Batman: The Chill of Old Ghosts

Clark Kent, Reporter

I.

“Praise him high and praise him loud, for he is our saviour! He is the chosen Son, descended from above to bring holy reckoning upon the wicked and carry us to the promised land!”

The bustling memorial Park of Metropolis is its usual sun blessed, green and pleasant self during the lunchtime hour as workers race head down to and from the gates to catch their afternoon meals. The dog walkers stroll along with the leashes off their pets, such is the safe and trusting nature of the people who live in the great city. The vendors are out and spread across the green acres selling their hot and smoking wears to the rush hour hungry. Smoke of pork, bacon, onions, fresh doughnuts and rolls wafts into the sky, blue as the ocean and blinding to the eye at this hour of the day, before the sun descends and the cool shadows of towers and kingdoms coat the map in the umbrella of evening.

“We were sinners! Lord damn us all, we were sinners! And then the Man above saw our faults for something more. Our Hell on earth could be a Heaven! By sending his own true Son to show us all our ways and to fill our hearts and minds with hope and love, our sins could be washed away in his blood and we could be as one under the wing of our great King!”

Among the passers by speaking to their cell phones, the elderly couples strolling under the sun, and the crowds of tourists gathering around the Memorial statues that stand as titans in stone, a news reporter takes the soothing walk through the park on what should be his break period. He stands out amongst the common man by far; 6ft 6 inches tall, thick shoulders stretched wide either side of an enormous chest, arms that swell like tree trunks, and all below a chiselled square jaw, high heavy cheek bones, and held up on a neck pulling his collar to its limit of reach with mass. This man would almost be at place amongst the godly statues of heroes and legends past here in Memorial Park, but despite his Herculean and sub-human figure, the eyes of the park are blind to see and they pass him by as if he wasn’t there.

His drab and anything but eye-catching garb fulfil its intent. He wears grey trousers that fail to reach to his brown and unfashionable shoes, the blue rings visible on the ankle of his white socks. A pale white shirt with orange chequer lines hugs his powerful upper body, draped with a cheap light grey woollen cardigan. Round, thick glasses with plain black rims seem to barely fit as he pushes them back up the bridge of his nose every two minutes, and a head of jet black hair is smothered across his head with a heavy dose of product that glimmers in the light.

“I was like you, all of you! I was a sinner, my Lord, was I a sinner. I lied, I cheated, I gambled away my money, I mistreated woman among others, I betrayed the trust and love of my daughter, I stole! Yes, I stole! And it was only then that he came to me. Only then, when I was at my lowest point, when like Job, I had lost everything, he came to me and he showed me the error of my ways. He promised me there was another way! I begged and I cried and I pleaded for mercy, and he dragged me to my feet, dusted off my shirt, and held me upright so I didn’t fall. And then I got my feet... and I was saved from falling evermore!”

The reporter stops near to the preacher, a rag-tag individual who stands atop a foot high wooden box in his clearly used and worn, grey miserable suit, with a scruffy, thick beard and untamed dreadlocks flailing with his every exuberant action.

He notices the shouting vagrant’s sign, misspelled on a piece of torn cardboard in front of his box: HE IS THE SHEPPORD, HE LAIS DOWN HIS LIFE FOOR THE SHEEPE.

Clark swing a brown shoulder bag around his side and reaches to take a pair of earphones. He places one bud into his right ear and attaches the plug to the socket of his phone. He clicks a link contained in a recent notification and it takes him to a live news cast from Gotham City. He watches as Commissioner James Gordon of the GCPD appears in front of a white screen with the police crest emblazoned all over. He clears his throat and addresses the media behind the flashing camera lights before him.