Aberrant Trilogy 1: Super Charged (7 page)

I hold my arms out to my sides.

“Sadly.”

“And Kimberly pulled you out?”

Kimberly raises her arms.

“It wasn’t me. I’m as dry as a piece of paper.”

Robby smiles widely and puts one hand on his hip.

“So you managed to swim to shore after all.”

“I doubt it,” I say. “The last thing I remember I was sinking to the bottom. Then I blacked out.”

All three of us look at the ground.

“It must have been Tyson, then,” says Robby.

“That’s what I said,” Kimberly agrees. “I didn’t see him do it, but somebody must have pulled you out. Otherwise, that’s one heck of a miracle.”

They’re both wrong. Tyson was leaving when I started to drown. But, I decide that I’m done arguing. I go to wipe some water from my forehead with the back of my hand and suddenly Kimberly points.

“You’re bleeding!”

I glance at my hand, which is clenched in a fist still, and am surprised to see that she’s right. Blood is running out between my fingers and thumb. I almost just smeared it on my face.

“What the heck?” I say. “How did that even happen?”

Did I scrape my hands against some rocks at the bottom of the lake before I blacked out? It’s possible, I guess. I didn’t even feel myself get sliced open.

I open my fist to see what the damage is and nearly jump back in shock.

There, in my palm, is a star-shaped piece of chiseled white metal: The Vestige.

“What the heck is that?” asks Kim.

But, Robby is already right next to me. His jaw drops and his eyes widen.

“Are you serious?” he says. “That’s the Vestige!”

“The what?” says Kimberly.

Robby waves his arms around a bit.

“The Vestige! The medallion from
Super Guy?
Don’t tell me you haven’t read it?”

Kimberly continues to listen to Robby talking about the series, but I’m not paying attention. I’m overcome with confusion at what is sitting in my hand. Is this really happening? The Vestige just appears in my hand after I nearly drown?

“I didn’t know that they made souvenirs like that!” said Robby. “Where did you get it? Was it a Con Exclusive? I bet it’s super expensive.”

I blink and shake myself out of my own thoughts.

“Uh...yeah,” I say and tuck the Vestige into my jacket pocket.

Then I start heading back the way we came.

“Hey - where are you going?” asks Robby.

“I can’t go to school with wet clothes,” I say over my shoulder. “You said you called the school?”

“Yeah.” Robby watches me with a dumb look on his face.

I continue walking, my shoes squishing with every step and leaving a wet trail of footprints behind me.

“Tell them I’ll be late. I’m headed back to change into some dry clothes.”

Robby hesitates, most likely confused by my abrupt departure, and finally manages to call out, “Okay! See you at the school!” before I duck around a patch of trees and out of sight.

10

Dry Clothes

Now that I’m alone I trudge up the dirt path that leads through the woods and up onto the main road. My hand is still bleeding so I grab a bunch of the hem of my shirt and try to stop the bleeding that way. Being honest, it’s just a cut, but it does hurt now that I know about it. It’s one of those types of injuries - the ones where you didn’t feel it happen, but now that you know it’s there it stings.

After a few minutes of brisk walking I arrive back at my grandparent’s house. They’re retired, so of course Grandma is still at home. She calls out as I enter the front door. The door slams shut on its own and I start for the stairs.

“Ed?” she says. “Back so soon?”

She comes around the corner and her eyebrows raise when she spots me.

“Shaun? I thought you were on your way to school. What on earth happened to you?”

I kick my shoes off onto the mat by the stairs and start up to my room.

“Nothing,” I reply, just wanting to get away from everyone. “I slipped and fell into the lake.”

Grandma frowns.

“You should be more careful!” she says.

I shrug as I get halfway up the steps, not stopping.

“Don’t worry,” I say over my shoulder. “It won’t happen again.”

Grandma calls up to me as I make my way down the hallway to the bathroom.

“Hurry up and change. You’re going to be late!”

I don’t bother replying. Instead I make my way into the bathroom and shut the door behind me, locking it for added privacy.

My clothes stick to my body like a second skin. I throw off the football jacket and struggle to get my soaked t-shirt off my chest and throw it into the claw-foot bathtub. Then I go over to the toilet and grab a wad of toilet paper, bunching it into my hand to stop the bleeding. After a few moments of compressing the cut, the blood is stemmed and I relax my grip.

With that taken care of, I turn my attention to the one thing that truly caused me to hurry back to the house.

I reach into my pocket and take out the sharp star-shaped object that caused the injury.

It sparkles a bit in the light. No bigger than a gold dollar, the tiny piece of metal is unmistakably hand-carved. Nature couldn’t have done this. Otherwise I would have simply thrown it back into the water and called it a sharp rock.

No. This is much more intelligent in design.

I set it down on the counter and open the medicine cabinet so that I can bandage up my hand properly. Grandma has some ointment that should speed up the healing, and I add a liberal amount before rolling some cloth bandages around my hand a few times. Then I tie it off with a metal clasp and return the items to the cabinet.

Now I can inspect this medallion in full.

The medallion is no bigger than a gold dollar. Its shape is almost a perfect star. The only thing stopping it from this perfection is the point on the top right is missing a piece as if it has been snapped off. The edges are sharp, though not as sharp as a knife. I had to be squeezing it pretty tightly for it to cut my skin like it did.

The resemblance to the Vestige from my father’s comic books is uncanny. It even has a pin-prick hole in the top point where a thread would be strung to allow Super Guy to wear it around his neck.

It glitters in the light as I hold it up to the mirror. I am absolutely dumbfounded. Where did this come from?

The Vestige...

The word lingers in my head as I continue to stare at the object in my hands.

This entire episode gives me the chills.

So many thoughts are running through my head, the first of which is that this isn’t possible. How can the Vestige, a fictional object that bestows superpowers upon its wearer, be physically in my hands?

I used to play games around this object when I was a kid. I used to draw a star on a piece of white construction paper and my mom would string a piece of sewing thread through the top of it and I would run around the yard pretending I was fighting The Drone.

Never in my life did I expect to feel something that was so real. Maybe once the merchandise for the movie was made, maybe. I expected it then, but not now. Not in the middle of nowhere Maine.

Grandma suddenly knocks on the bathroom door and it makes me jump. My heart is pounding.

“Shaun?” she calls from the other side of the door. “Are you alright in there?”

I take a breath to steady my voice.

“I’m fine,” I say. “Just a little wet.” I add for good measure, “I’m naked...drying off. Don’t worry about me, Grams.”

This seems to do the trick because Grandma mutters something about getting a move on, and then I hear her walk back down the stairs.

Once she’s been gone for about twenty seconds or so I open the bathroom door and hurry across the hall to my room. Once I’m there I make sure I lock the door behind me once more and yank some dry clothes out of my duffel bag.

I set the medallion down on the dresser as I change. It feels good to be in dry clothes once again, not to mention being able to breathe fresh air. My shoes are a lost cause since they’re still soaking wet and who knows how long they will take to dry. So, I take out my flip flops and manage to pull myself together.

Then I return to the medallion on the dresser.

“This really isn’t possible,” I say.

Taking it from its perch, I stuff it in my shorts pocket, making sure that the flap is buttoned tight. I don’t want to be losing this medallion on my way back to school - or on my way home, either. I need to do some investigating.

If this is just a coincidence, then I won’t have to worry about keeping the star-shaped whatever it is. I can just throw it away.

But, if it’s not a coincidence and this thing is the real deal...

“Real deal,” I say with a laugh. Who am I kidding?

Suddenly the image of my father pops into my head. It’s so real I can see the highlights on his hair and the sparkle in his eyes. It’s the same image that came to me just before I blacked out at the bottom of that lake.

What was it that the vision of my father had said?

Use it well?

What did that mean? Could he possibly have been talking about this medallion? I thought that my mind was just hallucinating when I saw him.

Could it be something more?

I shake my head.

Grandma yells from downstairs.

“Shaun, hurry up!”

I can’t keep wasting time with this. Odds are that this thing is just a fancy rock that someone threw away. Maybe it’s some Native American flint or something like that. An odd arrow head.

Still, I need to make sure. There will be time on my lunch period to do some investigating. I reach into my duffel bag and pull out a battered graphic novel of Super Guy - Issue #1 and tuck it under my arm. Then I throw open my bedroom door and head out for school.

11

Super Charged

School drags forever. I’m supposed to be focused on my classes, but it’s really damn hard to pay attention to advanced calculus when there’s a supposedly fictional medallion that gives people super powers in my pants pocket.

My brain fixates on the medallion until at last lunch arrives.

I grab a green speckled tray and pile whatever is in front of me onto it then head out into the sea of tables. Normally I’d be worried about where I am going to sit, but today it doesn’t really matter. To make things simple, Robby spots me from his seat near the corner of the cafeteria and calls me over.

“Are you doing alright?” he asks as I plop my tray down.

I groan.

“I just want to be out of here,” I say and go to reach into my pocket. Just as I pull the medallion out, Kimberly sits with us. I’m surprised to see her since I didn’t think someone like me would be worth her time. I expected her to sit at the track table with the rest of the athletic girls, but she picks up her silverware and gives me a demanding look.

“You can’t just fawn over that trinket,” she says. “Stop showing off and eat something. You look just as pale as earlier.”

“Fine,” I say and shove three french fries into my mouth. While I chomp them down I examine the medallion. I set the thing down on the table and pull my graphic novel out of my backpack.

Robby leans next to me to get a closer look at the medallion as well.

“That seriously is super cool,” he says. “Stuff like that goes for hundreds of dollars on eBay, you know.”

“I know,” I play along and set the medallion down on the table.

Kimberly doesn’t seem phased by it.

“Boys and their toys,” she says. “Stuff like that comes and goes. There’s always some new collectible to collect. That’s how they suck you in and keep you coming back.”

“Well, lucky for Shaun,” says Robby, “his Dad is the creator. So, I bet he gets a lot of this stuff for free. Don’t you, Shaun?”

“Sure,” I say. I’m preoccupied.

I flip the page on my graphic novel and come to the part of the story where Super Guy - before he’s Super Guy - finds the Vestige. I place the medallion on the opposite page of the book and compare them.

“It looks almost exactly the same as in the book,” I say. They are both shaped like stars, they are both the same color, and they both have a hole in the top to thread a string. The only thing different about the physical version is that it’s missing that chunk of the corner point.

I’m about to ask Robby if he sees the same similarities on the medallion as me when a voice laughs behind me.

I turn to see Tyson scoffing. He’s accompanied by the same two guys from the lake earlier.

I groan.

“Playing with your toys?” he says.

“Finished trying to kill your classmates?” I shoot back.

He takes a step back.

“Ooh, getting all pissy on me?”

“You’d be pissy too if you were almost killed,” I say and try to ignore the boy.

But, if I know anything about Tyson (and he makes it impossible to not know anything about him), he can’t leave well enough alone. So, he forces his way onwards in the confrontation.

“I don’t know why you’re so upset,” he says, trying to take a seat on the edge of the table. “Weren’t you sent here because you were trying to kill yourself on the top of some roof?”

“That’s a lie,” I say. “I wasn’t trying to kill myself, and if I were you, I’d go away before you get into even more trouble.”

“I’m not in trouble, though,” he says. “Your little buddy here? Robby? He called the school, but they have no proof that you almost drowned. You showed up here in dry clothes. So, I’m off the hook.” He holds a hand out in front of me like he’s presenting me to the cafeteria. “See? He’s all dry. And he’s still breathing! Playing with his little toys.”

Tyson goes to grab the medallion off the table in front of me, but I’m too quick for him.

I snatch up the medallion with one hand.

“I said leave me alone.”

“Oooh,” says Tyson. His two buddies are behind him once more. “It’s not you I came over here to see,” he says. “It’s Kimberly.”

Kimberly looks up from her lunch, shaking her hair out of her face.

“Excuse me?” she says.

“Yeah.”

Tyson presses a hand down on the table to my right and leans over.

“I came over here to ask if you wanted to go out with me sometime.”