Rain pounded on the roof of the dockside warehouse,
dribbled from the rusted gutter, gushed down the stormwater drain - and fell
like a million tiny bullets all over Batman’s cape as he rose impressively
from the crouch in which he had landed on the rooftop opposite the gangling
grotesque he now stared down.
“Scarecrow.”
Crane could appreciate the imagery; the way the little
white splashes of water burst off that wall of impenetrable black that was
Batman, framing his outline in a way that was strikingly reminiscent of the
bristling fur of some huge, furious beast. Scarecrow himself, he reflected,
would be cast by the same effect as more of a ghastly chalk-and-charcoal
sketch, all spindly lines and blurred, uneven silhouette. Something out of a
half-remembered, evil dream. The thought pleased him.
“Batman…” He whispered, in his best gasping death-rattle. “Come to share the ambience?”
“I’m watching you, Crane.”
“Then you’ll know I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“You will.”
“Oh, Batman. No bravado. You can’t touch me and you know
it. Arkham released me with a clean bill. I’m simply enjoying a stroll in
the rain.”
“In your Sunday best.”
Crane gave a raspy laugh and theatrically lifted his
taloned fingers to his face. It was an uncanny, spider-like move that sent
shudders into everyone who saw it - except the Bat, of course. “Perhaps I
just like the feel of sackcloth against my skin…there’s no crime in unusual
fashion sense, now is there?”
Suddenly, the Bat was there, gripping the Scarecrow’s
collar, hoisting him up as he had so many times before, staring without the
slightest trace of fear - without the slightest trace of anything but raw,
animal rage - straight into, straight through, both of their nightmare
masks.
“I’m watching you, Crane.” Batman reiterated, the narrow
eyes that seemed so white against all that black becoming mere knife-slits. “I know you. What you eat. Where you sleep. Where you walk. One slip.”
Crane felt the initial hot sting of shock and surprise melt
away into a cold crawl of dread, and somewhere deep within him shivered with
delight. Fear was his tool, his weapon, and he felt a special, intimate kind
of thrill watching it freeze the souls behind people’s eyes. But he had to
confess, if only to himself, that he felt a similar rush from being on the
receiving end. From being the prey as well as the predator; from the epic
game of trick-or-treat he played with this relentless, intimidating bastard
in the pointy-eared cowl. He let the Bat continue.
“So you can tell me right now what you’re planning for
Halloween…or I can find out, and stop you.”
So much primal, seething violence pouring off that cape and
out of that cowl and through that voice. Batman never killed anyone;
everyone knew that. But somehow he managed to inject a thousand times more
threat into a humble word like ‘stop’ than any lowlife thug ever could, even
if they had you strapped down with a gun pressed to your temple.
Batman would never pop you; he would never cut you open and
pull out your lungs. He wouldn’t even sever your finger as a trophy. Yet
somehow the fear he generated in the criminal community was palpable,
pervasive, and lingered far longer than any emotion stirred up by people who
were capable of doing things like that. The worst Batman ever gave
you was a few cracked ribs and a stint in Arkham, yet there was not one
criminal in Gotham who went about their business without jumping at every
shadow that might turn out to be the silhouette of a black cape.
The fear of Batman, Crane had concluded, was an actual,
classifiable phobia, because it was as irrational as it was inescapable, and
it all stemmed from the persona, the mythos, deliberately created by this
one man.
Brilliant. Breathtakingly brilliant. Jonathan Crane, the
Scarecrow, had never been able to achieve that kind of legend. He hated the
Batman; he envied him - and worshiped his genius.
“Thinking of poisoning the water supply again? I’ll have
the entire city inoculated against your toxin before you can blink. You
should think about sitting this one out, Scarecrow, in the comfort of a
padded cell.”
Scarecrow began to laugh. It was a hollow, breathless kind
of sound, but it added a slight tilt of the head to Batman’s scowling,
dagger-eyed glare.
“Joker got your tongue, Crane?”
“Not the toxin, Batman! Not this time. I’m better than
that. You’ll see. I’m not some sad featherweight who can’t let go of his
gimmick. You know me better than that! I know the human mind, as you do. I
know what makes flesh crawl in the dark. I am Terror. I am Nightmare. I am
Scarecrow.”
I am Vengeance, I am Justice -
Batman threw him down.
“Trick or treat, winged harbinger.” Scarecrow crooned, when
he’d managed to pull the wind back into his lungs. And just as he did, a
vast shadow loomed out of the wall of steaming fog and rain to their left -
from the ocean - and Batman’s eyes widened as a 40,000 deadweight tonne
cargo freighter with all of its lights out careened through the harbour,
shattered the nearest jetty into kindling, and jackknifed straight into the
warehouse they were standing on.
Batman seized Crane’s collar and jerked his lanky body out
of the way of exploding sheets of corrugate and beams of iron. He leapt down
to the wharf on the warehouse’s other side, and slammed Scarecrow into the
damp wood.
“WHAT DID YOU DO?!”
“N-not-”
“TELL ME NOW!”
He only stopped when he saw Scarecrow’s eyes; wide and
blinking and dull with confusion, not concussion. The Bat-mind didn’t take
long to snap to the fact that the freighter had narrowly missed turning
Crane into a smear on the wall and probably would have killed him if it
hadn’t been for Batman. Scarecrow was many things, but suicidal was not
among them. So either something had been bungled, or -
It wasn’t him. He had no idea.
“N-not my…trick.” Crane managed to gasp.
Batman let him drop and jabbed a gloved finger into his
chest. “Stay.” And then in a ruffle of black, the Bat was gone.
:::: You’ve reached Selina Kyle. She’s a little busy right
now doing things good little girls shouldn’t talk about, but if you ask
nicely she’ll think about getting back to you. Leave some catnip after the
meow. Meow.::::
***Selina? It’s Eddie. Listen, if you don’t have any
romantic plans with Bruce for ONE AW HELL, why not join me at my apartment
for a B-movie marathon? I promise it won’t be ‘Pumpkinhead’ or
‘Children of the Corn’. ‘Cat People’ if you ask nice. Call me.***
*BLEEP*
***The original. Not the remake with Natassja Kinski
running around in the buff for half the movie.***
*BLEEP*
***Not as if that’s in my collection, or anything. SON COME
ALL ***
*BLEEP*
“Oh Hell.” I muttered.
Eddie leaving a message that started with “Selina? It’s
Eddie,” instead of “Riddle me this, my dearest!” The slightly strained,
mousy quality Eddie was trying to keep out of his voice. The mention of us
spending a quiet Halloween together, at Eddie’s apartment, not the ‘berg. Not at the requisite Jonathan Crane Halloween Shindig that you really,
really didn’t want to miss, lest you wind up huddled in terror of the
monster under your bed or trapped in a hallucinatory murder mystery like
Bruce was last year for snubbing the invitation from ‘crow.
That could mean only one thing. The invitations weren’t
sent. Which meant Scarecrow wasn’t throwing his little pumpkin bash; he was
either holed up in Arkham, or loose and planning a more inclusive
party.
I lived with Batman. I knew the At Large list, and I knew
Scarecrow wasn’t in the loony bin right now. Shit. No wonder Eddie wanted to
huddle up and fortify himself in his apartment with some old movies and a
close friend (one capable of snapping Crane like a matchstick) for company
on Halloween. I should’ve been angry that he wanted to use me as Guard
Kitty, but I was verging on being touched that he was just plain making sure
neither of us was going to be alone on Scarecreep’s Night of Nights. Anyone
who’d offended him in the past year might potentially be a target, and
everyone had rubbed Crane the wrong way at some point or other.
He was Scarecrow. He was physically a pushover for the
likes of Bruce and I, he (generally) wasn’t as sick as Joker, his schemes
weren’t always that creative and sometimes amounted to cheap carnival
scares. And then there was his over-reliance on the good ol’ fear toxin. There were times when the Iceberg crowd treated him as a bit of a
second-rater. But there were other times when he chose to remind us that he
could live up to his hype when he felt inspired.
And he was always inspired by Halloween. He was like Jack
Skellington’s murderous redneck cousin.
I knew in advance that Bruce would be occupied on the big
night, either thwarting whatever scheme straw-head was planning or keeping
an all-night vigil in case he’d left any surprises. That left me free to
accept Eddie’s invitation. And it’d been a long time since I’d watched Cat
People.
The original, anyway.
I hit Eddie’s speed-dial.
Batman sat at his console, fingers steepled, brow creased
beneath the scowling mask, staring at an incomplete log and the blinking
cursor that marked the point at which he had stopped.
…no survivors, no bodies, no traces of gunfire, chemicals
or explosives. No sign of sabotage. The navigational equipment was left
functioning and the engines were running and maintained, suggesting someone
was guiding the ship into port. The ship’s logs, however, are missing. It’s
as if every trace of the people aboard that ship had been deliberately,
almost supernaturally erased.
And that was where the cursor sat. Why had he used
‘supernaturally?’ There were a thousand logical possibilities. Some kind of
danger or threat that forced the crew to abandon ship. But an emergency like
that wouldn’t explain the removal of the logs. Perhaps a relatively
bloodless act of piracy - or one that was covered up very, very well, but
maritime piracy was almost completely unheard of this close to the US. Batman had found nothing unusual in the Coastguard’s records over the past
few days; the last contact with the ship had been a Coastguard radio officer
warning the vessel of the large storm building in its path. There had been a
note that the response from the ship sounded unusually strained, but the
officer probably expected it from sailors nearing the end of a long run and
needing to navigate a heavy squall. That call had been made two days ago.
Why ‘supernaturally’? Batman selected the word, and his
finger hovered over the delete key.
A pair of warm arms draped around him from behind and a
pair of warmer lips kissed his masked cheek.
“Hey, stud. Heard about the dockside incident. Did you get
Crane?”
“He wasn’t responsible. But he’s been taken back to Arkham
- for observation.”
Selina laughed softly, and squeezed Batman’s shoulders. “Thank God. Eddie can at least relax now, and I might not have to sit
through Glen or Glenda again.”
Batman’s eyes narrowed as they did every time she mentioned
her ‘friend Eddie’.
“Explain.”
“Well,” she started, aware of the tension but - being
Catwoman - not about to change her attitude for it. “He invited me to watch
movies with him over Halloween. Y’know, I thought since you’d be busy…”
Scowl.
“Oh, Bruce. He’s scared, okay? We all get a bit edgy around
pumpkin-time, if Jonathan’s loose, and especially if Jonathan’s loose and
hasn’t sent out his party invitation. As painful as that party is, the
entire Iceberg crowd breathes a sigh of relief if they get the invite,
because if it doesn’t go out then he’s planning something big and it’s time
to break out the fear-toxin litmus test for everything you intend to eat,
drink or inhale for the next month…”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
She shifted, so she could drape across the keyboard and
poke his nose playfully. “Would it really have been news?”
Batman grunted.
“As cute as you are when you go all grunt-Alpha-Male on me,
gorgeous, I’m telling you seriously this time, give Eddie a rest. There’s no
riddle crime, it’s a movie marathon.”
“GLEN OR GLENDA. Could be an anagram.” Batman turned back
to his log, saved it, and opened another window.
“So sue the man for liking Ed Wood.”
“I don’t trust him, Selina. He’s The Riddler.”
“Gee, that’s news.” Selina rolled her eyes lightly, and
kissed him. “Mmm. But this one I can give you an answer to right now; Crane
free. No party invite. Scared Eddie. Wants to lock himself in his house with
one baddass scarecrow-snapping kitty-cat and watch bad movies on Halloween. Riddle me that.”
Batman smirked. He kept up the gloomy disapproval, but it
had - however slowly, and however much it bothered and grated him - begun to
sink in that if there was any aspect of Edward Nigma’s life where there was
a shred of conscience and honesty left, it was his friendship with Selina
Kyle.
“I’ll let him rest. For now.” As she withdrew, his eyes
followed her, and he closed Nigma’s file. The smirk remained. “But only
since you asked so nicely.”
“Mmm. Do you mean to tell me that a purr in Batman's ear
and a little kiss from a sultry kitty can actually change the World's Most
Inflexible mind?”
The smirk became a mild glare. Bruce cleared his throat,
and turned back to the unfinished log concerning the derelict freighter.
“Are you sure they didn’t scrape an iceberg and abandon
ship?” Selina tossed in, leaning against a bench nearby with a languid tilt
of her hips and watching. She might’ve been dressed in slacks and a sweater,
but the pose was pure Catwoman. Bruce tried - hard - not to be distracted.
“No. There’s something else going on here.” Batman growled. “The ship and dockside have been cordoned off by quarantine. High alert,
possibility of contagion.”
“Me-owch. What the hell was the cargo?”
“Large quantities of experimental soil samples. With the
ship’s logs deleted, they’re not going to take any chances until they’ve
traced the ship’s port of origin and any other ports it might have contacted
on the way.”
“The cargo was dirt?”
“Nothing else. And nothing alive on the ship except an
unusually large population of rats.”
“Dirt and rats. Great. No wonder they’ve put up the red
flags.” Selina rubbed her brow. “I’d offer Whiskers’ services, but I don’t
think he’s up to it on an industrialized scale.”
The Bat-brooding continued without skipping a beat. “Most
of the rats were contained and the ship has been scheduled for fumigation,
but a quantity escaped during the initial opening of the ship, and we don’t
know how many more slipped out through the hull damage from the crash before
quarantine arrived.”
“So do you think we might be looking at some kind of
outbreak?”
“We’re going to find out. The easy way or the hard way…”
Why, Batman, how hard do you want it to get?
The thought flashed through his mind, but the context was completely
inappropriate.
“And did you get in and out before quarantine and the feds
showed up?”
Batman smirked, and held up a vial of soil.
“I’ll have Alfred warm some milk.” Selina kissed him again
and waved gently as she drew away and left the cave.
She didn’t hesitate to touch me. Even knowing I might’ve
picked up whatever contagion could be on that ship. What a woman.
She must’ve known
right away that he wouldn’t have let her near him until he’d already run
every test the Batcave’s medical equipment was capable of and probably
inoculated himself against every possible pathogen carried in soil or spread
by rodents.
She trusted him. Implicitly. Years into the relationship,
he was still getting used to it.
To be continued…
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