Sam had been a superhero for around five months. The reasons for anyone doing anything are myriad and diffuse but Sam considered his own destiny as a superhero in twenty-first-century Britain a kind of inevitability. All the rivers of his life had led him to it.
He was an only child, born to two parents who were also only children, and so he found himself alone for great swathes of time in his early childhood. This loneliness was felt most keenly in the long summer holidays when his father was at work and his mother, a teacher, spent lots of time earning extra cash marking exam papers. It was on one of those long, lazy summer afternoons that his life changed for ever, when his mother gave him a beaten-up copy of the first Harry Potter book. Having no idea what was about to happen to him, Sam took the book, went upstairs to his room, and started reading. The only reason he came back down later on was because he was too hungry not to.
For Sam the magic of stories went far deeper than mere entertainment – they wove an alternate reality in which he could feel less alone. When Harry and his friends went to Diagon Alley for sweets or wands or broomsticks, he was right there with them. He loved the world the author built, felt himself sliding off his bed and into the pages of the book, into another universe. This transporting experience, where he could be with other people, was immensely powerful, and it was in books he found his first real friends.
When he was around nine or ten, his father took him to see a matinee of Jurassic Park and afterwards they went for ice cream, sat in a plaza watching people going about their exciting city lives. Perhaps it was more than mere coincidence that, on that perfect day, a second huge change occurred in Sam’s life. They called into WHSmith and his father bought him his very first Batman comic. Outside the shop, in the brilliant sunshine of the city’s high street, the gleaming buildings all around him and all the people whirling past, Sam held the comic in both his hands and stared at it, blinking out the brightness of the sun.
When he got home he lay on his bed and flicked through the pages and his mind was opened up. Here was something he felt he shouldn’t be reading. Did his father know the stories were this violent? Cops were being shot, acid was a weapon of choice, and the protagonist was not an innocent but an angry anti-hero, taking the law into his own hands.
But more than this, it was real. Bruce Wayne was a normal human being, flesh and blood. Sam was hooked. Like it was the most natural thing in the world, he started pretending he was Batman, cycling around the back alleys of his small housing estate in the hope of discovering a crime scene that needed investigation, though there never was.
He started exploring the large woods on the edge of town. The trees were big and old; there were hills and deep valleys and sheer cliff faces, something primal about its danger.
One winter day he discovered a weird basin filled with fallen leaves and there, on the far side, he saw a dark opening beneath the roots of a tree. Clambering up, he found himself inside. The ceiling was made up of hovering tree roots, and as he looked out across the autumn-leaved basin he had no idea just how important this place would become to him. He had found his Batcave. He didn’t know it at the time, but in the coming years that cave would become a place of great solace.
Because Sam remained a child late. A distance was growing between him and the other kids in his school. He wasn’t being invited to the parties at which boys and girls were experiencing their first kisses. He was smaller than most of the other kids. He didn’t excel at sports and, though certainly not stupid, he was nowhere near the top of his classes. At twelve he was given his first pair of glasses, at thirteen he got braces. He knew he was ugly but was powerless to do anything about it. He’d smile in the mirror and his braces looked like insects in his mouth. So he stopped smiling in public, and this created a greater degree of separation, like he was cut adrift.
He’d go to his Batcave regularly, crawling into his space, sitting there for hours on end reading his comics, even during winter when the land was brutal and cold. In summer he would scan the latticework of branches overhead, the vivid green leaves swaying in the breeze. He would gaze at the forest floor below, at the ferns and bushes, at the way a forest moves when nobody is there. Sometimes he felt like he might disappear entirely from the world, fall through some strange membrane and out of known existence.
He never once solved a crime, or prevented one, but he felt sure that, one day, his time to shine would come.
Sam’s local pub was traditional, with wooden chairs and tables, a flagstone floor and log fire.
‘So everybody’s still on for Friday,’ said Blotchy, a five o’clock shadow spread across the lower half of his large face and double chin, the small lenses of his round glasses reflecting the low light so you couldn’t see his eyes. His brow was bejewelled with droplets of sweat and his long hair, tied into a ponytail, looked lank. ‘I just need to let the guys know,’ he said, taking a pull of his cider.
Sam’s right leg was shaking, as it often did. The room was warm, he was feeling proud about returning the stolen laptop to its owner, he had a fizzy beer in his hands, and he was with his two best friends discussing plans for an upcoming astronomy project.
‘We’re meeting here at seven but some people are coming for food at six if you fancy it.’
‘Will you be eating food?’ Tango said.
‘I shall.’
They laughed.
Blotchy leaned in and raised his hands. ‘The. Food. Here. Is. Nice.’
‘I’m not being horrible but you’ve got to get fit,’ said Tango.
‘I will, I will,’ Blotchy said defensively. ‘I’m just stressed out at the minute.’
Blotchy got his nickname from the fact his face would often break out with red marks, and today they were particularly bad. At twenty-six, on bad days he looked ten years older.
‘Some of us have to work and don’t have time to go running every day.’
‘I do work,’ said Tango.
‘Writing novels is not work, unless you get paid.’
‘I work at Colin’s Books.’
‘You get paid three pounds an hour!’
‘So?’
‘It’s not even legal.’
Sam had known Tango for ever. His real name was Alan, or Al, and their parents had been friends. Whenever Sam spent time with kids outside of school as a toddler, Tango would always be there, and so now the foundations of their friendship ran so deep it was something they didn’t even think about. Blotchy they’d met in comprehensive school and had slowly accommodated him into their group because, over the years, they’d found themselves in the same lower section of the social hierarchy, not exactly popular but not strange enough to attract bullies. Ghosts, really; just numbers in the great mass of a school’s population. They liked the same films and television programmes, shared a curiosity for the supernatural, for conspiracy theories, for what Freud called the Uncanny.
It was Sam’s turn to buy the drinks, but before going to the bar he went over to the jukebox. He wondered if the police had caught up with the burglars he’d reported. It was one of those jukeboxes connected to the Internet, and Sam typed into the search ‘What’s So Funny ’Bout Peace, Love and Understanding’.
His mum had introduced him to Elvis Costello and it was this song, also his mother’s favourite, that Sam had fallen in love with. The music came on and he closed his eyes for a second, saw her standing in the sunbeams on the mountainside, and then he was ready to go to the bar.
As he waited his eyes drifted up to the mirror behind the spirits, and he noticed a bright flash of colour behind him. When he turned to see, he was greeted by the sight of a girl with red hair, red like dark blood, with black streaks underneath. The cogs of recognition clicked into place. It was the girl he’d seen in the bakery, when he’d bought Gloria a meal.
She was small, even shorter than Sam, and she wore a black T-shirt with a picture of a robot on it, a short tartan skirt and a pair of cool-looking ankle boots. Her hair was cut into an austere bob; at the front, two scimitars curled around either side of her face. A small nose and mouth, a clear complexion and two big eyes hidden behind a pair of thick-rimmed glasses.
‘Hi,’ she said to him, and she smiled.
All at once his heart started going crazy. Was she talking to him?
‘How’s it going?’ she said, and stepped closer to Sam.
‘I’m good, thanks,’ he said.
‘Yes, mate?’ The barman, in a short-sleeved shirt and tie, adopted an expectant look.
Sam found it hard to focus. ‘Two Red Stripes and a Strongbow, please,’ he said, recovering. ‘One of the lagers with a dash of lemonade. And two packs of cheese and onion crisps.’
He felt her eyes on him.
‘Who has the dash?’ she said.
‘Me.’
The lager came out of the tap interminably slowly. He wanted to get back to the safety of his friends.
‘I like your T-shirt,’ she said.
His T-shirt was grey with the word InGen stencilled on the front.
‘It’s from—’
‘Jurassic Park, I know.’
His heart lurched into another gear. This girl was wonderful.
‘Creation is an act of sheer will,’ she quoted. The expression on her face was unchanged. He tried to take a mental photograph of her and wondered how old she was. Maybe twenty-two or twenty-three.
‘Ten pounds twenty, please, mate.’
The drinks stood on the soggy beer mat with their bubbles rising.
‘This is my favourite song,’ she said, pointing at the air above her. The music swirled. ‘That was a nice thing you did yesterday. In the bakery.’
Oh Jeez, he thought, I’m going red. He suddenly felt very hot.
‘It was nothing,’ he said, trying to laugh, before panicking, tucking the crisps under his arm, and collecting up all three pints with his small hands, not without some frenzied spillage, nodding his goodbye, and rushing back to his friends. Setting the drinks awkwardly on the table, he turned back towards the bar but the girl with blood-red hair wasn’t looking. She had her arms flat on the bar and was rising up and down on her toes, talking to the barman.
‘How many do you reckon we’ll see on Friday?’ said Blotchy, but Sam wasn’t concentrating. The wonderful chemicals of excitement released through his blood, even though he’d been a complete idiot. He’d forgotten how they felt.
‘Sam?’
He should go back and talk to her. This was her favourite song, and it was his too. How often did the universe throw such a coincidence at two people? And what were the odds of her seeing him in the bakery? It had to be a sign.
‘Huh?’
‘How many meteors do you think we’ll see Friday night? The guys are running a sweepstake.’
The girl collected her drink and Sam was surprised to see her carrying a pint of Guinness back to her table. She was tucked away in the alcove in the corner of the pub, next to the fireplace. She picked up a book, the title of which was obscured in the low light.
‘Sam?’
He turned to his friends and sat down. ‘Friday night,’ he said. Now he was wondering if the girl with red hair was looking at him. He needed to act cool, which meant not speaking too much. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, and leaned back in his chair, ‘how can you run a sweepstake on something like that?’
The way the firelight hit the lager made it look like magma. Sam gulped down a third of his pint and it made him feel better. He wondered what she was reading. The book looked second-hand, with yellowing pages and a crumpled cover. Was she struggling to concentrate on the words, just as he was struggling to follow the thread of the conversation? He considered where she lived and why he’d never seen her wandering around town before. Perhaps she had just moved here and that was why she was trying to talk to him; to find friends. He should go over and ask her to join them. But would she really want to be privy to a conversation about a weird trip to the country on Friday night to look for meteors when most people his age were in the city getting wasted?
‘What are you writing at the moment?’ said Blotchy to Tango.
Across the table, his face a thin rectangle, his short brown hair wiry, Tango said, ‘I’ve got this idea in my head of a spaceship, and the crew on it start falling deeply asleep at night, all at the same time. And after a while they realise the ship isn’t working so great, and one of the engineers finds that parts are being removed and replaced while they sleep. But they notice that, no matter how good the copies replacing the originals, they’re never good enough to allow the ship to run smoothly.’
Sam listened, consciously pretending to forget the girl with red-and-black hair.
‘But then the crew start getting nosebleeds. And then they get sick.’ He stopped and opened the cheese and onion crisps, ripping the pack along its seam to open it out fully, as if on a plate. ‘The ship’s doctor examines the crew and they discover that it’s not just the ship that’s being replaced, it’s them too. Their organs are not their own but perfect copies inserted into their bodies when they sleep by some strange force. But despite their perfection, there’s something too complex about the way things work in the universe, and the new bodies are failing.’
Perhaps it was the effect of the girl, but the thought of being replaced sent a shiver through Sam. If I was replaced, piece by piece, would I still be me?
‘So what’s it all about?’ said Blotchy, quietly.
Sam turned in his chair and thought about going home tonight and checking his voicemail on his other mobile phone, which he kept in the drawer of his bedside table, just as he did every single night. He could feel the heat coming from the fire across the room, an uneven, unpleasant sensation now. He turned around further in his chair to see her, the girl with red hair, in the seat in the stone alcove, but she wasn’t there. All that remained was a half-finished pint of murky black Guinness, the foam making strange shapes on the sides, as he heard Tango say, ‘. . . slow invasion.’