“Well,” I say, trying to think of how to word it. In the end I decide to just go for bluntness. “I’m trying to find anything that will tell me how the Vestige works.”
Mae tilts her head to the side for a moment.
“That’s a little bit more specific,” she says. “But, if I remember correctly, I don’t think your father ever completely explained what makes the Vestige work. At least not in the comics themselves.”
“Yeah, but there’s tons of other places we can look,” I reply. “The forewords to the graphic novels. The afterwords to the individual issues. To be completely honest, I usually skipped over those.”
“You were more interested in the drawings,” Mae says with a wink.
We make our way deeper into the room and I am stunned by how organized it all is. I was expecting there to be tons of boxes and things stacked all over the place, but this room is surprisingly sparse. That is mostly due to the way that the files are stored.
Along the walls are long counters with cabinets underneath. Some of the counters have drawers that pull out, containing larger sheets of artwork. I expect those are some of the figure drawings that were used for reference. This archive room doesn’t just store work that my father did. It also stores at least a dozen other artists’ work. I can feel the creative energy pulsing through the air.
Besides these counters, drawers, and cabinets, there is also a long row of what look to be metal bookcases in the center of the room. However, these are not ordinary bookcases. These are all stacked against each other with placards on the ends of them. They are in alphabetical order by the last names of the authors and the shelves are designed to be pulled out like a stack of dominos. This is achieved by the way they are hung from the ceiling on large steel rods, with wheels attached to allow free movement. This is also an ingenious way to store artwork because when the shelves are all collapsed on each other it prevents sunlight from damaging and bleaching the paper.
Mae and I walk down the row of shelves and the overhead lights turn on at our movement. Mae runs her fingers along the placards until she comes to my last name: Boding.
“So, what is this paper about, exactly?” she asks as I help her to pull the shelves apart.
“It’s about inspiration,” I say. She gives me an interested look and I elaborate. “Basically the teacher wants me to look into the beginnings of an idea and analyze how it evolved over time. I figured that using my father’s work would be the easiest since I have access to almost all of his notes. It was either that or Tolkien, and I don’t feel like wading through a dozen volumes of backstory.”
“Instead you opted to go through about a million scraps of paper that your father wrote on,” Mae teases.
This brightens my mood. Up until now I have been completely serious. Rightfully so, I think. It’s not every day that someone gets super powers. Heck, it never happens, as far as I know. But, here I am, wearing the Vestige under my shirt, looking for answers.
Just like the comic book, I think with an ironic smile.
I wonder if my father ever thought this would happen. I doubt it, since he never once spoke about the Vestige being a real thing. Not even in news interviews did he give away where the idea came from - only that it just came to him on a car ride one night when he was coming home from a football game.
“I don’t think it will be too hard to find something to base my thesis around,” I say.
The shelves lock into place and we make our way down the row, searching for my father’s boxes. We don’t have far to walk because the bookcases are five shelves high and only a foot into the aisle we come across the first of dozens of black cardboard boxes containing my father’s work.
I rub my hands together and look over at Mae.
“Well, we’re in for a party,” I say and pull down the box closest to me.
Our search begins in earnest, then gradually tapers off into a more leisure pace. I’m not exactly in a rush. My train home doesn’t leave until tonight, so I have plenty of hours to peruse the boxes.
There are so many things in here that I can’t help but become absorbed.
Leafs of lined paper with my father’s messy handwriting filling every inch. Notes on plot, character, and even a few life stories that inspired different scenes. Super Guy’s parents are no doubt inspired by my grandparents. They share the same names, albeit with changed last names, and their sketches are similar to what my grandparents looked like in their younger years. I smile at these.
Moving on, I come to another box that is filled with storyboards. These are my father’s rough outlines for scenes. Not exactly useful for my purposes, but I enjoy looking through them. There is definitely a stark contrast from where my father first began his comics to where he ended up at the end. His drawing abilities flourished, and I can see that his confidence grew after about issue ten.
“Anything useful yet?” I ask Mae.
She’s at the other end of the aisle, and she shrugs.
“Not too much,” she replies, kneeling on the carpeted floor with a bunch of papers laid out around her. “A few scraps. I found a description of the Vestige from the beginning, but not much else. A lot of these boxes are concept sketches.”
That’s what I’m finding as well. Though, I’m not getting discouraged. We’ve only just begun, and there are plenty more boxes to go through.
I return the papers that I’m holding to the box in front of me and slide it back on the shelf and go to pull down the next one.
This one is heavy, and I find that instead of artwork in here, there are piles of typed pages. These were done on an old Smith-Corona that my mother still has in our home. It’s one of the things that we wouldn’t give up to the publishing house.
Before I get too deep into the box, however, I am stopped by something that I don’t expect.
Sitting on top of one of the piles of papers is a photograph of my father and me. I don’t remember when it was taken, but it was obviously when I was very young. I look to be about four. Dad is holding me in his arms. He’s so young. His hair is full, his eyes are bright, and we’re both laughing. It’s a professional photograph because the background is a solid screen of fabric.
I crouch down with the box, nearly sitting on the floor, and reach out to the photograph. My hand trembles slightly as I pick it up by the edge.
My father’s eyes look back at me, almost like they were expecting to see me here.
“Hi, Dad,” I say softly. I bring a hand up to my chin for a moment, covering my lips. “Would you look at us? So happy.”
I flip the photo over and see that it is inscribed with my mother’s handwriting. The inscription reads: My two best men.
I blink away the tears from my eyes. No need to let Mae see me getting so emotional.
I set the photo down and lift out a stack of the typed papers.
To my surprise I see the heading of the first one reads “The Vestige”.
Looking back at the photo, I smile.
“Guiding my steps again, Dad?” I say.
Then I dig into the papers.
They are dense. My father used to type in a flow of notes - connected thoughts - things that he called thinking-and-writing. This was where his main task was to write exactly what he was thinking and then make sense of it all at the end of his session. These are typed thinking and writing notes.
The first page starts off with general notes about the Vestige. These are mostly descriptions of what the medallion looks like. As I remember from the comic books, the medallion is star-shaped with five corners. Under my shirt, however, the Vestige is missing the top right corner. That is not accounted for here.
Then the notes go on to talk about where the Vestige came from. It seems that in this early stage even my father didn’t know exactly where it originated.
The notes turn into a bulleted list.
It reads:
Space? Crash landing.
Earth origin? Possible, but how? What are the details?
Obviously ancient. From a time beyond man. The Vestige taps into a forgotten power that only the Shamans or Native Americans can remember. It is all legend and there are few who truly remember the power.
I pull out my tiny notebook from my pocket and begin to scratch out notes.
Native American origin? I scribble. That is one that I never really heard from my father. These notes are incredibly early on. Most scholars who have studied my father’s work believe that the object came from space. I suppose that it’s possible that the Vestige could have come from space and also been of Native American origin, if they were the first people to discover it.
But, how did my father figure these things out? Did he have some sort of research when he typed out these notes? That is a question that I don’t find an answer to.
At least this is some sort of lead. I make a note to look into Native American folklore for anything that resembled the Vestige in shape or properties at a later time. I have to chuckle at the thought of it coming from space. It’s a very base observation. The star-shape lends itself to the cosmos. However, the sharpened edges resemble arrowheads when studied closely.
Maybe my father was onto something.
The Vestige is cold against my chest as I set the pages down onto the stack and browse through the rest. It occurs to me that these notes take on a new meaning to me that Dad’s publishers wouldn’t have picked up on. To them, these notes are the musings of a great fiction writer. To me, at this very moment, they are historical documents detailing an actual object that is strung around my neck.
The rest of the box doesn’t yield much results. It’s more story notes, and I come to the end of the papers. I collect them all and tap them into place, then set the box back on the shelf.
“Would you take a look at these?” Mae suddenly calls to me from the other end of the aisle.
I set down the notebook I’m scanning through and walk over to her. As I glance over her shoulder I can see that she’s holding a small stack of sketches. The paper is yellowing at the edges, but the artwork that is etched onto the surface of the pages is still crisp and beautiful.
“Wow,” I say, reaching out to take one of the pages from her.
The drawing shows a series of expressions for the main villain of the series, a man named The Drone. Except, these drawings show The Drone in a younger state. It’s unmistakably that character. I’ve read every issue of my father’s comic series, so I recognize the face in an instant, even if it is younger here.
The line work is exquisite. Dad used a regular graphite pencil to sketch out the contours of the character - the chiseled nose, thin mouth, and deep-set eyes - and he used a sepia toned pencil to shade in the areas that needed it. At the same time he also used a white colored pencil to add highlights to the cheek bones, chin, and the upper lip.
“That’s The Drone, isn’t it?” Mae asks.
I nod.
Mae leans closer to me, handing me another page that shows a full-body sketch of the character. However, instead of his signature villain costume consisting of a long trench coat, thick steel-toed boots, and his eye mask, the character is simply wearing every day clothes. His shirt is unbuttoned at the top. His pants are a simple pair of jeans. And he is wearing sneakers.
“I can’t believe how realistic these drawings are,” says Mae.
I agree with her. I’ve never seen concept sketches like this from my father’s collection. Most of the time they are always stylized. I look at the bottom of the page for a date and see that the year he drew them was in the early 1990’s. These are really old, from when he was probably in high school. I run my gloved fingers over the date delicately.
“These are ancient,” I say. “I wonder if these are based off someone my father knew in real life?”
“Could be,” says Mae. “Don’t most artists find inspiration in their every-day life?”
“I guess so.”
I try to take a look critically at the drawing. Is there anyone that I know who looks like this character, even as an older person? I can’t think of anyone off the top of my head. This could have been someone that my father went to school with. Maybe he was someone in his class or something like that.
The Drone has dark black hair that hangs down in a shaggy fashion. It goes all the way down to his jawline, stopping there in layers. Some of his hair frames his face, which is jagged and triangular.
But, it’s the eyes that attract my attention the most. The eyes are haunting. They look like they have seen too much. There is a sorrow to them that I can’t quite describe. I look closer at them and see that there is a reflection in them, however faint. It looks like the Vestige is shining in the bright areas of his eyes. Fitting, I think, since most of the story involves him trying to take the Vestige for himself.
I shake my head.
“Those eyes…” I say.
Mae smiles.
“Didn’t your father once say that he starts with the eyes? The eyes are the soul of the drawing. Once you get those right, everything else falls into place.”
She’s right. I remember him saying that in a lecture he gave at my school once.
I walk over to one of the tables with the sketches and lay them out in a row. Then I have Mae take out her phone and snap pictures of them.
“There we go,” she says. “All catalogued for us. Luckily technology is so easy.” She sticks her tongue out at me as I check my track phone.
“Stop rubbing it in,” I say, shoving the phone in my pocket.
19
Pursuit
Mae and I are just stepping off the elevator into the lobby when I turn to tell her that I think we found a lot more than I expected. But, the words don’t even make it off my lips because there is a great commotion going on at the reception desk.
To our right there is a tall man leaning over the desk at the receptionist. He is wearing a dark trench coat and his clothing is plain - a white button-up shirt and a pair of old jeans. He’s turned with his back to us so that I can’t see his face. But, I notice that he has dark black hair that is messy, despite being parted and combed to the side.
The man raises his voice, which stops the few people in the lobby from whatever they were doing, causing them to look over in interest. Mae and I stop as well.
“What’s going on?” asks Mae.
I shake my head and listen.
“What’s the problem?” the man says, his voice not incredibly deep, but enough to be intimidating.
The secretary, who was kind to us just a little while earlier, looks flustered. She keeps raising her hands away from the desk, her mouth open as she stumbles over her words.
“I am terribly sorry,” she says. “But, nobody is allowed into the archives without an appointment -”
The man slams his hands down on the counter. The secretary, Peyton, lets out a gasp and a few of the onlookers do as well.
He leans over the counter until his face is right in front of hers.
“I’m making an appointment right now,” he says, his voice booming. “Now, let me in there.”
“I’m sorry!” Peyton pushes her chair back a bit and I see her reach under the desk. I wonder if she’s pressing a panic button. In a few moments I guess I’ll see if I’m right. She continues trying to talk the man down. “That’s not how it works. There are more things to consider besides an appointment -”
Suddenly I hear a sound that makes the hair on the back of my neck and arms stand on end. It’s the click of a gun. Mae and I are a good distance from the revolving doors, but some people standing close to there make a dash outside. Hopefully somebody calls for help.
Beside me, Mae pulls out her phone as well. Leave it to her to be on the money.
“I’m calling the cops,” she says.
Back at the desk, Peyton stands up and backs against the wall, her hands raised high. The man begins to yell full force at her.
“You had to make this difficult, didn’t you? I could tell that you would make it difficul
t before I even came over here.”
He is about to continue, his gun-arm raised, when suddenly the sound of a phone ringing echoes around the lobby.
Mae’s phone is on speaker. I look over at her and grimace.
“Oh great…” she says, fumbling with the touch screen.
It feels like a bucket of ice has been dumped into my stomach as the man turns and his attention is now focused on the two of us standing by the elevators. His eyes are like lasers, and his dark hair falls over his forehead.
“Drop the phone,” he demands.
When Mae hesitates, he shakes the gun and hollers.
“I said drop it!”
I can see how much pain it causes Mae to do it, but she releases her grip on the phone and lets it fall to the ground. It lands on the carpeted area with a thud, and I am relieved to see that as it bounces to a stop that the screen hasn’t been cracked. The speaker is turned off, but the call has connected with the authorities. Now it’s up to us to get creative.
“Put the gun down,” I say, loud enough that hopefully the phone will pick up my voice. “You don’t need that.”
“Don’t tell me what I need!” the man yells. No doubt that is picked up by the phone. He takes a few steps towards us, but there’s still enough space that I don’t feel completely cornered. “You have no idea what I need, so keep your mouth shut.”
Behind me the elevator doors all close and the lights at the top turn red. Someone from security must have been alerted and shut off the connection to the rest of the building. Now it’s just us in the lobby and this frantic man, whoever he is.
I take a moment now that he’s facing us to really get a good look at his face in case I have to describe him to the cops.
My eyes widen as I notice that there’s something very familiar about the man’s features.
His brow is heavy over his eyes, which are set deep in his skull. Around those eyes are black circles and his skin is sagging a bit. His mouth is thin and severe and when he snarls his white teeth are like daggers, gnashing.
If I’m not mistaken I’d say that the face belongs to an older version of The Drone. Taking a second pass, the resemblance is uncanny. His hair is longer, yes. But, the features are nearly unmistakable.
The Aberrant Series (Book 1): Super Charged Page 9