Chapter 4: A Cool, Damp Place

By a/k/a Simon
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For a while they drove in silence, only the hum of the engine and the occasional passing car disrupting the quiet. Eddie was enjoying a momentary high. He projected forward in time, extrapolating the outcome from this one good deed. They were back together, he felt. There was still the strange emptiness from his missing powers. But, for the moment, it was being replaced by the nourishment of a relationship renewed.

Megan was having a minor anxiety attack, her heart racing, every effort made to control her breathing patterns. Emotions were conflicting, old wounds reopening. She felt like she was walking into the lion’s den, eyes wide open, expecting to be devoured once they reached their destination. It had been such a monumental task to separate from their dysfunction. And now she was returning, voluntarily. Part of her wondered if her father’s madness was finally being passed to the next generation.

Eddie didn’t know where they were going, he didn’t have the faintest clue. He recognized the roads in town, but once they were out of the District his knowledge of thoroughfares ended. Local roads were important for him to know; even some of the major highways. But outside of a certain radius the countryside opened up enough that it simply reverted to north, south, east, and west. Trouble could easily be seen without buildings to obscure his vision. So when he saw a sign saying “295 North” he’d lost all sense of their location.

“Where are we going,” he asked, finally ending the hush.

Megan just looked straight ahead to the ongoing stretch of hot top. “Home,” she said without indication that any more information was coming.

Eddie was confused. “Where home?” he asked, not understanding the statement. “Your home?”

“The place I used to call home. Putnam, Massachusetts.” Her tone let him know that she wasn’t fully happy about their destination.

“Putnam? Are we going to see your family?”

“You bet,” she said sarcastically, nodding. “It’s about a nine hour drive. Get comfortable and enjoy it while it lasts. It’ll probably be the closest thing to fun we have for the next few days.”


Two hours of driving passed with little conversation. Megan had a satellite radio in the car and Eddie found entertainment by wandering about the channels XM had to offer. For a while he listened to news, but eventually the number of crimes and catastrophes they listed began to make him feel weak and useless. He moved on and found a station called The Loft playing a Tom Waits tune, ‘Innocent When You Dream’. Megan heard four lines of Waits’ warbling voice and couldn’t take it. She pushed one of the pre-sets and the station switched to Fifties on Five. Matt the Cat introduced ‘I Ain’t Got You’ by Jimmy Reed. It was Blues, but it was still peppy enough for a dark drive up an East Coast highway.

Not particularly feeling the music, Eddie decided to make another attempt at conversation. “You never talk about your family,” he said, hoping it would get the ball rolling.

“Actually, I talk about it a lot,” she corrected. “The more time passes since I left them behind, the more I find myself talking about them. When Becky and I go out for drinks I usually end up telling at least one story about them. The dysfunction makes for an entertaining, if not a little disturbing, story.” And then she added, “I just didn’t talk about them with you.”

Eddie felt like he’d failed her in a whole other way as a husband. “Why?”

“I don’t know. I guess it was because you were hardly ever around. You know, we never really talked about the deeper stuff. It was always me telling you about the kids at school and you going on about the latest trip to the planet Fordan.”

“You mean Forlan?”

“Whatever. The point is, we talked about our lives with each other but I never really felt comfortable talking about myself, or my past.”

He processed it for a second. “Wow. I always thought it was just because whatever drove you away from them was so bad that you didn’t want to relive it.”

“Well, there’s that too.”


By the time they made it to 95 North in New Jersey they were coasting on fumes. Megan pulled the car into one of the countless Mobil stations that dotted the highway. Eddie stopped into the Burger King and got an order of onion rings and a chocolate shake while Megan pumped gas. It was close to one in the morning and Megan was dumbfounded how he could eat such things. Then, while paying for the gas in the convenience store she added to the bill a large coffee and a bag of Fritos.

They loaded back into the car. Eddie took two sips of his shake and realized how cold it was. He offered the rest to Megan but she declined. So he wrapped it in the paper bag and placed it on the floor, as far away from him as possible.

As they pulled back onto the highway Eddie munched his onion rings and Megan crunched her Fritos, their mastication creating a cacophonous staccato of crumbling carbohydrates. He was looking for the best way to ask the question on his mind, but he couldn’t think of a delicate way to put it. “So what did they do to you?” he finally blurted out.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said, trying to end the discussion there.

“Come on,” Eddie pleaded. “I want to understand. You said you needed someone you could trust. Let me show you you can trust me.”

“I don’t think so.”

Then he had an idea. “I tell you what,” he said in sympathetic bargaining mode, “if you tell me what happened to drive you away from your family, I’ll tell you how I lost my powers.”

Megan thought it over. She wasn’t particularly keen on saying the memories out loud. They were roiling through her head every second with increased intensity the more they neared their source, like a homing beacon. The pain that she’d spent years trying to quell was returning and she didn’t know if she was strong enough to deal with the full brunt of it again. Saying it all out loud would make it real, when she’d tried so hard to turn it into a nasty figment of her imagination.

At the same time, though, she was curious to know how Eddie had lost his powers. Despite how much it kept them apart, she always enjoyed hearing the stories of his travels and battles. There was still a certain mystique about being married to a superhero, like being married to a rock star or a famous actor. It had to have been something truly remarkable to drain him of the abilities that once seemed limitless. Did her curiosity outweigh her desire to avoid the pain of her past?

“Fine,” she agreed.


“Things had never been great with my family. My brothers, Shane and Ryan, were spoiled early on. Shane was the master manipulator, the first born. He was always running some scam. Ryan, the baby of the family—in more than one sense of the word—would throw temper tantrums to get what he wanted. Very quickly it was decided to just give him whatever he was after to prevent all the screaming. They got away with a lot, but there was still a limit to how far they could go. A limit enforced by my father.

“But then, when we were all around our teens, dad started acting strange. He would wake up in the middle of the night screaming. Sometimes he would forget where he was or who we were. Then he started hallucinating. A few times we caught him running evacuation drills at home like he was still at the plant. He was a stubborn old bastard, but eventually we convinced him to go to the doctor’s. They diagnosed him with Parkinson’s Disease. A year later they decided he had Alzheimer’s on top of that. I guess sometimes the two go hand-in-hand.

“So, with him slowly getting worse, degenerating into next to nothing, my brothers took it upon themselves to take full advantage of having the old man weakened. Without my dad to keep them in check they started getting pretty ballsy with their shit. And my mother wouldn’t do anything about it.

“I don’t know, I guess she felt that she was losing one important man in her life and she didn’t want to lose any more. She treated those two like they were angels, because suddenly they were so precious to her. And they walked all over her.

“Anyway, it kept getting worse as we got older. I went away to western Mass. to go to college at Amherst (Amherst College, not UMass Amherst). I would come home for holidays but I started to feel more like a stranger in that house. Shane was getting into some development stuff he was always vague yet boasting about. Ryan was heavily into drugs and alcohol. All things considered, the temper tantrums were a joy compared to the way the chemicals played with his aggression.

“Shane had moved out and was living with some trailer park reject looking for a payday. He was stupid enough to give it to her. Ryan was still at home and had pretty much taken over the house, my mother spending most of her time either working or at the home she had to put my father into.

“It all really started when I graduated from college. I decided to take a semester off before going for my Masters and I returned to Putnam to save a little money. Three months into my stay it happened.

“Over time Ryan claimed the basement as his refuge. It was understood that no one was allowed down there or they’d get their ass kicked. Since most of us didn’t give a damn about his silly, tough guy posturing, we adhered to his wishes. Until one day when I was home by myself.

“The doorbell rang while I was in the living room watching TV. I got up to answer it. Before I could even cross the kitchen the guy was pounding on the door, yelling my brother’s name. When I looked through the glass window in the door I didn’t recognize the guy’s face. So I put the chain across and cracked the door. The guy kicked it open, breaking the chain and knocking me onto the floor. He stood over me asking where Ryan was. I told him he wasn’t home. The guy didn’t believe me.

“He picked me up and walked me to the basement door. It was locked, as usual. He demanded I open it, seeing that it was just a button lock like they have on bathroom doors. So I grabbed a pin from the kitchen and pushed the lock open. The guy grabbed me and we went down the stairs.

“At the bottom of the stairs he flicked on the light. I had a feeling he’d been there before.

“Once the lights were on I could see why Ryan didn’t want anyone down in his room. Covering the cement floor were large buckets filled with soil, marijuana plants growing out of them up wooden lattice. I had no idea what the dollar value was, but it had to be a decent amount.

“Over the next half hour I was made to help the guy carry the buckets out of the basement and load them into the back of his SUV. There was an odd number and he was left carrying the last one. We were standing in the basement near the stairs. He put the bucket down, thanked me for my help in a menacing kind of voice, and then he pushed me up against the wall. He kissed me. When he was done he ran his hands down my body and said maybe he’d give me a call sometime. Then he left.

“As soon as I was sure he was gone I deadbolted all the doors in the house. Then I locked myself in my bedroom and cried.

“Three hours later Ryan came home, drunk. When he saw the basement empty he ran upstairs to my bedroom and started beating on the door. At first I was afraid the guy had come back. Then I recognized the voice and knew it was Ryan. But I could also tell how upset he was, so I didn’t want to let him in.

“He went and got a pin and unlocked my door. He burst into the room screaming and yelling, shouting questions and barking accusations. He yanked me off the bed and held me by the wrists, demanding to know where his drugs were. I tried to tell him about the guy who forced his way into the house and took everything. I got halfway through my explanation when he smacked me, dropping me to the floor with one swing. While I was doubled over he kicked me twice in the stomach. At that point I think he realized it was useless to take his rage out on me and he left. A minute later I heard his truck pull out of the driveway and roar down the street.

“But that wasn’t the worst part. My mother came home an hour later and found me curled up in my bedroom, totally freaked out from everything that had happened. She asked me why I was the way I was. When I told her she said it was preposterous. She couldn’t believe that her angelic son was capable of anything so dastardly. We went down into the basement because she wanted proof. Of course, the proof was gone because I helped the guy take it away. A little bit of dirt on the floor didn’t mean anything. And I have the misfortune of not bruising easily, so there wasn’t any evidence that I’d been hit either. No proof? Then nothing must have happened.

“I went to the police station the next day to ask them what my options were. Basically there weren’t any. Once again, without any proof they couldn’t do anything about it. I couldn’t even remember a description of the guy’s SUV. The only thing they could do was to keep an eye on my brother, since they recognized his name and had been hoping to catch him on something since he was in high school.

“Well, in small towns word gets around pretty easily. Ryan found out that the police had their eye out for him and he wasn’t too thrilled.

“I was staying at a friend’s house, not wanting to be in my family environment any longer. One night I was walking to my car down the street when someone came up behind me and pushed me up against the window. It was Ryan. He pinned me up against my car and began trying to intimidate me. I wouldn’t let him see any fear. He kneed me in the stomach. Then he walked across the street, picked up the largest rock he could find, and threw it through my driver’s side window, shattering the glass.

“After he was gone I ran back to my friend’s house and called the police. They came and dusted the rock for fingerprints, but it was winter and Ryan had been wearing gloves. I don’t know if that was forethought or just dumb luck. Once again, no concrete evidence. But I filed charges anyway.

“A month later we had our day in the magistrate’s office. Ryan showed up with a friend claiming to be a witness. It was the guy. They both lied through their teeth and the magistrate was buying it. Two against one, I guess. But the real capper was when Ryan pulled out a letter from our mother that said I had been growing increasingly emotional since our father started getting sick and I was jealous of the attention that Ryan and Shane got from her. She made it sound like I concocted everything because I was a jilted child. The magistrate decided it was just a case of sibling rivalry. He said he would keep the case open for six months and, if anything else happened we could revisit it. But I knew there wasn’t going to be any further discussion. That was the last straw.
“Not long after, I was accepted to the Masters program at four different colleges. Georgetown was the furthest away. I moved down to DC a week after I notified the school that I would be starting in the fall. And I haven’t been in contact with my family ever since. Well, except for the occasional call from my Aunt Greta.”


Eddie sat in the passenger seat, waiting to make sure her story was over. When he was confident that no more was coming he started to say, “I’m so sor…”

“Don’t,” she interrupted. “I didn’t tell you all that so you would feel sorry for me. I just wanted to let you know what you’re going to be dealing with.”

“Well, so if all that happened, then why are we suddenly driving all the way up there to see these terrible people?”

“Because my mother is dying. She might even already be dead. I don’t know. I’ve hated her and all of them for so long. But this may be my last chance to see if anything can be salvaged.” She didn’t really believe that. “At the very least I should be there when she goes.”


The Impreza was heading north on the New Jersey Turnpike. The clock was nearing three a.m. and both occupants were getting tired. Megan watched the lines in the road blur as she fought against sleep. Every so often she would close her eyes for a second, only to have them spring open once she felt the car drift into the next lane.

Eddie noticed the drifting and would nudge his wife to wake her up. They needed something to recharge them, something to break the monotony of the highway.

Under a large sign that said Iselin, on the side of the road, a car was parked with its hazards on. As they passed by, the headlights illuminated a dark figure fumbling around next to the car.

“We have to stop,” Eddie announced, stirring Megan back from listlessness.

“What? Why?”

Eddie turned and pointed out the rear window. “There’s a man back there with car trouble and nobody is stopping to help him.”

“So?”

She saw Eddie sitting there. The look in his eyes was the same as when he was about to turn on his powers and go save a life. But now his chances for heroics were few and far between. She could tell he needed this. He needed to be helpful in even the smallest way he could. He needed to feel like a hero.

For Eddie it was like being a junky, a heroics junky. It had been days since he’d been able to do anything to save someone and he was going through extreme withdrawal. Just the idea of being able to help the person on the side of the road was making him shake with excitement.

They stopped the car and Eddie ran back to the stranded motorist, Megan close behind. When she finally got to the car, Eddie was talking to the man and already assessing the situation.

“This is Father Mark,” he said, introducing Megan to the priest. As a car passed by she could make out the tiny white rectangle in the center of his collar, surrounded by all-black clothing. “It looks like he’s got a flat and no spare. We’re going to have to drive him to the next gas station so he can get help.”

Megan couldn’t disagree.


“Thank you so much for this,” Father Mark said from the backseat. “Not too many people willing to stop for a man dressed all in black at this hour.”

“Don’t worry about it, Father,” Eddie reassured. “Everything will be just fine.”

The priest was hungry for conversation. “So, where are you folks heading?” he asked.

Eddie looked at Megan, forgetting the name of her hometown. “Putnam,” she said, helping him out.

“Putnam,” Eddie repeated to the priest. “Massachusetts.”

“Oh, that’s on the North Shore,” Father Mark observed, recognizing the name of the town. “Lovely area up there. Going on a vacation?”

With his eyes Eddie asked Megan for permission to reveal more. Her expression told him he might as well go ahead.

“No. Actually we’re going to see her mother.”

“Well that’s fantastic,” he said with exuberance. “People should spend more time with their family. You know, that’s where we get our strength from. Yep, the one thing you can always count on is your family.”

Megan almost laughed at his statement. Count on them for what?

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