Tales of Capes and Cowls by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: superhero fiction
Publisher: Crossroad Press
Published: 2022-04-13T06:00:00+00:00

Night of the Shriek

By Michael Boatman

Soaring over Lake Shore Drive always brings out the worst in me. I tell myself it’s an indulgence I can’t afford. Three months ago my prey murdered an innocent child. Now it’s Friday night and the monsters are gathering on the South Side.

Mom?

Yes, Mathias?

Something happened last night. Something…weird.

Ignoring my better judgment, I reorient myself, and as the full moon glides over Lake Michigan, I inhale, expanding my lungs and my wings. Then I catch a tailwind the color of sunflowers and let it sweep me toward the Lakefront.

The memories are always the same.

My family and I have just left our family reunion, out in the suburbs west of O’Hare Airport. We’re traveling south along the Lakefront and nearly home when the car jumps. My father wrestles with the steering wheel for a moment...

“Damn potholes!”

Then my mother’s voice, like a wind-chime in my memory, her gentle growl; “Enrique… Matty’s awake.”

In the back of our Chevy SUV, my twin brother Samuel is snoring. To me, that buzzing drone smells like fresh apples. We’re nine years old and we’ve just spent the weekend with our cousins, swimming in my Aunt Eva’s pool. Exhausted, exhilarated, I’m watching the stars as we head toward the South Side. The stars are singing back to me.

“Mom?”

“Mmhmm?”

“What’s bigamy?”

“What?” she laughs. “Where did you hear that word?”

“Last night I dreamed Aunt Eva was crying and she kept calling Uncle Reggie a bigamist.”

My mother looks at me with the oddest expression then. Even in the dark I can see the worried little flinches that dance at the corners of her eyes whenever she’s nervous.

“What’d he say,” my father asks. “What’s he talking about?”

My mother is still staring at me with that odd expression when the car lurches again.

“Damn!”

My father pulls over into the breakdown lane and stops the car.

“Dad? What’s wrong?”

“Just a flat tire, buhito,” my dad says, using his favorite Spanish nickname for me; “Little Owl.” He worries because I’m the nervous one, the watchful one. If Samuel were awake he would doubtless chime in just to score brownie points; Bruh… you’re such a chickenshit. Poor little Butt-holio… still afraid of the dark!

But they don’t know about the changes.

The worry lines on my mother’s face deepen. “Wait,” she says, eyeing the dark length of the expressway behind us. “Maybe we should call the road service.”

“Nah,” my father says. “Be done in a second.”

He opens the door, steps out and disappears around the back of the SUV. It’s just after midnight. In six minutes they’ll both be dead.

“Go on,” my mother says, only now she’s practically whispering like she doesn’t want anyone else to hear. “Tell me about this dream.”

I have just enough time, a fleeting eternity, to wonder how to tell her about the changes. How my muscles ache if I lie still, but only after sundown; how, just the other night, I’d awoken from the dream about Aunt Eva to find myself floating five feet above my bed. I want to tell her about the scary voices that smell like dill pickles and the terrible things they whisper to me.

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