by Nick Cole
Cory looked at the refrigerator, walked to it and devoured a handful of the lunchmeat. He drank some water from the sink faucet because he was thirsty, wiping his mouth with his sleeve when he was finished. In the backyard, he climbed the fence after making the “Bhuwuuush!” sound before he did, and then let himself down into the silent wooded area beyond the housing tract. He knew the pharmacy was just down the hill through the woods.
He tried to be quiet.
He knew somehow strangers were attracted to noise. He knew being quiet was important from now on. But Cory was large and not the most agile of persons. He finally crashed through the dry, brown, summer’s end foliage and down onto the silent parking lot behind the pharmacy. The bright white sodium lights hummed to life, casting hot cones of light in the early twilight. Above him, the sky was a pale blue. An early night blue.
Silence.
Cory walked around the outside of the store and didn’t see any of the strangers there. He took the parking ramp up to the main road and walked back uphill toward the entrance to his neighborhood, sweating underneath his mask. He was still clutching the bag of medicine for Mrs. Sheinman. He was very tired. He hoped there would be pancakes when he got home. When Daddy came home after patrol.
He really hoped there would be pancakes.
He made it back into the neighborhood hearing nothing but a deep, intense quiet that had settled over everything in the last twenty-four hours. Gone were the sounds of the distant freeway, humming and droning, always running day and night. Gone were the sudden emphatic explosions of kids playing late into the dark on still, hot summer nights. Gone were radios in garages as cars were being worked on. Gone were TVs behind windows casting blue light late into the night. All these things were missing and gone. Even the dogs that once barked at Cory as he passed their gates and fences had disappeared.
Cory saw a cat he didn’t know. He tried to pet it, but it hissed and ran off into a dark house. Cory continued on, almost home. Sometimes he would see shapes behind the shattered windows of the houses along the street. But he was quiet and walked slowly and none of the strangers came out after him.
When Cory made it to Mrs. Sheinman’s house, he found the porch light on, but it seemed small and even wan as though it were being besieged by the night. For a long moment Cory stood in front of the house. He knew he did not want to go inside.
But he had to. Mrs. Sheinman needed her bag of medicine.
Maybe Daddy is home now, he thought.
Cory opened the gate, listening to it whine on a rusty sing-song note. He imitated it as he always did. But this time his voice was little more than a whisper or even a dry croak. Then he closed the gate which was what he was supposed to do and walked up to the front door of the house. He entered and listened. The house was dark, save for a lone light in the living room by the TV. Cory went and placed the bag of medicine on the table.
“Tired,” he mumbled to himself.
He walked toward the guest room that Mrs. Sheinman had set aside for him on nights when Cory’s Dad wouldn’t be home until late. At the far end of the hall, he saw the door to Mrs. Sheinman’s bedroom was closed.
He approached the door.
“Ummm...” He started to say something about the bag of medicine. Instead he said, “Home now,” flatly and walked quickly back down the hall. Halfway along its length, he heard a flat thump from behind the door to Mrs. Scheinman’s bedroom.
Cory stopped. Listening.
Another thump.
Raspy breathing.
Like the strangers when they had come too close to him.
He took off his mask and cape in the spare room. Then he went to a small bathroom and brushed his teeth with the toothbrush Daddy had always made sure Cory had when he stayed the night. He heard another thump.
He did not want to hear anymore thumps. He did not like the thumps. Strangers made thumps.
With the toothbrush still in his mouth, he opened the door to the spare room and looked down the dark hallway that led to Mrs. Sheinman’s room. The door was still closed.
Again he heard another thump.
He closed the door.
He stepped back from it.
He pushed a small desk in front of it and stood back.
He rinsed out his mouth and got into the tiny single bed.
“Ummm... God Jesus please keep Daddy safe.” Which is what Cory prayed every night. The same prayer. He meant it every time. Then he added, “Um... me too, God Jesus.” Which was something he’d never prayed before.
He lay in the dark for a long time listening, trying to be very quiet.
He was afraid.
He got up quietly, retrieved the mask and cape and put them back on. Then he got back into bed.
“I’m Batman,” he whispered.
Then he slept.
There were no more bumps in the night.
Chapter Seventeen
Cory left the house in the morning.
The day was already hot and thick and there were smells in the air that were not pleasant to him.
He’d left because he knew Mrs. Sheinman was a stranger now. When he awoke in the morning and dressed, taking off his Batman cape and mask, putting them into his backpack, he’d heard the bumps and the groaning whispers coming from behind her door.
“Ummmm...” he tried through the bedroom door, but couldn’t think of what exactly to say. Instead, she’d only growled at him and banged into the flimsy door as a reply.
Cory left the house, closing the gate behind him as he went, as he always did. At his own home, a few doors down, he found it as he’d left it. There was no sign of Daddy. A dirty policeman’s uniform wasn’t by the laundry machines. Daddy wasn’t in his bed, sleeping. Cory had a snack bar and a glass of milk, only spilling a little bit when he poured it, which was good. Then he sat down in front of the dark TV.
If I just wait here, he reasoned, then Daddy will come home and turn on Batman. Cory hummed the theme to the show as he waited.
“Na-na na naaa NuH...”
Soon he began to rock back and forth because he was very worried and he didn’t understand any of this. He did not like these strangers. These bumps. None of it.
Things were not as they should be, which is very hard for someone who uses patterns and routines to cope with life. Things were messy, and even scary.
“Na-na na naaa NuH...”
Batman would know what to do. The real Batman. If the Joker, or Plant Lady, or Crocodile Man, or Scarecrow had captured Daddy....
“Na-na na naaa NuH...”
...Real Batman would know what to do. How to... help Daddy.
Then another thought occurred to Cory. Maybe a criminal has Daddy in a secret hideout.
He thought of all the criminals. Thought of which one it could be. He watched the dark screen of the silent TV and tried to see and remember all the shows all at once. He saw every episode. And the more he thought of each criminal, and Daddy, and what all the strangers and the smoke and fire and Mrs. Sheinman could mean, he was even more afraid.
“Na-na na naaa NuH...”
Then...
“Scarecrow,” Cory whispered to the silent, stuffy room. “He would make it all Halloween.”
Which in Cory world was the worst day of the year.
The day when things are not what they seem. Not what they should be. What Cory is used to, and needs. Of all the villains on the 1990’s cartoon version of Batman, there was no villain scarier to Cory than the Scarecrow. Those episodes were always the most frightening and Cory didn’t really like them very much. But he watched them because he knew if he waited long enough, Batman would win because Batman was brave. When Batman stopped the Scarecrow, Cory felt like he’d been brave too. All through the Scarecrow episodes, when he’d wanted to not watch and he’d continued to even so, that, to Cory, was being brav
e. Cory was often afraid and he wished he was like Batman all the times he was afraid, even though sometimes, Batman was afraid too.
Cory reached into his backpack and took out the mask and cape. He held them and wondered if he could be brave enough to find the Scarecrow and rescue Daddy. Cory wished at the moment that he was brave enough to do the thing that needed to be done, even though he was afraid.
Just like we all do sometimes.
He clasped the cape around his neck.
He drew the mask over his head, adjusting it with one of his large sweating hands until it didn’t pinch his nose and make his breathing stuffy.
He would go find Daddy. Even if the Scarecrow was in his way, even if all the Batman villains were against him, he would be brave and he would find Daddy and they would come home and... well, there would be pancakes.
Which meant so much more than just pancakes as ordinary things often do sometimes.
“I am the night...” spoke Cory in the silence of the empty family room.
Chapter Eighteen
Cory had drunk deeply from the faucet in the kitchen before he’d left the house. He’d shoved snack bars into his pocket, then taken one out and ate it while thinking of pancakes.
He was going to look for Daddy. He would find other policemen and they would tell him where to go. They would know where Daddy was or where the Scarecrow’s hideout might be.
Now, standing in front of his house in the late morning sun, he saw a few strangers at the far end of the street. They just stood, staring at nothing, not even noticing Cory who’d donned his cape and mask and was being extra quiet.
Like Batman.
Cory cut through the houses on the far side of the street, following a well-worn path behind those houses that popped out in a forested area above some train tracks. All the kids of this neighborhood called the forested area along the train tracks “the Forts”. The Forts was a tree covered half-hill with a drop that led down into a wasteland between neighborhoods. The wasteland consisted of the carved away section of the hill, at the bottom of which, train tracks ran south next to a small drainage area turned overgrown swamp. On the other side of the railway wasteland was a library, an old church, and more neighborhoods.
The other kids would often tell Cory a monster lived down in the swamps. They would go down the hill, cross the train tracks and enter the swamp, knowing Cory was not allowed down the hill. They did this so he couldn’t follow them and ruin the fun they were having, which was really just the “fun” of teasing Cory.
The train tracks were a “no no” to Cory.
On the occasions when the neighborhood kids would play this particular game, Cory would watch them from atop the hill, bouncing from foot to foot, worrying his fingers, waiting for them to come up out of the swamp they’d disappeared into. Hoping the monster hadn’t gotten them. Sometimes they would scream down there and Cory would run and go tell someone, but no one would ever believe him that the kids, his “friends” as he called them, were in any kind of trouble. Cory would simply be left to worry about them until he saw his friends again.
Then everything would be alright.
Cory came to “the Forts” which were half-dug pits like open graves, lying along the top of the slope among the long, dead yellow grass of late summer. The Forts were holes that the children would dig, usually starting on a Friday after school, waiting for the train to come along. Then, when they heard the train from far off, its momentum somehow spilling off the iron rails ahead of it, they would all run and hide inside the holes they called “the Forts”. They would throw dirt clods at the rushing locomotive as it flew past their hiding places. Never rocks. Just dirt clods which exploded in dusty sprays along the tinted windows and shiny metal passenger cars.
The daylight was orange, and Cory smelled burnt wood in it which reminded him of the beach and the beach parties in the summer when the other men and women who worked with Daddy would gather down by the ocean and spend the day and late into the night around smoky fires. Cory could watch fire for hours. Watching it burn and turn everything orange and ash was the very definition of beauty to Cory. There were beautiful empires of ember within the heat and flames, wavering and shifting as though it were a whole living world dying inside the coals there. Cory loved watching fires, especially on nights at the beach when everyone laughed and ate hot dogs and let Cory do the same things they were doing.
Now he looked along the skyline above the suburban rooftops, but he couldn’t see any great gray and black plumes of smoke like he’d seen before. He could only smell it hanging over everything in the heat of the day.
Atop the hill, Cory could see the train tracks both stretching off toward the milky north and curving around a bend to the south, passing under a small bridge, running alongside, for a time, the tiny swamp where a monster lived.
“There’s a monster inside the swamp.” Cory had heard some voice inside his head telling him this. “That’s what the kids always told you.”
The Scarecrow is like a monster, thought Cory. His wide mouth, his floppy hat. His eyes like holes, dark holes that always made Cory wince when he saw them on TV. When Cory thought of monsters, or a monster, he always thought of the Scarecrow.
Ash began to fall from the sky and Cory watched, fascinated by the delicateness of the gray and black flakes, their course seemingly random choice, their descent inevitable.
Why didn’t they fly up, or away? Why was it always down?
Ash always flies, inevitably, down.
If the Scarecrow has Daddy, Cory continued to reason...
Then stopped.
And the Scarecrow is a monster...
He waited, waited to finish the thought.
“There’s a monster in the swamp, Cory. Better not go down there, he’ll get you.”
That’s what the kids always told him.
Then they’d go down into the swamp and watch him watching them from the top of the hill above the train tracks. Watching Cory from within the deep foliage of the swamp. And the scream would come once they were just inside the edge of the swamp and well hidden. Cory would always jump. He never heard their giggling laughter as he ran to tell someone his “friends” were in trouble.
Silence.
Daddy might be in the swamp.
“There’s a monster in the swamp, Cory.”
The Scarecrow is a monster.
“I am the night...” Cory reminded himself.
He took a deep breath.
Then he started down the narrow trail through waist high, feathery yellow grass that led down along the train tracks. The tall dry grass on either side of the path seemed to swallow him as he went. The air began to feel slightly cooler and Cory could smell the sage that grew down there in the wild, thick and heavy. At the bottom of the slope, he waded out through the tall dead grass and crossed the cleared space along the railroad tracks and walked up onto the bed of gray rock that lay underneath the rails. He could smell the oily ties as he watched the twin lines of the rails, almost perfect lines, race off in both directions. He’d only been down here one time. He’d followed a boy named Steven down there one afternoon. Cory bent down with a grunt and placed his hands on the rails and waited for the vibration Steven had told him about. Steven said if you felt the rails vibrating, that meant there was a train somewhere down the tracks, probably coming in a hurry.
Cory could still feel that vibration when he thought of that memory sometimes. Bending down awkwardly now, gloved hand on the rails, he felt nothing.
He heard a short huffy Whoop. Above and behind him. Almost a loud gasp.
He turned and saw strangers, dozens of them, clustering at the edge of his neighborhood high above the train track wasteland. They crawled over the low backyard fences that looked down upon the slope. They fell over barriers, tumbling down among the eucalyptus and cypress into the gray concrete drainage ditche
s that ran along the dry brown slope of the hill. They were dark shadows at this distance.
Stranger shadows, thought Cory.
Cory hurried across the train tracks, his hands waving to pull him forward because of his backpack and the heavy utility belt he wore. He ran across the dirt and dust on the other side of the rails and found the wide chalky path descending into the swamp. Low hanging trees loomed over the shadowy entrance and reminded Cory of the mouth of a dog that once snapped at him even though Cory liked dogs.
That dog was a snapper, he thought.
He looked back once and saw the strangers, and even more strangers now, stumbling down the hill after him. They were moving slowly, moaning as they crossed the wasteland for him, but they were definitely coming. Cory knew they definitely meant to harm him.
To “play” like Brian Rattigan had played.
But there were too many to play with.
If there are too many, Daddy had said, then run and find a teacher.
Cory wished, right now, that he could find Mrs. Baird. She was the teacher that always protected him. He wished he knew where he could find her.
The corpses came stumbling down the hill at the sight of Cory, reaching and waving as they walked awkward and stilt-legged from side to side down the steep slope.
Cory turned back to the gaping maw that was the narrow path leading down into the swamp and whispered, “I’m Batman.” Then, after a great draw and exhale of his massive chest, he started down into the clutching undergrowth and low-hanging musty trees.
The air was cool and moist under the shadowy, green embrace of the tiny swamp. A small stream burbled nearby, its bottom close to the surface and streaked with oil and ochre-colored mud as long strands of grass bent and drifted in the wan current. There were discarded cups and magazines tossed and tangled in the growth alongside the trail. Cory followed the twisting sandy path alongside the stream, and in time came to a small clearing. The remains of a fire lay at its center, surrounded by banked stones. Cory cast a glance through the fluttering leaves toward the hill and saw only shimmering daylight peeking through the leaves.