Whilly nodded, agreeing that it was probably the simplest way to proceed.
“Aren’t you excited, Whilly?” the boy blurted out then, hardly even waiting for an answer before adding, “I am.”
Dragons don’t get excited, Bradley Wallace, Whilly told him evenly. But I will enjoy doing things again, like we did in Hawaii.
Bradley Wallace’s eyes were wide with hope. “Maybe now I’ll finally fit in, huh?” But then his face clouded like a thunderhead. “Even if I am a freak.” His voice was tinged with regret.
Another problem with being a superhero struck Bradley Wallace before they even went out for the first time - scheduling.
What with school resuming the next day, “Dark Shadows” every afternoon, his homework, and keeping his parents from becoming suspicious, he realized how little time he’d have for saving people. At least he wouldn’t be working for Mr. O’Conner until sometime in March. The old man called it his “hiatus,” which lasted from Halloween to March every year. Usually Bradley Wallace never saw him during those months, and this year had been no exception. But this year he’d grown closer to the old man, or at least felt he had, and he missed that comforting presence in
his daily life. He knew approximately where Mr. O’Conner lived, though he’d never been there, and it wasn’t far by bicycle. He definitely should drop in and visit some day, he decided. Yeah, surprise the old man. That is, when he had the time.
Anticipating scheduling problems, Bradley Wallace tentatively decided to limit saving people to weekends and maybe a couple of weeknights. Whilly reluctantly agreed to that scenario, rationalizing that they needed to get the hang of rescuing before going into it full time. The boy smiled, and returned home that New Year’s afternoon feeling more elated than he had since Hawaii. He even stopped at the Gully, which he hadn’t visited for months, to watch the magnificent orange and red sunset. He’d been so busy lately he hadn’t even spent much time watching sunsets, and he never wanted to get that busy. No way. He stayed and watched until the sun was nothing but a pale red glow limning the distant hilltops, and then hurried home for supper.
John Wagner did not enjoy his Christmas vacation at all. How could he when everything was falling apart? For a while, since he’d regained control of Murphy and his other classmates, John had felt renewed, even better than before that first troubling dream so many months ago.
He still didn’t understand the dream images of mangled animals, or even why he’d thought to accuse Murphy of killing those animals. He must’ve stumbled onto something or Murphy would never have let himself be blackballed like that. It was strange.
But at least John had been able to finally put that little faggot in his place for good. Or so he thought. Now things were changing again. Murphy was beating the guys at arm wrestling again, and everyone seemed to have forgotten about the fight. Murphy was actually gaining ground on John, eroding some of that control little by little. And John didn’t like that, no way.
But most disturbing of all for John was his inability to figure out what to do about it. He couldn’t shake the disturbing feeling that his and Murphy’s destinies were intertwined somehow, and that he was powerless
to change what would ultimately happen. Those were pretty heavy thoughts for John, who didn’t give a damn about destiny or crap like that. But these thoughts gnawed away at the edges of his consciousness and he couldn’t shake them loose. He didn’t know where they came from, and that disturbed him almost as much as the crazy ideas themselves. Even worse, he still had the persistent, irrational feeling that there was someone else involved with all of this - with his connection to Murphy - someone whose existence he couldn’t prove. But that someone was powerful, he knew that much. Dammit, what was Murphy’s secret? John only had bits and pieces of the puzzle, and he desperately needed to learn the rest.
He sat sullen and moody through Christmas dinner, and refused all his mother’s attempts to get at what was bothering him. His attitude irked her because she had gone to a lot of trouble to prepare a traditional holiday meal of turkey and dressing and all the extras. Even though it was only for the two of them.
He must be having trouble in school, she decided, chewing on a piece of white meat and eyeing her husky son picking absently at his cranberry sauce.
He’d been fine since September, no dreams or rages or erratic mood shifts. In fact, he’d reminded her very much of his father; too much. But since vacation started, he had become irritable and unpredictable and way too quiet for him. One thing John was not was a thinker.
And yet, he continued to surprise her at every turn. After sullenly poking at his food without eating hardly any, and not saying more than three words during the entire meal, he stood up to leave the table and said, almost absently, “Thanks for dinner, Mom.”
And then he simply retreated upstairs without awaiting an answer. Not that she had one handy; it was difficult to talk with your lower jaw hanging open like an enormous fish preparing to swallow some food.
Is adolescence for boys always this erratic, she asked herself, listening to his heavy tread on the stairs? She didn’t remember her brothers ever acting so volatile, but then everyone is different. And everyone didn’t have John’s father’s genes. She had loved him when she married him, hadn’t she? She couldn’t really remember. The interceding
years had desensitized her to feelings like love, especially when saddled with a child like John. His “Thank you” echoed through her head, and she felt a pang of guilt for that thought. She stood wearily and began clearing the table.
The day before New Year’s Eve, the day when Bradley Wallace rescued the old woman, John felt unusually restive and skittish, like a horse in a barn that senses danger approaching. He paced back and forth in his room and when that became too confining, roamed aimlessly throughout the house, going from room to room, unable to sit for ten minutes at a time.
During the actual minutes Bradley Wallace was in that burning house, John’s own body temperature rose to an alarming degree. Sweat poured from his skin in rivers, and his throat felt parched to the point of suffocation, and he panicked.
What was happening to him? My God, he felt like he was in the middle of a forest fire! His mother was at work and he became so frightened he very nearly called her. Even sticking his steaming head into the freezer didn’t help. And then, just as he felt certain for the first time in his life that he would die, the experience ended, as quickly and inexplicably as it began. His body temperature returned to normal, and he could breathe again. But the really scary part came after, when he could actually taste acrid smoke in his mouth and lungs, and when he realized that his clothes were scorched! His clothes were actually burned!
He must be going crazy, he decided, because there was no way what happened could have happened. Even he, dumb ole John Wagner, knew you couldn’t burn your clothes or taste smoke in your mouth unless you were in a fire. But he hadn’t been near a fire. He’d been safe and cool in his own house. And yet now he looked like Smokey the friggin’ Bear!
He really considered calling his mother this time, even picked up the receiver in panic and started dialing. But then he hung up. What could he tell her? That he got burned up standing in the kitchen? She’d already been looking at him lately like he was fit for the loony bin, and after this he was beginning to agree with her.
He was scared, more scared than he’d ever been, and actually felt like crying. He couldn’t remember the last time he cried and he wasn’t
even sure he knew how. But he didn’t cry. He was too tough for that. He ditched the burned clothes before his mother returned from work, and told her nothing of the mysterious heat attack. But he was glad to see her, and spent the entire evening in her surprised company.
An incident even more terrifying than the fire occurred on the night before school resumed. John had not yet formulated any strategy for dealing with Murphy, and he lived in constant fear of a repeat attack by the invisible fire, as he’d chosen to call it.
So it was not surprising that his sleep was fitful. But the dream that night was worse than any previously, even worse than the invisible fire. He was trapped inside an ancient, crumbling castle. He smelled the musty, stale air, and heard the persistent scurry of unseen rats all around him. Cobwebs abounded, and the stone walls were cracked and pitted with age and decay. And Murphy was there, fighting off hordes of hideous, demonic creatures with slavering fangs and raking claws.
John watched as Murphy somehow kept the vile things at bay, but couldn’t be sure how. He did know that the other boy couldn’t last much longer; there were just too many of them. The demons seemed to be exerting a mental pressure on Murphy that was slowly weakening him, and John relished the sight. Or did he? His feelings seemed ambivalent and terribly confused. Then suddenly, Murphy toppled backward over a fallen, rotting rafter and crashed hard to the dirty stone floor. He was dazed, and the monsters pounced.
Before he realized what he was doing, John bounded forward and leapt into the seething mass of writhing, misshapen bodies, beating out furiously with his fists. He shouted to the stunned Murphy to run while he distracted them, and that’s when the attack turned back against him. Razor-sharp fangs and claws ripped at his exposed skin, gouging out chunks of flesh with a sickening sound, like paper tearing. He struggled desperately against them, but the ponderous weight of so many bodies kept him pinned to the cold, hard floor. Three sets of dripping, gleaming fangs descended on his throat like lightning, and his last recollection was the tortured voice of Bradley Wallace Murphy crying out his name.
John woke with a silent scream lining his lips, heart pounding like a sledgehammer, body drenched in sweat.
He saw the familiar surroundings of his room, and let out a desperate sigh.
He’d always been told that if you died in your dreams, you’d never wake up, and he believed that, too. He must’ve awakened just in time. He dropped weakly back onto the wet pillow and swiped the perspiration from his forehead. He’d never been so terrified in his life, and he determined not to sleep another second that night. He just lay there under the covers, the lamp on his night table switched on to dispel the threatening shadows that took on twisted, inhuman shapes, and just thought. He had died to save Murphy, and that scared him more than anything. What the hell was happening to him, he asked the posters on his wall repeatedly? But the various rock stars could offer no answers. He was damned scared. One way or another, he was determined to get to the bottom of all this. Murphy was the key, and if it was the last thing he did, John would find out that bastard’s secret. He would learn the truth before the uncertainty drove him mad.
CHAPTER 14
“They Seek Him Here, They Seek Him There”
When Bradley Wallace saw John Wagner at school the next day, he nearly gasped aloud. The older boy looked like he spent the night in Hell itself. His mother was fond of using the expression “He looks like death warmed over,” and until this day Bradley Wallace had never really seen anyone to whom he would apply that description. Wagner looked like he hadn’t slept the entire vacation, or eaten much for that matter. He was thinner than before, and there were bags under his eyes the size of Hefty trashcan liners. Wagner glanced once at Bradley Wallace with dark, clouded eyes before hurrying away in another direction. The moment had been brief, but Bradley Wallace saw something in that look he didn’t understand, a flicker of incomprehension mixed with traces of what seemed to be fear. What could have happened in two weeks to change Wagner so drastically? The bully looked so wasted that Bradley Wallace almost felt sorry for him. Almost. The compassion which rose within him was brief, for he deliberately forced it back down. His pride would not permit him to feel sorry for Wagner. Anybody else, but not him. He decided the older boy’s problems were his own, and to leave the matter be.
Nonetheless, it seemed that whenever he looked up from what he was doing, Wagner’s eyes were fixed firmly on him, as though searching for something, an answer maybe to some inexplicable question. Wagner would instantly avert his gaze the moment Bradley Wallace noticed, and pretend to be doing something else. And wherever Bradley Wallace seemed to be in the school, he could feel the drilling of those piercing grey eyes right through the back of his head. The sensation was very disconcerting.
At one point, the tickling in the back of his mind activated his subconscious voice, which told him that Wagner knew something about his secret, and sought to learn more. He turned and caught Wagner’s gaze for a second before the other boy turned and entered the bathroom. What could Wagner know, he asked himself for the umpteenth time? And what did he think he wanted to find out?
Fortunately, Bradley Wallace had an innate ability to know whenever he was being watched, but he would still have to be extra careful in the future. Wagner was up to something, he knew, and determined his enemy would not catch him unawares.
Unbeknownst to Bradley Wallace, however, John Wagner was determined to do just that.
Bradley Wallace searched every stationery store in downtown San Rafael that week for a suitable rubber stamp. When he could find nothing that remotely resembled a cool-looking “C”, he decided to drop the idea of “leaving my mark,” as he put it, at the scene of each rescue. Whilly didn’t really care, but Bradley Wallace was a little disappointed.
He could at least satisfy his theatrical streak with the knowledge that through his mind push, everyone would know the name of Captain Courageous, and it would surely make the TV and newspapers. “It’ll really blow people’s minds,” he exclaimed, grinning excitedly. Whilly wondered at the boy’s unconscious choice of words, but said nothing.
The duo went out in search of trouble during that first week in January, taking wing one afternoon following “Dark Shadows” at 4:30. Unlike previous flights, Bradley Wallace was decked out in an old pair of red Pants, blue t-shirt, mask, and cape, and flew beneath Whilly, gripped tightly in the dragon’s formidable talons. In this way, reasoned the boy, when they spotted trouble Whilly could more easily lower him to the ground.
The dragon felt the loss in time would be minimal, but he knew this method of flight made the boy feel more like the superheroes he so idolized, and thus humored the child.
They sailed back and forth over the city in this manner for an hour and a half, but all they managed to rescue was an elderly Siamese cat stuck high up in a massive oak tree poking through the sidewalk of a very boring residential street. The cat, which had the longest whiskers Bradley Wallace had ever seen and a throaty meow, expressed its gratitude at being saved by raking the boy’s hands with its sharp claws and scurrying off up the street. The incident seemed to amuse Whilly, but not Bradley Wallace, who felt depressed and foolish.
Fortunately, the day was not a total bust. He did get a small chance to at least establish his new identity. Spying a lone hitchhiker on San Pedro Road (a San Rafael High student, was Bradley Wallace’s guess, as he was carrying several books under one skinny arm), the “Captain” instructed Whilly to disappear and descend. The street was empty of traffic, and no one else was in sight. This would be perfect.
Swooping low, Whilly eased Bradley Wallace just above the head of the startled youth who, when grabbed under the arms and lifted into the air by a young boy in a red cape, nearly wet his pants for the first time since he was five years old. Laughing at the youth’s incomprehension as they soared out over the yacht harbor, Bradley Wallace tried to ease the other’s fear by teasingly commenting that he was just “trying to give you a lift.” But the hitchhiker was too frightened to be amused, and couldn’t bring himself to look down. This had to be a result of the grass he’d been smoking earlier. That had to be it. Nonetheless, he vowed never to hitchhike again. He stammered out his address at Bradley Wallace’s request, and the dragon set off in that direction. “We’ll have you home in a jiffy,” the boy told his petrified captive, who merely nodded weakly and closed his eyes.
When the blank-eyed youth entered his house that evening, his mother immediately demanded an explanation for why
he’d missed the bus and how he’d gotten home. He merely gazed back at her with a dull, vacant look and admitted hesitantly and sheepishly that he couldn’t quite remember how he’d gotten home. One minute he was standing near The Red Kettle restaurant on San Pedro Road and the next minute he found himself on his front steps staring stupidly at the closed front door. All he could recall was a weird name he’d never heard before – Captain Courageous.
And so it went for the next month or so - no major disasters or rescues, not like the fire, anyway, but just minor incidents. They helped a woman change a flat tire (which Bradley Wallace had never done before, but figured it out - it wasn’t hard), freed a small boy’s foot that had inadvertently got wedged in a sidewalk gutter grill, and even guided an old blind man back to his house after several “delinquents” swiped his white cane (that one had been tricky because Bradley Wallace had to zap everyone he passed on the way, and it gave him a tremendous headache).
Thus, little by little, like water trickling down the outside of a drain pipe and forming a gradually increasing puddle at the bottom, the name of Captain Courageous began to get around, and a reputation started to build.
Bradley Wallace was definitely having fun, and he was happy. But Whilly only feigned contentment for the boy’s sake. He was grateful to be able to expend some of his strange nervous energy, but he also worried. The day was approaching when the boy would learn the truth, or a good part of it, at least, and Whilly wasn’t certain his human companion could accept such revelations. Bradley Wallace was so innocent and trusting; he saw good in everything around him. Would he be able to see the good in the awesome powers he possessed? Or would he despair of being a freak as he had when learning of the mind push?
A Boy and His Dragon Page 45