Masked (2010) (6 page)

I’ve crossed so many lines in my life that I didn’t think there were any more left to cross. But it turns out there’s one more.

I fly home for some supplies, and then to the cemetery, where I touch down on the ground in front of Verlaine’s grave. I sit down and look at the fresh earth, sifting it in my hands, knowing I’ve got to hurry and not wanting to. I’ve got a bit of Digger Jakes wrapped in cellophane and I’m unwrapping it when I hear footsteps behind me.

It’s Jeanie Verlaine, bringing flowers to her dead husband’s grave. She doesn’t seem surprised to see me.

“Hello, David,” she says, forcing a smile. “I was wondering if I’d see you here. I’ve been watching you guys on the TV all morning. I saw you fly away.”

“Yeah,” I say. “I. . .” I trail off.

Jeanie sits down next to me and places the flowers on the fresh dirt. They’re daisies. For a second, neither one of us says anything.

“I know why you’re here,” she finally says.

“What do you mean?”

She looks at me, forces me to look at her. “David, Russ had powers nobody knew about. He could look at someone’s DNA, just standing in front of them, and know how a particular gene would be expressed. He understood people; he could see right into their hearts. You know, their secret hearts.”

I look away.

“No, David, listen. Russ always knew how you got your powers. He knew it five minutes after meeting you. But don’t worry; I’m the only person he ever told about it.”

“I’m not sure what to say.”

“Russ knew that someday you might need him. You know, that you might need
his
powers. Especially if. . . you know.”

“If someone killed him, you mean.”

“Right.” She takes a deep breath. “He knew that if he ever got killed, then you might need to. . .”

“I would have to
eat
a piece of him, Jeanie.” I’m sweating and I feel cold at the same time. “I would have to dig him up and cut off a piece of him and
eat
it. Don’t tell me that doesn’t revolt you.”

She stands up, holding her hands to her head. “Of course it
revolts
me. I think it’s disgusting!” She turns away. “I’m not Russ.”

She sniffs and wipes her nose with the back of her hand. “But it doesn’t matter what I think. Russell knew and it didn’t bother him at all. He pitied you.”

“I don’t want his pity!” I bark.

“Yes, you do. You want
his
pity. He was a better person than us. He had a perfect moral worldview, can you imagine that? He just
knew
right from wrong. He never felt jealousy, never felt sorry for himself, and he never condescended to anyone. He knew how
hard
it must be to be you. He knew how much you hated yourself for doing it, and he knew that you did it anyway because you were willing to sacrifice your own self-worth in order to do the right
thing.

“Don’t you get it? He loved you for that. He said that it made you a better person than him, because he never had to make the choice that you did.”

As usual, I can’t think of anything to say.

“Look,” she finally whispers. “We’re wasting time. We both know what you need to do here. I can’t watch you do it, so I’m going to leave. But I needed you to know that you had Russ’s permission. You had his blessing.”

She turns to go, then says, “He figured you probably couldn’t bring yourself to do it otherwise.”

“He was right,” I say.

I wait for her to go. She hurries along the path and disappears from view. I choke down Digger Jakes and start clawing at the dirt. I can feel the grit sinking into my fingernails, cold and eternal. Then Digger’s power kicks in and the hole opens wide. In less than a minute I’m in a dank hole, standing over the coffin of my best friend, looking down at his face. Even in death, his body refused to be tarnished. The hole in his chest has sealed itself, leaving him perfectly whole in his spotless gold Spandall costume.

Before I even touch him, I realize my stupid mistake. Verlaine’s body is virtually indestructible. I have no idea how I’m going to eat it.

I’ve got just enough Nightingale left to fly myself home, praying that nobody comes across Verlaine’s open grave in my absence. I rifle through the basement, thinking furiously. What am I going to do? I go through about a dozen of the containers in the freezer, tossing them aside one by one, before I remember the Rock.

The Rock was known as the Indestructible Man until a chemist with a grudge found a way to destruct him. Then the Rock was just known as “deceased.” Rock’s been sitting on a gurney in the freezer for months. It took weeks to plan and execute the removal of his two-ton body from Highland Cemetery, where he’s still believed to be buried, just a couple rows down from Verlaine. Now his dead
eyes are staring up at me from inside their granite-like lids. His skin feels like polished marble; he is all over a dark green speckled with silver veins. His particular mutation left him without genitalia, so he never bothered to wear a costume. He just went around naked, wearing nothing but a fanny pack to keep his keys and wallet in. Aside from the fact that I’m certain to take on his very distinctive appearance if I eat him, the lack of genitals is another big reason why I’ve never done it.

There’s nothing to do about that now. I get a fresh scalpel and look down into the wound in Rock’s chest where the mad scientist hit him with his chemical spray. Though unfortunate for the Rock, the hole is a godsend to me, because I couldn’t bite through Rock’s skin any more than I could bite through Verlaine’s. But inside the hole, his guts are just as soft and pink as anybody’s. I slice out something that might be a bit of lung and pop it into my mouth.

It’s not something you get used to.

When Rock’s power suffuses through me I suddenly feel heavy and cold, and every part of me aches. God, is this how Rock felt all the time? I never heard him complain about it, not once. He was actually one of the most upbeat guys you ever met. For my own sake, I tell myself that this pain is just a side effect of the admixture of Nightingale and Digger Jakes and everybody else I’ve been snacking on the past few days. I’ve learned the hard way that a mixed diet is fraught with peril.

Now that I’m the Rock, I realize that I weigh about a million pounds, and I’m not sure if my car will even support my weight. So I steal my neighbor’s Hummer, holding my breath as I settle down into the seat. The thing protests, the frame groaning miserably, but goddamn if that machine isn’t worth the price tag and the lousy mileage.

By the grace of God, when I pull up next to Verlaine’s grave, it’s just as I left it. I jump down into the hole without thinking and fall right onto Verlaine’s chest with a heavy thud. To his credit, and to
the point of this whole enterprise, his ribs don’t even bend.

I kneel down in the grave, leaning awkwardly over the open coffin. I tear the Spandall from his right arm and hold the arm up in front of me. The musculature is perfect, the skin unblemished. I feel like I’m defacing an idol.

I bite down. Nothing. It’s like biting steel. I bite again, harder this time, and I can feel the skin give way, just a little, but my Rock teeth sing with a queer pain, like I’m biting down on electrified tinfoil.

I bite down as hard as I can, clamping my jaw on Verlaine’s forearm like an attack dog. I can feel the teeth beginning to crack in my mouth. The pain, my God the pain is unbelievable. Just when I think I can’t take another second of this, Verlaine’s skin parts and his flesh pours into my mouth, soft and clean, filet mignon.

The transformation is mind-blowing. Verlaine blasts through my system, ejecting the Rock without a moment’s notice, totally taking me over. I feel him surge into my bones and muscles, bubble up into my brain. My teeth begin to heal. My body balances and relaxes, poised and graceful. My mind reels; I’m dizzy with the potency of it. Then Verlaine seeps into my consciousness and I feel a sense of clarity like nothing I’ve ever experienced. I’m gasping, trying to control my thoughts. Everything is so
obvious
. Verlaine, who he was. Me, who I am. I see the way Verlaine saw, not just with my eyes, though this too is astonishing and I find myself drinking in even the tiniest aspect of the visual world. But I feel his goodness and wisdom as well. I reflect on myself. I see and understand David Caulfield: Wildcard in a way that I’ve never, ever known myself, and I realize that this is how Verlaine always knew me.

I know that Verlaine, though he would never have told anyone, apparently not even Jeanie, actually held one small, petty jealousy.

It was of me.

Flying with Verlaine’s power is nothing like flying on Nightingale
Air. The wind doesn’t fight against me—it becomes my ally. The Universe lifts me and carries me where I want to go. I can sense the globe underneath me; I can feel the vibrations of the cities. I can smell the Ghoul King and his children ahead of me while I’m still over Pennsylvania.

I see him the instant he clears the horizon, my vision cutting through clouds and air pollution. I can see him like he’s right in front of my face. I feel invincible.

Oh my sweet fucking Christ. This is exactly how Verlaine must have felt flying toward the thing on the day he died.

Verlaine wasn’t invincible. He wasn’t immortal. My skin crawls and even that sensation is multiplied a hundredfold by my enhanced awareness. What chance do
I
have?

It’s too late, though. The Ghoul King has put down everyone who’s stood against him. It’s been almost three hours since I left the fight and the King and what remain of his minions are having the city of Milwaukee for brunch. I see him right in front of me. I’m flying at around six hundred miles an hour. Somehow he senses me coming and turns to meet me. Unable to pull back in time, I accelerate directly into his lashed-out fist at the speed of sound.

To Verlaine, pain is a sensation that, like all sensations, can be savored by his heightened consciousness. My own way of thinking about pain—i.e., that it hurts—vies with Verlaine’s and it’s like I’m seeing double, but with my mind instead of my eyes. The pain separates what is quintessentially me from what is quintessentially Verlaine, and the comparison in no way flatters me.

It takes a second for me to realize that I’m on the ground and that the Ghoul King is standing above me, shrieking. His right hand is hanging at an odd angle and I realize, peering through his rocky exterior with X-ray vision, that my impact on him broke two bones in his wrist. All
I
broke was my nose. Take
that
, asshole.