Marvels: Maggie, part 2

by DarkMark

There I was, in the secret lair of the recently absconded Inhumans, faced by someone who was both my living guilt and my possible expiation. She was probably about ten years old.

"Maggie," I said.

She was still behind the couch.

"Maggie, please," I said. I held out my arms.

She whimpered.

"I know how you're feeling," I offered.

"No, you don't," she said. "No, you don't!"

Damned if she wasn't right. I admitted it. "Okay, Maggie. I don't know. I can't. I don't know how you got here, and I don't know how it's gone for you since, uh, since you left."

She was starting to cry.

"Don't leave, Maggie," I said. "Whatever you do, don't leave. I want...to talk to you. I want to help. I don't know how, but, my God, I've got to help."

Maggie was almost out from behind the couch, but she was holding onto it as if it were a raft.

"I won't...I won't move, Maggie. Don't worry. I'll leave that all up to you."

And then she was out from behind it and holding me and burying her little bony face in my chest and those big globular eyes of hers were making my tie and shirtfront wet and I really didn't give a damn, because I was holding her tiny body and resting my chin on the top of her barely-haired head and shaking and crying just about as much as she was.

I don't have any idea how long we spent like that, but I don't think it was nearly enough.

At the end of it, she sniveled and said, "Mr. Sheldon, I'm hungry."

I sighed and said, "Is there any food down here for you? If there isn't, I'll...well, you're coming home with me. That's all there is to it."

"Home," she said, holding me as hard as her small arms would manage. They barely reached around me. "This is my home, now."

"It can't be, Maggie," I said. "There's nobody here for you."

"There hasn't hardly been anyone for me anytime, Mr. Sheldon."

"I know that, Maggie, I know it. And I'm sorry. But you know what?"

"What?"

"I'm sure there is a God somewhere, now, because he brought me back to you tonight. Or maybe you to me. I'm not sure. But...Maggie...it's been hard for me. Very hard."

"Why? Did Mrs. Sheldon and Jenny and Beth move out on you?"

"No. You did." I squeezed her a little harder. "That hurt, too. Because...well, you were family, too, Maggie." She burrowed a little closer under my arm. "Also, because I...well, I felt very bad about it, Maggie. Very bad. I'd gotten used to you being there. You were a...a..."

"I was a mutie," she said, and sounded like she was going to cry again.

"Don't let me ever hear you say that word again!"

"Well, it's what I am," she said. "That's why the big robots were looking for me. That's why I ran away. So they wouldn't get you or Beth or Jenny or Mrs. Sheldon."

"I wouldn't have let them get you," I said, rubbing her back. "I wouldn't have let them, Maggie."

"How would you've stopped 'em?"

"Told them there were no mutants in this house and they should leave at once."

"What if they didn't believe you?"

"It's my house and they would've had no business being in it if I didn't want them," I said. "I would've told 'em that."

"Do you think they would've listened? Mr. Sheldon, I'm hungry!"

"I would have made them listen," I said. "I would have made them, Maggie."

I don't know how much of that was just to convince myself. But at that moment, I think I would have said anything just to keep that wonderful, grotesque little girl in my arms just then.

I've no idea how the voice of God comes. If Moses heard it through his ears when he stopped in front of that burning bush, or if Adam saw Him face to face when he was trying to hide out in the Garden of Eden, it was never repeated in my life nor in the lives of any people I ever knew. I don't know how it is. Sometimes I just get feelings. Other times I hear a voice in my head that could be from my own brain, or another part of it. I can't say God has any definite connection to that.

On the other hand, I've never been able to say He didn't, either.

So this voice insinuated itself into my forebrain and said the words I'd been pushing to the back of my mind:

Well? What are you going to do with her? And how are you going to do it?

"Is there anything left in this place for you, Maggie?" I said. "I don't know how I'm going to feed you before I get you home. And I don't know how I'm going to get you home just yet, but you better believe it: I will."

"They had some food for themselves and some meat for Lockjaw, the dog," she said. "Most of it's gone now. But I'll take a look."

"Take me with you," I said.

So she disengaged herself from my arms and led me through the demon's-mouth room to a smaller room beyond. It was what passed for the Inhumans' larder. There were storage cabinets, some sort of freezer that didn't seem to be operating, a round, clear table, and low-slung seats, plus a meal preparation machine that was not unlike a microwave, only some years too early. Maggie took hold of the top of a counter below the wall storage cabinets, pulled herself up onto it, stood, and opened the door of a cabinet. There wasn't much in there besides a container of some floury substance.

"I can eat that," she said. "I have to mix it up with the spit in my mouth, but it doesn't taste too yucky." She reached in her hand and crammed some of the stuff in her mouth, and churned it thoroughly. Well, at least it was something. She sat on the edge of the countertop and dangled her legs over.

"Maggie, don't talk with your mouth full," I said. "But how'd you like me to get you a hamburger?"

She nodded her big-eyed head, vigorously.

"A hamburger with everything on it but cheese?" I'm not Orthodox, but my dad wouldn't eat cheeseburgers and he passed the prejudice on down to me. She nodded again.

"Well, then, all we have to do is find a way to get you out of here, into a taxicab, and back to my house," I said. "Without anybody seeing your face, of course."

"Because I'm a mu--", she started, trying not to spit out paste.

"Stop that!"

"Well, I am," she said. "If I wasn't, I...I could be around people, and...and..."

"Maggie, listen to me," I said, stepping closer and taking her by the shoulders. "A lot of people have said this, and maybe they don't always want to believe it. But what's important is what's inside you, not what's outside of you. And the inside of you is one of the most beautiful little girls I've ever seen. Can you believe me when I say that?"

She didn't answer me.

"Well; all right," I said. "But I tell you one thing: I believe it."

For the first time I'd seen that night, Maggie smiled.

"Maggie, listen," I said. "The police are going to be here within a few days. Maybe tomorrow, I don't know. But I've got to find a way of getting you out of here, and back to my place. So it's got to be tonight."

"They're coming after me?"

"They just want to find out about this place," I said. "About the Inhumans. You won't have a home, because they'll cart everything out of it and take it back downtown. To a police lockup, or to the Baxter Building. So...you won't have a place here to stay."

"They're always doing that," she whispered. "Always chasing me out. Always hurting me, making me run. And I don't never do anything to them, Mr. Sheldon."

"I know, baby. I know."

"How do you know?" She looked at me almost defiantly. "How do you know, Mr. Sheldon?"

I shook my head. "Because I'm a Jew. And because that's what they did to us, what they've done to us, for about 3,000 years. And counting. Maggie."

"What?"

I took my coat off. "Let me put this around you."

I draped it around her to where her face and most of her body was shrouded. It reached down to about her knees. She still had shoes on, but they were showing her toes from wear. I couldn't tell if they were the ones we bought her.

"Do you think they won't see me in this?" she said.

"I think we're going to have to try it," I told her. "Now, let me do one more thing, Maggie, and we'll get out of here. I have to take up this roll of film. But I don't want any pictures of you. Okay, Maggie?"

"Okay," she said.

"Hamburger afterward."

She grinned.

-M-

Once I was done with the snapping, I took the roll out and put it in my pants pocket. Then both of us got in the "service elevator" and she stepped on a certain section. The lift rose, and pushed aside the two overhead doors.

Night outside, still. Past midnight by a sight. She wasn't tired. Nighttime was her natural wake time, and had been since she left us...and before she came to us. I was still up in the air, but I didn't know when I'd get the chance to sleep. I'd planned to spend the night in a hotel, but that was out of the question now. I had to get Maggie out of there, and back to my place.

The light of the chamber below was more pronounced, now, to abovegrounders. I could only hope that not too many of them had seen us. Hope usually wasn't worth a damn, so I hustled Maggie and myself off the platform as soon as possible. It went down behind us, after a few more seconds.

A brisk early fall wind was blowing, and it was chilling my arms and chest. "You feel alright?" I said, in a low voice.

"I'm okay," she said, and held my hand. I wrapped my fingers around her. We started forward, stepped over the aforementioned debris and burnt wood and junk and moved away from our starting point.

One of the bits of debris was human.

"Little girl," it said, in a 16 rpm voice. "Gotta li'l girl."

I clutched her hand harder and pulled her away. "Mr. Sheldon," she said.

"Come on, Maggie," I insisted.

"Should we help him?"

The "him" was the stewbum I'd almost tripped over a few hours earlier. I looked at him and took in his old Army coat, the tattered and smelly jeans, the one eye still semi-open enough to regard us, and the bottle lying beside him, his hand tipping it up so the last precious drops didn't run out before he'd had a fighting chance at them.

"Can't," I said, and tugged her.

"Why not?" she said, coming with me reluctantly. "I'd be scared of him if you weren't here, but now you're here."

I hesitated, then plowed on. "Because there's too many people in the world need help, Maggie," I said. "And there's just one of me."

I stepped on through the block, to the street, across it, glancing back every now and then to make sure Maggie was still holding the coat shut across her face. The picture we presented to an onlooker's eyes surely couldn't have been a wholesome one. I got us to the car I'd rented for the night and placed her on the seat beside me. God was with me when I turned the ignition key; the car started up.

"Are we going home?"

"We are," I said. "Got to make one stop first."

I hit a White Castle a few blocks away. I'm not sure if it would've constituted cruel and unusual punishment, but I ordered some of their square, hole-punched burgers for myself and Maggie at the driveup window, together with some fries and a Coke, plus two coffees for me. The kid working the window peered at us, mostly at Maggie, with some curiosity. I didn't say anything about her. I was just too blamed tired to make up any good lies.

But we got the stuff, and she ate it on the way back, and so did I. It was going to be a long drive home. Several hours. I needed to crash, but I just didn't dare.

"Tell me about what happened, Maggie," I said. "Tell me what happened after you left us."

"Tell you?" She shrugged. "I can't even tell myself."

"Then tell us both."

So she told me.

She told me about leaving the house in the dark of early morning (God, why didn't any of my scenes with Maggie replay with daytime as a backdrop?) and scurrying off over the back fence and down the alleys with what seemed like all the dogs in the world barking. A few sandwiches and such in a laundry sack flung over her back, avoiding the streetlights, going as fast as her spindly legs would take her, gasping and panting and running away from the only folks who had given her a place of conditional warmth in the world.

A police car slowed down for her. She darted back into the darkness. Some latenight types yelled at her. She ducked under places through which they could not go. Her small size was a benefit, perhaps the only one she had. Along the way, she ducked into the wrong yard and got dogbit. She barely made it out of that one. She rolled down her sock and showed me what still remained of the scars.

She worked her way down, out, and away.

And while she did, she kept looking up at the sky for the flying robots.

She told me she cried a lot, and even wished one would come and take her if it would take her someplace warm. But they didn't.

She learned to conceal herself in places where even night watchmen did not poke, and lived off what she could grab from garbage cans, shut-down grocery stores, anyplace that had food she could acquire. Sometimes she was almost caught. They tried to catch her. If a flashlight beam picked out her face long enough for them to see it, they yelled, "MONSTER!" or some such.

Not too many times did she get called "Mutie!" Backhand benefit, I guess.

She was lucky. She had avoided people of all kinds. I couldn't blame her. She didn't get caught, didn't get abused, didn't get picked up and sent to wherever they sent mutants.

She also didn't find any friends.

But she prayed every night, she told me, because she figured that God was still listening, and that He didn't hate her as much as humans did, or maybe at all.

Yeah.

It had been over a year since I'd seen her. She had snuck a ride on an outbound truck full of furniture bound for a warehouse. She'd hopped off it during a slowdown point, gotten seen, gotten chased, and huffed and puffed her way to the block where I had seen her. She was about to settle down in the shadow of one of the structures that offered enough darkness and eat what she had found that night. Then something pre-empted that thought.

She saw a girl and a giant dog riding something down into the ground.

Of course, it was the "service elevator". Maggie was more frozen by the sight of the mammoth pooch, who I later learned was called Lockjaw for good reason, than by the brisk air around her. But it planted an idea in her head. What was down there? And, if she could get to it, would it be safer than what she had up here?

So she waited till minutes after the elevator had gone down, then scampered over there, and clambered all over the spot. It was almost impossible to tell where the doors covering it really were. They were designed to be like that, and it was night, anyway. She was trying to find whatever opened them, whatever switch you had to push, whatever rock you had to lift up, wherever you had to stand. But she couldn't.

Then she was dislodged by the doors raising, and her foodbag spilled out, and she rolled over what bread she'd managed to cop earlier that night.

The redhaired girl in the white dress was back, with the big doggie beside her. Maggie's first impulse was to run. But the girl looked at her in curiosity and said, "Are you one of us?"

Then she did run.

But the big dog caught her before she could get very far, and brought her back to the girl. Maggie started to scream. Crystal put her hand on Maggie's mouth. "If you are one of us, you must be silent and draw no attention to us. We are on a secret mission. Understood, little one?"

Maggie nodded. But Crystal didn't take her hand away before the three of them were on the elevator again and down on the lower level.

When she saw what was below, Maggie couldn't have spoken even if she'd been forced to. It was like Disneyland to her, with all the lights and baroque decor and gadgets. The two of them were alone at the time. Maggie, open-mouthed, was barely able to get off the platform and touch some of the things which surrounded them.

Finally, she turned around to Crystal and said, "Are you Susan Storm?"

Crystal laughed and said, "No. No, I'm not a storm. My name is Crystal. What's yours?"

"Maggie," she said.

"What is your power?" asked Crystal. "Or have you been subjected to the Terrigen?"

She fidgeted and said, "I don't have any power. What's a Terrigen? And please don't let your dog bite me."

Crystal stroked Lockjaw's card-table ear and said, "He wouldn't hurt a fly unless I wanted him to. Then he could tear blocks out of a building. But I don't want you hurt, little Maggie."

At that, Maggie stepped a little closer, gathered her courage, and said, "Why aren't you 'fraid of me?"

"Should I be? You may look odder than these humans I've seen, but where I come from, there are a lot of people odder than you."

"There are? Are you all muties?"

"I know not this 'muties'," Crystal said. "I am an Inhuman. Are you one?"

"I don't know," Maggie said. "I'm nine years old and my name is Maggie and they say I'm a mutie and that's why I ran away."

Crystal knelt down and looked in her eyes. "I don't think you're an Inhuman."

"No," said Maggie, tentatively.

"That means I probably shouldn't have let you in here. I could get in big trouble for it."

Maggie didn't say anything.

"But you don't have a home, do you?"

Maggie shook her head "no".

"If you promise to keep out of sight, stay in my room, and hide in my closet when somebody comes to the door, I may find a way to keep you. That is, if you're a very good little girl. Are you?"

Maggie shook her head emphatically, "yes".

"The others will be out for awhile longer," Crystal said. "If we hurry up, we can get you fed and give you a bath."

-M-

So they did, and it didn't last two days before their silent leader barged in and caught Crystal talking with Maggie. Black Bolt stood there, arms folded, and turned a face of granite to both of them. Maggie didn't know how, but he'd found out.

Crystal explained as best she could, and asked to be allowed to keep her, as long as she kept out of sight. Black Bolt probably gave her a look that parents or older relatives reserve for a kid who's just told them, "He just followed me home, honest." Then he turned around and left. Crystal turned to Maggie and said, "He says you can stay."

I saw some reflected joy in Maggie's face as she repeated it. It was easy to imagine what her reaction had been before Crystal. But she didn't tell me that, and then her eyes went to her shoe-level.

I finally said, "Then what happened?"

"Something awful," she said. "Somethin' horrible."

Not three days after that, the Inhumans had apparently brought back Madame Medusa, late a member of the Frightful Four, who turned out to be one of their family. That precipitated contact with the Fantastic Four, apparently, and some other party from whom Crystal and her family unit had been hiding.

Crystal had burst into their room, carrying a bag of food, and taken Maggie to the elevator. Maggie was all questions, but all Crystal would say was, "The Seeker is coming. You must leave. He mustn't find you here. Go."

"But I don't wanna go! Why can't I go with you?"

Crystal had held her by the arms and said, "Because we are in great danger, little one. We may not survive. Can you keep safe for a week?"

"Yes," said Maggie, tentatively.

"Good," Crystal said. "If you can, come back here in a week's time. If we can...no, if I can...I will be back, then. But you must leave. You must go. The Seeker will not be as kind as I."

She sent Maggie out in the elevator, boarding it with her to make sure she went. When Maggie hesitated, she pushed her off the platform, reluctantly, and said, "Go!"

Maggie left, and hid in the shadows, and watched the elevator go down. She went several blocks down the street, found another hiding place, and did what she knew how to do best.

She cried herself to sleep.

I was fighting back the same impulse in myself because I wanted to cry and I wanted to sleep and I knew, crossing the big damn Brooklyn Bridge as we were, that I couldn't afford either.

Maggie told me that she'd heard noises and seen backwash of things happening on that block within the week, but didn't have the nerve to go see what it was. Not quite. Besides, most of it happened during the day. She was asleep then, or tried to be.

She kept her word, almost, and went to the elevator only about 6 days later. It opened for her. But the place had been darned near cleaned out. No trace remained of Crystal or her family. There was a little food left, but not a lot. None of the fancy-shmancy gadgets worked anymore.

It was tolerably warm for sleeping. But, by and large, Maggie was back where she'd been, where she always seemed to be. Crystal didn't come back at the end of that week, or anytime thereafter. I later learned that was because she and the other Inhumans were trapped behind some kind of barrier in their homeland.

That was pretty well the end of her tale. Except for another long pause, at the end of which she said, "Mr. Sheldon?"

"Yeah, Maggie?"

"Do you think she and Lockjaw are dead?"

I tried to keep my eyes on the road and not her. "I don't know, honeybunch. I don't think anybody knows. But one thing's for sure, no, two things. I'm not dead yet, and neither are you. Are we?"

"No," she said. "Is that a good thing?"

"Of course it is," I said. "And never forget how good a thing it is."

"I'll try," she said.

There's more or less a lull in my memory from that point on till the time when I finally pulled up in front of my house, feeling that I knew how Ulysses felt when he finally checked in with Penelope. I got myself and my little charge out of the car, hoping none of the neighbors were there to see a little girl with a coat over her head, and fumbled with the keys until I finally got the right one to fit.

Doris opened the door before I could, and gaped. I herded Maggie and myself across the doorstep. Then I closed the door behind us.

"Doris, this is Maggie," I said. "Again."

She peeked her big round eyes out of the coat opening. "Hello, Mrs. Sheldon," she said.

"Fix her something and put her to bed," I said, and collapsed on the front room couch. "Make sure the door's locked and the phone's off the hook."

At least, I think I managed to say all of that before I fell asleep.

To be continued...