The Dummies Guide for Superheroes: Introduction

Leverett Prescott sat on the post-and-rail fence behind his house. In his hand, he gripped his obituary, torn from the newspaper he’d found it in. It wasn’t until he reached home that he realized the obituary meant Ray and his computer were telling him the truth. But even with the truth, he had to see his wife of forty years, Lau Rolette. He told himself he had to know she was safe, unwilling to admit why he really had to see her.

When he did see her, the memory of his last day alive in his previous life flooded back to him. He remembered his painful, ghastly death in detail.

Fire engine number 47 pulled up to a warehouse gradually being consumed by flames. Akin to a clown car in a circus, firefighters poured out of the vehicle. Leverett came out of the cab, staring at the blaze, mentally assessing where it was safe to enter the building.

Behind him a voice yelled over the roar of the fire, people, and rush of water from the fire hoses. “We have word there’s five workers still in there!”

Leverett turned to watch his chief direct the younger men. He was only a few year older than Leverett, and for the last five years he’d encouraged Leverett to apply for his job, or at the other two firehouses when a chief position came up. Leverett wasn’t interested in being a chief, though. Even as his senior citizen years crept up on him, he wasn’t ready to give up the adrenaline rush of fighting fires. Maybe next year, he kept telling himself, his wife, and his adult children – but they all knew next year would be the same answer.

He pulled on an oxygen tank and full-face mask.

“Levi,” the chief said, looking at him. “Take Andrews and Rich around back. Gary, I want—”

Leverett didn’t wait for the rest. He led the two men to the back and found a door. It wouldn’t budge when Andrews tried to open it.

Andrews stated the obvious. “Can’t get it to open.”

“It’s metal. Probably got hot and swelled up. Hack it open, Andrews,” Leverett ordered the rookie. “But be careful. Once she gets a breath, she’ll try and eat you, kid.”

Andrews moved in with his ax and hacked at the door. He hesitated on the last swing, tensed, swung, and ducked. In a roar, fire leapt out the door at them and super-heated the air over them as the flames reached for the night sky. Then the fire sucked back inside.

The three men entered.

“Andrews, go on ahead. Rich, take the left. Watch out for holes, and who knows what else.”

Leverett went right, searching for anyone in need of rescue. From his left, inside the blind spot his helmet created, something lunged. He turned in time to see it was human before it hit him and the two landed hard on the floor.

“I’m here to save you!” Leverett screamed as he struggled with the person. He couldn’t see their face.

The person’s fingers fondled his chin and Leverett realized the person was trying to get his helmet off. He swung to push the attacker away, but loaded with an oxygen tank and his fire resistant gear put him at a disadvantage. Before he could get to his feet, the attacker was on his back, his arm around Leverett’s throat. Leverett pulled his hand away, seeing a ring on the person’s index finger. It was a man’s ring with a Celtic twisted knot design.

Leverett ran backwards against a flaming wall. The person yelled and let go, and Leverett ran for the exit. He grabbed for the radio mic on his shoulder. The moment he realized it wasn’t there was the same moment it snagged on a jutting board. He turned to pull it free and saw his attacker charging at him. Leverett braced himself for the attack. The man fell against him, pushing Leverett to the floor. He swung a fist at him and the man jammed something sharp into his neck.

The world shimmered and then began to sway, and the attacker left him in in the burning building. Leverett tried to get up, but he couldn’t tell up from down. He wanted to get to the exit, but he didn’t know where that was. He wanted to pull his mic free, the one caught on a board, but his fingers couldn’t find where it was attached.

The fire moved in on him. It sought revenge for the others he had killed over the years. He felt its heat on his skin long before it engulfed him and lit his body on fire. Leverett screamed and screamed and screamed even when he felt the fire in his throat.

He closed his eyes but the fire wouldn’t let him be blind to it. He heard hissing and groaning. He heard someone say his name. He cried and screamed, but the fire wouldn’t go out. He felt something cool in his mouth. It flowed down his throat and into his lungs, and then there was nothing.

Even after the memory of his death had revived, he hadn’t been convinced it was real. He did the next logical thing. He stopped at a library and after an hour, was staring at his obituary. According to the date on it he’d been dead for almost eleven months.

Now, alive and mostly well, he watched his wife move around the house. She had a hard time with losing loved ones. When she’d lost her parents and brother, he had spent months holding her as she cried. During those months, she only slept from exhaustion. She became so depressed that it worried him to leave her alone. Eventually, though, she pulled through. She was a much stronger woman than her frail frame and emotions would suggest.

She had probably cried all she could over the loss of her soul mate and now she was continuing with life. That made Leverett cry, something he didn’t do often. He knew he couldn’t walk up to the front door, ring the doorbell, smile when she opened it, and tell her that he was home. She had buried him and it was better to let her believe he was gone.

All that was left was to find the man who had murdered him.

I will find him.

The thought sounded like someone else’s voice and it startled him. He twisted around to see who had spoken. The world moved like a television camera being jostled as the operator tried focusing it. When the movement stopped, he was standing in the hall of a small apartment. At the end the door of the bedroom was open and he could see a man asleep on a mattress with no frame or box spring.

He approached the bed, careful not to make any noise. The person turned in their sleep so he could see the man’s face, but it meant nothing to Leverett.

His eyes drifted to the bedside table. A watch. A wallet. A silver ring twisted into a Celtic knot design. Leverett picked up the ring, turned it in his fingers, studied it. It was the ring his murderer wore.

Leverett looked down at the man. His rage ignited and burned hot in him, like the fire he’d swallowed. He reached out his hand to wrap it around the man’s throat, to strangle the life out of him – and stopped.

No.

As much as this man was a killer, he was not. Leverett turned away, looking around the room. He walked down the hall and found the front door. The apartment was on the fourth floor of a rundown building, but he didn’t even feel himself practically run down the steps. When he came out of it onto a poorly lit, derelict part of town, he didn’t see that. His mind was reeling right now.

It was hard enough to accept he had died, and he had been brought back to life, but now the emotions were crashing down: grief from losing his wife, terror remembering his death, rage from seeing his killer, and the most potent, shock from somehow moving from his home into the hallway of his killer’s apartment. This was too much!

Anna stood at the window of her daughter’s room, staring at the front lawn. Almost a year had passed and there was still a shrine at the end of the lawn. Fresh flowers and lit candles had been placed by it, probably by her mother or daughter.

Seeing it as she walked up the sleeping street stunned her, because it backed what the computer had told her. She had died. There were laminated newspaper clippings about her death in the shrine. They told about Anna’s career as a Ranger, how she excelled in the Police Academy, how she’d saved a man from jumping off a building, and that she was survived by her mother and daughter.

Anna’s heart leapt when she felt a hand slip into her own. She stared down into her daughter’s eyes. Anna crouched in front of six-year-old Anna Lisa. The child didn’t shy away when she reached out and smoothed her long, black locks back.

“They said you died, mommy,” she whispered. “You’ve been gone for a really long time.”

Anna smiled. “I did die, baby. I just came back to make sure you were okay.”

“You’re an angel?”

Anna’s heart broke. She didn’t want to lie to her daughter, but she had to. Her daughter was far too young to grasp the truth.

“Yes. I’m an angel, baby, just looking in on you.”

“Will you stay?”

“I can’t. I have to go back up to heaven and stay with daddy.”

Excited, she asked, “Will he be coming too? Will I get to see him?”

Anna shook her head. Her eyes burned with tears trying to overcome her.

“No, baby, just me, but I won’t come all the time.”

“Doesn’t God want you to see me?”

Behind Anna a voice replied, “Angels can’t stay on Earth. They can only come once in a while to make sure you’re being good and doing okay.”

Anna watched her mother, Caliopa, move along the wall until they could look at each other. She could see the woman’s distrust and fear.

“You need to go back to bed now, honey,” Anna told her little girl. “You have school tomorrow.”

Anna Lisa beamed. “I can tell Rachel my mommy visited tonight.”

“You can’t do that,” Anna ordered. “No one but you, me, and grandma can know I came here tonight.”

“It’s a secret. A family secret,” Caliopa told the girl.

She looked from one to the other, watching to see which would smile first, suggesting this was a joke. But they didn’t. The world would be cruel if she told anyone her dead mother had come to visit her in the middle of the night.

“Okay,” Anna Lisa quietly replied.

Anna pulled her into a tight, tender embrace. She couldn’t stop herself from crying. She swiped her tears away behind Anna Lisa’s back. She pulled back, kissing the child’s soft, round cheek.

“Let’s get you back in bed, sweetheart.” Anna stood but Anna Lisa latched onto her hand.

“Tuck me in and sing me a lullaby, mommy. The one with the looking glass and the bird.”

She heard Caliopa leave the room.

Anna smiled. Softly she told her, “Okay.”

She put Anna Lisa back in bed and laid next to her for a long time after the child had fallen asleep. Anna kissed her daughter’s forehead and left her to sleep alone.

She found her mother sitting at the kitchen table with her hands clenched around a coffee cup of warm milk. Anna slid into the chair across from her. She didn’t even know where to begin.

“Who are you?” her mother demanded. Anna knew the rough voice with a thick Spanish accent meant Caliopa was angry.

“I’m your daughter, Madre.”

She leaned across the table, her black eyes turning hard with her anger. “They told me that my daughter’s body was mutilated. I buried her ashes. Who are you?”

“Madre, it’s… Complicated.”

“Are you working undercover? Was this all an act for your job?”

Anna closed her eyes, wagging her head back and forth. “No, Madre. This isn’t… This is complicated.”

Anna looked at her. She was tempted to spin a lie, but she and her mother never lied to each other, not even to protect each other’s feelings. If she betrayed that now, Caliopa would never believe her again.

“What I’m going to tell you is difficult even for me to understand or accept. I was shot and I died. My body was stolen and put in a place where a computer was supposed to use it to store data. But instead someone brought me and six other people back to life.” Anna reached across and laid a cautious hand over Caliopa’s. “Madre, it is me. Really, it is. Ask me anything to prove it. Anything your princesa would know.”

At the mention of the pet name Caliopa used for Anna, she yanked her hand back. She became rigid, pulling herself into as small of a space as she could. Tears welled up and began running over her brown, withered cheeks. They found the cracks in the…

Anna gasped when she saw the woman’s face as if it were under a microscope. She saw the molecules in the tears as they crept along the crevices of the skin cells and over hair follicles.

“What is wrong? Why are you staring at me like that?” Caliopa asked.

Anna’s vision returned to normal and she saw Caliopa’s whole face. She didn’t know she’d paled when her ability had taken over her. Color returned as they continued talking.

“I’ve changed, Madre. I’m… Different.”

Caliopa nodded. Anna knew that like herself, her mother believed in God and miracles. Perhaps she saw this as just another page in God’s plan. Anna almost smiled because that same thought occurred to her when she was standing in her daughter’s room.

“I’m afraid that if the people who killed me find out I’m alive, they would hurt you and Anna Lisa. You cannot let anyone know, Madre.”

Caliopa looked into her milk. Was she hoping for some divine answer from it?

“You will have to wear a mask or have your face changed,” Caliopa told her.

Anna nodded when Caliopa looked up. “I’ll wear a mask. I want Anna Lisa to know me when I come again.

“You must wake her when you visit, but you mustn’t visit often. If we must lie to her about this, too many visits would make it unbelievable. And you have to find someone to contact me if something happens to you. Something… Permanent. I don’t want to be left to wonder what has become of my princesa.”

Caliopa slipped her hand away from her body, slid it across the table, and wrapped it around Anna’s. Anna smiled.

“I have to go,” Anna said.

Her mother nodded. “Be careful.”

Anna got up and walked around the table. She hugged Caliopa, holding on as tight as she thought was safe.

“I never want to lose you again, princesa. It hurt too much.”

“I know, Madre.” Anna kissed her temple.

“Go. Before we think you should stay,” Caliopa urged, pushing Anna away.

Anna gave her one more kiss on the forehead and then slipped out the back door into the alley. She heard her mother begin to sob and started running, but her own tears caught up with her.

Harley sat in the middle of a dark, empty living room, that used to be his, staring at a blank wall. The light from the streetlight was weak, but it showed outlines where photographs had hung for years. Harley had remembered how he died when he first opened his eyes, but standing here in his dark house made the memory come back and threaten to drive him into a rage.

A grenade exploded against a low wall, showering Harley and his company with sand, mud, and small bits of shrapnel. Harley and the men were trying to take cover behind a low wall, firing over it at their attackers across the square of the small Iraqi village.

“We are in need of an evac immediately!” he heard Private Dietz say behind him.

Harley’s gun clicked. Out of bullets.

He ducked down and pulled off the magazine, reached for another, and realized he was out of ammo. He dropped the rifle and checked his side arm clip — only fifteen bullets. He decided not to waste them.

“Where’s our ride, Private!” Harley barked.

“They’re in the air, sir.”

Harley looked at the terrified Iraqi sitting among his men. The man had a bandanna tied around his mouth and was handcuffed.

“You better be worth this fucking shit or I’ll kill you myself!” Harley told him.

The man stared wide-eyed at him.

“I’m out, Captain,” another soldier told Harley.

“I’m getting there fast,” another said

Harley looked around them, doing a fast assessment.

“Brookes, you and Dietz take the asshole and go through that building to the rendezvous. Leave everything but your Glocks. We’ll hold ‘em off until you tell us our ride is here.”

“What about what we found, sir? We gotta tell someone about that.”

Harley patted his pockets and retrieved a small digital camera. He gave it to the man.

“Take it with you. We’ll tell Admiral Kells when we get back.”

Brookes took the camera, dropped his Glock, and grabbed the prisoner’s arm. He and Dietz hurried into the building toward the rendezvous location

That left Harley with four men to hold off what felt like the entire Iraqi army. Harley checked one of the rifles for rounds and turned. He froze, staring at a man hiding in the shadows of a nearby building. He was bald, thin, dressed in rags, and aiming a rifle at Harley. Harley didn’t have time to alert the others or fire a shot before the man pulled the trigger.

Harley didn’t hear the single gunshot over the enfilade. He felt pain rip through his armpit and deep into his chest. He lost a breath and then two. He saw the wall tilt up and give way to a cloudless blue sky. Bullets flew overhead as silver fireflies with sunlight dancing off them. Lieutenant Gibson’s face came into view. His mouth moved. Harley didn’t respond.

He was picked up. The sky became a mud roof that jiggled and jounced. The sky reappeared. He saw the blades of a helicopter. Somewhere in his mind he knew he shouldn’t be able to see the blades as they rotated, but he could. They circled, circled, circled, as they faded into black…

He heard a heart monitor beeping and opened his eyes. Harley knew he was just becoming aware of a noise that had been there for a while. He saw people moving around him. They were all wearing surgeon gowns and masks. A woman’s face leaned in.

“Hang on, Captain. We’ll pull you through this.”

He smiled. “I’m dying.”

She didn’t smile. He could tell because the corners of her eyes didn’t wrinkle. “No.”

“I’m ready. It’s a good day to die.”

“It’s never a good day to die, Captain.”

“Make sure Ebony gets the flag. We married before I shipped out on this tour.”

The woman leaned in, her blue eyes meeting his. Wisps of strawberry blond hair escaped from under her surgeon cap.

“Your day to die has not come yet, Captain. Not yet,” she told him and then moved away.

He felt something cool and stinging go into his arm.

As a boy, Harley grew up on a Navajo reservation in Arizona. His parents wanted the best for him, and most of their wages were spent sending him to a Catholic school. It caused him to have a conflict of religion until he was ten.

That’s when he decided that both religions were right. The creator and his son in the Catholic story were the same ones in the Navajo beliefs. Angels, demons, and the devil simply had other names in Navajo. The two religions were entwined. He carried that belief up to the moment he died.

So why had he woken up in a room with a monk in an orange robe who spoke to him in a language he didn’t understand? Why hadn’t he woken up in Heaven or the Navajo underworld? For the first time in his life, his beliefs appeared to be faulty, but he wasn’t sure which religion to blame for that.

Standing in his empty house, with his family missing, made this loss of faith even more painful. Nothing made any sense anymore.

Harley turned and walked back to the broken front door. He stared at the twisted and burned metal. He had panicked when he looked through the front window that he charged the door. He expected it to be open but it hadn’t been.

He had raised a fist to slam it against the door and before it made contact, electricity leapt from his fist, nearly blowing the door off its hinges. The blast of electricity melted and scorched the brass door handle and plate.

Harley pushed the door closed and headed back down the street. All he could do now was return to the temple and hope to find answers to his past and future.