Batman 5 - Batman Begins

by Dennis O'Neil

  The door opened, and in the glow from the hallway, Batman saw Jonathan Crane and two other men enter.

  Crane pointed to the pile of stuffed rabbits. “Get rid of all traces.”

  “Better torch the whole place,” one of the men said. He took a bottle of amber liquid from a coat pocket and poured it on the toys. The air was suddenly filled with the pungent odor of gasoline.

  Crane had moved to the open window and looked out onto the fire escape.

  “Wait a minute,” the man with the gasoline said. “I gotta take a leak.”

  He went into the bathroom, switched on the light, and glanced into the cracked mirror over the washbasin. What he saw made him open his mouth to yell—

  Batman smashed him into the mirror and as he was bumping against the basin and falling to the floor, Batman was already moving to the bathroom door. There he met the second man and took him out.

  Batman shoved past the falling man to confront Crane, who had donned a burlap mask. Crane raised his hand and a tiny cloud of smoke puffed from his sleeve. Instinctively, Batman turned his head to avoid inhaling it and leaped at Crane. There was a second puff of smoke and this time Batman breathed part of it in and choked . . .

  . . . and the Batman who was Bruce who was a child at the bottom of a well was not looking at a funny man in a funny mask, oh no, not now, not anymore—he was seeing a monster coughed up from hell with flaming eyes and long tentacles spinning, spinning, spinning, spinning . . .

  “Stop the spinning!” Was that his voice, yelling like that?

  Batman staggered, shook his head. He had to make the vision go away. Somehow.

  Crane smashed a bottle over Batman’s head. Amber liquid trickled over his mask and the reek of gasoline stung his nostrils. Batman gasped and coughed.

  . . . the gasoline stink congealed into another hell-spawned monster with gaping jaws . . .

  The window. Maybe salvation lay outside, in the air, in the rain. If only he could get to the window. The window should be easy to reach. The window was only a few steps away.

  . . . but the room was suddenly miles long and the window was receding into the horizon . . .

  . . . and bats were exploding from a dark crevice . . .

  Crane was holding up a cheap plastic lighter.

  “Need a light?” he inquired pleasantly, and flicked the wheel. When a tapered flame sprouted from the top of the lighter, he tossed it at Batman.

  Gasoline ignited and Batman was swathed in fire.

  The window!

  . . . no matter how far away it is, got to reach the window . . .

  Batman closed his eyes and flung himself at where he knew the window had to be. He felt something crack and heard glass breaking and knew he was on the fire escape. His momentum carried him forward and he flipped over the railing and, cape trailing flame, he fell. He pressed a stud in his cowl and the cape popped open and became rigid—a wing. No, only half a wing; fire had damaged the other side. Still blazing, he spiraled out and down, the damaged part of the wing flapping—

  His fall was broken by a car. As his flaming body struck the vehicle, he fell through the roof into the rear of the car. The heavy rain had extinguished the flames. He lay, gasping for breath, mentally scanning his body, seeking broken bones. None: not that he could detect. He worked his way out of the wreckage of the car and struggled to regain his balance.

  Two men, hands in pockets, approached.

  “Hey, wait up a minute, got something to show you,” one called in a singsong voice.

  Batman stepped into the light of a streetlamp—a gaunt, black figure with smoke rising from it.

  “Never mind,” the man said, and he and his companion ran.

  Batman limped into an alley and from his utility belt pulled out a tiny phone. He pressed a button, and in a hoarse whisper said, “Alfred?”

  Forty minutes later, Batman lay sprawled on the rear seat of Alfred’s Bentley as Alfred turned toward the manor. The smell of scorched fabric filled the car.

  “We’ll be home soon,” Alfred said, putting the car into gear.

  Batman pulled off his mask. “Blood poisoned,” he whispered.

  . . . and the car was filled with bats, screeching, tearing . . .

  He knew they could not be real but also knew, absolutely, that they were.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Bruce opened his eyes. He was in Wayne Manor’s master bedroom and Alfred was sitting next to the bed.

  “How long was I out?” Bruce asked, almost not recognizing the hoarse rasp that was his voice.

  “Two days. It’s your birthday. We’re having a party, remember?”

  Bruce sat up, lifted a glass of water from the night-stand, and quickly drained it. “It was some kind of weaponized hallucinogen administered in aerosol form. I’ve felt something similar before. If I’d breathed in a whole lungful . . .”

  “You are definitely hanging out at the wrong clubs,” said a familiar voice. Bruce turned; Lucius Fox was sitting near the window, his legs crossed, an amused little smile on his face.

  “I called Mr. Fox when your condition worsened after the first day,” Alfred explained.

  “I analyzed your blood, isolating the receptor compounds and protein-based catalysts,” Fox said.

  “Am I meant to understand all that?” Bruce asked.

  “No, I just want you to know how hard it was. Bottom line, I synthesized an antidote.”

  “Could you make more?”

  “Planning on gassing yourself again?”

  “You know how it is, Mr. Fox. You’re out on the town, looking for kicks . . . someone’s passing around the weaponized hallucinogens . . .”

  Fox stood. “I’ll bring you what I have, but the antidote should serve as an inoculation for now.” He nodded to Alfred. “Alfred, always a pleasure. I’ll see myself out.”

  After Fox left, Alfred drew the curtains and advised Bruce to get more sleep.

  Bruce slept for another two hours. Then he arose and showered. His hair was a problem; the stink of burning gasoline that clung to it was stubborn. But after several shampoos, the smell abated. Bruce went into the bedroom and was putting on a dressing gown when he heard the front doorbell ring. He went to the top of the stairs and looked down at the front door. Alfred was speaking to Rachel.

  “Are you sure you won’t come in?” Alfred was asking. “The other guests should be arriving shortly.”

  “I have to get back,” Rachel said, and extended a small, gift-wrapped package to Alfred. “I just wanted to leave this.”

  Bruce descended the steps and called Rachel’s name. She looked at him and frowned. He knew how he appeared: hair tousled, eyes red, unsteady on his feet.

  “Looks like someone’s been burning the candle at both ends,” Rachel said. “Must have been quite an occasion.”

  “Well, it is my birthday.”

  “I know. I was just dropping off your present.”

  Bruce heard a ringing sound coming from Rachel’s shoulder bag.

  “Excuse me,” she said. She pulled out a cell phone and spoke into it. “Rachel Dawes.” A pause. “What? Who authorized that? Get Crane there right now and don’t take no for an answer. And call Dr. Lehmann—we’ll need our own assessment on the judge’s desk by morning.”

  Rachel stuffed the phone back into her bag. She did not look happy.

  “What’s wrong?” Bruce asked.

  “It’s Falcone. Dr. Crane moved him to Arkham Asylum on suicide watch.”

  “You’re going to Arkham now? It’s in the Narrows, Rachel.”

  “You have yourself a great time. Some of us have work to do. Happy birthday, Bruce.”

  She raced down the walk, got into her small car, and sped away.

  Bruce found Alfred in the dining hall near a table heaped high with wrapped gifts. “Can I see what Rachel left?”

  “Certainly, sir,” Alfred said and handed Bruce a small box wrapped in gold foil.

  Bruce removed the wrapping and took
the lid off the box and found himself looking at something he had not seen since he was eight years old. An arrowhead lay on a cushion of white cotton across a slip of paper with the words “finder’s keepers” handwritten on it.

  “I have an errand to run,” he said.

  “But, Master Bruce, the guests will be arriving shortly.”

  “Keep them happy until I arrive. Tell them that joke you know.”

  Bruce strode into the study and to the big grand piano in a corner of the room. He hit four notes and a large, ornate mirror swung forward to reveal a doorway behind it. This second entry to the cave was Alfred’s idea and it was a good one. Bruce passed through it and went down a stone staircase. He arrived at a landing and a spiral staircase with a dumbwaiter in its center. He stepped onto the dumbwaiter and tugged a lever. The dumbwaiter plummeted down and, with a rattling of chains, stopped at the bottom of the stairs. Bruce stepped out of it and into the cave. He went to a wardrobe. The Batman costume was inside, a phantom that seemed to be staring at him.

  As William Earle hurried down the lowest corridor in Wayne Tower, he was speaking into his cell phone: “. . . Oh, and, Jessica, I’ve got to attend the Wayne party. I guess I’d better bring a gift. Get something nice. He’d probably like a blond, but make it respectable. Silverware or something. You know—expensive.”

  Earle passed through the door marked APPLIED SCIENCES and saw Lucius Fox manipulating a box with screens and dials. Fox was absorbed in whatever it was that he was doing and did not hear Earle come in.

  Earle cleared his throat. “Having fun?”

  Fox swiveled his chair around. “Bill. What’s a big shot like you doing in a place like this?”

  “Has Wayne been around much?”

  “In and out. Nice kid.”

  “Forget about kissing his ass to get back to the executive suite, Lucius. Despite his name, he’s only an employee.”

  “You came all the way down here to tell me that?”

  Earle shifted his weight from his left foot to his right. “Actually, I need information. The Wayne Enterprises forty-seven B1-ME.”

  Fox scooted his chair close to his desk and began typing at his computer’s keyboard. After a minute, he said, “Here it is. A microwave transmitter . . . designed to vaporize an enemy’s water supply.”

  “I know all that. Any other applications?”

  Fox rubbed his chin with the back of his hand. “Well, as I recall, rumor was, they tested dispersing water-based chemical agents into the air. But that would be illegal, wouldn’t it? And you wouldn’t be interested in anything illegal.”

  “Cut the crap, Fox. I need everything on the project development up to my office right away.”

  Earle moved toward the door.

  “What happened?” Fox asked. “You lose one?”

  Earle stopped and turned. “By the way, I’m merging Applied Sciences with Archiving,” he said in a monotone and then chuckled. “You’re at the top of the list for early retirement. Didn’t you get the memo?”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Night had fallen by the time Rachel Dawes guided her car off the bridge and onto the island known as the Narrows. She drove slowly, trying to avoid the many potholes that made some Gothamites liken the area to the surface of the moon. Light was virtually nonexistent; there were few streetlamps. Those that did exist were never serviced when they broke or burned out. The moon was no more than a dim smudge behind clouds. Rachel stopped in front of the sprawling architectural monstrosity that housed the famous—some said infamous—Arkham Asylum: high windowless walls and steep roofs. Rachel shuddered at the thought of entering this nightmare, but parked her car and walked through the front door anyway.

  She spoke to a guard at a security desk, and a minute later a white-clad nurse with orange hair escorted her into the patients’ wing.

  Rachel saw Dr. Crane approaching from the other end of the corridor.

  “Ms. Dawes,” Crane said, “this is most irregular. I’ve nothing to add to the report of Mr. Falcone’s condition that I filed with the judge.”

  Rachel met his gaze and said, “Well, I have questions about your report.”

  “Such as,” Crane said in the tone of the unjustly victimized.

  “Such as, isn’t it convenient for a fifty-two-year-old man with no history of mental illness to have a complete psychotic breakdown just when he’s about to be indicted?”

  Crane gestured to a wire-reinforced window that looked in on a cell. In it, Carmine Falcone was strapped to a bed, staring at the ceiling, his lips moving.

  “You can see for yourself, Ms. Dawes . . . there’s nothing delusional about his symptoms.”

  “What’s he saying?” Rachel asked.

  “Scarecrow,” the orange-haired nurse volunteered.

  “What’s ‘scarecrow?’ ”

  Now Crane adopted the manner of a professor lecturing a particularly dense class. “Patients suffering delusional episodes often focus their paranoia onto an external tormentor, usually one conforming to Jungian archetypes. In this case, a scarecrow.”

  Rachel looked at Falcone. “He’s drugged?”

  Crane nodded. “Psychopharmacology is my primary field. I’m a strong advocate. Outside, he was a giant. In here, only the mind can grant you power.”

  “You enjoy the reversal.”

  “I respect the mind’s power over the body. It’s why I do what I do—ultimately, I’m just trying to help.”

  “I do what I do to put scum like Falcone behind bars, not in therapy,” Rachel said, letting anger into her voice. “I want my own psychiatric consultant to have full access to Falcone, including bloodwork to find out exactly what you have him on.”

  “First thing tomorrow, then.”

  “Tonight. I’ve already paged Dr. Lehmann.”

  “Would you also like to inspect our facilities, Ms. Dawes?”

  “It wouldn’t hurt.”

  “Follow me.” Crane led Rachel to an elevator door, which he opened with a key. Once inside Rachel felt them descending three floors, she guessed—and when the doors again opened they exited into a long, dim corridor. Rachel shivered, both because the place was chilly and because it was so creepy—a horror of dripping pipes and grotesque shadows.

  . . . If they scare you, they win . . .

  Crane, with Rachel a step behind, paused at a door marked HYDROTHERAPY and opened it. Rachel blinked to adjust her sight to the brightness of the place, a vast room with dozens of stainless-steel tables on which were scales and aluminum kegs. Workers—asylum inmates?—were busy transferring white powder from the kegs to cloth sacks. Two of the workers were pouring powder from a barrel into a large hole in the floor. One of them stared . . . not at Rachel, but through her. Rachel was certain she had met him somewhere and then her breath caught as she recognized the murderer Victor Zsasz.

  “This is where we make the medicine,” Crane said. “Perhaps you should have some. Clear your head.”

  He was talking to no one.

  If they scare you, they win, yes, but sometimes danger is real and immediate and the only sensible thing to do is run.

  In the corridor, Rachel stumbled: Damn boots . . .

  She continued running toward the elevator. Inside, she pressed the button marked 2.

  Nothing happened. She jabbed at the button again and again. Nothing. She hit all the other buttons. Still nothing.

  Someone appeared in the open door, wearing a scarecrow mask.

  Crane?

  “Let me help you,” he said. He reached toward Rachel and a small puff of gas shot from his sleeve. The back of Rachel’s throat stung and she gasped. She coughed into her fist and when she looked up—

  . . . worms slithered and fell from the stitching of the mask . . .

  Rachel stifled a scream.

  Two inmates dragged her back to the hydrotherapy room and pushed her onto one of the tables. Crane grabbed her face between his thumb and forefinger and forced her to look at him.

  . .
. worms crawling . . .

  “Who knows you’re here?” Was it the scarecrow talking? “Who knows?”

  Rachel wrenched her head away.

  Suddenly they were in darkness. Someone had killed the lights.

  Crane pulled off his mask and said, in an awed voice, “He’s here.”

  “Who?” someone asked.

  “The Batman.”

  “What do we do?”

  “What does anyone do when a prowler comes around? Call the police.”

  “You want the cops here?”

  “At this point, they can’t stop us. But this . . . Batman has a talent for disruption. Force him outside, the police will take him down.”

  Crane was fumbling around in one of the table’s drawers. He located a battery-operated doctor’s light used to examine inmates’ eyes if they accidentally got powder in them. Turning it on, he swept the thin beam around at the inmates.

  “Get them out of here.”

  “What about her?” one of the others said, gesturing to Rachel.

  “She’s gone,” Crane said with a satisfied smile. “I gave her a concentrated dose. The mind can only take so much.”

  “What about the Batman? The things they say about him . . . I heard he can disappear.”

  “We’ll find out, won’t we? Call the police.”

  As Bruce Wayne, at the monastery, he had learned to make use of darkness—any kind of darkness. He could conceal himself in shadows or, if necessary and conditions were right, hide in plain sight. None of that was necessary here. This ugly monstrosity of a building seemed to radiate its own darkness and there were no lights on the grounds to dispel it. And the dim moon was no problem, either. An elephant could have tiptoed inside without being seen. But Batman had played it safe and cut the power lines anyway. He knew, from his earlier research, that no surgery was done this late at night and there were no artificial life-support systems in the asylum, so he was probably not endangering anyone. Probably. He couldn’t be certain, not now. Later, he promised himself, he would find ways of being certain in situations like this.