Apocalypse Weird: The Dark Knight

by Nick Cole

  “Always be Batman”.

  And Cory, playing in Cory world, hearing that unheard symphony or some such, looked up from the closet where he was petting one of his Dad’s sneakers and said, as Colin Morris belted his utility belt around his waist checking the fit, he’d been losing weight lately because he’d been skipping lunch. Saving just that much more for Cory, y’know. Cory looked up and said, “Who are you, Daddy?”

  Colin looked up suddenly. He’d been thinking about the burn to his hand and how it had to be right where he would grip the steering wheel all night. Right in the web of his hand. And, just like all of us when small things send us down the well of self-pity again, and our larger issues rear up and mean so much more in the light of tripping, or dropping a plate, or putting salt in the coffee instead of sugar, Colin had no answer other than an existentially deep and unspoken “I don’t know some days” that seemed on the tip of his tongue, but was really deep down in his heart. Or at least, that’s where it felt like it was.

  And that wasn’t good enough for Cory, Colin knew. Cory didn’t understand existential answers. Neither does life.

  Then, remembering the piece of yellowing paper in the locker room, Colin Morris said, “I’m Batman.” He smiled and snapped the belt into its loop.

  “How come?” asked Cory.

  What followed was Colin Morris trying to explain, to his mentally handicapped son, what a police officer did. Which led to crime. Which led to bad people and the farther Colin went, heading into the law and judges and even the constitution, he knew either Cory wasn’t listening or didn’t understand and he wasn’t sure because Cory just watched a shoe with his head cranked to the side and a little bit of drool escaping out the side of his mouth. The more Colin Morris talked, the more he was convinced Cory would never understand.

  But later...

  “My dad is Batman,” he told Mrs. Smith, his then-caretaker that afternoon as Colin Morris left for his shift. Colin Morris smiled awkwardly. Mrs. Smith nodded and ushered Cory in. That night, as Colin Morris patrolled the streets, his mind took a break from everything. He just drove up and down empty streets in the night. There really wasn’t much going on, which was nice and restored his faith in humanity for a little while. Still feeling good and going on toward midnight, he stopped at a 7-11 for a coffee. The store manager always brewed a pot at midnight and made sure the cops knew they could come by for a free cup.

  Free cup in hand, Officer Morris felt good. He’d liked talking with Cory that afternoon and the burn hadn’t felt as bad throughout his shift as he’d thought it would. Talking with your kid was good, he thought to himself inside the 7-11.

  Now most parents with young children might take this for granted. They might talk with their kids so much, answering never-ending rivers of questions about the sky being blue and why don’t people have pet elephants, that those parents might actually crave some silence every so often. Don’t worry about them though, they’ll get it. When the questioners have grown and gone, they will ache for just one more question. Just one. And when it comes, when the telephone rings and they finally ask advice on how to cook a steak, or buy a house, or get a tough stain out of a good coat... well, that’s just one of the best days, isn’t it?

  But the parents of children who are special, and yes all children are special, but in this case we mean the “special” children who are autistic, mentally handicapped, Down syndrome... special children. They, these parents, don’t always get to play the game of questions. Some of these children don’t ask questions much, or ever. Like Cory. Some don’t know how to show affection. Like Cory. And so, when you are the parent of a special child you must wait, like a hunter in the blind through long wintery afternoons, you must wait all alone. You must wait so long that you forget you’ve been waiting. One day, you even give up hope of ever having even a normal conversation with the child you love more than you could’ve ever imagined loving anyone. Life? Love? The best way to cook a steak? Questions. Special children don’t ask a lot of questions.

  And so a rare and wonderful thing had happened to Colin Morris that day, he thought as he reflected back on the ironing and the question and his descent into the American legal system. His son had asked him a question. And Colin Morris had answered back and he’d answered back so much that even now he laughed at himself about the trail he’d followed trying to answer a simple question.

  Did Cory understand ten percent of it? Five percent?

  Who cares, thought Colin Morris. Who cares?

  It was wonderful.

  It was a conversation with his son.

  Then an evil thought occurred to Colin Morris. What if there were more of those conversations? What if... what if he could talk with his son like...?

  He stomped that line of thought down. Because that meant waiting for a day that might never come. Waiting and maybe missing something else. Waiting for Cory to be someone other than who Cory actually was. Wanting for him to be...

  Which is why his wife had left them both.

  She got tired of waiting for Cory to be something else.

  He sipped his coffee, spinning through a rack of DVD’s inside the 7-11. Not really thinking. Just enjoying the carousel and its hypnotic motion.

  The first season of the old Batman cartoon spun into view. Batman from back in the nineties.

  Colin Morris bought it.

  “Always be Batman” some little girl had written to a lonely and frightened soldier in the desert.

  When they’d come home from school the next day, Colin put one of the discs into the DVD player and asked Cory to come watch it with him.

  “Do you remember when I told you...” he started. “Do you remember when I told you I was Batman, Cory? Do you remember that?”

  Cory said “Yeah, Daddy.” He was watching a hummingbird just outside the window.

  “This is the real Batman,” said Colin and pressed play.

  Music began and the horns rose triumphantly after the Warner Brothers logo. And Batman...

  You know... Batman.

  Cory turned his head toward the screen and watched. And so did Colin Morris, except that he occasionally snuck glances at Cory whose eyes were large and whose mouth was wide open. His son was enthralled, raptured.

  “Always be Batman” meant always be a hero. Always help those in need. Cory understood now.

  “I’m going, Cory,” said Sergeant Morris, Colin Morris, Cory’s dad, for the last time he would ever say anything to nineteen-year-old Cory that last day as the world began to end. Cory, in his child’s Batman costume over his regular clothing, just the too-small cape and the rubber mask, well-made, turned and waved quickly and without finesse as he shouted, “Okay, Daddy. I’ll watch for the Bat Signal if you need help before I go to sleep.” Then he turned back to the TV. All of it in one motion. All of it in his rapid, breathless, off tone rising-pitch speech.

  Colin Morris closed the door to his house for the last time. Six hours later, he’d be at the hospital, responding to a riot-in-progress call. As the world began to end.

  Chapter Nine

  At six o’clock, Cory, no longer wearing his Batman costume, left the house, remembering to take the key from around his neck and lock the front door. It was still hot out. There weren’t many people on the street. All the houses in the typical 1970’s white stucco block-and-angle construction Southern California tract home neighborhood were quiet.

  Cory walked three houses over to Mrs. Sheinman’s. When he opened the door, he could smell the soup she always made him. Tomato. There would be a grilled cheese sandwich also. He went right to the lace-covered dining table and sat down, waiting.

  “I made soup Cory,” came a thin, weak voice from the back of the house.

  She usually fed Cory his supper on days that Cory’s dad had to be in to work early. Colin had called her, telling her he’d been ordered in to deal with some developing situation.

  The soup came out and they both sat in the quiet, eating together. Cory was not
a talker, but that didn’t matter as Mrs. Sheinman was.

  “It’s been quiet out today, Cory,” she said and coughed delicately behind her thin bluish wrist. Cory said nothing.

  “Are all the kids back in school already?”

  And...

  “I hope they do something about those fires over in Orange, the smoke is playing havoc with my allergies.”

  When the soup was finished, Cory with business-like commitment stacked his dishes in the sink and went to sit back down at the table, staring at his folded hands.

  Mrs. Sheinman finished her soup. Except she didn’t really finish it, she just stopped eating.

  “I didn’t feel well enough to make dessert today, honey,” she told Cory softly. “I didn’t even make it to the store to get my diabetes medication.”

  Cory stood up, pushed in his chair, and went and sat down in the rocker near the silent TV. After dessert, they would usually watch Jeopardy and then Cory would sleep in the guest room until after midnight when his father would come back, pick him up and take him home.

  Late at night the two of them, Cory and Colin, would sit in the kitchen as Cory’s dad scrambled eggs and had his dinner. He would talk about the day and the shift and Cory would say nothing.

  Then bed.

  But tonight there was no dessert.

  Mrs. Sheinman sat down after doing the dishes. She always sat on the couch across from Cory. She would read her novels with the covers of well-muscled men and raven-haired beauties looking longingly at each other. But tonight she seemed tired.

  She turned on the TV. Jeopardy wasn’t on.

  Only the “Stay Tuned to this Station for an Important Announcement” stared back at the two of them.

  “Well,” sighed Mrs. Sheinman. “I wonder what this could be about.” They waited, but there were no special bulletins or important messages. After a while, as late summer twilight surrendered to deep evening dark, she switched off the TV and sat by the lone light in the living room. It cast an hourglass of yellow light above and below the lampshade, leaving the rest of the room in shadows.

  Cory could smell the flowers in the garden coming through the open window near the rocker he drifted back and forth in. He liked the smell of the night.

  It reminded him of his mother.

  Mrs. Sheinman looked out the window.

  “It’s so dark out tonight, Cory.”

  Normally they could see the lights of other houses out beyond the backyard, but tonight it was indeed, truly dark out. And quiet.

  Cory continued to gently rock back and forth, enjoying the motion and comfort the rocker provided. He liked the barely audible squeak it made as it rocked forward each time.

  Like music he could make.

  Mrs. Sheinman tried to read but her eyes kept closing, the book suddenly dropping to her lap, as her head sunk to her chest.

  “I’m afraid...” she began, almost groaning, her voice a tired croak. She didn’t finish.

  She got up slowly, went into the kitchen and Cory could hear her using the phone. When she came back she was pale. Even Cory could see that.

  “Cory, honey,” she began and knelt beside the chair. She had never done that, come so close to his personal space. “I need you to do something very important for me, honey.”

  Cory continued staring at the lamp and its hourglass of yellow light. Its twisting beveled butterscotch glass housing fascinated him.

  “I need you to go down to the DrugCo,” she paused. “Do you know where that is?”

  Staring straight ahead Cory said, “It’s right and left and straight and right. Cross the big street. Don’t go to the freeway. Candy aisle and come right back.”

  Mrs. Sheinman’s eyes were closed as she listened to Cory’s monotone recitation of the path needed to arrive at the DrugCo. “Yes dear,” she said and it clearly pained her to do so. “Can you go there and ask for someone to take you to the pharmacy? Dr. Liu knows you’re coming. He’s going to give you a bag and you need to bring that bag right back to me, honey. It’s very important. Can you do that for me, dear?”

  Cory stood up.

  “It’s dark out,” he said flatly.

  Mrs. Sheinman got to her feet. Unsteady at first. “Yes dear, it is. I’ll give you a flashlight.”

  “I’m not s’posed to go out in the dark unless it’s a fire or an emergency or it’s the Bat signal, not just the moon, ‘cause that means Daddy needs help. I’m not s’posed to go out at night.”

  She sighed.

  “I know that, dear. I wouldn’t ask you to unless it was very important, but you see, I need a medication called insulin and I forgot to get it today. If I don’t have it, I could become real sick, Cory. I’ve called everyone I can think of to go and pick it up for me, but none of the neighbors are answering. Dr. Liu told me he needs to close the store soon, but he’s waiting to hand out medication to a few people like myself who are going to need a supply of it for the next few days. I just don’t know what’s going on, dear. But it seems serious and... well... I need help.”

  Cory stood up.

  “I’ll be back.”

  Cory walked to the door and left. The door closed with a heavy thud that left a gaping silence in the room as Mrs. Sheinman crawled to the couch and leaned her head against it.

  Ten minutes later, he was back and Mrs. Sheinman couldn’t believe he’d gone to the store and come back so quickly. Or had she passed out? Lost time?

  Cory stood framed in the doorway in his child’s Batman costume. The police utility belt around his wide waist. Heavy duty work gloves on his large hands. A dark blue school backpack on his back, beneath his cape.

  “I’m Batman,” he announced in the post-door-closing thud silence.

  Confused, Mrs. Sheinman looked about. Fear, worry and mortality raced through her like sudden rivulets of ice water. She felt the walls closing in. She struggled to her feet, walked toward him feeling foggy and confused, then sat down with her own thud on the little creaking bench in the foyer. The one she and her husband Ed had picked out twenty years ago.

  She thought, well Ed, I guess I won’t be away from you much longer.

  She patted the bench, remembering when she’d been younger and they’d picked it out at a chic furniture store down in Newport Beach. She didn’t feel like she’d ever get up from it again. Her body felt distant.

  I never imagined I’d die on it though, she thought. Life’s funny that way, I guess.

  “Oh Cory,” she mumbled.

  “I’m Batman,” said Cory. “Batman can go out at night. I am vengeance, I am the night. I am Batman.”

  Cory turned and walked out the door, across the grass of the lawn, disappearing into the depths of the night.

  Chapter Ten

  The street that bisected the nearly identical houses on each side stretched off and away from Cory. A darkness that seemed unnatural, even to Cory on this night, closed in about him. In the distance he heard a scream. Once, briefly. As if uttered in sudden horror and terror. Then it was gone, so gone in fact, it was as though it had never been.

  As if it had been swallowed.

  “I am the night...” mumbled Cory as fear began to pull at the corners of his mind.

  He remembered he must turn right first.

  He turned right, made sure it was right and started walking, holding the thick flashlight Daddy let him carry on the utility belt in his gloved hand.

  “It’s dangerous out at night, Cory,” he said to himself in a soft monotone whisper.

  He passed the house where Kenny Watt lived. It was dark inside and Cory searched all the familiar spaces of it with his eyes. He did not like the way the house looked when it looked like this. Abandoned. Empty. Dangerous.

  “It’s not safe...” mumbled Cory again to himself. “At night. For little boys to be out.”

  Then he remembered Batman was never afraid. Except, you didn’t count the time Scarecrow made Batman afraid using poison gas. Then Batman had been very afraid but it didn’t cou
nt and by the end of that episode, he remembered not to be afraid. So Cory remembered not to be afraid too. Even though he was.

  Nearing the end of the street where he must turn and leave the neighborhood to cross the big road and then walk down the hill to the DrugCo, Cory heard something in the dark behind him.

  Something scraping against the sidewalk.

  He turned, the bright flashlight playing its blistering cone of white across the grayish street, onto the washed out green lawns, then landing on the sidewalk behind him. The flashlight illuminated everything within that cone of withering washed out light to at least twenty feet away.

  There was nothing.

  Still, he heard the scrape in the darkness beyond the cone again.

  Then its source lumbered into the light.

  It was a stranger.

  “Stranger Danger,” flashed across Cory’s mind just like Cory’s dad had taught him. Stranger Danger meant certain, unknown people were dangerous. This man, this lumbering man came forward in a dark coat, pale face, teeth bared, eyes gleaming with hatred. This man was certainly the stranger Cory had always been warned of.

  And if he was unsure...

  If he was unclear...

  If he doubted himself for a moment, which was something Cory did often though no one could tell, that this Stranger meant him harm, then in the next moment all Cory’s fears were confirmed when the bloodless stranger reached long spindly arms and scabbed over fingers out for Cory as a thin mouth whispered a guttural papery grunt.

  Cory recoiled.

  What do you do if a stranger tries to talk to you...

  ... or grab you, Cory?

  Run, Daddy.

  Run.

  But where to Cory? Where do you run to?

  Cory was running already. The flashlight bouncing ahead of him. The street, the sidewalk. A slinking gray cat yowled at him, then darted off into some bushes.

  “I’m scared, Daddy.”

  That was all Cory could think of.

  “I’m scared, Daddy.”