by Rhys Thomas
* * *
Sipping beer abjectly, Sam looked at Tango and Blotchy. They’d managed to get the best table, the one tucked away in the corner, in the alcove near the fire.
“All we’re saying is,” said Tango, in the seat opposite him, “it’s great you’ve got a girlfriend, but we’re still your friends too.”
He’d been looking forward to seeing them after Christmas away, but now he wasn’t sure why.
“What do you want me to say?”
“We didn’t know where you were,” said Tango.
“I told you. I was away. I don’t get why it’s such a big deal.”
The way they were looking at him made him feel small. And more than a little confused.
“This guy,” said Blotchy, sitting next to him, the pores on his cheeks wider than Sam remembered, “up at the house. Sounds like a cult leader.”
“Are you guys jealous?”
“Pfft. Don’t be so ridiculous.”
Tango reached across and put his hand on his shoulder. “We miss you.”
Sam looked at the hand. “And you’re saying they’re like a cult?”
“Okay, let’s just drop it,” said Tango.
“It’s fine,” said Sam. “I don’t mind. If you guys have something to say, you should say it.”
“‘Guys’?” said Blotchy, face screwing up. “Since when do you say ‘guys’?”
Sam rolled his eyes. Why weren’t they happy for him?
“All we’re saying,” said Tango, “is that all of a sudden it’s Christmastime and you drop off the radar for a week. What are we supposed to think?”
“Oh, I get it. Don’t worry,” he said, “I’m not going to get lonely at Christmas and throw myself off a cliff.”
“No, it’s just...you haven’t been yourself lately. We don’t want you rushing into something you’re not ready for.”
“Jesus Christ, are you listening to yourself?” His voice was wavy as his frustration with them grew. “How come you guys care so much about my feelings all of a sudden? You never did before.”
“You need to check yourself,” said Blotchy.
“Oh, come on. You don’t own me and I don’t own you. Can’t you see how shit like this holds us back? All of us. We’re all too scared to do anything new because we make fun of each other. Constantly. We should be happy for each other occasionally.”
Blotchy said, “I see during his absence he’s become a professor in Sociology.”
“Very good, Blotch, but at least I’m not fat.”
“Resorting to insults.”
“Better than resorting to lasagna.”
“Sam.” Tango looked at him. “We’re not trying to hold you back—that’s not what this is about. We’re just looking out for you.”
“Why the hell is this table so sticky?” Sam said, trying to dislodge his beer mat from the wood.
There was an uncomfortable silence.
“Well, now, gentlemen,” said Blotchy at last. “We’ve said what we wanted to say and now I would like to show you one of my Christmas presents.” From his man bag he produced a small remote-controlled drone. “This, my friends, is capable of flight.”
Sam noticed Blotchy and Tango exchange glances, and the anger he’d been feeling dialed back. The tiny craft was square, about an inch long, with small propellers at each corner. Their plan was to state their point, then bring out the drone to sweeten the mood, like a cat being given a treat after taking some medicine. He imagined them plotting in their WhatsApp chat and it was almost sweet. Blotchy put the drone on the table and fiddled around with the remote.
“You can’t fly it in here,” said Sam.
“Watch me,” said Blotchy, winking.
“Clear for takeoff!” said Tango.
“Takeoff imminent!”
Sam stared at them incredulously. Blotchy’s tongue popped out, as it was wont to do when he was concentrating. The drone rose up off the table quickly and Sam jumped back.
“Oh wow,” he said.
A tiny red light blinked on and off on the undercarriage of the drone. But Blotchy’s piloting skills weren’t honed.
“Shoot,” he said, as the drone hit the ceiling and tumbled out of the air toward Tango, who tried to get out of the way and instinctively batted the drone away, straight into the fire.
“No!” said Blotchy, jumping up.
“Bloody hell,” said Sam, laughing.
Blotchy grabbed a brass shovel from the poker stand next to the fire and tried to dig the drone out of the logs. He turned to Sam desperately. “I pushed it farther in!”
The people at the tables nearby were looking over at him as the sparks drifted up out of the fire.
“Let it go, Blotch,” Sam said. “It’s gone.”
Tango caught Sam’s eye and they looked at each other across the table and many messages tying in across the years drifted between them in a single moment of time.
* * *
A few years ago he set up a little widget on his computer so that when a new email arrived there was a whooshing sound and an American female voice said, “You’ve got mail.” Sam loved it. He’d turned it right down following many complaints from Linda but refused to mute it completely. It reminded him of the ’90s when the internet was new, and it always made him feel nostalgic. He clicked the email from one of his clients and his stomach tightened.
Hi mate,
Writing about Invoice #ED0041765 dated 5th Dec. There’s an air shipping bill for £3518 and then another one on Invoice #ED0041799 for £1845. Is this an error?
Cheers,
Phil
“Sam, hun,” came Linda’s voice from the other side of the blue felt partition. “Your leg’s shaking and you’re wobbling the floor, my love.”
Sam quickly turned his monitor off so he didn’t have to look at it. He spun his chair forty-five degrees and saw Rebecca leaning over her keyboard, squinting at an Excel spreadsheet all the colors of the rainbow. Sam stood up and went to the warehouse, being sure not to glance across the office to Mr. Okamatsu, whose eyes followed him all the way through the door.
* * *
That night Sarah had invited him for dinner and he’d be staying the night. He stopped off in the local Spar on the way to buy a Viennetta for dessert, and by the time he got to her place it was almost seven. She’d given him a spare key and so he let himself into the flat through the narrow front door at the base of the stairwell.
“Hello?” he called up.
There was no answer. As he neared the top of the stairs, he heard voices coming from behind the living room door. He did a quick calculation to try to remember if she’d said there would be other guests and for a second the idea that it might be Francis flickered in his mind.
Knocking on the door, he went into the living room. Standing in the corner, next to the TV, was a man with dark hair, cropped close to his head. He was wearing a gray tracksuit and a pair of white trainers. His eyes were narrow, and as they met with Sam’s, silence fell across the room, like the shadow of a cloud blocking the sun across a farm field.
“Sam. You’re home,” said Sarah. She was standing in the middle of the kitchenette, beneath the harsh white light. There was a note of distress in her voice.
“I am.”
The silence fell back in.
“This is Zac.”
His mind searched the memory files and suddenly clicked into place.
“Hi,” he said. “Nice to meet you.”
“You too, wee man,” he said.
He was tall and lithe and there was an edge to him. The Scottish accent was faint but there, and the “wee man” comment was definitely filled with passive-aggression, because Scottish people surely don’t go around calling people wee man. Zac made no move to shake hands, so Sam didn’t either.
“Zac’s
staying here for a while,” she said.
“Here?” Sam said, pointing directly at the floor.
“In town,” said Zac. “Fresh start.” He smiled.
This was bad. The corner where Zac was standing was the one where the lamplight didn’t reach and he was half in shadow. He was one of those people who put a disturbance in the atmosphere, the way a patch of ocean changes when a shark is present. It was hard to believe that Sarah would ever go out with someone like this.
“What’s that?” said Sarah.
Sam held up the box in his hand and felt stupid.
“Viennetta,” he said. “I’d better put it in the freezer.”
As he crossed the room, Zac watched him.
“Sarah said you work in a factory,” he said.
“It’s a wholesaler,” said Sam. “We don’t make anything.”
What was he doing here?
“Do you want to stay for dinner?” Sarah said.
Zac shifted and coins in his pocket clinked.
“Nah, you’re good. I’d better be off.”
“Okay, cool,” said Sarah. “Well, it was great to see you.”
“Aye, you too. We’ll go for that drink sometime, yeah?”
Sam opened the freezer and felt the cold touch his face. It was so quiet he could hear the hum of the refrigeration element. He closed the freezer and turned around. He’d been in the flat less than a minute, but it felt like an hour.
“Well, I’m off,” Zac said.
He moved across the small room like a wild animal in a cage, then stood at the door, turned and winked at Sarah before leaving.
They listened to him going downstairs, opening the front door. The sound of it closing was like a gunshot. Sarah glanced at Sam and smiled, then followed Zac out of the room. Quickly she came back again.
“I just wanted to check he’d actually gone.”
“You think he might have pretended to go?”
She leaned her back against the closed living room door.
“No, I don’t know. He seemed on edge.”
“How did he know where you live?”
“Urgh, I told him. I didn’t think he’d just turn up unannounced.” She pushed herself away from the door. “Sorry, I was just a bit taken aback. He’s not a bad person. He’s just a little lost.”
“Well, he is a drug dealer,” said Sam.
Sarah went into the kitchenette, where there was a pile of unchopped radishes.
“Not a real drug dealer. He just used to do a bit, you know. And it just snowballs without you realizing.”
“Right. He did used to sell cocaine, though.”
“Sam, please, it’s no biggie.”
She picked up the chopping knife.
“You’re shaking,” he said.
She turned away from him. Her hair was tied back, but a few strands were hanging over her neck. Her shoulders slumped.
Sam turned her around.
“It’s okay,” he said. “He’s gone now.”
She sniffed. “It’s not that,” she said. “I’m not scared of him. I’m just sad.”
He hugged her.
“He’s not a bad person.”
“Has something happened?”
She swallowed. “He’s been to prison.” The words hung in the air for a moment. “I know it’s stupid and he’s not part of my life anymore and he probably deserved it, but how’s he going to get on with his life?”
“He’ll be fine,” said Sam, trying to soothe her.
He felt her shake her head.
“He won’t. Something’s gone out of him. He’s changed.”
Sam didn’t say any more to this. He remembered a holiday in France when he’d gone out into the sea, as deep as his neck, and the current had pulled him out. He’d been able to swim back easily enough, but that moment when he tried to plant his feet on the ridges of sand and there was nothing there, angling his toes down and failing to gain traction, the sensation of a great force having control over him, was how he felt now.
“God, I’m a mess,” said Sarah, and she laughed and pulled away from him. “I’m gonna go and clean up.”
She’d left her laptop open. On the kitchen counter the screen glowed ghostlike. The Facebook Messenger chat window was open in front of a BuzzFeed article. He knew he shouldn’t do this, and he swore he would never do it again. He wouldn’t even read what had been written, because that would be such a breach of trust. This wasn’t to check up on her, he suspected her of nothing. All he needed was an address.
THE PHANTASM #011
And the Tower Blocks Wept
Every great civilization has its own myth system. In Sumeria the gods created man to ward the animals, in Greece Zeus defeated the Titans, in Finland bears became the embodiment of the forefathers and in Rome the boatman collected you from the banks of the Styx to take you to the next world. Stories bind civilizations, shared around the campfire, spreading like a warm blanket across the lands, bringing people together in a way nothing else can, and in the middle of the twentieth century the greatest civilization of them all, the American West, created a new structure, of men, men and women, with incredible abilities, with masks over their eyes, working together to fight injustice. The superhero was born. The world made more sense with them in it than not. Earth was a hard, scary place; war reached terrifying new scales, there were weapons that could destroy the planet, economies collapsed, terrible things happened in secret camps and only in darkness can heroes be born. Imagination sets us free, stories make us feel safe and now, in the darkest time of all, they are spilling into reality, falling off the pages of the books and into the real world. Men and women everywhere, with nowhere else to turn, are dressing as mythic heroes and taking matters into their own hands, hitting the streets, trying desperately to hold back the dark tide that only used to happen in stories. All over the world it is happening. Something must be wrong.
* * *
Patience is a virtue and in this part of town virtue is given short shrift.
He waits. He waits. He waits and watches.
Our hero can’t help but wonder. What would his great love think of him doing this? And yet he knows it does not matter. He can no more abandon the mask than a pope might abandon his robes.
The target emerges from the stairwell at the bottom of the high-rise. Hood pulled over his head, he plunges his hands into the pockets of his puffer jacket and moves into the night. This night he has a shadow that is not his own, stalking him, watching, waiting. Modernist bridges cross filthy culverts.
Having attained through cyber espionage the name of the estate where he resides, the hero stalked the local store for three nights in plain clothes until at last the target showed his face. Following him home was easy.
It’s the same every night. The candlelit windows in the top floor of the tower block go dark and the target walks, on foot, a circuitous route, to a thin alleyway between two of the high-rises. It is a place of darkness, and though it might be true that only in darkness can heroes be born, for every yin there must be a yang, and villains too have their own origin story to tell.
There is a good peeping spot, higher up, halfway along an elevated walkway, and here our masked crusader waits crouched, watching with his night-vision goggles through metal bars.
Sometimes the client waits on foot, sometimes he is sitting in a beat-up old jalopy, sometimes he is on a bicycle. In the four days so far it has never been a she. The exchange takes place in the center of the alleyway, where they think nobody can see. They think wrong. Night vision can see. The lens in the camera mounted on a tripod for stability against the retinal insertion points of the night-vision goggles can see, just as cameras placed against the eye of a telescope can discern the mighty rings of Saturn. Yes. The camera never lies. The camera is a man of truth and honor.
Money cha
nges hands. The silent vigilante shakes his head. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but old dogs still need to eat. That’s why they resort to old tricks. Come on, Rover, jump through the hoop, there’s a good boy.
The target exits the alleyway while the client leaves from the far end and is on his way. On his way down a dark path, but that is of no concern to the Phantasm. He knows the best treatment here is to cauterize the wound.
This night is different. The target does not return back to his high-rise the normal way. He is going somewhere else. He steps into lanes and down side streets and the hero follows. Is there a second deal? What’s going down?
What a fool this target is. He has already repaid his debt to society and now he is busy rebuilding his crime credit rating. It is so sad. Whatever happened to the self-worth drawn from a day of good work?
He zigzags through the estate until, at last, the landscape becomes familiar again and the target has returned home. The hero remembers how drug dealers take different routes to avoid pattern and suspicion. But his distraction techniques are nothing compared to the Phantasm’s tracking skills. He has Bear Grylls on series link. He waits as the target disappears back up the stairwell, and he sees the light come on in the flat on the top floor. The target, unseen, relights his candles that glow in the darkness every night. It is a sad and lonely existence, really. Perhaps he will give him one more chance. Perhaps when he returns to his lair he will delete the photos from his camera, as he has done the past two nights. The first night the photos were blurry, hence the tripod and hours of practice in the belfry; the second time he’d experienced a change of heart, for Samson Holloway is a better man than his alter ego.
For now his work here is done. Danger lurks everywhere. Perhaps there is another adventure to find this night. He runs down the empty street unseen, until the darkness consumes him.
26
THERE WAS A whooshing sound and the American woman’s voice said to Sam, “You’ve got mail.” Sam sat forward. This was from one of Japan’s major car manufacturers, querying an air shipping bill of £4,343. They wanted to see the standard authorization sheet for air shipping, but, of course, it didn’t exist because it had never been returned to Sam. He did, however, have the emails explaining how air shipping costs would be incurred following the Suez Canal incident if they didn’t say no, which they didn’t. He fired off the emails and tried to ignore the low fizzing of dread that was operating slowly at the base of him. He was getting lots of these emails now.