Jake Knopp and Carl Olvera had worked together on the grounds-keeping crew at Gabriel College for seventeen years, and had been fast friends since the day they met, the day that Jake arrived for his first day of work, and Carl had shown him around by virtue of a full year’s experience of his own. Both young men had shared an interest in college football in general, the Ohio State Buckeyes in particular, and generally considered the months between August and January to be the best of the year. Both enjoyed sausage-and-pepper sandwiches, and once Carl had introduced Jake to a local eatery called Il Papa’s, the two ate lunch there together three times a week. Both had similar senses of humor, and often quoted classic bits from Adam Sandler movies back and forth while mulching the flower beds around the Gabriel College library or cleaning branches off the quad after a heavy storm.
But as Jake and Carl had bid farewell to their twenties, and then their thirties, and approached their mid-forties, and as Jake had moved into a larger sized grounds-keeping crew jumpsuit as the decades of Il Papa’s sausage-and-pepper sandwiches had added girth to his belly while Carl had remained maddeningly thin, both men agreed most on the best part of every August. Even more than the start of another Buckeyes gridiron campaign, both men looked forward to the arrival at the end of every summer of another crop of beautiful eighteen-year-old girls at Gabriel College. Both Jake and Carl would pray for the summer weather to extend as far into the beginning of the fall semester as possible, in hopes that barely legal girls would lay out in bikinis and give the grounds-keeping crew something other than grass to look at as they rode their standing mowers back and forth across the lawns of the academic buildings and dorms.
Seventeen years of practice in discreetly ogling co-eds had allowed Jake and Carl to engage in their favorite pastime almost without repercussion. But only almost. Every now and then a girl walking alone would notice the overly appreciative gazes of Jake and Carl, and not once in those cases had the appreciation been reciprocated. Most girls looked away and hurried onward, shielding themselves with their arms or their bags. Some snorted and rolled their eyes. More than once, Jake and Carl had been given the finger. Earlier in the week, the two grounds-keepers had paused in digging a hole for a sapling tree, leaned on their shovels, and watched a blonde student jogging by wearing nothing but tiny track shorts and a sports bra that barely restrained her considerable feminine endowments. As the girl passed within a few feet of Jake and Carl, she had huskily informed them, “You pervs are old enough to be my father.” At the time, Carl and Jake had thought that was hilarious.
Now, it was agonizing. The day had started like any other, with Jake and Carl driving a battered pickup truck over to Sven Farnon Memorial Hall, taking a pair of weed-whackers out of the truck bed, and edging around the building. After fifteen minutes, Jake had killed the electric motor on his weed-whacker, crossed over to Carl, and asked him if he felt bad about skeeving out the jogger the other day. Carl had shrugged in half-hearted agreement, and both had returned to the task at hand. A mere five minutes later, Carl had stopped his own weed-whacker and approached Jake to bring up the jogger again. The landscaping tools had remained silent ever since, while Jake and Carl had degenerated from verbal articulations of their shared remorse to animalistic grunting and whimpering as their shameful humiliation gnawed at their guts.
Like almost everyone else on the campus of Gabriel College that day, Jake and Carl writhed on the ground as if impaled, their minds feverish with hyperbolic self-recrimination, made all the more exquisite due to their proximity to the epicenter of the phenomenon. They were unaware of the cause of the phenomenon itself, or the confrontation it had produced, playing out beneath the ground on which they thrashed. All the groundskeepers knew was an internal world of wrongdoing and culpability so overwhelming it verged on psychosis.
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MARVEL 2000 PRESENTS...
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| The Psycho-Man held his Control Box in the tight grip of one emerald gauntlet, the fingers of the opposite gauntlet twisting a knob atop the gray device. The knob had been rotated as far as it could turn, causing the yellow surface of the Control Box’s top panel to burn bright with light, while the black letters of the word GUILT pulsed in rapid cycles. Ghost Rider stared down both the Psycho-Man and his Control Box, undaunted. John Blaze had long known that the Spirit of Vengeance, which he once again hosted, existed in a state that defied mortal considerations such as pity and remorse, and he realized that the Ghost Rider was at heart incapable of feeling guilt. He could sense it in others, and in some mystical way he could manipulate it in a variety of ways, but despite all of that the emotion itself was utterly alien and unknown to the entity. Ghost Rider took a menacing step forward and spoke in a manner that was similar to the voice of John Blaze, scorched around the edges. “The super-science you’ve used on everyone here at Gabriel must exploit the victim’s inner feelings. You’ll find none inside me.” The second part was a lie, but Blaze hoped to increase the Psycho-Man’s confusion as much as possible. “What will I find inside you?” Before the Psycho-Man could answer, Ghost Rider had jammed one hand under the gold faceplate of the alien armor and pulled the metallic mockery of human features close to his own fulminating skull. Points of light like distant white suns erupted in the black depths of Ghost Rider’s eye sockets as the Penance Stare impressed itself on the Psycho-Man. But the Spirit of Vengeance felt only a cold, inert emptiness in response. The Psycho-Man uttered a low noise, a mechanically inhuman approximation of a chuckle. “My exoskeleton thwarts your abilities as well, creature. I calculate that you would require a more direct access to my physical being to have any effect on my person, but in this dimension, you would find that quite impossible.” “Nothing is impossible for one such as me,” Ghost Rider challenged, with more of the dark cadence of Noble Kale. “Nor for me,” the Psycho-Man retorted. “Yet we seem equally immune to one another’s weapons of choice, do we not?” “I have a second choice,” Ghost Rider said, then quickly turned and windmilled the arm holding the Psycho-Man, who was lifted over the Spirit of Vengeance’s flaming head and then thrown across the laboratory. The Psycho-Man flew through the air and struck the opposite wall, the impact of exoskeleton against steel and concrete creating a resounding boom. “Physical violence,” the Psycho-Man said with disgust, emerging from the crater of ruined lab equipment and dented masonry amid a tumult of shearing metal and collapsing stone. “I am loathe to resort to it … but not incapable of it when forced.” The Psycho-Man charged across the lab like a runaway freight train, drawing back an armored fist that shot out just as the exoskeleton stomped within reach of Ghost Rider, heavy green knuckles smashing into naked jawbone. The Psycho-Man’s momentum carried him forward several additional steps even as Ghost Rider sailed backwards and collided with a wall which was not simply indented but completely blown apart. Ghost Rider’s leather-clad form blasted through the partition in a hail of splintered rebar, pulverized concrete, shredded machinery, sparks, smoke and dust. And the Psycho-Man inexorably followed. Roxanne Simpson
Blaze could not quite bring herself to get out of her car, despite
having pulled up in front of the unassuming cottage and cut the
engine some time ago. Despite the very real reassurance of upholstery
under her legs and along her back, she felt as if she were balancing
precariously on the top of a desolate, windswept mountain: cold
settling into the marrow of her bones, a dizziness slowly gyrating
back and forth from her head to her abdomen, a low keening in her
ears. For the first time in a long time, Roxanne was glad that her
children were far away. If she was going to do this, she was going
to do it alone. The cottage was built in a style that was hundreds of years old, and might have attained a physical age of several centuries itself. It was not dilapidated or structurally unsound in any way; its timbers were sound and straight, its plaster uncracked. But the humble dwelling gave the impression of a woodcut illustration of a fairytale, pulled off the page and nestled in a primeval forest, or at least the neck of that forest that stretched into the northern United States. Roxanne knocked on the weathered front door, startling a raven from its perch atop the gabled roof. The door slowly creaked open. She stepped through and was unsurprised to see that the interior of the cottage was completely consistent with the exterior: humble, with only a few furnishings which all looked as if they had been made by hand. The room Roxanne had entered contained two chairs, a long table flanked by two rough benches, and a cast iron stove surrounded by cupboards. A rag hanging in a doorway opposite the kitchen presumably separated the main area of the house from a bedroom. An old woman with long dark hair reaching all the way to her hips stood at the stove, tending to a pot. “I’m here,” Roxanne said defiantly, unsure how else to begin. “Still not sure why, but I’m here.” “You have come for the very same reason that I invited you,” the woman at the stove said without turning around. “You know as well as I that women must stick together.” “But why?” Roxanne demanded. “Stick together against what? The Ghost Rider? He doesn’t exactly go after people based on gender …” “Perhaps,” the old woman conceded, and Roxanne immediately fell silent. The cottage-dweller was not physically imposing, but she exuded a certain presence which made Roxanne feel as if she were standing in the presence of a holy empress. The old woman went on, “I confess, my dear, that I invoked the name of the demon which possesses your husband to be certain that I had your attention. But the Spirit of Vengeance is hardly the only devil which might oppose women such as ourselves. Almost every power on earth, above or below, seeks to deny us our birthright.” “Birthright?” “Of course. Women carry a natural connection to forces that run deeper than any which the male mind can access. Yet we are constantly kept separate from it.” The old woman finally turned to face Roxanne, and her eyes glinted, penetrating the dusty shadows of the room. “But if you help me, Roxanne, I can guarantee that we shall fully possess that which is naturally ours.” “I … I …” Roxanne stammered, bewildered. “And you will never know fear again,” the old woman promised. “Fear,” the Psycho-Man intoned, “is inherently destructive, though perhaps no moreso than love and hate.” The silvery exoskeleton climbed through the jagged rift in the wall left by the passage of Ghost Rider through it, as Ghost Rider struggled to rise from a pile of loose debris. The Spirit of Vengeance had one boot on the floor and was leaning on one knee when the Psycho-Man closed on him and delivered a powerful kick to the mid-section. Ghost Rider once again flailed through the air, smashing into a glass cabinet on the opposite side of the lab with a chorus of jangling chimes. “A creature afflicted by love, or hate, or fear, is a creature with an excess of energies which it will burn up to approach or avoid some external object,” the Psycho-Man continued to lecture. “Such a creature will tear down anything in its way. Such a creature will kill anyone who opposes it. A kingdom of such creatures would soon be one of ruins, hardly worth reigning over.” Ghost Rider did not bother rising from his supine position among the shards of the former cabinet. He raised one skeletal hand and pointed it at the Psycho-Man, summoning forth a column of crimson hellfire that engulfed the alien armored form. The Psycho-Man’s arms shot up as if to ward off the inferno all around him, and then the entire exoskeleton was hidden behind a solid curtain of netherworldly flame. A moment later, however, the Psycho-Man stepped out of the hellfire column, trailing wisps of smoke but otherwise unharmed. The Psycho-Man lifted Ghost Rider out of the glass wreckage and tossed him dismissively toward the door to the hallway. The force of striking the door knocked it off its hinges, while Ghost Rider slid across the corridor and through the swinging door of the bathroom across the hall. The Psycho-Man came in after him. “Guilt, on the other hand,” the Psycho-Man resumed, “is inwardly directed, rather than outward. It is self-pitying, self-loathing, self-defeating. A population of creatures ravaged by guilt can be conquered with far, far less collateral damage. I should have thought of it years ago.” Ghost Rider pushed himself backward just as the Psycho-Man lunged forward and swept a backhand through the air. The blow missed the Spirit of Vengeance and instead snapped a porcelain basin and its plumbing off the vertical tiled surface; water began to spray through the air from the new hole in the wall. “Since guilt means nothing to you, monster, I shall destroy you myself,” the Psycho-Man proclaimed. “But all others will cower in submission like this one.” He pointed to a scientist with thinning white hair, curled in a fetal position near the toilet stalls. Ghost Rider glanced at the physicist and discerned the stinging self-reproach that engulfed the man’s soul. It was every bit as artificially augmented as the guilt harrowing the rest of the campus population, but Blaze could detect something more acute as its basis, a self-perpetuating spiral that was worsening as the Psycho-Man drew closer … because the scientist was responsible for the Psycho-Man’s arrival. Ghost Rider unlooped a length of chain and snapped it through the air. The free end of the chain obediently wrapped itself about the chest of the Psycho-Man. With another snap, the middle of the line of metal links arced upwards and around an exposed, mangled beam jutting from the devastated wall across the corridor. Ghost Rider pulled hard on the end of the chain in his fist, yanking the Psycho-Man off-balance and back out the door of the bathroom to collide heavily with the far wall. With his opposite hand, Ghost Rider grabbed the scientist off the floor and dragged him into the spray of water from the exposed pipes. “Attend me, mortal!” the Spirit of Vengeance barked, giving full throat to Noble Kale. The fiery skull shook haltingly from side to side, and when the mouth opened next the voice was once again much closer to that of Johnathon Blaze. “Doctor, please, snap out of it. I know you’re the one who brought the Psycho-Man here. I need your help to send him back where he came from.” “Should never … have probed the Microverse … so deeply … hubris … unforgivable …” the scientist sputtered. “He is of no use to us,” the voice of Noble Kale sneered in Blaze’s mind. “He is weak.” “Then we’ll strengthen him,” Blaze responded. “We do not offer comfort!” Kale’s disembodied voice nearly shrieked. “We mete out punishment! Vengeance!” “Things change,” Blaze countered. The Psycho-Man had underscored a double-edged truth: Ghost Rider was immune to feelings of guilt, because Ghost Rider exercised utter mastery over it. For untold millennia, Ghost Rider had always used that mastery to shape guilt as a tool, as a weapon, as primal as fire. But like fire, guilt could be extinguished. Ghost Rider grabbed the scientist by what little hair he still possessed and forced the man to meet his gaze. The eldritch energies of the Penance Stare surged forth, but rather than exploiting the physicist’s guilt, the Penance Stare consumed it utterly. In a moment the scientist’s eyes were lucid and unafraid. “Go. Now. Set things right,” Ghost Rider commanded, and the scientist dashed out the door and down the basement corridor. Ghost Rider lurched wearily out of the bathroom and was immediately tackled by the Psycho-Man. The pair crashed to the floor, cracking tiles from wall to wall. The Psycho-Man landed on top of Ghost Rider, pinning the Spirit of Vengeance to the floor under the exoskeleton’s knees. The bulky green gauntlets clutched at Ghost Rider’s neck, and Ghost Rider struggled to pry them away. “You are a troublesome beast,” the Psycho-Man insisted in a voice that was somehow both flat and ominous. “You have introduced much unpredictability in what should have been an elegant triumph.” “You haven’t … won … yet …” Ghost Rider growled. “And yet, inevitably, I shall,” the Psycho-Man stated. A thrumming filled the corridor, rising in volume and intensity until the structural fragments scattered across the floor were bouncing wildly in place. The Psycho-Man’s head cocked slightly, and although the features of the exoskeleton’s gold and black faceplate were immovably etched, a flicker of alarm seemed to cross them. Then the thrumming cycled to a frequency that rattled the entire building, and the Psycho-Man flew backwards off Ghost Rider as if buffeted by a hurricane wind. “NonononoNOOOOOO!!!” the Psycho-Man howled as unseen forces pulled at him. The exoskeleton shrank, losing half its mass with every heartbeat, until it was no bigger than a bird, an insect, a speck. Then the Psycho-Man was gone, and the thrumming faded as well. Ghost Rider drew himself to his feet and surveyed the physical havoc left in the wake of the battle. The evidence of violence was abundant, but not irreparable, and the building itself seemed to be structurally sound. With a satisfied nod, Ghost Rider conjured forth his flaming hellcycle. “That overreaching philosopher who caused this,” Noble Kale said in the recesses of John Blaze’s mind, “should have been excoriated. His soul should have been laid to waste to match the damage done to this hall. But you have made that impossible.” “And yet the scales somehow got balanced,” Blaze retorted, speaking aloud as Ghost Rider. “He brought Psycho-Man here, probably by accident, and he sent him back. End of story.” “That is not the Spirit of Vengeance’s way,” Kale averred. “Well, it’s my way, and I’m still in the driver’s seat,” Blaze said, settling onto the saddle of his infernal vehicle. “So suck it up.” The Ghost Rider roared down the corridor on wheels of fire, up the stairs, out of the building, and away. END...FOR NOW
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