Issue Number One
“A Dream of Friends Part One: The Spy Who Mastered The Tax Codes”
By
Thomas Deja
Patrick
Steed seriously worried about his sanity.
This
in and of itself was not news. The fact
was, he had been worrying about his sanity ever since the Black Mass Barrier
went up. And in this fact he was not
alone—the Royal Psychiatric Association had recently reported an increase in
people seeking treatment for their mental health since the Barrier was erected.
But
it did not stop the fact that Patrick worried.
Partially
it was because of the persistence of the hallucinations he was experiencing of
late, but mostly it was because of the nature of those hallucinations. He would be minding his own business,
reviewing the codes, evaluating returns when all of a sudden he would be
transported into this bizarre parallel world where he was fighting alongside
some stunning auburn-haired woman with an arch smile and a wicked front kick
against a succession of forces meaning to wreck havoc on God and Country. And after he was done, he and the woman
would retire to some out of the way place to engage in clever quips.
He
was dressed very strangely in these dreams, Patrick was, in an odd variation of
the classic three-piece Saville Road suit, a bowler hat atop his head and a
domino mask over his eyes. And he even
carried a bumbershoot….
The
weirdest part of these hallucinations was when the auburn haired woman would
turn to him and ask him to do something…
“Say
my name, Steed,” she’d say in a voice that sounded like it was pleading.
“Say
my name.”
He
lays awake in his bed, his wife beside him, staring at the ceiling and trying
to imagine the stars beyond it. Her
wife’s warmth, settled in the crook of his arm as she snores the night away, is
a comfort to him.
But
he has not been sleeping well of late.
He can sense The Other out there tonight, looking for his fellow…well,
Miracles, he’d probably call them.
He
knows that’s what he’d call them.
He
likes it here in this modest flat with the attractive wife and the job at the
local paper.
Most
importantly, he likes existing. And if he—not him, the younger him—locates the others, he’ll have
to confront the truth. Or even worse,
he’ll have to confront the Typewriter Gods, who he’s sure will locate him once
all the Miracles are active.
For
a moment, his mouth is ready to form the word of power, ready to speak the
phrase that will make him a hero again….
But
he doesn’t have the courage, so he continues to keep watch on the ceiling.
But
soon something would have to be done.
“So
you see my predicament, Stuart.”
Stuart
smirked and took another sip of whiskey.
Patrick didn’t have many friends, but Stuart was one of them…this in
spite of the older man’s dubious profession.
He’d
go so far to say he despised that Stuart sold drugs. But with what was going on in his head, he needed the man’s help
more than ever. “So can you help me?”
“Oh,
aye, I can do that,” Stuart replied.
“The question is, why do I want to?”
“I’ll
do anything you ask, Stuart…just give me—“
“I
dinnae ask what you can do. I asked why
I would want to get anti-psychotics. I
know you’d kin it be a shock and all, but most people want drugs that cause hallucinations, not suppress them.”
Patrick
looked around, worried that someone was watching him. “I’ve been having these sort of waking dreams. I’ll be sitting at my desk, processing
Revenue payments, and then I’m suddenly in this bizarre world that’s like
something out of an old 60’s spy program, you know? It’s all psychedelic and the people are all arch and using these
strange gadgets and there’s jazz music everywhere and some bird in leather
keeps telling me to say her name—“
“And
you want me to save you from that?”
Patrick
nodded. Stuart shook his head and
chuckled. He reached into the pocket of
his mac and brought forth a small foil package. He slid the package over to Patrick. “I’ll work on it, but until then, you kin have some of this. It’s on the house, cause you did alright by
my sister the other week.”
Stuart’s
sister had found herself pregnant by a boyfriend who disappeared on her the
moment he found out. Patrick had used
the Inland Revenue database to locate where he was and passed the information
on to Stuart. What Stuart did with the
information…well, Patrick tried not to think of it.
Patrick
opened the foil. The contents were
white and powdery. “What’s this, then?”
“Powdered
unicorn horn. Got a supplier out in
Durbin that manufactures it. Very posh,
this is.”
“What
is it—some form of aphrodisiac?”
“What
are you, daft?” Stuart replied sharply.
“The unicorn, it’s a pure creature, right? So when you take this—dissolve it in a glass of milk or water,
but only use a little—it makes you temporarily pure. Suppresses all the nasty shite that you’ve got inside you for a
little bit. My customers say it makes
you feel like God on His best day. I
figure if you take this, it’ll suppress whatever’s making you dream you’re
Jimmy Bond, eh?”
Patrick
looked at the powder and refolded the foil, crimping the edges tightly. “Thanks, Stuart—but you’ll tell me the
moment you get what I need?”
“The
second it comes in, I’m on the phone.”
“Thanks,”
Patrick said, putting the packet away.
The
spoon tinkled against the glass as Patrick stirred the portion of unicorn horn
into his milk. The power seemed to
change the color, making it a bright, glowing white—almost as if it was the
glass of milk from that Hitchcock movie with Gregory Peck, the one where he
tries to murder Ingrid Bergman….
Patrick
hesitated before picking up the glass.
He kept staring into the liquid, watching the mini-whirlpool created by
his stirring.
Outside,
some middle school students were on the local pitch, practicing their passing
and shooting in preparation for this weekend’s football game. In the sky, Patrick could see something
flying in the distance…a dragon, perhaps, or a Rukh.
He
downed the drink in one gulp.
Patrick
went to bed immediately after downing the potion. He prayed silently that this would be the first night in over a
month that wasn’t plagued by psychedelic visions of madmen in stylish suits
wanting to rule the world.
He
was wrong.
She
was waiting for him, standing by the Lotus they sometimes drove in his dreams;
sometimes they drove a Bentley from out of the 30’s that drove like a Formula
One Race Car. She arched her eyebrow as
he approached and took his bowler from on top of his head. She shined with her forearm.
“You’re
not well, Steed,” she told him.
“Of
course I’m not well. I’m going right
barking, aren’t I?”
“No,
you’re not. Something wonderful will
happen. All you need to do is say my
name.”
Before
he could question her further, they were beset upon by Communist robots who
looked like Peter Cushing and fought like Pendragons.
He
and the woman still managed to come out on top.
Moira
Glendowne shook him awake.
“Are
you all right, Patrick?”
“Of
course, of course,” Patrick stammered, suddenly aware of what he was caught
doing—actually sleeping on the job, the sort of thing that could get one fired
if they weren’t careful.
Moira
placed a small pile of payment checks in his In Box. She smiled faintly, her long, thin gash of a mouth disquieting in
the harsh light. “You should take care,
Patrick. Last thing you need is Old Man Warren catching you taking a nap. This isn’t Madrid, you know.”
“I
know,” Patrick said, avoiding her eyes.
“And
you better mind what you say when you’re away with the pixies.”
Patrick
took the check on the top of the pile and called up the client on his
terminal. “What do you mean?”
“You
were mumbling in your sleep about some old spy show,” Moira said. She chuckled, a dry humorless sound like
bones snapping. “I suppose I shouldn’t
be surprised. With your last name and
all, it’s no wonder you had a thing for her.”
“For
who?”
“For
Diana Rigg, silly. Although I doubt
you’d fancy her the way she is now,” Moira replied. “I best be back to work.
Catch you up for lunch?”
Patrick
nodded. Moira went back to her desk,
unmindful of the food for thought she had just fed her co-worker.
It
was getting worse.
He
was walking back to his bed sit from the bus stop when he began hallucinating
again. He was no longer in the high
street near the footbridge. He was
running after the woman, who was leading him to a disaster of unmitigated
import.
Wait
a minute…he wasn’t running. He was
flying.
“You
need to say my name,” the woman admonished him. “She’s a Miracle like you.
They’re going to hurt her…make it impossible for her to manifest.”
Patrick
wanted to say I don’t know what you’re talking about. What he said was, “Then I suppose I shall
have to show those blighters why I have no time for crime, shan’t I?”
She
smiled and turned into an alleyway. Off
near the cul de sac, two men were beating on a pretty, dark-haired young
woman. Even though she moaned as if
seriously hurt, there was no blood, no wounds.
Patrick
lit down on the ground and gestured toward the criminals with his brolly. “What’s all this then?”
Say
my name, Steed. It’s
important.
The
criminals looked up and laughed.
“Look
at this one, then,” said one.
“Round
the twist,” said the other.
The
criminals came rushing at Patrick just as the hallucination ended. He no longer saw op-art posters on the
walls, and the woman who was being beaten no longer wore a transparent plastic
dress but a sensible raincoat over an even more sensible long skirt and
blouse. There was blood on her
mouth—something that never happened in his hallucinations—and looked genuinely
scared.
In
his head, the woman continued to prattle.
Say
my name
And
finally, he remembered her name—it was the name Moira mentioned that morning…
He
held his arms up over his face as the first of the criminals punched him.
…no,
not the actress’ name…the character’s name…
The
criminal grabbed him and threw him up against the wall. Patrick looked him in the eye as the man put
his forearm on his windpipe and exerted pressure. “Shouldn’t have come nipping round here on your little trip,
mate,” the man told Patrick through rotten stumps of teeth.
Patrick
grinned at him and put all his strength behind keeping the man from crushing his
windpipe. His efforts had minimal
results, but they were results that allowed him to speak.
“Mrs.
Peel,” Patrick said in a hoarse, strangled voice, “We’re Needed.”
Patrick’s
attacker suddenly found himself launched across the alley.
He
sits up with a start, instinctively knowing that what he feared since finding
those magazines at the junk shop has come to pass.
Somewhere,
one of his fellows finally figured it out.
One of his old mates, one of the slaves of the Typewriter Gods, had
unlocked his inner hero.
One
of the other Miracles has been released into this world.
He
imagines that The Other is already on his way, the aura that surrounds this new
parahuman glowing like holiday fireworks.
He wonders if the Typewriter Gods have caught sight of that glow and
have decided to come to this world to ply their sadistic games.
He
still has memories of snapping his good friend’s neck. He still has memories of watching his
daughter disappear into the aether because she had grown bored with him.
He
gets out of bed, his mind racing with ways to make sure this situation doesn’t
get worse. Deep in the back of his
head, there’s a nagging desire to say The Word, to unlock
his own Miracle and take to the sky in defense of his security once more.
But
he mustn’t do that. Not when the sounds
of keys being struck still haunt his dreams.
As
he works his way through this problem, he takes notice of a glow out of the
corner of his eye. He turns to see what
it is…
And
stifles a scream.
“I
fancy myself a patient man,” Patrick said, mindful of how much deeper his voice
had become, and how he had somehow traded in his Soucer accent for something
dripping with Eatonian class.
“Jesus
wept,” swore the remaining criminal.
Behind him, the woman was slowly scrabbling to her feet. Patrick saw a strange glow, like a halo of
pure white light, surrounding her.
“But
there are things in this life I have no time for. Boorishness in the face of common courtesy, for example. Government committees that never seem to
make any findings. Microwave
ovens. Boy bands.”
Patrick
took slow steps toward the miscreant, lazily swinging the brolly in his hand in
slow arcs. “But if there’s one thing I
just cannot abide by is crime. I simply
have no time for crime.”
The
criminal took a swing at Patrick….no, that name wasn’t right. Well, it was right, but
it wasn’t, not when he was in this form.
His hand, now as large as a hamhock, intercepted the flying fist. Patrick/not Patrick’s fingers squeezed, and
the blackguard cried out in pain.
And
Patrick knew what his ‘not Patrick’ persona was called.
“Let
go, you wanker!” the criminal cried out, half in fear, half in pain.
“The
name is not ‘wanker,’ you ruffian,” Patrick said with a chilling calmness. “It is Big Ben. And I dare say you’re about to find out what happens when I
strike one.”
And
then, Patrick/Ben did the most logical thing he could think of.
He
knocked the man out with his bowler.
He
should have known.
The
clues were all there. Her name, her
resemblance to the creature that brought his marriage in the previous world to
a halt….
He
squints against the glare of her aura, an aura that is as strong and as pure as
any he has seen to date, a radiance so bright it rivals that of the Other….
His
lips tremble as the urge comes over him again.
He
goes as far as uttering “Kim…” before common sense gets the better of him.
She
can’t know. She mustn’t
know. He’d have to see to that.
Even
if it meant destroying his youth….
Ben
helped dust the woman off. “Well, I
dare say they shan’t bother you much more tonight. You might wish to contact the local constabulary and lead them
back here.”
The
woman looked up at Ben (except that he was still Patrick on some level; at
least he felt like he was still Patrick…). He saw his face reflected in her eyeglasses. It was fuller, beefier in this body, a
little more lined…but the eyes behind his domino mask betrayed a wisdom Patrick
never had. “Yes, I…I best do that.”
He
studied her for a moment, trying to discern the nature of the aura that
surrounded her. “What’s your name,
child?”
“M-marie
Foulcar,” the woman replied.
“Pleasure
to meet you, Ms. Foulcar,” Ben said with a slight nod. “If you don’t mind, I shall be off. Your day is almost over, and mine is just
begun.”
Marie
nodded hesitantly and watched as Ben took to the skies, brolly neatly tucked
under one arm.
It
seemed perfectly…normal…taking flight.
But then, now that Patrick was Ben and Ben Patrick, it seemed perfectly
normal for him to be dressed in a black spandex suit that somewhat mimicked the
cut of a standard three piece suit.
Once
he had reached a certain altitude, he discovered someone was waiting for him.
The
man floating in midair before him wore a brightly colored suit of blue and red
and yellow with a high collar. His
symbol, a stylized double M was familiar to schoolchildren and comic book fans
of a certain age everywhere. Piercing
blue eyes like laser beams stared at him set in a face that was handsome enough
to be a renaissance sculpture. The whole
effect was—and there was no way around it—god-like.
“Hello,”
Miracleman said. “May I have a word?”
NEXT
ISSUE: Miracleman brings Big Ben up to speed on his search for the Miracles
before the two try to locate the pyretic manipulator called The Firedrake. But who is the older man wishing misfortune
on the two and hoping to stave off the arrival of ‘The Typewriter Gods’? Find out when “A Dream of Friends”
continues….
THE
MAILBAG OF VERY WEIRD LETTERS
Many
years ago, back when New York City still boasted both a Comic Art Gallery and a
Forbidden Planet in midtown, I became enamored of a black and white British
magazine called WARRIOR.
WARRIOR,
for those of you who are not familiar with the history of British comic book
publishing, was a comic magazine launched by former Marvel UK editor Dez Skinn
after he was removed from the company.
Skinn managed to procure licenses to produce new stories based on
existing characters. One of those was a
character unheard of at that time in the US called Marvelman. We know him better these days as Miracleman.
I
loved WARRIOR, and not just for Alan Moore’s marvelous update on Marvelman (the
fourth segment of which still contains what to me is one of the most terrifying
moments in comics). There were a number
of bizarre and wonderful characters running through its pages (It wasn’t for
nothing it was billed as ‘The Magazine of Very Weird Heroes’), and I ate up
each new issue hungrily.
Obviously,
if you’re familiar with WARRIOR or the Marvelman/Miracleman strip, you’ve got a
slight glimmer of what’s going on here.
MIRACLES, INC. is a series that I hope will be my love letter to these
characters, and something that will be a lot of fun for the readers. Plus it’s a chance to play in Barry Reese’s
rich Pendragons playground, and who could pass that up?
Let
me know how I’m doing.
--Thomas
Deja (nywisdom@hotmail.com)