Beware the Pact

This world is not mine. You can see I am not one of you, that I am a stranger here. Each night when I creep into the woods I plunge my hand into the soil, and wherever I am standing I pull up a latch that opens a door to the stairs that lead down to my black underground lair. The floor is a grate in case I need to drown someone who followed me; on the left is a sentient computer with no hardware that is merely an extension of myself I use for appearances. At the back is a form-fitting bodysuit with clawed hands preserved in a mold; when I zip it up it transforms me into someone taller, stronger and younger. The government already has infrared footage of me flying over major cities at night and sitting on skyscrapers, that is the reason for the artifice. I want them to think I’m an eccentric inventor. I go without a mask because my human face already is one.

Never in my nightly wanderings have I encountered another being like myself, and I certainly have never seen a higher power or knew one existed. So you will think the two parts of my story are unrelated, that a reclusive nocturnal vigilante with superhuman strength and speed would be moved by the plight of another man’s sick child, a man that I know during the day.

The elusive, mysterious Olympic Committee was having a gala convention at the Glass Castle in Lausanne, Switzerland; one of the few times such a meeting has ever been publicized. So this closed-door, invitation-only gathering of the world’s billionaires was to be held under a glass roof and therefore visible to me. It was the most eccentric structure I’ve ever scaled in today’s world, its fortified walls filigreed with black iron curls like my black hands. It was almost a pleasure to climb it and I was more naïve than I am today.

The castle is a hotel as well as a battlement and convention center. Late in the evening the members were milling around a lavish entertainment area filled with chandeliers, silk tablecloths and music not knowing I was peering down at them like a gargoyle. As I moved to a better position my eyes fell on a group of well-dressed ladies talking to a suited gentleman whose face was just out of my sight. He had their undivided attention, and the moment my eyes fell on him this man turned and looked directly up at me through the glass a distance of over one hundred feet.

I rocketed backward into the night sky leaving the castle and the city behind at half the speed of sound. Not since I first took this form have I ever had a reason to panic, not knowing who or what kind of omnipotence was required for someone to be aware of my presence which I thought was unknowable. And the most obvious answer, at least to me, that this person was tempting the most elite females of the wealthy, caused me to bury myself in the ground on the other side of the Alps for two days for fear of being discovered. So profoundly did this trouble me I gave up my nightly transformation and gallivanting for two years.

--

I returned to the life of an ordinary human, no longer sleeping during the day, eventually deciding to make better use of my gifts. The person I am during the day was not a priority for me; but it was how I first began, a nobody who liked to read vigilante comics, so that is the reward I received when my life was cut short even though I am no hero. I wasn’t born a night stalker who reads about living an ordinary life, and yet I returned to it.

My daylight existence was not as adventurous, interesting or scandalous as vigilantism, however there was one bright spot worth mentioning and that is a man named Jerrod A. Hill. He was a youth counselor in the past life I have no memory of, which is nothing to a delinquent or a vigilante except that he is a person who gives the shirt off his back to someone who would never lift a finger for him; and as strange as this is, with a new face and a new life he remembered me. I say this because there was nothing memorable about me and yet he still knew me. His accounts of our time together are my only knowledge of those times, whitewashed of any complaints by the virtue of his personality. In the time between that life and this one he served a tour of duty overseas as an army chaplain, and was now working at a hospital. He married an elementary schoolteacher and they had a young son.

At the time we were reunited their son was seven years old, which is significant to the story because at age eleven he was diagnosed with Adrenoleukodystrophy, a rare genetic condition that steals a child’s eyesight, speech and physical development leading to paralysis and death within one year. His little league games were replaced with days spent on a ventilator. There is no cure.

I know as little about this as I do about friendship, but I watched this news reduce my friend and his wife to people with no future. You see he was a shining example of faith and its practical implications which I am not, and the knowledge that their child would not survive to age twelve broke my intellect. I watched Jerrod’s attempts to explain it in religious terms and take it in stride barely concealing his devastation.

Grown men do not normally discuss such things, but I asked him What if I could change into a night bird and fly his son to any treatment center or laboratory in the world? Jerrod said it wouldn’t make any difference, their specialists were already on the cusp of dystrophic research worldwide including the latest experimental treatments.

“Part of the problem is he had just gotten his age eleven vaccinations when it started.” he told me.

“Do you think this is something that may have been triggered by a vaccine?” I responded.

“No but it makes no difference.” his eyes were bloodshot. “No specialist in the world will discuss that aspect or they would be discredited instantly. Apparently there are search engines looking for the word ‘vaccine’ in all immuno-dystrophic related papers so those clinics can be defunded and their projects suspended.”

I checked my underground computer and indeed a condition that erodes the myelin sheath around all neurons in the brain at the genetic level is not something that can be fixed with a simple breakthrough. My own brain was sore from studying it. I spent the night sitting on a skyscraper like a bent statue dissecting the only possible solution and the choice that lay before me. There was only one being on this Earth I had ever glimpsed who could change the course of these events for a price, only one who had the power!

--

I had to proceed carefully. The Olympic Committee’s membership was an international secret; slipping into their headquarters to get their roster was child’s play, the problem was I had to make contact as my human self and if there was a break-in there was no chance of that. Maybe I could do this as just a human investigator on a mission of mercy, but the clock was ticking. I returned to the glass castle in Lausanne and broke into their security room.

My black hand slipped through the steel wall as if it was made of water and disabled the guard by slipping my claws into the back of his neck, their tips laced with the anesthetic venom found in caterpillars. I sat down to review the surveillance footage from two years ago, placing a small black object with an antenna on top of the CPU which is merely a McGuffin for my own instincts so people will think I am a hacker. As I told the machine what to do I stopped for a moment to consider that any manifestation of a god might be a god, that his printed image might turn and look at me from the paper or even burn two holes in the computer screen.

Back as my human self I made contact with one of the Committee’s lesser representatives in the area of charity work who did not know of the break-in, and she agreed to meet me at a restaurant.

“This family has no idea I am here and has not paid me to represent them in any way.” I placed some papers in front of her including an X-ray of Timothy’s brain. “Their son has only months to live, during which his sight and speech will degrade until he is unable to breathe on his own. I realize you don’t actually connect individual patients with donors; I have never taken such a case as this myself and have stepped well-outside of my comfort zone already.”

“Yes but working outside the parameters of our vetting system might actually be illegal.” she responded. “I’m not a neurologist and you are not a lawyer.”

“Well there aren’t any comprehensive treatments anyway that money could buy.” I took out a manila envelope. “But a donor is still a donor if they initiate contact themselves, yes?”

“Theoretically, but that’s a dangerous thing to be asking.”

“I happened to be present at a convention where I heard some of the members discussing a subject that would be of great interest to this family...” As I reached down to take out the security photos I’d printed I realized the metal clasp on the envelope would have embedded itself an inch into my skin if I was mortal.

“And they were discussing neurological research?” she watched as I looked down at my palm. “Membership is confidential and vigorously protected. The best I can do is make inquiries.”

I took out the black-and-white photos and spread them on the table. They were grainy images of several older, decadent women talking with someone just out of frame. The sleeve of his tuxedo was only a blur.

“Where did you get these?” she demanded warily. “They’re security photos.”

“The hotel provided me with them.” I answered. “Do you recognize anyone you could reach out to anonymously?”

She refused to answer but her face seemed to grow pale at the sight of them.

“I really couldn’t say. But they’re not members, they’re wives. Membership changes frequently, people divorce or pass on…”

“Are you saying some of these women have died?” my instincts began to take over. “Do you have any idea who this man they’re talking to might be?”

“It’s company policy not to give personal information.” she flustered. “Just policy!”

A passing waitress stumbled and spilled a kettle of boiling water that would have scalded the woman’s face but I reached across the table faster than the human eye can see and pulled her aside.

“I understand.” I said quietly, holding her wrist. “It’s just company policy.”

The waitress cursed and made her excuses. The water had doused the table and reduced the photos to a gray blur. When it was cleaned off there were square marks where the photos had been. This was all completely unnecessary; contact had already been made. Perhaps all I had to do was make the deal.

--

I had until nightfall as I’ve never transformed during the day, but perhaps I should die as my human self with a degree of dignity rather than risk exposing my secret. I don’t know how I can be harmed or if I could die a second time which was the unspoken fear that made me hang up my wings in the first place. I only had to be sure the boy would live; and how to be sure of that I had no idea. But I didn’t want to be defenseless when it happened.

At dusk I wandered into the patch of woods behind where I live and plunged my hand into the leaves to pull up the hatch as I’ve done many times before. I descended the stairs and put on the black suit, and sat down at my omnipotent computer that has no circuits.

“Show me a manifestation of Death.” I instructed it.

To my surprise the blank screen pulled up the black-and-white film The Seventh Seal which I could have watched on my home television if I wanted to. It was the scene where the knight portrayed by a young Max von Sydow has stopped at a little church to confess his sins. Death, disguised as a monk, was listening to him from behind the iron-barred window of the rectory…

“Through my indifference for people I’ve been placed outside of their society.” the knight spoke in Swedish. “Now I inhabit a ghost world enclosed by my dreams and imaginations.”

“Despite this you don’t want to die?” Death responded behind the bars.

“Yes, I want to.” the knight replied.

“Well what are you waiting for?”

“I want knowledge.” the knight stated.

“You want guarantees?” Death inquired.

“Call it what you like. Is it so terribly inconceivable to comprehend a god with one’s senses? I call out to him in the darkness but it’s as if no one is there.”

“Then perhaps there isn’t anyone.”

“Then life is a preposterous horror.” the knight answered. “No one can live faced with death, knowing everything’s nothingness that day. We must make an idol of our fear and that idol we shall call a god?”

“Stop.” I commanded the machine and the film went silent. Death’s pale, hairless face was immobilized on the screen looking at me; an actor whose name I didn’t know.

“Is it true that any manifestation of a god is a god?” I thought aloud. Its colorless eyes seemed to ponder me as if it was listening. I turned away from the screen and when I looked back it was still staring.

“Is there something you want to say to me?” I asked curiously.

Death’s eyes seemed to narrow as if I was some curious thing that had caught its attention between lines but it was forbidden from deviating from the script.

“Will the boy survive if I offer myself in return?” I made my demands of it.

Death’s bloodless face seemed to want to answer as its gaze intensified. This was a mistake allowing it to see into my inner sanctum. I ordered the screen to go black and flew up the stairs and outside. Levitation allows me to run and climb faster than any human including on all fours, and some miles later I knelt down on the ground and unzipped my protective suit changing back into an older, weaker man. I would have to find the thoughts to unmake everything I had created, something I’d never considered but it was my thoughts that made them in the first place. There is no escape from thought, it follows you wherever you are.

It is said that with telepathy there is no pause between thoughts and speech to consider one’s words; but I don’t know in what context this would happen, if the mental blocks that stand in our way were removed or if the soul was pulled from our physical bodies altogether. I knelt down with my bare forehead against the earth afraid of when that time will come, afraid of what will be there when I look up again and what it will discover about me. My intentions were honorable, justified, childish. Must we make an idol out of our fears and call it a god that sees everything we do? Must we insist on giving it whatever power it requires to reach us? And must we wait just as it waits salivating in its relish for fools and their inescapable fears?

--

“And now you’ve given me nothing but a shattered dream.

Feels like I could float away from this empty heart…”