A Red Line inbound train ripped into the afternoon fog over the Charles River. The fog, unfazed, closed again the moment the train had passed on. Swollen Friday clouds slouched and sweated around the crown of the Prudential building, and a single sailboat broke the gray surface of the Charles like a lonely whitecap. Gray water above sagged toward gray water below, and gray steel squatted box-like between. Adam Reed, staring out the scratched, streaked window of the train, knew that all over the city were equally gray graveyards, their headstones slanting earthward as though sickened by centuries of vertigo. Yet they stood still, bone-thin, their colonial names long worn off by indifferent New England rain. As the train carried Adam over the languorous Charles, Boston slumped against the wet Atlantic, and brooded on its own malaise, and took no notice of him.
Adam clutched the handrail with his right hand and twisted the left behind his back, clawing with stubby fingernails toward his shoulder blades. Inwardly, he cursed the mosquito that had chosen to get its bloody meal from that near-unreachable spot. After nearly a minute of awkward, fruitless pretzeling, he fished around in the pocket of his denim jacket and pulled out his keys. Using the longest of these for extra reach, he managed a few feeble scratches. The itch faded, and Adam let his arm fall to his side and looked around.
A few yards down the train car, a middle-aged couple was staring at him. He met the woman’s gaze, and she immediately returned her attention to the tour book sitting open in her lap, and fiddled with a bit of her dyed auburn hair. Her balding husband, when Adam’ eyes fell on him, turned to stare pointedly out the window; the murky blue-gray view was immediately extinguished as the train dived below ground, but the man continued staring anyway. Feeling a little smug at having stared them down, Adam also turned to the window and surveyed his faint reflection.
His light brown hair had been cut that week. Too short, he thought. It made his ears jut out like twin mug handles.
The train ground to a stop at the grimy Park Street platform, and Adam was the first one out the sliding doors. He edged his way past the growing crowd, turning his body sideways to slip between the brick wall and the jostling strangers. Above him, a bronze sculpture of a hand hung on the wall, its first two baseball bat-sized fingers raised in a papal gesture.
The moist air was warm and thick with the smell of old tunnels. As Adam climbed the stairs, he thought of a story he had read somewhere, in which a race of subterranean horrors emerged from the subway tunnels below Park Street and overran Boston. He also thought of rats. He gripped the handrail as he ascended; he knew it was filthy, but didn’t care. With his other hand, he pulled his cell phone out of his jacket pocket and, with practiced fingers, composed a text message.
@ Park St. Should I get ur ticket? It might sell out.
He bounded up and out into a chilly drizzle as the bell in the tower of Park Street Church tolled five.
Ordinarily this part of Boston Common would be alive with t-shirt vendors, donut carts, and especially pigeons, but today the weather had pushed all of them into hiding. Slick cobblestone reflected red taillights, and pedestrians hunched their shoulders and darted from awning to awning. Adam turned to the east, keeping the park on his right, and walked, trying to ignore the misting rain.
In his pocket, his cell phone beeped and shook. He took it out and read the reply.
Sorry!! The kids’ mom is working late so I’m stuck nannying tonight. You free tomorrow?
Adam sighed, his breath steaming, and scratched his back.
Sure! Tomorrow, same time. Blame it on the brats.
The amber-lit lobby was warm and crowded. There were several dozen people in line to buy tickets at the counter, but Adam wasn’t anxious to talk to a cinema employee anyway. Instead, he got in a shorter line and bought his ticket from an electronic kiosk. He often wished he could buy everything from a machine this way. Talking to cashiers made him nervous.
Outside, the rain became heavier, and the wind started to howl. Adam rode an escalator alongside an enormous window, listening to the erratic percussion of the rain on the glass and watching the dark shapes of Bostonians on the sidewalks below as they scurried about trying to flag down taxis. He scratched his back and was glad to be inside.
His movie hadn’t sold out, but it must have been close; when he arrived at the auditorium it was brimming with rowdy moviegoers. Most seats were taken, but it’s easier to find a seat at the movies when you go alone. Adam quickly chose a seat in an upper corner of the room, pulled off his jacket, and sat down.
Immediately he stood up again, revolted. As soon as he had touched the back of the seat, he had felt a warm stickiness across the center of his back.
He whirled around to inspect the seat. Sure enough, a dark wet spot stained the red upholstery. Someone must have spilled a Coke or something. No wonder the seat had been open. Adam looked around for another place.
By now, the only available spots were in the front row—the seats that would give you whiplash from craning your neck upward to see the screen. Reluctantly, Adam collapsed into one of these. The sticky wetness had soaked into his t-shirt; he tried to ignore it.
The big screen began to show commercials: a Coke ad featuring people on roller skates; an announcement that downloading pirated movies was wrong; an Army recruiting spot. Adam half-noticed them. His back was itching, worse than it had on the subway. He had assumed it was a mosquito bite, but he’d never had a bite like this. He wriggled and twisted in his seat, trying to find some position that would relieve the itch.
Friction of fabric on skin, and the itch became a burn. Adam thought of the mysterious stickiness on the seat, and hoped that he hadn’t come down with some horrible rash.
That thought was driven from his mind by a stabbing sensation, as though a knife in his back were thrusting its way out. The air went out of him in a wheeze and he was driven back in his seat by the pain.
The screen before him was bright green, declaring that the following preview was approved for all audiences, but warning that the movie it advertised contained intense sequences of fantasy violence. Adam never saw the preview, though. A new onslaught of pain hit him; this time it felt like twin blades, knifing outward from each shoulder blade. He couldn’t contain the miserable whimper-grunt that escaped from his lungs as he pitched forward in his seat, head nearly between his knees, and groped with both hands for his back. His ears rang and whistled.
Behind him, in the second row, a girl gasped loudly. Next to her, a high male voice said something that sounded like “popsicle.”
Adam twisted around to look at them and was rewarded with another pair of dagger-thrusts from inside his back. His forehead struck the plastic on top of the seat back and he moaned.
“Can you hear me?” It was the same high male voice. “Do you need to go to a hospital? I think you do.”
Adam raised his head and peered into the gloom. Purplish mists swam in his eyes, obscuring his vision. He shook his head, trying to clear it.
The voice that had spoken belonged to a big guy, linebacker type, wearing a trucker cap and hooded sweatshirt. His eyes were wide as he looked at Adam. The girl next to him, who had gasped, was small and dark; her expression was somewhere between worry and disgust.
“I don’t know,” Adam croaked. “I had this…itch, but—“
“Itch?” The big guy looked incredulous. “There’s blood all over your back, dude.”
Adam slowly rose to his feet, still facing away from the screen. He now became aware that every face in the auditorium was gaping at him in the blue light of the screen, though the first scene of the movie had begun. He grabbed his jacket, turned toward the glowing exit sign, and ran toward it, surprised to find that his feet were still sure beneath him. The screen displayed the title of the movie in stark red on black: DAWN OF THE DEAD. He hit the door and pounded into the wide hallway, toward the nearest bathroom.
Moments later he was peering over his shoulder into a broad mirror, examining the shiny, wet redness that filled the back of his yellow t-shirt. It was almost perfectly symmetrical, like a Rorschach ink blot.
I see a butterfly, he found himself thinking.
The bathroom door banged open and the big football player from the auditorium was inside breathing hard.
“I called 911,” he panted, “but I think you should lie down or something. You don’t look—“
Adam didn’t hear the rest, because he was running. Out of the bathroom, through the corridor, down the escalator, through the lobby he hurtled, heedless of the big guy’s shouts and the anxious noises of passersby.
He could not have explained exactly why he ran, except that, as he stood there in the cinema bathroom, he was overcome with a primal, undeniable need to be alone.
The hinges on the front door of the cinema squealed as Adam exploded out into the icy, blowing rain. The clouds glowed orange and green, inches above him. A cab driver leaned on his horn as Adam tore in front of his taxi, crossing the street into the Common, still running as fast as he could. The pain in his back returned with fury. His skeleton was trying to escape his skin, he was sure of it.
The park was virtually deserted and he probably ran about a quarter of a mile and the trees were black cracks in the air and the wind screamed from in to out and the purple mist within his eyes clotted and a thousand fire alarms screamed in each ear and his knees finally buckled and his cheek met brick with a wet slap.
To smoke the fire and round the horn
To tooth the nail and claw the hammer
To measure scale and lengthen bone
To soar on wings, but not like eagles—
Some time passed before Adam was again aware of the damp ground beneath him. The flat sky had ceased to pelt him with freezing grenades of rain. The wind had slowed, too. Now, a night breeze wandered from alley to thoroughfare and across the park, sliding over Adam and smelling like wet city. Somehow it felt different, as it touched his back, than any breeze he had felt before. He could not say how.
He started to roll over onto his back, but for some reason, he could not bring himself to do so. Instead, he braced his hands against the brick and pushed himself into a standing position. He looked around, swaying a little, like an anchored sailboat.
There were a few reddish swirls on the ground where he had been lying that the rain had not rinsed away. His blood. But his back didn’t hurt, now. The stabbing pains were entirely gone, as was the infernal itch. He felt good, he realized. A different sort of good than any he was used to. But also cold. He shivered again, realizing with dismay that he had left his denim jacket in the cinema bathroom.
In the murky darkness it was hard to be certain exactly which way was which. Adam had run a fair distance into the park before collapsing. He squinted about for a few moments, and then struck off in a direction that he thought must be north.
Walking was a strange experience. The chilly air glided past Adam’s body, as though for the first time. It was exhilarating, but so cold. His damp t-shirt clung to his skin, and his teeth chattered.
He reached the edge of the park and observed two things. First, he had walked the right way; the Boston Common cinema was directly in front of him. Second, the road was nearly empty. There were no pedestrians on the sidewalks, and only a few cabs prowled the street. The lights of the cinema marquee were on, but the lobby was darkened. No one went in or out through its big double doors.
It was the middle of the night, apparently. Two or three in the morning, at least, since all of the movies were over. Adam realized that he must have lain unconscious in the Common for no less than seven hours.
That was unsettling, but another violent shiver reminded him of a more pressing matter: he was freezing.
The subway was closed, so he couldn’t get home that way. He couldn’t call someone to come get him; his phone was in his jacket, which was now locked inside the movie theater. He had no money for a taxi; his wallet was in his jacket, too. He’d have to wait until the cinema opened so he could retrieve his stuff, he realized with horror.
He was shaking violently all over now. He wondered if the blood he’d lost made him more susceptible to the cold. Another breeze went by, and Adam squinted and hugged himself.
Maybe a cop will come by, he thought hopefully. Or else I’ll have to beg for mercy from one of these cabs.
Just as this thought entered his head, a yellow taxi slowed to a stop in front of him, and the passenger’s-side window whirred down. The driver leaned across to peer out at Adam. He had a kind-looking face with a broad forehead and red cheeks.
“You all right, kid?” the cabbie asked.
Adam found himself at a loss for a way to describe his current state. All he managed was “C-cold.”
“I should say so,” the man said, eyebrows raised. “Well, I guess you can—“
The cab driver’s eyes widened. He seemed to be looking, not at Adam, but at something just behind and to the side of Adam. His thin mouth opened in dumb shock, and then the air was full of the sound and smell of squealing rubber as the cab tore off. Adam thought he saw the driver cross himself as he pulled away.
As he looked to the right, watching his rescue disappear, something rustled behind his left shoulder.
He whipped around; the sidewalk was empty, but the rustling sound came again, still behind him. He turned once again, and heard the sound a third time.
If you had been there, you might have been surprised at how calm Adam appeared as he crossed the street to examine his reflection in the plate-glass windows of the cinema. He still shivered a little, but his face was impassive, and his step was steady. He reached the opposite side and stopped, staring.
Adam Reed looked into the glass and saw a demon.
Head, torso, and limbs all looked the same as they ever did. But from behind each shoulder rose a huge expanse of wing. Each one stretched at least eight feet to the side, and seemed to grow larger by the moment.
They were like bat’s wings, and yet not. They were fixed along the top with long, strong bones, and about halfway down the length of each of these bones a small black horn or claw jutted. Four slightly thinner bones branched off from the top ones, and formed the web across which the wings were stretched.
But while a bat’s wings are a thin film of mammalian skin, the ones Adam now saw (My wings, he thought before he could stop himself) were covered with a plating of what looked like very thin scales. Each one was about the size of Adam’s hand, and they gleamed reddish in the light of the street lamps.
Adam could feel, now, the place where the wings met his shoulder blades. He could feel the connecting muscles, which joined these huge sheets of scale and bone to his back. Experimentally, he flexed those muscles. He gasped as the enormous wings in the window flattened back against each other, and then rushed forward again, scooping a huge quantity of air along with them. A couple of cigarette butts skittered across the sidewalk in the gust he’d created, and for a dizzy moment, Adam thought he felt his toes almost leave the ground.
So completely did the winged image in the window entrance him that he was not aware of the sirens and flashing blue and red lights until they were directly behind him.
A spotlight hit his back. Tthe bright light penetrated the thin wing-scales, making them glow red in the window.
“PUT YOUR HANDS ABOVE YOUR HEAD AND TURN AROUND SLOWLY!”
Adam did as he was told, feeling the drag of the wings as he turned. The light hit him in the face, but he found he didn’t need to squint.
“NOW GET ON YOUR KNEES!”
Again, he complied. As his knees touched the ground, he felt his guts lurch.
“I think I’m going to throw up,” he told the cop, not wanting it to be a surprise. The officer didn’t reply. He was walking toward Adam, handcuffs ready.
Once more Adam’s innards leaped within him. He heard the roar of his bloodstream and the clanging of bells. Purple mists clouded his eyes. His muscles seized and tensed. He could not stop himself from howling his pain. He was going to burst.
Through the spreading agony he felt a strong grip close around his right wrist and jerk the arm down behind his back. He moaned, and delirium crept around the corners of his mind.
As a fifth-grader, Adam had won a summer reading contest. His prize had been a book, a big one, full of weird stories about mysterious shipwrecks and hauntings and archeological hoaxes and legendary lands like Atlantis. Adam had read in this book about spontaneous human combustion. That is where one day, for no reason anyone can tell, a person just catches fire, and the fire burns incredibly hot but the person’s house doesn’t catch fire and the other people in the house are okay. Only the person burns, and when the fire goes out, sometimes their head is all shrunken, the size of an orange, and everyone thinks it’s very mysterious. Adam sometimes imagined that he was one of those people who would spontaneously combust. Sometimes street lamps would go out when he walked under them, and he thought that was maybe because he had some weird energy in him.
As a seventh-grader, Adam had lain awake lots of nights, rubbing his knees and wishing they would stop aching so he could sleep. It felt like his leg-bones were growing too fast for his muscles and knees to keep up. He didn’t want to ask his dad for an Advil because his dad would know it was for the knee-aches and he would say something embarrassing about growing up and becoming a man. But eventually he’d give in and ask for the Advil and get it. His dad would make the embarrassing remark but at least Adam could sleep. But he’d still have to get new jeans and new shoes in a month.
As a college sophomore on the damp Boston sidewalk, Adam remembered both these things at once. But this was different. This wasn’t just his bones growing too fast; this was like his skin couldn’t contain him. And if he burst out in flame now, he didn’t think his head would shrink down to the size of an orange. It would get bigger, huge, and the fire would burn other things, not just himself. Maybe everything.
Adam’s thoughts were pulling away from him now, collapsing into a heap below the horizon of his head. Both hands were behind his back now and the cuffs jingled under the roaring crimson river and there was something he was trying to remember, something he was supposed to do or say or think or but he but or he couldn’t seem to
smoke the
fire and
round
the cuffs wouldn’t close around his wrists.
The cop made a sound, maybe.
The sound of smoke, maybe.
The smell of screaming, maybe.
The taste of fire,
* * * * *
Eight thousand feet above Boston, the air was beautifully cold beneath Gwendolyn Eddar’s wings. She closed her eyes for a second and enjoyed it; the icy wind ran over and under her, a sublime, freezing sting. She loved the cold, and though the business at hand was serious, even worrying, she was glad for the chance to be out flying.
There were two layers of clouds over the city that night. The heavier one hung down to scrape the tops of the towers, while another floated a few thousand feet above that. Both were saturated with the city glow, so that Gwendolyn was suspended in a gray void between two bands of orange. There was orange above, and orange below, and gray to every side, and the roar of the air everywhere. It was primal, elemental. For a moment, Gwen let herself imagine that she was in some other dimension, where there was neither earth nor steel, neither flesh nor sea. There was only blasting wind and misty ochre radiance.
Okay. Time for another look. She folded her wings slightly toward her back, and felt herself descend. She plunged into the orange mass below her, and it closed around her. Some time later, she emerged from it, and Boston became a cluster of pinpoints below her. She was careful to stay just below the cloud cover, so as to disappear back into it at a moment’s notice.
Gwen cast her eyes around the cityscape. The column of thick black smoke still rose and billowed from the north side of Boston Common, just where it had been the last four times she’d looked. Next to it, the lights of a dozen or so emergency vehicles flashed and winked. Elsewhere, the headlights of cabs glided around the streets, just as they would at 3:30 AM on any other night. But nothing moved between the rooftops and the clouds. Except for Gwen herself, anyway.
She drifted back upwards. As she reached the gray void between cloud layers, she saw a big shadow soaring along, off to her left. Henry. She banked and drew up alongside him. He looked tense and irritated. But that’s no great surprise, she thought, and smiled to herself.
“Hey Henry. How’s hunting?”
Henry grunted. The sound was impossibly low.
“Well, I’m having a great time,” she volunteered, sweetly. “Whether we find our guy or not, I’m just happy to have a little evening constitutional. Feels great. It’s a perfect night for it, isn’t it?”
Another grunt, almost subsonic.
“Oh, right. You’re not as much a fan of the chilly weather as I am, are you?” She was practically cooing, trying to get a rise out of him.
It worked. “That’s a beast of an understatement,” Henry growled. His voice was like a huge old tree, creaking and groaning in a storm. “Nobody likes it as cold as you.”
“Yes, I forget that. But I’m sure we’ll find him soon, and then we can all go home and we’ll wrap you up in four blankets and get you a nice cup of hot chocolate to warm you up, poor guy.”
Henry glared at her out of the corner of his eye.
“Okay, okay, I’ll make it five blankets,” Gwen smirked back. “You drive a hard bargain, mister.”
“Do you ever shut up?” Henry shot at her. “You’re worse than Titus tonight.” But Gwen saw him smile his strange quarter-smile, and heard the half-joke in his voice. She laughed.
“Worse than Titus? Wow, you do want to hurt my feelings.”
Henry grunted and changed the subject. “I hope we don’t find this guy tonight. I have no idea why Murata-sensei and the rest of you are so sure he’ll be happy to meet us.”
“How could he not be delighted to meet a charmer like you?” asked Gwen, all seriousness.
He grunted again. For a moment they were quiet. The wind roared on. Then Gwen spoke.
“All right, sunshine. Your turn to take a look. I’ll keep an eye out up here.”
“’Kay. Yell if there’s trouble,” Henry replied.
“You saying I can’t take care of myself?” she asked, in her best pout. It earned her a stern glare from Henry. “Okay, okay, I’ll holler. Go.”
She watched Henry’s bulk descend into the glowing clouds, then she banked to the left, describing a large circle above the place where he’d descended.
Not a minute passed before she heard his voice booming at her through the wet air. She threw her wings back with a snap and plunged toward Boston, hard.
As orange mist rushed past her, she heard Henry again, more clearly this time:
“GWEN! I SEE HIM!”
And then a mocking voice, which was not Henry’s and which sounded much closer:
“Hear that? He sees him! WAY TO GO, EAGLE EYE!”
Several voiced laughed in response to this; their laughter sounded like logs cracking in a campfire. Gwen looked around frantically.
It was too late. A huge shape hurtled out of the miasma to her right and smashed into her. She spun and flailed. As she struggled to get air beneath her wings again, a blast of light, brighter than the clouds, exploded in front of her. The heat of it forced her eyes closed.
Then she felt something rush up behind her, and something horribly strong grasped her shoulders, and a hot, dry breath tore past her face. The heat was awful; her eyelids squeezed more tightly together.
“Stupid White slag,” hissed a voiced like spreading lava. It sounded bored.
He’s right, Gwen thought. I am stupid. I bolted off blind, and I got myself killed.
Her assailant pulled his face away from hers, and the hot breath receded. She opened her eyes, and saw another shadow racing up toward her. She waited for the flames to swallow her.
But the shadow crashed into the attacker on her back, tearing him away from her.
Henry.
“GO, GWEN! There are at least six of them, we can’t take them! We have to get back! Stay close to me! GO!”
Gwen seemed to be moving in slow motion. She thrust her wings out and felt the air catch beneath them. She steered herself toward the big shadow that had spoken with Henry’s voice. They burst out of the clouds, and she saw him clearly. He didn’t look irritated anymore. He looked…what? Worried? Angry? Ashamed? She couldn’t tell—she couldn’t think; it was like all the heat of the attack had warped her mind.
The shapes behind them wheeled, and spouted flame, and jeered and laughed, but they didn’t pursue.
“I—thought I was gonna die,” she stammered.
“I’m sorry, Gwen. I shouldn’t have called you. I should have known better.” Henry’s voice was strained, and he stared straight ahead as he spoke.
“No,” she replied, dumbly. “No. Thank you. Thanks.”
He glanced at her. “Are you all right to fly back?” She blinked a few times, trying to get her thoughts in focus, trying to be okay. After a few moments, she was.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine,” she replied, her voice strong. “Sensei’s not going to be happy that we let them get another one.”
Henry sighed loudly. “Why doesn’t anyone listen to me?” The growl was back in his voice. “They would have ended up getting him anyway. It’s always the same with his kind.”
Gwen glared over at him. His kind. He knew she didn’t approve of that sort of talk. He scowled back, defiant.
“It’s always the same,” he repeated. “You’ll see that someday, Gwen.”
* * * * *
Adam rolled over in bed, to face the wall. The morning sunlight came through the window like bright arrows, piercing his tired eyelids. He must have forgotten to close the blinds last night.
He lay still for a few minutes, but it was no use; there was no more sleep left in him and his head hurt vaguely. He looked at the clock. The green digits read 6:08. He threw off the blanket and sheet and put his feet on the floor of his dorm room. He stared around for a few moments at the piles of clothes and stacks of papers that cluttered the room. Then he stumbled over to the little television set on top of the dresser and flicked it on.
After pulling on jeans and a t-shirt, he shuffled back over to the bed and sat down, looking at the TV but not really seeing it. There was news on, or something. A building on fire, downtown maybe. Lots of black smoke.
Memory struck him, at once like a slap to the face and a blow to the gut. He stood up, staring wide-eyed at nothing.
The movie, the itch, the blood, the cop…
…the wings…
…and then what? He remembered being cuffed, or almost being cuffed. But what after that?
He paced the room, staring at the untidy floor. He had one hand on top of his head, as though to keep his fleeting memories from escaping.
He could not remember anything after that moment, kneeling on the sidewalk in front of the cinema. How had he gotten home? His heart was hammering.
He looked back at the TV. The images were from a news helicopter, and they plainly showed the movie theater, across the street from Boston Common. There was a hole in one side of the building, about twenty feet wide, and thick black smoke was gushing from it. Fire trucks and police cars were crowded around, and one police car, directly in front of the cinema, looked crushed and blackened.
Adam’s stomach seized. He was going to vomit. The nearest restroom was down the hall; he’d never make it in time. He dove for the little plastic garbage can next to his desk and held his chin above it.
He gagged and retched, his neck straining, his eyeballs aching. But nothing came up from his stomach. I haven’t eaten anything since lunch yesterday, he realized, feeling weak.
After a minute or two the heaves subsided, and Adam got unsteadily to his feet. As he rose, something on the wall caught his attention. It was a tiny mirror, only a couple of feet square. The mirror wasn’t remarkable, nor was the face he saw reflected in it. It was the eyes in the face.
They were still his eyes, certainly. Still deep-set, and half-closed as usual. Still his eyes, but red.
At first he thought they were badly bloodshot, from the retching and the lack of sleep and whatever had happened the night before.
But they weren’t, especially. The whites of his eyes were still mostly white. It was the irises. Formerly deep brown, now they were red. Around the pupil they were a hot, burning red, almost orange. At the edges, they faded to a darker crimson. They looked like candles of blood, viewed from above.
Adam’s face was inches from the mirror, gazing into his own scarlet eyes, when there came a loud rap at the door. He jumped, startled, and let out his breath in a rasping half-cough. He stared at the door, frozen. It seemed to stare back. The knock was repeated. And again.
He crept over to the door, rolling his weight from heel to toe, trying to be silent, though he realized that was foolish. The television still blared, announcing his presence. Whoever was knocking on his door at 6:30 AM on a Saturday, they knew he was at home and awake.
Adam’s red right eye aligned with the peephole, peering out at the warped, fish-eye corridor. Here is what he saw:
A man, in his late twenties or early thirties. Stocky, not fat. Brown hair with bleached tips, spiked a little with gel. Sunglasses, dark and stylish. A moustache and goatee, trimmed neatly. A maroon dress shirt, expensive-looking, but worn without a tie. An expectant half-smile.
As Adam watched, the man on the other side of the door raised his left hand and tapped his knuckles on the wood for a fourth time. Then he spoke.
“Adam?” A pause. “Adam, my name is Ross. I’m sorry, I know it’s early, but I’d really like to talk to you.” Pause. “I think you might like to talk to someone, too. Am I right?”
Adam didn’t reply. He watched the man, Ross, shift his weight from foot to foot.
“Hey, Adam, I don’t even want to come in. You don’t even have to open the door all the way. Why don’t you chain it and open it a few inches? I want to show you something.” Another pause. “Look, I don’t think you can see it well enough through the peephole. Please?”
Adam slid the chain into place, unbolted the door, and turned the handle. He wasn’t sure why. Maybe Ross was right. After last night, he probably did need to talk to someone.
The door opened a crack, and Ross and Adam regarded each other through it. Ross’s half-smile opened into a complete one. It was a nice smile—genuinely happy, Adam thought. Ross opened his mouth to speak, but Adam interrupted:
“How do you know my name?”
“Uhhh…” Ross made an embarrassed face and pointed at the door. Adam couldn’t see what he was pointing at, but he knew what it was: a placard that read Adam Reed. All the dorm rooms had them. He found himself laughing aloud.
Ross chuckled too. The ice was broken.
“Hey man, you’ve had a hard night, huh?” Ross asked sympathetically.
“So you know that too? You psychic?”
Ross laughed again and shook his head. “It’s easy enough to tell, from the state of you. No offense.” He flicked a finger in the direction of Adam’s face. Horrified, Adam threw up a hand to cover his eyes. Staring through the peephole, he’d forgotten what they now looked like.
“Hey man, it’s okay,” Ross whispered. “Listen, I’ll tell you something else I know about you. I know what you are.”
Adam’s hand fell to his side again and he stared at Ross through the tiny gap between door and doorframe. What do you mean, “what I am”? He wanted to ask. Instead, the words that left his mouth were:
“You do?”
“Yep.” Ross nodded, his mouth pressed in a sort of grave excitement, or somber amusement. “I promised to show you something, right? Check it out.” He removed his sunglasses.
He looked at Adam, and Adam looked back, and each pair of eyes was as red as the other.
“I know what you are, and it’s the same as what I am. And we have a lot to talk about, I think.”
Adam nodded dumbly.
“Yeah.” Ross smiled. “C’mon, get dressed. I’m parked around back, the red Civic. Meet you there in ten?”
Adam could only nod again.
* * * * *
Transcript of Titus Donnelly’s interview with Hisako Murata, 17 January, 2004
TD: Tell me about the first time you changed
.
HM: It was July, and the summer was very hot. I was a very young girl then, a five-years-old girl. I lived with my parents and my older brother on the outside of the city. My father worked for a big company, an electric company. I can’t remember the name of it anymore. That is sad, ne? My brother was eleven years old that time, and many days he was working in the center of the city with the other boys, breaking down buildings to make— what is the word? The empty place to stop fire from spreading?
TD: Firebreak.
HM: Yes, he was making firebreaks with the other boys, downtown. They had not dropped bombs on our city, but we wanted to be ready if they did. And my mother was at home, with me. I was almost old enough for school.
The first time I changed I was very scared. I was used to being very small, and suddenly I was much bigger, and I looked so strange. Like a monster, I thought. But even though I was big, I felt more… more vulnerable, maybe. It was like I could see everything truly then, and the world was so big and mysterious and scary, more than I had dreamed. And even though I was bigger, I did not know how to be. I was still a little girl inside, whatever the outside was like.
I was scared, but at first everyone else was very excited. No one had ever seen something like me, but they knew stories and they had seen paintings, and they believed that I was a sign of luck. They said that I meant very good luck for the Empire, and that Japan would win the war very soon. Everyone wanted to see me. My father brought home men from his company, and when they saw me in my big shape, they would bow very low to my father. One old man gave me a very pretty kimono, and he had tears in his eyes.
Very quickly I learned how to fly, and I would fly around the neighborhood in the evenings, with my brother and his friends chasing behind with kites and shouting and laughing. The small children in the neighborhood wanted to ride on my back while I flew, but I was not strong enough to carry them.
My mother called me ginko-chan, which means something like “my little silver child,” and she smiled all the time.
Then it was August, and the great bomb came to our city.
The work crews started early in the morning so the boys would not have to work in the hot afternoon. My brother was in the middle of downtown that morning, very close to the bomb. It was probably over very fast, for him. His name was Daichi.
We do not know exactly what happened to my father. We waited for him as long as we could, many weeks, before people made us leave. But he did not come home. His name was Hanshiro.
My mother and I could see the big smoke cloud from our house. I wanted to fly up for a better view, but my mother held me down.
I don’t blame our neighbors, now, for being afraid. They expected me to bring luck and prosperity to Japan, and instead, a bomb destroyed our whole city. Three days later, it happened again, in Nagasaki. So I can’t blame them for thinking I was a bad omen. After all, I did look like a monster. Even my mother stopped calling me ginko-chan. She just called me Hisako.
People wanted us to leave, so I couldn’t bring more misfortune, but they were too polite to say it. Besides, they didn’t want to be unkind to my mother, because they knew she was a widow, even if she didn’t realize it. We stayed in the house until winter. My mother spent most of her time kneeling by the front door, waiting. She did not let me go outside much.
Then, one morning, there was a dead fox outside our house. Its blood was all over the snow. My mother said that an oni killed it and put it there, but I think it was one of the neighbor men. Either way, we had to leave. We got on a train and went to Osaka, where my father’s sister lived.
My mother told me that I must never change into the silver shape again, or we would be chased away from Osaka, too. I did not want to disobey, but on very dark nights I would go out into the garden, and stretch my wings, and breathe deeply. I felt that I had to.
* * * * *
Adam stood in an empty warehouse in Somerville, and fixed his red eyes on Ross. Their breath formed clouds of mist between them in the vast space. Adam shivered a little, from cold and excitement.
Ross’s eyes were closed, and he stood very still. He breathed slowly, as though he were meditating. For several seconds, there was no visible change. Only the steady rhythm of inhale, exhale.
Then he seemed to expand. His body became taller and broader. His head elongated, along with his feet. His skin darkened and divided, like parched desert ground. And then—yes!—wings erupted from his back, nearly identical to the ones Adam had seen on his own reflection. And still Ross grew, his clothes ripping and falling in a ragged ruin to the dusty floor.
Then the change was done.
Dragon, thought Adam. He’d never seen one before, but he knew that was the name for what he saw.
Ross now stood twelve feet tall, even though he was on all fours. He measured maybe 28 feet from his reptilian snout to the tip of his long tail. His neck was long and powerful. His rear legs looked like those of a predatory dinosaur, while the front ones looked more like hands, with claws and opposable thumbs.
Most impressive of all were the wings that sprung from Ross’s back. As Adam watched, he raised them straight up toward the warehouse ceiling, and then spread them wide. They seemed to fill the whole building. He flapped them once, hard, and the gust of air sent Adam sprawling.
As he stood to his feet and gaped at Ross through the swirling dust, Adam could think of nothing to say. He settled for the obvious.
“You’re a dragon.”
The dragon chuckled—Adam could feel the sound through the cement.
“Takes one to know one,” Ross boomed.
