Chapter 22: A Reservoir of Wisdom

By a/k/a Simon
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The conversation between Eddie and Megan didn’t happen that night. After the fight, Megan and Greta cleaned Eddie up. In total, they used half a bottle of hydrogen peroxide on his assortment of cuts and a handful of Band-Aids to cover the larger wounds. He held an ice pack against the side of his head to stop the swelling and was mostly successful at it. The keen observer would probably notice the lump through his black hair, but the casual eye would be too distracted by the rectangular bandages dotting his face to notice anything else. First aid sapped the last of their collective energy and they all decided to go to bed.

Ryan had long since passed out in the basement, content with his victory and sleeping soundly with the assurance that his masculinity remained intact.

Megan and Eddie helped Murphy up the stairs to his bed. Greta had had some reservations about him staying at the house overnight, but the nurses from the home gave her some advice at the wake and put her mind at ease. There was the chance that he might try to wander off or make a random phone call in the middle of the night. Unplugging the phone in his bedroom solved that problem. With Megan and Eddie in the next room, and Greta on the couch downstairs, she doubted very much that he would wander far.

Once Murphy was secure in his bed and asleep, Greta returned to living room and Eddie and Megan went into her room to sleep.

Of course, Eddie didn’t get much sleep. It took him a long time to fully calm down from the fight, the last vestiges of adrenaline still lingering in his system. Even after it wore off he tossed and turned thinking about Ryan pounding on him, replaying the short fight in his mind over and over again. It didn’t seem just, he thought, momentarily foolish enough to expect justice in the world. Ryan was such a despicable human being, if that term could even be used. He was the villain, and villains were supposed to lose. This was especially true when the hero was standing up for someone weaker, like Megan. Maybe that was the mistake, though. Maybe he was wrong to think that Megan was the weaker of the two. How would she have reacted in Eddie’s situation? What if Megan had been the superhero and lost her powers?

Eddie was sick of what ifs, wonderings, and maybes. He could think about things and analyze them as much as he wanted but it wasn’t getting him anywhere. Since losing his powers he’d been trying to figure out what to do next, what direction his life was going to take. Every time he thought he might be in the vicinity of an answer, something got tossed into the equation and he found himself at the beginning of an even more difficult puzzle. Life was a series of riddles and he couldn’t even figure out the first one.


When he finally did get to sleep it didn’t last long. Another dream. This time he was sitting at a dining table in a dark room. Two large silver trays floated out of the blackness and onto the table. He pulled off the covers and found the cooked bodies of his parents displayed as entrees. Someone handed him a fork and a knife. He cut into his mother’s leg. A beam of light shot out, energy oozed like liquid from the incision. Finishing the cut he lifted away a hunk of charred meat, pulsating radioactive green. A voice told him to eat, eat and he would be powerful. But he refused. He put the fork down and backed away from the table. In the darkness he searched for a way out. Hands grabbed him; they strapped him to a chair, holding his mouth open. They force-fed him the pulsing chunk of his mother’s leg. He did his best to resist, but lost. He fought back as best he could, but in the end he swallowed the piece down. Right before he woke up he felt the power flow through his body.

Eddie got up and went to the bathroom. He looked at himself in the mirror, trying to erase the dream images. Splashing cold water did nothing but give him a chill. He was starting to grow used to the lower body temperature by now, but sudden changes still took a long time to recover from.

As he stood over the toilet bowl emptying his bladder, he looked out the window to the yard outside. There was something about the woods, since the first time he’d seen them, that gave him a sense of peace. He’d hoped to get a chance to explore them before he left, but knew that it would probably never happen.

Looking around the yard he saw something by the pool. It was a human figure, a man. Eddie squinted his eyes but couldn’t tell who it was.

Curious and a bit paranoid from the events of the past few days, Eddie slipped on his shoes and headed downstairs. On his way to the back door he grabbed a flashlight that had been left on the kitchen counter after the brown out. He was careful not to wake Greta as he closed the back entrance and walked down the stairs to the yard.

The pool filter was running, filling the air with a low thrum. Eddie approached cautiously, turning the flashlight on only once he was within fifty feet of the mystery man.

His light shot across the face of the man. It was Murphy. He stood fully erect, not a hint of a slouch, nor the constant tremor that indicated his disease. Eddie didn’t know how the old man was doing it, but he was worried about him being so close to the deep end of the pool.

“Murphy?” Eddie asked, trying to get his attention.

Murphy turned his head to look at Eddie. At first, his expression was blank. But suddenly it was as if he’d seen a ghost, his eyes wide and his jaw dropped. Murphy turned and ran the opposite direction, making a beeline for the woods. Before Eddie could even react, Murphy had crossed the width of the backyard and disappeared into the trees.

“Murphy, wait!” Eddie cried, too late. He looked back to the house, wondering if he should get anyone to help. He had no idea how big the woods were, and it was possible that Murphy could be lost deep within before Eddie could get help. He needed to follow the trail while it was still warm, try to catch up to Murphy while he was still close enough to be heard rustling through the trees.

Eddie entered the woods at the same spot he’d seen Murphy enter. It was easy to pinpoint the location the noise was coming from and he hurried in that direction. Branches whipped across his face and rocks fell into his shoes as he ran through the darkness. With every step the sound of another man’s footsteps grew louder. But Murphy still had a good lead on him, and it would take a while to catch him. Eddie hoped that Murphy would run out of steam before too long. He also hoped the old man didn’t hurt himself, because it was going to be hard enough finding his way back without worrying about hauling an injured man along with him.

The ground turned soft, as dirt became mud. Each step became more arduous as the muck got thicker and deeper. At one point, Eddie lifted his foot out of the sludge and his shoe didn’t return with it. But he couldn’t stop to worry about a lost shoe. He’d lost the noise he’d been using as a beacon. Wherever he was, Murphy had stopped.

A hundred yards further the woods opened up and a quiet lake stretched out before him. Eddie looked around. To his right, at the edge of the water, Murphy sat on a large rock embedded in the ground. “Murphy?” Eddie said, keeping the light away from him.

Murphy turned his head casually. “Eddie,” he said. “Right?”

Eddie approached slowly, worried that anything might set him to a sprint again. But Murphy didn’t even seem winded. If anything, he seemed completely normal.

“Have a seat, son,” Murphy offered, patting a space next to him on the rock. Eddie sat down as Murphy looked out across the lake. In the far distance, on the opposite shore, was the tiny silhouette of a group of buildings. “You know why I built my house here?” he asked, keeping his gaze on the shadowy outcropping.

Eddie shook his head.

“Because this is the closest they’d let me,” Murphy said. He pointed to the buildings. “Over there, across the lake, that’s the nuclear power plant. The plant my father build and that I ran. Ran into the ground, some might say. I built my house right on the border of what the law would allow. I wanted to be the closest person to the plant in case anything went wrong. Part of it was so I could be the first to respond. But the really reason was because I wanted to be held accountable. If something happened, some horrible catastrophe, I would be the first to be affected. I didn’t want to be some remote industrialist who lived a hundred miles from his business, safe from any fallout. I wanted to be a captain. And the captain goes down with the ship. Never expected them to take the ship away from me, though.”

He looked down into his lap, then at Eddie. “It was about being responsible for my mistakes,” he said. “You know what I mean?”

“I think I do,” Eddie said.

“And I made a lot of mistakes over the years. The place never blew up, but that didn’t mean it was safe. Helen probably got cancer from working at that place. I should have listened to Peter all those years ago when he went on and on about safety upgrades and plant renovations. But I was too worried about siding with my father, spiting my brother, keeping my spot in the family hierarchy. Look where it got me. I’ve overheard them saying that the extreme stress of operating the plant might have aggravated my Parkinson’s, made it worse than it should be faster. Helen dies of cancer. And my brother disowns himself from the family. All because of my mistakes.”

Eddie tried to think of something to say, something about how it wasn’t all Murphy’s fault, that there was a good chance Mrs. Kroeger’s cancer had nothing to do with her years at the plant.

“He was there today,” Murphy said. “Peter. I saw him at the wake.”

“You saw that?” Eddie echoed.

Murphy picked up a pebble and examined it. “I don’t know what brought him out of hiding. It’s not like he was that close to Helen. I just remember this damn fog that hangs over me lifting, and through it, I see Peter walking past me, going out the door.” He crooked his head at Eddie. “And you were following him.”

“He says he can get me my powers back,” Eddie confessed. He didn’t feel like hiding things anymore. Murphy had already opened up so much; he felt he owed it to him.

The old man bounced his head and curled his mouth downward. “He probably can, too,” he said. “I wouldn’t put something like that past Peter. He might be a pain in the ass, but he’s a genius. No arguing that.”

Murphy turned away from Eddie. “So, are you going to take him up on the offer?”

That was the question, wasn’t it? It was the thing that Eddie had been struggling over all day, the monumental choice that could put everything back the way it was supposed to be.

“I haven’t decided yet,” Eddie admitted. “A huge part of me wants to call him up right now, start whatever procedure he has cooked up, get the thing done. But then there’s this thing that’s holding me back. There’s…”

“Meg?” Murphy finished the thought.

“I’m not sure how I feel about her. If you’d asked me the day I lost my powers what I was willing to do to get them back, I would have said anything. But the option wasn’t offered to me then. I turned to Meg, took a blind stab that maybe I could fix things with her. I didn’t have to make a choice, because I didn’t have a choice. The powers were gone and I couldn’t get them back. Meg was gone and maybe I could get her back. Now everything is so mixed up. I don’t know how the decision suddenly got so hard.”

“It’s because you never even knew her,” Murphy said.

“I was married to her for years,” Eddie informed him.

“There’s a difference between being with someone and knowing someone, son.” Murphy turned himself halfway to face Eddie. “You might know what kind of person she is, what category she fits into or how a psychiatrist might describe her. But you don’t really know her. You don’t know those little details that make her unique, the things that don’t fit into categories or make it onto a doctor’s notepad. What’s her favorite book? How did she get the scar on her right knee? What did she do to Tigger the time we all went to DisneyWorld? How does she feel about the Kennedys? When she was seven years old, what did she say she wanted to be when she grew up? These are all things you find out when you really get to know a person. You can like the kind of person someone is, but in order to love someone you have to really know them.”

“That’s why you’re having so much trouble,” he concluded. “You’re starting to get to know her.”

“How well did you know your wife?” Eddie asked.

“You know how well we knew each other?” he began. “When I started getting really bad, when I started having more days trapped in the delusions, days I couldn’t even talk, she’d sit next to my bed and have entire conversations with me. She didn’t talk at me. I mean actual conversations. She’d mention some topic and start in on an argument. She knew me so well, she knew how I would respond, the kind of counter arguments I would make. I was a vegetable and she’d still debate me until she was blue in the face. I remember it all, like it was some distant dream. But I know it happened. Maybe the nurses thought she was crazy, but Helen knew I was there somewhere. And I was.”

The idea was amazing. Eddie had never imagined something like that, having that kind of connection to someone, a connection that transcended communication barriers.

“She was your biggest fan, you know,” Murphy told him.

“Really?” Eddie couldn’t believe it. He didn’t even know if Mrs. Kroeger knew who he was.

“How do you think I know so much about you?” Murphy asked him rhetorically. “I’m not that smart. Meg told Greta, Greta told Helen, Helen told me. Naturally, part of it was concern for her daughter, wanting to know that she was all right. But the truth is, Helen was a big nut for superheroes. She collected clippings of every article she could find about you. We’d go to the lake for a week now and then and she spent the whole time sitting on the deck, pasting in her scrapbook. She was so proud you were her son-in-law. You should have seen the way she lit up whenever she told people about you. You think you can beam?”

“I remember seeing one piece,” he continued. “There was some hero named The Orb, came down with cancer. You teamed up with this magic guy…”

“Master Arcanum,” Eddie said, remembering the incident.

“That was it. You and that Arcanum fella, you cooked something up and cured the other guy’s cancer, wiped it out of his system. When I heard that…I don’t know. I knew it was a long shot. I guess I just hoped maybe you could do something like that for Helen.”

For the first time, Eddie felt even worse about not having his powers. “I don’t know that I would have been able to do anything. A lot of the reason why that worked was because The Orb’s powers were based on similar energy as mine. I’m really not sure how it would have affected an ordinary person.” To ease his guilt a little, he added, “I didn’t even know she was sick.”

Murphy took a deep breath and looked at the moon in the sky. “Yeah, we’ve really made a mess of things with this family,” he said, saddened. “I blame myself for a lot of it. I didn’t learn my lesson seeing the mistakes my own father made raising his kids. I just repeated the cycle. My dad made me his favorite and let me get away with everything, just like I did with my sons. In my case, I let the plant become a potential biohazard. Now I’ve got one son running around muscling people for shady building permits and another son just drifting through life, leeching off the family tit.”

He put his arm around Eddie and drew him close. “Listen, son. Don’t let all this bullshit scare you off. I can see it in your eyes when you talk about her. Get to know her. You’ll see that she’s worth it. Build a family. Be happy. But always be careful not to repeat the mistakes my father made, the mistakes I made. Break this goddamn cycle of dysfunction. You’ve got a chance to start over, make things right. I know you’ve got to make the choice on your own, but I’ve got a good feeling about you. Try something new.”

They sat by the edge of the lake a few more minutes, enjoying the view in silence.


As the moon reached the middle of the sky they began the walk home. In the woods they searched for Eddie’s shoe, buried in the thick mud. Murphy went over the path he had followed, keeping a close eye on the ground. Eddie stayed near, flashlight at the ready. It seemed futile, but Murphy insisted they keep looking.

“Eddie, there’s one more thing I want to talk to you about,” Murphy said as he continued to stare at the muck. “It’s about my will.”

“I thought there wasn’t any will,” Eddie questioned, remembering the conversation from the morning before.

“Helen didn’t have a will,” Murphy agreed. “But I do. A living will. One that can be executed while I’m still alive. Shane and Ryan think they’re owed something and they’re going to fight to get it. They’re going to try to cut Megan out just to spite her. It’s going to be bitter and ugly and mean. And it makes me sick. If I still had all my senses this would never happen. But any second now I might go back to being a zombie. These episodes of lucidity are rare nowadays and I want to use what might be my last chance to fix some of the mistakes that have been made. I want Shane and Ryan to learn some responsibility. I want to make things right with Greta. My will can do that.”

“So where is it?”

“It’s in a safe place,” Murphy said, pointing Eddie to a spot on the ground. “Only the person I asked to be my witness knows where it is. If he showed up with the will, there’s no way anyone could dispute it.”

“Who did you ask to be the witness?” Eddie asked, as he pulled his mud-crusted shoe out of the filth.
“Witness for what?” Murphy asked.
“Witness for the will,” Eddie repeated.
“Will?” Murphy said, confusion in his voice. “Will’s been dead nine years. He got eaten by a shark.”
“He what?” Eddie didn’t understand what he was talking about. “A shark?”
“Big shark. And his wife left us with the cats.”
“Cats?”
“We have to feed the cats,” Murphy commanded.
The old man started back toward the house, his body hunching over. Eddie grabbed him by the hand and noticed it was trembling. He shined the light near Murphy’s face and recognized the blank stare. He’d retreated back into the delusion.

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