I didn’t say anything.
Later that day, while Janet was running some errands, I
packed my camping gear. I left a note, apologizing for not
being able to share with her what was going on with me.
Apologizing for suddenly taking off. I didn’t tell her where
I was going. I didn’t tell her why. The note said:
I hope you’ll
still be able to welcome me when I return
. I wrote that I loved
her, and I meant it, even as I was probably destroying
whatever affection she still felt for me.
I wouldn’t have been able to leave if Janet had been there
to talk me out of it. And I didn’t want her to. I didn’t.
I joined the stranger on the beach.
Together we waited for “them.” For the Preservers.
I couldn’t stop thinking about Janet, but otherwise I
enjoyed being a beach bum. No-one ever came here, so Janet
wouldn’t find me. If she even bothered to try after what
I did to her. Occasionally, I’d go into town and buy some
food. Word had gotten around about how I’d abandoned my
wife, and people were ruder to me than ever. The Johnsons
barely tolerated my presence in their grocery store.
When all this was over, when the woman was safe — or
at least when I’d done what I could to help her, or whatever
it was I was doing — I’d go back to Janet. If she’d still have
me.
Or maybe I’d become a lonely old grouch. Or I’d finally
leave this dump of a town.
Most of my time on the beach was spent alone, while the
stranger hid. I crooned old sailing songs to the seagulls.
The same thought kept nagging at me, no matter how
hard I tried to let go of it: how unbelievably stupid it was
to leave Janet just as the fun and the passion were finally
coming back into our relationship. Or was all that just a
temporary byproduct of the storm? Maybe it had been
best not to hope it would last. Eventually, life would have
returned to banal, numbing normality.
I spoke to the stranger about my life, about what she
called “this world.” She described more of the myriad worlds
that she claimed to have visited. But she was tight-lipped
about her personal details. And no matter how I prodded
and asked, she wouldn’t say how she had travelled to these
countless alternate realities. “After,” she kept reminding
me, “I’ll tell you everything.”
I didn’t know if I really believed the stranger. I both did
and didn’t, somewhat apprehensive of either possibility. I
wanted to believe that the universe was as fantastic as her
stories made it out to be.
But it was all so crazy. And yet . . . how had she spent an
entire day under the water? And what about that man she
called Hunter, with his Jake Kurtz technology?
Maybe she hadn’t really spent that much time in the
water . . . maybe she had surfaced somewhere and then
swum back . . . and that man could be from a secret high-tech government agency or something.
She could be a crazy woman who needed help. Maybe I
was projecting too much of my own imagination into all this.
Was I really helping her by encouraging her delusions?
I was skipping rocks on the water when a violent burst of
hot wind knocked me down. I looked up. They had arrived.
A woman in skin-tight dark leather, her scalp shaved to
stubble and her face covered with tattoos and piercings. Large,
feathery wings sprouted from her back. Sandy King was no
longer a teenager, but a woman of . . . sixty? Sixty-five?
Another woman in a similar leather outfit: her trim body
gave the illusion of youth, but her weathered face revealed
her age. In the comics, no-one ages, but Suzanne King must
have been at least eighty.
Cliff King’s age was harder to tell. Ten feet tall, his
entire body covered in blue scales, he looked only remotely
human.
Stanley King, holding a metal pad that could have been
designed by Jake Kurtz, looked twenty-five. But he could
mold his features into any shape.
Behind them, a gaping portal into the unknown, a
gateway to the fantastic world they had come from, still
leaked a prodigious amount of heat.
I hadn’t really believed her until this moment. Now I
had no choice but to believe. I wept, partially from the blast
of burning heat but also from joy that the universe truly
was as wondrous as I’d dreamed as a boy.
The Human Angel. Spectral. The Brute. Professor
Unknown. “The Preservers!”
Professor Unknown spoke. “You know who we are?”
I had to pretend to know less than I did. For her. But
there was still so much I didn’t know.
“The Preservers are my favourite comics characters. Is
this a movie set or something? What kind of special effect
is that thing . . . that hole behind you?”
“Comics? In this universe, we’re characters in comic
books? Interesting.”
“Stanley,” said Spectral. “There’s no time for all that.”
“You’re right, Suzanne. Sir, I wish we had time to
explain, but we really are the Preservers.” As if to highlight
the Professor’s claims, the Human Angel spread her wings
and flew up into the dawn sky.
I gasped in awe. Could I really deceive these people? I
wiped my eyes dry. Already the heat from the portal was
receding.
Stanley King addressed me again. “We’re looking for
someone. A woman.”
Before I could respond, the Human Angel landed back
among her family. She looked at me. “I saw a tent over
there.” She nodded toward it. “Do you live on this beach?”
I said that I did.
Professor Unknown asked me, “Has anything peculiar
happened here recently?”
“You mean more peculiar than superpowered comics
characters coming to life?” That came out more facetious
than I’d intended.
Suzanne interrupted. “Sir, I’m afraid this is rather urgent.
Your world is in danger. As are countless others, unless we
capture this woman. So, if you don’t know anything, we’ll
be on our way.”
“No, wait. I think I know who you mean. But, if you ask
me, she seems to be the one in trouble, not the world.”
Professor Unknown said, “Please continue.”
“Well, about a month ago, a young woman I’d never
seen before walked into the ocean. No-one ever swims
or anything here. The water’s too contaminated. Anyone
going into that water has only one thing in mind, and that’s
killing themselves. And then, that very day, there was a
monstrous storm, the worst I’ve seen in my whole life. Tore
the town apart.”
I hesitated. Could I betray her to these heroes? She was
in my care — whoever, whatever she was. There was a fragile
loneliness that hid behind all that pent-up fury of hers, and
that moved me. Impulsively, not fully in control of the fact
that I was doing so, I made up a story, borrowing details from
a chapter of Kurtz’s
Destroyer of Worlds
.
“The next day, she walked out of the ocean, dressed
in a silver metal bodysuit overlaid with the same kind of
circuitry design as that pad you’re holding — ”
Interrupting me, Spectral murmured to herself, “How
did she get a hold of that kind of technology?” She looked
worried, but mostly impatient. “What happened next?”
“And at that moment a big guy ran out from that path
over there and started shooting at her, firing a strange-looking gun, again with those circuitry markings. What is
that stuff? I’ve never seen anything like it in my whole life.”
“Please, it’s important that we know where these people
went,” Professor Unknown replied, ignoring my question.
“I think you’re going to have to tell me what this is all
about before I say anything more. The girl was scared. That
maniac was hunting her.”
Sandy barked, “Listen, you filthy bum, there’s no time
for that. Tell us what you know.”
The Brute gently put a hand on her shoulder, while
Professor Unknown harrumphed.
Stanley said, “I apologize for that, sir; we’ve all been
under tremendous stress.” He cleared his throat again.
“You were right, when you first saw that woman, she was in
all likelihood committing suicide. And she succeeded. She
died. Then the second time you saw her, someone else —
something else — was inhabiting her body. What you saw
emerge from the ocean was a reanimated corpse taken over
by a destructive entity that lays waste to universes as she
travels from timeline to timeline. We want to capture her
and hold her until we can figure out how to neutralize her
threat.”
“If she’s so dangerous, why not simply kill her?”
“Because her death is what triggers the travel between
dimensions, and she can’t leave a timeline without
automatically destroying it. The entity’s new avatar is
always a freshly dead woman.”
“And that maniac?”
“He’s called Hunter. His homeworld was destroyed by a
previous avatar of the entity. He’s obsessed with vengeance.
He tracks her down from world to world, killing her every
time, regardless of the consequences.”
“But . . . doesn’t he die when the worlds get destroyed?”
“No. He automatically jumps to the avatar’s next
destination world, though not necessarily near her point of
arrival. Sometimes it takes him months to track her down,
sometimes hours. On many worlds, there’s a network, a
secret society devoted to his master, that awaits his arrival
and helps him. He’s only an agent of her true enemy, a much
more powerful entity.”
“Do these . . . entities . . . have names?”
“She is Kali, and her enemy is her husband, Shiva, the
destroyer of worlds. It’s all a game to them.”
I gulped. Kali? The stranger was a Hindu goddess? The
same Kali that Jake Kurtz had written about in
Destroyer
of Worlds
? Could I trust her? Should I? These people — the
Preservers — were heroes. They saved worlds. They didn’t
destroy them. At least, that’s what the comic books said.
I continued lying to my heroes. “Then they both flew
away. Like superheroes. Or like gods, I guess. And I never
saw them again. I guess this ‘Hunter’ hasn’t caught up to her,
because the world’s still here.”
The Brute suddenly moved more quickly than could be
expected of a creature of his size and girth. He knocked all
of us to the ground, shielding us from a ray beam striking
from the sky. He grunted in pain but appeared otherwise
unhurt.
Sandy King snarled, “Hunter.”
Our attacker flew with the aid of another Kurtz-like
machine, a one-man platform with curved handle controls.
Another beam shot from one of the handles.
The Human Angel flew straight at Hunter, evading
his ray beams. The powerful Brute valiantly shrugged off
direct hits from Hunter’s weapon as if they were insect
bites. Spectral became nearly invisible and rose into the air
toward their foe. Professor Unknown shouted instructions
at his family, coordinating their efforts.
While the Preservers and Hunter fought, I crawled into
the woods. To relative safety.
Kali, or whoever she was, found me and enfolded me in
her arms.
I was trembling, the surreality of the dangers around
me taking its toll. Her lips brushing my ear, she whispered,
“I have to leave now, while they’re busy fighting Hunter. I
can’t fail again. This must end now.”
I trembled even more.
Despite her stated urgency, she stayed put. She had
never stood this close to me. Her arms around me, I felt her
tremendous physical strength, and I nuzzled deeper into
her embrace.
She said, “I heard everything. Thank you. It’s good to
finally have a friend.”
She pressed her hand against my chest, helping me slow
my breathing, calming me down.
She told me her version. “They have some of it right, but
not all of it. Yes, I am Kali. Yes, my husband, Shiva, plays a
game of cat-and-mouse with me, destroying worlds in the
process, so that new worlds may be born. These Preservers
mean well, but at least once before they have played
into my husband’s hands. This is beyond them. Vishnu
overestimated their effectiveness.”
“They’re just pawns in these games of yours?”
Kali ignored my question. “I want to end this; their plan
would only enable my husband’s agent to find me more
easily, to torture me at his leisure. They cannot seriously
oppose Shiva, who has been playing these games for
millennia. Years ago, I proposed to Stanley King that he
give me one of his dimensional travel devices. According
to the rules set by my husband, Hunter can only follow if
he kills me, not if I travel by other means. But King feared
that the world would be destroyed in my wake, regardless
of how I left.”
“Would it?”
“I don’t know. Probably. Yes. But then, Hunter would
die along with it, and perhaps I would live forever in the
new world, and this game of destruction, perpetuated at
my expense, might end. I know my husband — he must be
bored by this sport by now and would not start it afresh by
going to the trouble of finding a new pawn.”
I wanted to believe her. To trust her. Maybe I did. Maybe
I didn’t. Maybe it didn’t matter.
“What about Kurtz? What does he have to do with all
this?”
“From what you say of him, he sounds like an aspect of
Brahma, the creator.”
“And the woman . . . this woman whose body you took
over — who was she?”
“She killed herself. The details don’t matter.” Kali stood
up. “I have to leave now. I can still tap into the portal’s
residual energy and travel between worlds, but I can tarry
no longer.”
Yet, she hesitated. She held out her hand. “Come with
me. To a new world. To a new life.”
I thought about how fed up I was of life in Singleton. I
nursed old angers: the polluted oceans, and all the other
ways we were destroying the world that gave us life.
But then I thought about all the people and animals
and cities on Earth. About all the suns and planets in the
universe. About the Preservers, doomed to perish in this
mundane world after decades of astonishing adventures. I
thought about everything that Kali would soon destroy.