| The Ghost of Captain Courage Vs. The Monster Under The Bed, Part I -- by Matthew Cody |
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Illustration by Eric Wight The Ghost of Captain Courage Vs. The Monster Under The Bed,
Part I: Origin Story! Captain Courage died like this: On March 15th, 1954, just six months after the cancellation of his short-lived television show The Adventure Hour with Captain Courage, a broke and professionally depressed actor named Bert Conway arrived at the grand opening of the new Get Clean Carwash on 23rd and Pine Street. He was in costume, on the clock, and making $1.25 an hour plus lunch. Captain Courage was set to appear on a makeshift stage just long enough to shout his nowhere-near-famous catchphrase, “This calls for some courage . . . Captain Courage!” Then he’d shake some hands, tell a few folks to wash their cars, collect his check and be gone. But a cheap microphone with a live wire and a carelessly placed bucket of soapy water changed his life forever – by ending it. Captain Courage died in his boots. His winged “Boots of Bravery” to be exact. The very same boots that allowed him to fly faster than the speed of fear (another unmemorable tagline). In the end, those rubber-soled prop boots were the only thing not fried to a charcoaly crisp, which was funny because they were the one piece of that costume Bert didn’t despise. The wardrobe department had taken extra care to make them comfortable and form-fitting, complete with nice arch support, and had they not been bright yellow and winged, he might have worn them everywhere. As fate would have it, he wore them into the afterlife. He wears them to this day. The boots, you see, are haunted. And that’s why Leroy just had to have them. Leroy was considered by most to be an odd little boy. He was obsessed with things most boys couldn’t care less about – old science fiction stories, black and white television shows . . . books. As a collector of very, very old stuff he also liked the superheroes that no one cared about anymore. Maybe because they were a bit odd, a bit different. Maybe because they never quite found a place to fit in. Spider-Man and Batman were fine for some, but Leroy was drawn to absolutely obscure old heroes like Amazing Man and the Crimson Avenger. He was an expert authority on Captain Courage, in particular. Like any true uber-fan, he’d done his research and collected an obscene amount of useless trivia about his favorite hero. For instance, he knew that Bert had tried his hand at Shakespeare before landing the part of the wing-booted icon of bravery. He’d also read about how near the end of the first season, amidst falling ratings, the writers introduced the character of Kid Courage, a scrappy orphan sidekick. Unfortunately, not even Kid Courage could save the Captain from cancellation. But most important of all, Leroy knew about the haunted boots. The boots’ various owners had reported some very unusual things over the years. Typical poltergeist activity, mostly - cold drafts, creaking doors – but also more ominous hauntings, such as echoing Shakespearean soliloquies performed badly, and the occasional, chilling howl of “This calls for some courage . . . Captain Courage . . . here to tell you how you can get a wash and wax for only $1.99!” In the face of such horror, no one had the courage to keep the boots for long. So when Leroy spotted the boots up for auction online, he sold his complete run of golden age The Green Lama comics just to raise the money. When the boots arrived in the mail his mother looked suspiciously at the faded yellow wings and wrinkled her nose at the blackened edges (they still smelled slightly of burnt rubber, even after all these years) But Leroy was overjoyed. He sped off into the living room and stashed the boots inside the little red pup tent he kept there. After dinner, he washed up, put on his Flash Gordon pajamas and kissed his parents goodnight. Then he crawled inside the tent where he’d been sleeping for a month, and waited. And waited. And he wished. He stared at the boots and wished and wished, fighting off sleep even as the living room clock chimed midnight and his eyes grew heavy. Then something remarkable happened. Bert didn’t particularly like scaring people. He wasn’t the sort of ghost who relished haunting, but the sad truth of a ghost’s afterlife is that it’s a lot like math class – it never ends. There’s just not a lot to do, and so every now and then you have to stretch your legs. If you’ve got nothing to do for an eternity, you might as well scare a few folks to pass the time. But Bert’s hauntings were mostly accidental. He preferred to spend the long hours of eternity practicing his Hamlet, and if someone occasionally overheard him, well, all the better to have an audience. It was a lonely existence, and he’d accepted it. But to say he’d gotten used to it would be too strong - you never really get used to loneliness. The boy was small and thin and he had a look about him that Bert recognized at once. He’d seen it only on those rare occasions when he’d caught his own ghostly reflection in a moonlit window. The boy was lonely, too. “You’re him,” said the boy, looking directly at Bert. “You’re really him.” “Eh,” answered Bert. “Um.” He wasn’t used to talking to living people and really was quite thrown. “I need your help,” said the boy. “I need Captain Courage.” “Er,” answered Bert. “Well . . .” The boy took a deep, bracing breath, like he was about to say something just awful. “I need your help,” said the boy. “There’s a monster under my bed.” “Err. . . .” continued Bert. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like to hear the Slings and Arrows speech from Act III? Hamlet’s famous soliloquy on action versus inaction . . .” “No,” said the boy, blinking at him from behind the flashlight. “Monster. I need you to fight a monster for me.” The boy shined the flashlight directly at Bert, the beam of light passing through Bert’s Captain Courage costume like sunlight through a dirty pool. Most people think of ghosts as insubstantial, but that’s not exactly true. A ghost’s body is mostly protoplasm, a kind of supernatural goo. Bert managed to look mostly solid in a dim room, but he went positively translucent in direct light. It was an odd effect that usually sent people screaming. But this little boy stood steadfast. The truth was, the kid was handling the shock of Bert’s sudden materialization a lot better than Bert was. He hadn’t expected to appear inside a tent with a little boy (chatty one, no less). And what was it he’d said? Something about a . . . “Monster. It’s under my bed and it wants to eat me.” Oh. That was it. “Now, ah little boy . . .” “Leroy.” “Right, Leroy then. Ah, when you say monster, what do you mean, exactly?” “It’s big and furry and has teeth as long as my fingers.” “Ah, I see. And how do you know it wants to eat you, exactly?” “Because it said so. It’s a very direct monster.” Try as he might, Bert had no response for this. When he’d been alive, Bert hadn’t spent much time with kids. Other than the occasional Captain Courage fan looking for his autograph, or his days on set with his miserable sidekick Kid Courage, he’d lived a relatively child-free life. Beyond their often-perplexing logic, kids were little germ factories, and as a rule he’d stayed away from their snot-bombs and sticky fingers. Of course, catching a cold had been less of an issue since he’d died, but you still couldn’t be too careful. The boy was talking. In fact, Bert realized that the boy hadn’t stopped talking - at some point Bert had just stopped listening. “I couldn’t get a real alive superhero,” Leroy was saying. “There don’t seem to be that many of those around these days, so I thought a dead one would be the next best thing.” “So, you know I’m a . . . well, a ghost?” “Yep.” Bert looked down at his ridiculous incorporeal winged boots. His ghostly versions were spotless, so very unlike the charred pair that sat at Leroy’s feet. This boy had somehow gotten ahold of those boots, the only remaining anchors of Bert’s former life. To Bert they were a bitter reminder of something long gone. But to Leroy, they were so much more – the genuine thing. The real deal. Proof that heroes do exist, or at least they used to. “Look kid, I was doing a gig when I kicked the bucket. I died with my tights on, but I wasn’t fighting crime. I was on the clock selling car washes.” “Oh,” answered Leroy. “I thought the whole actor thing might just be a cover story. You know, to protect your secret identity.” Leroy looked somehow deflated and hopeful at the same time. What had been a ball of excitable ten year-old a moment before suddenly turned sad and scared. Leroy kept glancing over his shoulder, beyond the tent door and towards the stairs. Somewhere up there was the kid’s bedroom, Bert guessed. And the kid’s supposed monster. Leroy was clearly terrified. And disappointed. The last part, at least, Bert could identify with. “Tell you what,” said Bert. “What if I float on up to your bedroom and just scare that mean old monster away? I mean, having a superhero spirit on your side can’t hurt.” Leroy’s anxious frown turned to a smile in an instant. Bert had seen that smile before. Once in while a kid like that had shown up at one of his Captain Courage appearances with that smile on his face. In the masses of snot-nosed, sticky-fingered little mongrels, once in a great, great while that smile would show itself. “Could you?” asked Leroy. “Really?” “Sure,” said Bert, getting into character. “I’ve dealt with monsters before. They scare easily. Some eerie moaning, a few rattling chains and they fold like a bad hand.” Actually Bert’s plan was even simpler than that. He’d go up to Leroy’s room alone, kill a few minutes practicing his To Be or Not To Be, and then declare it a monster-free zone. Whatever childhood neurosis had led Leroy to this particular delusion, Bert was sure the boy just needed some reassurance. There were no such things as monsters, but if Leroy needed the ghost of a failed-actor to prove it to him, then so be it. Though it was hard to make out details in the dark, Leroy’s bedroom looked typical. Superhero posters, dirty clothes, a bunch of comics and action figures – most of it looked old, even to Bert. Bert let out a sigh as he floated down onto the bed. He was a ghost of the 1950s and this 21st century was so totally unlike the 21st century he’d been promised, starting with the fact that no one was wearing a jetpack. It was a strange and lonely experience being a ghost, and in that moment Bert found himself empathizing with the strange little boy who was terrified of his own bed. Leroy probably didn’t have many, if any, friends, and in the dark even an ordinary bedroom can seem ominous – the long shadows can give a clothes dresser a devilish look, or make a laundry basket seem downright bloodthirsty. Bert would’ve flipped on the light, dispelled the demons, but ghosts as a general rule have trouble touching things. It takes a lot of concentration just to squeak open a door, and even in the afterlife Bert was prone to stress headaches. So he rested on the bed in the dark room and waited. He figured five minutes would be enough to fake a monster exorcism. Maybe ten. After all, if there was one thing Bert had it was time. After just a few minutes, he thought he heard something. It was a kind of slouching sound, like something big had just rolled over. Bert tried to remember if radiators made that kind of sound or if the wind slouched between the trees. But it had been too many years since he’d heard the wind properly (when you are dead everything sounds kind of like you are wearing a fishbowl on your head). There it was again. Was it louder this time or just closer? The bed moved. It bucked suddenly like an ornery horse and Bert half-leaped, half-flew off the bed and into the corner. The bucking ceased and the bed was still again. But underneath, in that infamous dark space between the bedframe and the floor, something was moving. The first thing he saw were the eyes, and the eyes were enough. Big, mean and shiny in the dark, Bert would have been quite happy if he’d have seen nothing more than those eyes. But unfortunately, they were just the beginning. There was also a furry, toothy face attached to a long pair of arms that ended in clawed fingers. The whole ugly thing was dragging itself out of the dark. The Monster Under the Bed. In life, Bert had never been a particularly brave man. Most actors weren’t, especially those actors who played the heroes and tough guys. Even the fistfights on The Adventure Hour with Captain Courage were handled by stuntmen, and every time Captain Courage threw a punch, Bert’s behind had been safely resting in his chair with a bagel and a cup of coffee. The truth was, it was hard to be really courageous when your toughest choices consisted of whether to have the catered chicken or the catered fish for lunch. Suffice it to say that Bert did not have a deep reservoir of bravery upon which to draw at that particular moment, so when the monster’s dripping snout sniffed the air next to his feet Bert did what Captain Courage had never, ever, done in his two-plus years of syndication: he screamed. It didn’t matter if Bert, being a ghost, could really be eaten or not. He didn’t stop to consider the possibilities, the consequences of his protoplasmic body getting devoured by a monster under the bed, or whether such a thing could actually happen. Bert’s reaction was honest and instinctual. His scream - high-pitched and girly. That’s when the bedroom door swung open and Kid Courage came to the rescue.
More articles by this author  The Ghost of Captain Courage Vs. The Monster Under the Bed, Part II -- by Matthew CodyIllustration by Eric Wight
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Hits: 5980 Comments (15)Subscribe to this comment's feedDR. SEUSS STYLE POEM!!!
ha! That's true!
You'd think that you would believe in the supernatural the bizarre and the unfactual If you yourself was a ghost! And I would think that most ghosts would believe in beasts or in monstrosity at least The ghost don't believe in the monster!! I find that a bit wrong sir. Thumbs up for Dr. Seuss style poems!! Rowan Hood has spoken.
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April 05, 2011
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Wonderful! I especially love the mention of "this 21st century was so totally unlike the 21st century he’d been promised", so true. I remember watching a 1960s episode of The Twilight Zone, where apparently we'd be exploring other universes by the 1980s.
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April 06, 2011
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AWESOME STORY!!!!!!!!!
  LOVED IT, SUPER FUNNY, ESPECIALLY THE GHOST THAT DOESN'T BELIEVE!
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April 06, 2011
AWESOME!!!
THAT WAS GREAT!!! Seriously, who'd a thought a ghost wouldn't believe in a monster!!! Do you think that the monster doesn't believe in ghosts and he'll scream too??? THAT WOULD BE AWESOME!!! LOVE IT
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April 06, 2011
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P.S
I lost my cat, so if you see an all black, 8 month old kitten with yellow eyes and a purple collar it is mine! He is very friendly and is not fixed. REWARD. MUST SHOW CAT BEFORE WE GIVE THE REWARD!
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April 06, 2011
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LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOVE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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April 06, 2011
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can u read this?!?
H pumpkins ave u re peaches ad the pinaepples secr plums et seri picking pepper es??no p-words.
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April 30, 2011
This is a ghost story???
This is more of a comedy than a ghost story!!By the way,i DON'T know the secret, and the MIDnight Su is totally not reading everything on this website!!!
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August 31, 2011
OK.
To judge it, i'll have to read the rest of it, but so far so good.........
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February 02, 2012
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