Shadows Out of Time

Everything swept its way into the nothing at the center of that impossible game.

Where is fancy bred? In the heart or in the head?

I held onto my comic and ran. I ran for the front door, I ran for the alley outside, for the street, Angell street where I’d found the store in the first place. I ran for the car, back toward the post office, the place where I’d begun the evening. I ran for my father and the memory he would never keep, the one final piece of him I could hold onto. I ran and ran and felt like a woman running before the storm, toward her child, running to keep him alive. I ran like a man who couldn’t remember his father, not for real, who knew one thing, just one. I ran like a man who wanted to keep any, single, solitary memory, glad or sad, of his father alive. I ran like a son who would give anything—any universe, Saturn, Titan, all the stars aflame between— anything to have his father back.

I survived of course. This isn’t American Beauty or Our Town or that song by Gordon Lightfoot. I’m not a ghost. I finally mounted a successful if dull production of Hamlet, one my Dean could live with. It wasn’t what I wanted — no female lead, no go-go boots, no guns — but it helped fill the coffers of the capital campaign. And after that night things did change. I moved, for one. New town. New job. New directing gig. I keep that issue of Believe It or Not!in a shadow box on the wall of my new office. This school may not have the Rose, but the politics smell sweeter. They let me do more innovative stuff, spread my wings like I couldn’t before, like my dad couldn’t. I think he’d be happy for me. He’s still in the facility, still losing ground, still doomed to walk the earth. He doesn’t know me. He doesn’t remember anything anymore.

I shall not look upon his like again.

So, no, things aren’t perfect. They never are. This isn’t a comic book. No mythic figures in t-shirts or capes. And no, despite my most careful searches and investigations, I have never been able to find Angell again, though I did find a hero.

Malygris Never Died JOHN R. FULTZ

“What know ye of Malygris?”

— Clark Ashton Smith

Sages of the ancient world transcribed many legends regarding the infamous Malygris of Poseidonis. In the golden age before the final remnant of Atlantis sank beneath the waves, the glory of Malygris spread far and wide. According to various written accounts mostly lost to history now, the wizard inhabited an onyx tower that cast its shadow over the bright domes and temple-gardens of the Atlantean capitol. Slaves from the royal courts delivered monthly tributes of gold, ivory, and precious rarities to the sanctum of Malygris, overlord of kings and sorcerers.

Malygris held mastery over the spirits of the upper air and the lower earth, commanded solar and lunar demons, and established his dominance over the living and the dead. No magician of the ancient world could rival him at the peak of his powers. Yet legends say that he grew miserable in his wickedness, set apart from humanity by his exalted conjury. Eventually the demon of Loneliness overpowered even his ravenous lust for knowledge. All human beings shunned him and feared to walk in the shadow of his tower. So Malygris stayed locked in his lofty sanctuary for decades, his only company that of summoned imps, wraiths, and the occasional conjured daemon.

After centuries of supernatural existence, old Malygris finally died sitting in his great chair of ebony and crystal. Yet his sorcery lived on after his death in the form of the unearthly spirits that guarded his tower-tomb against thieves and looters. There was no relief for the longsuffering Lords of Poseidonis when they heard tale of the wizard’s demise, for even in death the terror of Malygris persisted in their hearts. The Tower of Malygris rose above the city like a titan gravestone. No embalmer came to apply the treatments of death to the withered corpse of Malygris. It sat rotting in its high seat for many years. Eventually the ocean swallowed the last fragments of Atlantis. Tidal waves rushed in to drown the streets and gardens of Poseidonis, and the cursed tower crumbled with the rest of the capitol. Malygris, like his legendary kingdom, was finally gone from the earth.

Or so the stories tell.