice the new arrival.

  I reached for the light with little will I had left. It's white hot surface seared the fragments of my mind, almost forcing me to pull away. I held on tight and let its heat pulse through me, revitalizing my weakened mind. Inside, I saw a figure staring back at me, screaming something—I couldn't hear the words, couldn't understand. There wasn't enough of my mind left to understand, just enough to know that this thing was my last hope—the one chance that remained to survive. The sphere of fire was burning my mind, sending searing pain along fragile pathways of thought. That was it! I smashed it into the Man in White, burying it so deeply inside his mind he would have to destroy himself to get it out and pulled away, leaving it behind.

  The flesh screamed! Screamed loudly enough that billowing clouds of dust broke free of ancient stone seams above and filled the room. Janus grabbed Paige and ran, trying to shield her body with his own. The Man in White recoiled from my mind, turning his attacks inward in a vain effort to rid himself of the burning sphere.

  "You lose," I said. Power, raw unadulterated power poured out of the sphere. So much energy that he barely had time to feel the heat and pain of what he had unleashed on Pocketville before the Man in White's mind boiled away to thin wisps of nothingness. It wasn't over. I could still hear him screaming, still feel the scraps of his essence trying to draw themselves together in the darkness. The sphere was still there, dumping more and more energy into whatever space the two of us inhabited. I took hold of it, feeling its potential—its reality—and knew instinctively what had to be done.

  If Pocketville was ever to be safe, there was only one way to protect it. One final thing to do. The channels were there in the flesh, forged through years of practice by the Man in White. A path between Pocketville and the outside, the world of flesh and blood. My mind took hold of the flesh one last time—savoring the sensation of reality while it lasted. I took the searing sphere of light and willed it through those channels into the outside world, into the flesh's hand—a blindingly bright pinpoint of flame. The flesh fought my hold—it didn't want to die, to cease forever. I was stronger. We closed our eyes and smashed that pinpoint into our chest.

  SNAP

  "WHAT DID YOU DO TO ME!" screamed the Man in White.

  The back of my head hurt, and my eyes didn't want to focus. I reached up behind me, found a warm, gooey wall, and then discovered a distinct and very tender lump growing where my head came into contact with wall. Except it wasn't a wall, I was laying flat on my back staring up at a screaming, distorted silhouette of a man shot through with violently twisting streamers of red light. They wrapped around him and passed through him, branching and joining at random like jumbled electric arcs, weaving tighter and tighter around his wildly flailing body. He floated there, unable to move, unable to escape or separate himself from the raging energies.

  "I prevented you from blowing Pocketvi—" I jerked upright looking for Aden. We were still on the roof, which looked more or less intact as far as I could tell. The boxy little room that held the stairwell was gone—leaving a square hole descending down into the building. Most of what had probably been the cooling plant for the building lay in mangled piles of glowing metal around the perimeter of the roof. Aden was standing in the middle of a circle of polished metal about ten feet from me, breathing heavily—her eyes fixated on the tortured phantasm that was all that remained of the Man in White. I climbed to my knees and spotted the remains of my forty-five—a congealed pool of blackened metal—laying at my feet.

  "Artemas!" Aden choked out. "What's going on?"

  I was almost afraid to look over the side wall of the roof. How much of the City was still intact? Were there any survivors?

  "Why did you pull a gun on me?"

  "That's what you saw," I said. "But I wasn't the one in control. We should be dead… why aren't we dead?"

  The buildings were still there. Pocketville was still there! What the hell was going on? I replayed the whole sequence over in my mind again—walking through each moment, each tiny fraction of a second frame-by-frame until I found it. The Phantom's eye! A mere fraction of a second before Aden's blast hit me I held it up between us. It was no longer in my hand, but I found it easily enough, embedded in the remaining roofing tar a few feet away. The eye glowed brightly, flickering through reds and golden yellows as if opening a window into a world full of flames. It had to have absorbed the blast from Aden's matches or there would have been nothing left of me or Pocketville.

  "T.E.M. or whatever the hell your real name is," I said calmly. "I believe this is the item you originally contracted me to recover for you"

  "KEEP THAT THING AWAY FROM ME!" he screamed. His body was almost completely enveloped now, floating a good four feet off the ground.

  "I'm sorry sir, you've already paid me for this job, and I intend to complete it," I said walking towards him. The Man in White tried to back away from me, almost frantically, and only succeeded in spinning himself around it the air. For whatever reason, the threads of light seemed to bind his normally incorporeal body to that one point in space.

  "Stay back!" he screeched, holding his arms as if to push me away. I walked right through them to stare him in the eye.

  "You did this!" I spat at him. "This world, Anne's death, my mother! It was all you!"

  "You don't understand," he gasped out. "There's an—"

  I held up the glowing eye, saw his panic, and pushed the eye slowly forward until it just touched the surface of his head. His eyes took on the same flickering light that the Phantom's eye was giving off, and his body went rigid. For several seconds nothing seemed to happen until his skin started to bubble, and then melt—running down his face in rivulets of pinkish white. Another second and what was left of the Man in White disappeared as a puff of reddish smoke and I still held the Phantom's eye.

  "I think I should take that trinket off your hands," called out Sheridan from the stairwell. "Yeah, seems to me that it wouldn't be a good idea to have it floating around out there."

 
"So, you survived then?" I asked quietly.

  "Yeah, thanks to your pal—"

  "Don't call him that," I interrupted. "He hasn't been my friend in years."

  "Well, whoever the bastard was, he saved my bacon back there," said Sheridan. "Not sure I understand from what though."

  At what cost?, I wondered.

  "Now hand over the gem before I have to take it from you," commanded Sheridan.

  I glanced down at the Phantom's eye, now a dull black sphere. "Alright, you can—"

  "I'm tired of being ignored!" snapped Aden. "If somebody doesn't tell me what's going on here I'm going to melt this whole building!"

  "This your kid?" asked Sheridan.

  I thought for a second before answering. "You saw downstairs?"

  Sheridan looked away, almost as if he didn't want to look me in the eyes. "Yeah, I was meaning to ask you about that," he answered quietly.

  "Her mother was down there," I said and continued in a whisper. "She doesn't know."

  Sheridan's shoulders slumped. "That's going to be hard," was all he said, "Social services in the City don't do so well for—"

  "I'll make sure she's looked after," I interrupted him. "As for this!" I said tossing the Phantom's eye up in the air and caught it. "No one in Pocketville should have this." I dropped it on the top stair and smashed with my heel. It sounded like shattering glass when it broke followed, by a low rumble far in the distance. For just a second, Sheridan's pupils dilated a fraction too wide. Something had changed—something in the very foundations of Pocketville had changed, I could feel it.

  "Hey! Are any of you listening?" yelled Aden.

  "Shut up, kid!" I snapped. "Let the grown-ups talk for a moment." and then to Sheridan I asked, "Did you feel that?" but his eyes were locked on something behind me.

  "That's never been there before," he said. "There's never been a desert before …"

  I turned around and saw what he was staring at—the Wastes were back.

  "I guess everything is back to normal in Pocketville," I said.