Marshall Conrad: A Superhero Tale Read online

  I spotted the giant blue H of the Greenfield County Hospital glowing brightly in the darkness. I increased my altitude so I was directly over the roof and decided to drop Marilyn Aldrich off in a safe place and then run into the waiting room claiming that a suicidal patient was on the roof. It wasn’t pretty, but it was the only idea I could think of that would ensure Mrs. Aldrich received medical treatment while reducing the likelihood that someone might see me floating in the air.

  “I’m going to get someone to come up here and help you, Mrs. Alrdich.” I said. The glow from my eyes revealed the severity of the injuries to her face. “There’s going to be a shit-storm of media coverage now that you’re safe and I’d be grateful if you revealed as little information as possible about what happened tonight.”

  “I-I’ll do my best, Mister...?”

  “Just call me Vanguard,” I said. “Everyone else does.”

  As I slowly hovered above a large ventilation shaft, I noticed a flash out of the corner of my eye. I didn’t think anything of it and assumed it was just a strobe light from an ambulance. I gently laid Mrs. Aldrich alongside the ventilation shaft, and gave her a last once over to make sure she was all right.

  “Good luck,” I whispered, smothering the glow from my eyes.

  She didn’t answer me and that was just fine. I had to get down to the main floor and alert the medical staff.

  I raced across the roof, ducking behind exhaust vents so I wouldn’t be seen until I spotted a ladder that led down to the east wing of the hospital. Friction from the metal burned my hands as I slid down to another roof, about two stories above the service entrance. From the darkest corner of the roof, I peeked down over the edge to see if the coast was clear. I spotted a large garbage bin in the corner against the building and dropped down behind it, twisting my ankle in the process.

  I found myself in an alleyway about a hundred yards from the emergency entrance, so I pulled down my hood and hobbled as quickly as possible up the alley and toward the Emergency entrance. The automatic doors slid open and I ran inside.

  “There’s someone on the roof,” I shrieked like a madman. Everyone in the waiting room looked up, startled. “Someone call security, there’s a lady on the roof, and I think she’s going to jump! Hurry!”

  “Where?” asked a nurse who was taking information from a woman in a neck brace.

  “On the roof!” I shouted. “She’s going to bloody well jump if someone doesn’t get up there right now.”

  I must have been convincing because within seconds, two nurses were on the phone and another got on the PA system and called for security.

  I tore out the sliding door, and ran through the staff parking lot and off the hospital property. I kept glancing over my shoulder, hoping nobody was following me. The Greenfield County Hospital was about to become famous, and I had no desire to hang around for the media circus that would ensue.

  I kept on running for another twelve blocks until I saw Shelby Avenue. The Curiosity Nook was only three blocks away. Satisfied that I’d avoided detection at the hospital, I started walking so I could catch my breath. I glanced at my watch. 9:25 PM—more than enough time for me to grab Ruby and head back to the barn for a confrontation with Grim Geoffrey’s host.

  It took another five minutes for me to get to Stella’s store. “Thank God,” I breathed, as I saw the lights were on. I walked into the alcove and banged on the glass door. “Stella! Ruby!” I shouted. “It’s Marshall, let me in!”

  The lights suddenly switched off and Stella appeared at the door with a huge scowl on her face. The door opened and she grabbed me by my collar, pulling me inside.

  “What the hell have you done?” she shouted. “Ruby is having a meltdown, and you my friend have just become the front page headline of every newspaper in the country!”

  “W-What are you talking about,” I panted, still trying to catch my breath.

  “I just printed this off the Drudge Report website,” she snapped, handing me a sheet of paper. “Marshall Conrad, you’ve just been outed.”

  Chapter 36

  My jaw dropped. It was me, all right. In all my unnatural splendor.

  I stood in the doorway of The Curiosity Nook, trying desperately to find a word that would describe the firestorm of shock that seized my body as I stared at the sheet of paper Stella’d handed to me. I opened my mouth to speak, and all I could manage was a sound that curiously resembled a squeak.

  Beneath the big black words Drudge Report was the grainy image of a man with glowing white eyes floating high above the Greenfield County Hospital. He was carrying a woman.

  An important woman.

  A woman whose kidnapping had already made national news and who would soon be answering police and reporters’ questions about the way in which she’d been rescued.

  “Marnie Brindle,” I gasped, unsure how she she’d known that I’d be at the hospital. Then I remembered the note I slid in the door jam of Stella’s store before I went searching for Marilyn Aldrich.

  She must have followed me in her car and snatched the note after I headed out of town. It was a harmless note, or so I thought. A note that directed Stella and Ruby to look for me at the Greenfield County Hospital. A note that gave a conspiracy-minded twenty-three-year-old woman who’d been obsessing about a superhero her best chance to prove she wasn’t going crazy.

  Stella grabbed my collar and dragged me down the hallway to her office. A small color TV sat atop a filing cabinet with the sound cranked to full volume. A live image of the Greenfield County Hospital shared the screen with the picture from Drudge’s website, as the words BREAKING NEWS: MYSTERIOUS RESCUE OF CONGRESSMAN’S WIFE rolled across the bottom.

  “If you’re just tuning in,” a bearded and bespectacled reporter in somber voice said, “an incredible story is unfolding at this hour in the small city of Greenfield, New Hampshire. Sources say Marilyn Aldrich, the wife of Republican Congressman Byron Aldrich, is receiving medical treatment at the hospital you’re seeing in the foreground. Mrs. Aldrich, you’ll remember, has been the subject of a state-wide search after she was abducted from the family cottage at Crystal Beach last Sunday. The Drudge Report, an independent web-based news service, posted the startling picture on the right side of your screen to their website approximately fifteen minutes ago. We can’t confirm whether the image is genuine. However, this much we do know: Local police have confirmed that Marilyn Aldrich is under the care of physicians, and are investigating her sudden reappearance. Hang on—I’m getting something. I’m on the phone with Lara Pinter, a reporter with The Greenfield Examiner. Lara, can you hear me?”

  “Charles,” she said. Her voice was as clear as the day she’d given me the finger at the second crime scene. “We’re trying to stitch together information as it comes in, but here’s what we’ve learned so far. Witnesses inside the Greenfield County Hospital report that at around ten after nine tonight, a man raced into the hospital shouting that someone was going to jump from the roof. Security was dispatched to investigate and found Marilyn Aldrich, who’d been missing since Sunday night. I’ve talked with a security guard who requested that his name be withheld, and he told me that Mrs. Aldrich was not—I repeat, was not—trying to commit suicide, and that she was in need of medical attention. The man told me that Mrs. Aldrich kept on repeating that she’d been held captive in a barn on the outskirts of town and that a mysterious man she calls ‘Vanguard,’ a man with glowing eyes no less, snuck into the barn, freed her and then carried her to the hospital. When he asked how she wound up on the roof, Mrs. Aldrich is reported as saying, ‘He flew me here. He carried me in his arms and flew me here, like Superman.’“

  “What do you know about the picture on the Drudge website?”

  “About as much as you know, Charles,” said Lara Pinter. “The picture arrived in the form of an anonymous email and it appeared on the Drudge Report within minutes of Mrs. Aldrich being admitted to the hospital.”

  I switched off the TV because I’d he
ard enough.

  Ruby sat in a big office chair, with a Mickey of scotch in her hand, and glared at me, her face as sour and crotchety as ever.

  “Have you lost your G-D mind, Conrad?” she barked. “Do you even have the tiniest inkling of what you’ve just done?”

  I stared at my feet, unable to answer.

  “I’ll G-D tell you what you’ve done. You’ve just guaranteed that Grim Goeffrey has a national G-D audience, you idiot!”

  “I tried to reach you both,” I said, knowing Ruby was right. “I came down here to grab you and Stella, but the store was closed and I had to find Marilyn Aldrich. He was going to kill her, for crying out loud!”

  “I should crush your spine for being so utterly reckless,” Ruby snapped. “Cripes, Conrad, the Guild is going to want you dead because of this!”

  Stella sat down on the small leather sofa beside her desk and motioned for Ruby to calm down. “Let’s just hear Marshall’s side of the story before we pass judgment,” she said, looking up at me. “What happened?”

  I folded the picture of me floating over the Greenfield Hospital and stuffed it into my breast pocket. I closed my eyes for a moment and gathered my thoughts, then drew in a slow breath as I prepared to give a detailed account of the last two hours.

  “I was on a date with Marnie Brindle in my apartment,” I said, slowly. “She’s the woman I rescued at Chesteron College and she’s had it in her mind that I am some kind of superhero. You both know that my ability to foretell hasn’t been working properly. Anyway, as we were eating, a vision came to me.”

  “What was the vision?” Stella blinked.

  I drew another deep breath as I slid down the wall and sat on my haunches. “I saw Marilyn Aldrich inside a barn. It had a checkerboard roof. I also saw Grim Geoffrey’s host—the man in white coveralls. She was bound, gagged and severely beaten. He said his master told him to kill her just before midnight. That’s when I came to.”

  “What time was that?” Stella asked.

  “Around a quarter to seven,” I said. “Marnie insisted that I go to the hospital, and we had a huge fight. I screamed at her and told her to get out of my apartment because she started on about my being a superhero. When she left, I changed into my outfit and ran outside to my car. I came here and left a note in the doorjam which clearly you didn’t receive because Marnie must have followed me here and grabbed the note.”

  “How did you find the barn?”

  “I drove out of town and hid my car in a cut line, then flew around until I spotted the barn. I made every effort to ensure I wasn’t followed.”

  “Not G-D good enough, apparently.” Ruby took a swig of scotch. “Did you take down the guy in white?”

  “No, he wasn’t there.”

  “Son of a bitch!” Ruby growled, as she threw her bottle against the wall, shattering it. “This was a G-D setup the whole time! He planned this because he knew you would rescue her and it would get huge media coverage. Talk about a helluva way to spread fear.”

  “It was not a setup,” I snapped. “Listen Ruby, you don’t know a goddamned thing about how I foretell crimes. He was going to kill her, for Christ sake! I had to get out there and save her.”

  Stella heaved a huge sigh and once again motioned for both of us to calm down. “I think you’re both right,” she said. “I think he was counting on what the shock value a dead Marilyn Aldrich might do to Greenfield. Believe it or not, her rescue might have a positive effect.”

  “In what way?” I asked.

  “Distraction,” said Stella. “News that a flying man saved Mrs. Aldrich is going to distract everyone from the unsolved killings.”

  “That’s possible,” Ruby said, chewing her lip. “Conrad, you’d better get your ass back to that cut line and grab your car because if they find it, they’ll probably pin her kidnapping on you.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “But I can’t just step out back and fly there. Everybody and his dog is going to be searching the skies for a flying man. Besides, there’s still time to get back to the barn and take down Grim Geoffrey’s host.”

  “There’s no point in going back to the barn. He’d already know that Mrs. Aldrich was rescued,” Stella said. “You need to get your car, but you can’t go out dressed like that. They know what you were wearing when you ran into the hospital.”

  “Well, I can’t go back to my apartment.”

  Stella stood up from the couch and gave a wry smile. “You’re forgetting that you’re inside Stella Weinberg’s world famous Curiosity Nook. I’ve got something you can wear that won’t arose any suspicion if you’re pulled over. Give me five minutes and I’ll be right back.”

  Stella waddled down the hallway. I turned my attention to Ruby, who wore a frown on her face that could shatter glass.

  “Were you serious about the Guild wanting me dead?” I asked. “I thought they were supposed to be noble superheroes that go around saving the world.”

  Ruby nodded. “I wouldn’t lie to you, Conrad, they take matters of secrecy to insane levels, that bunch.”

  I snorted. “Well, they can take a number, I’ve already experienced one assassination attempt.”

  Ruby stretched her legs out and plopped her feet on top of the desk. “I said they’ll want you dead, I didn’t say they would actually kill you.”

  “How come?”

  “You’re more valuable alive, that’s how come. If anything, you should expect a visit from Ephraim now that I’ve been kicked out. They wouldn’t want me spilling the beans about all of their internal politics and spoiling their shot at recruiting someone with your powers.”

  “I see. And who is this Ephraim?”

  “He’s the head of the Guild,” she said, blowing her nose. “He’s a Vanguard as well.”

  I unzipped my leather jacket and folded it over my arm. Clearly the Guild experienced the kinds of political games that define most organized groups. I’d pick Ruby’s brain for more information when I returned with my car, as Stella was walking up the hall carrying a garment bag.

  “I’ve always thought your leather outfit looked like you stole it from the costume rack of Elvis Presley’s comeback tour.” Stella grinned, handing me the garment bag. “The Smithsonian has never forgiven me for not donating it to their collection.”

  I hooked the hanger on the doorknob and carefully pulled down the zipper, hoping not to damage whatever was inside. The garment bag fell to the floor, revealing a fire engine red tank top with the letters U.S.A. emblazoned in an arc across the chest. Underneath was a pair of blue shorts with a drawstring.

  “I suddenly have a craving for Wheaties,” I said, examining the tank top. “This wouldn’t be?”

  Stella smiled. “Yep, it’s the same shorts and tank top Bruce Jenner wore when he won the decathlon at the seventy-six Olympics. The shirt still has his sweat on it.”’

  I pulled the shirt off the hangar and held it over my chest, checking to see if it would fit. “I’m not going to ask how you acquired it,” I said, wrinkling my nose at its stench.

  “Let’s just say that Mr. Jenner owed me a favor back in seventy-seven, and he was short on cash at the time.”

  “Gotcha. Where can I change?”

  Stella pointed her arm out the door of her office. “Bathroom is down the hall and to the left.”

  I wandered down the hall and into the bathroom, thinking that if I ever were to don a costume, it would probably be just a tank top and sweat pants. I put on the tank top and then slid the shorts up over my legs when I realized that I didn’t have any footwear other than my motorcycle boots. I looked down at my bare feet, shrugged, and stuck them in my boots.

  “Stella,” I shouted. “I think I should wear something over my face—just in case some idiot with a telephoto lens takes my picture while I’m flying!” Within seconds, there was a knock at the bathroom door. I opened it a crack and Stella handed me a green balaclava with the words Ski Vermont embroidered into the wool. I pulled the balaclava over my head a
nd glanced at myself in the bathroom mirror.

  I groaned and rolled my eyes. “I look like an idiot.”

  I grabbed my car keys from my pants pocket and emerged from the bathroom, preparing myself for hoots of laughter and ridicule from Ruby. When I walked in the office, Ruby eyeballed me from head to foot, and simply shook her head.

  “You have ugly knees,” she said, not even trying to conceal the tinge of sarcasm in her voice “Oh, and the boots are a nice touch.”

  I rolled my eyes and looked at Stella. “Your turn.”

  “We can laugh at how stupid you look when you get back here with your car,” she said, leading me to the back door. “There’s a big trash bin outside. If you step behind it, nobody will see you take off.”

  “Check.”

  “Drink this.” Stella handed me a Dixie cup filled to the rim with a clear oily liquid that had little gold flecks floating on the top.

  “What is it?” I asked, thinking it was a potion of some kind.

  “Uzo Gold,” she said. “You’re probably going to freeze your ass off up there.”

  I gulped it back, grimacing as it went down my throat. “Thanks,” I said, unlocking the door and stepping outside.

  “I’ll keep an eye out and tell you when the coast is clear,” said Stella, as I stepped behind the Dumpster.

  I looked up in the sky to make sure there were no helicopters hovering nearby. The coast was clear. “Say the word,” I whispered.

  “Go!” said Stella, as I pushed against the pavement and rocketed into the air.

  I felt a cold rush of wind against my bare feet and realized that my takeoff had blown my boots off. There was no time to go back and get them, so I aimed my body toward the Interstate and began to scan the ground for my car.

  Chapter 37

  There were no tire tracks or footprints other than the ones I’d left when I drove the Tempo up the cut line, so I landed beside the front door and hopped in. I started the engine but kept the lights off as I did a U-turn and drove back down the cut line, dodging overturned logs and large rocks until I saw Highway 9.