Black River Falls by Jeff Hirsch(72)
I stepped into Dad’s office.
All his things were still there, exactly where he must have left them when he walked out the morning of the sixteenth. I ran my hand along the spines of the books on his shelves. Countless sci-fi and horror paperbacks, box-set DVDs, and comics in tall collected editions. All of them were set back from the edge to make room for the horde of souvenirs he’d picked up at various cons and festivals over the years. Day of the Dead skulls; toy cars; a set of juggling balls; the small, grim army of ceramic superheroes that guarded all of it. Batman. Superman. Captain America. Dr. Strange. Cardinal.
I went to a window and forced it open. A grass-scented breeze swept in, carrying the hum of distant voices. I leaned over the sill and took three slow breaths. When my head cleared, I stood up with my back to the room. I was positive that if I turned around, I’d find Dad bent over his desk like Smaug in his den, head down, his massive frame curled over the computer as he tapped out his scripts.
Of course, when I did turn, there was nothing but a black, armless chair tucked under a desk. Dad’s laptop was closed, and next to it was an empty Superman mug, an uncapped fountain pen, and the lumpy ceramic cup I’d made him in the third grade. It was filled with a bouquet of black pencils. The words FOR DAD were badly painted on one side in green and red. I’d given it to him for Christmas, wrapped in the pages of the Sunday comics. I remembered him unpacking it the day we moved to Black River and then filling it with great ceremony. His favorite pencils. A fistful of change. And something else. Something he drew from his pocket and dropped inside. Something that landed with a soft ping.
I dumped the pencils and the change out onto the desk and sorted through them until I found what I was looking for. A key. Thin and delicate. I turned it over in my fingers, then took it to the filing cabinet by the desk. My hands trembled as I slipped it into the lock. There was a click, and the top drawer popped open. It was empty except for a single brown folder labeled
THE BROTHERHOOD OF WINGS
—Volume 5—
THE HAUNTED PLAIN
There were six manila envelopes inside, one for each of the issues that would make up the final volume. The first two envelopes contained completed scripts and rough sketches. The next three had general notes and an outline. I sank to the floor, spread the papers out in front of me, and began to read.
Cardinal was bloody and battered, and his armor was falling to pieces when he was exiled to the Gardens of Null, but he didn’t give up. He knew that he had the only thing he needed—time. The Volanti wouldn’t arrive for another year, and he was determined to be ready for them. He spent the following months scavenging the Gardens for any piece of technology that might help him repair his armor, all the while fending off attacks by radiation-mad gangs of mutants and the vicious Hounds of Null.
As Cardinal toiled in his cave workshop, other exiles living in the Gardens drifted into the story. They were all funhouse versions of the Brotherhood. The fat and jolly, if slightly dim Brother Handcrank was clearly meant to be Goldfinch, and Jumpin’ Jerry Johnson was an even younger and more innocent take on Blue Jay. The others were there too—Black Eagle, Rex Raven—all except for Sally Sparrow. Her absence was like a dark hole in the center of the story.
Cardinal pushed the exiles away. He insisted that his work was too important to be interrupted, but it was obvious that their presence reminded him too much of his dead friends. One night, in the midst of a furious radiation storm, a gang of mutants raided the workshop. Cardinal was on the verge of defeat until Jumpin’ Jerry and his friends swarmed the cave and saved Cardinal’s life. Afterward, as they tended his wounds, Cardinal told them about his mission. In the end he was convinced that he couldn’t beat a force like the Volanti alone, and he agreed to make them into a new Brotherhood. The fourth issue ended with Cardinal sitting down at his workbench to begin construction of their armor.
After that, all that was left were notes and scraps of dialogue. The fifth issue was to take place on the day of the Volanti’s arrival.
“Gee whiz, Cardinal! What’s gonna happen to you when we win?” Jumpin’ Jerry asked in a bit of dialogue Dad had scratched out on a napkin. “I mean, when we knock the stuffing out of these jerks, Future You won’t have a reason to come back in time, which means you won’t be here to train us to beat the jerks in the first place!”
“Easy, Jerry,” Cardinal said. “You think about this stuff too much, you’ll break your brainpan. I think time has a way of sorting itself. As for me, when we win and the future is put right again, I guess, well, I guess I’ll just . . . disappear.”
I opened the last envelope. Issue six. Inside, there was nothing but a single sheet of paper. Dad’s only note for the final issue was written in a scrawl so dark that it almost ripped through the page.
At the battle’s decisive moment Jerry Johnson is revealed to be an advance agent of the Volanti. He betrays Cardinal and the Brotherhood. All but Cardinal are killed. The Volanti land, and the transformation of Abaddon into Liberty City begins. Cardinal, barely clinging to life, lives out the rest of his days alone, trapped in the Gardens of Null.
The page fell out of my hands. It fluttered through the air and landed on the pile in front of me.
29
DR. LASSITER’S OFFICE takes up the top floor of a building so tall that when I stood at the windows in the lobby, I could see all the way to where the Hudson and the East River meet at the southern tip of Manhattan. Brooklyn was locked in fog on the opposite shore.