by Rucker Moses
“Oh, the theater? Nothing. Just I heard, my one cousin told my other cousin and he told—”
“Told you?” asks V.
“No, he told this kid I ball with on the playground, and he told my closest cousin, who told me that one of those gargoyles ate a pigeon one time. But you were right. Your story, that’s way weirder.”
“A gargoyle ate a pigeon?” I ask.
“Well, either that or the pigeon just flew away. The details get lost in translation. But go back to the part about your pops and the Mirror. I’d heard that he got a show in Vegas and you guys all left, after the fire.”
“Who told you that?” asks Veronica.
“One of my cousins. I can’t remember which one.” Tall shakes his head. “Man, I’m sorry to hear you had to go through that. You ever think he might come back? I mean, if he could disappear, why not reappear, you know?”
Veronica nods. “I think that’s why he was asking about the Mercury. Is that right, King?”
“Yeah,” I admit. “I mean, he’s a magician, right? And all magicians’ great tricks have a finale. It’s called the Prestige, where they show the audience the card they pulled, or—”
“Or the rabbit they pulled out of the hat?” Tall chimes in helpfully.
“Sure. There’s that moment when the audience is wowed and the magician—he stands there and takes a bow. And there was this old magician named Black Herman. He did this trick where he’d bury himself alive and then, three weeks later, folks would buy tickets to watch him dig himself out, then follow him to the stage for a show. And he was one of my pop’s heroes. I just can’t help but think maybe . . .” I let my words trail off. For some reason I can’t bring myself to say the rest out loud.
Veronica steps in. “Maybe this is a disappear-reappear trick, with a four-year delay on the Prestige?”
Hearing her say the words makes me wince. I look at Too Tall, though, and he doesn’t think it sounds so strange.
“Maybe your father’s doing the Black Herman move?” he suggests.
“Maybe?” I say.
“Well, there’s one way to find out, li’l King. Now, I’m as creeped out by burnt-up old-timey theaters with daddy-stealing mirrors as anyone, but let’s go check this place out, and see if there isn’t a magic Pops waiting to appear onstage.”
“For real?” I say.
“For reals. Tired of running these fools in pickup games at the playground all day anyway. Plus, it’s too hot for that mess. Let’s go check out this theater.”
I’m looking at Veronica. I expect her to shoot down our stupid idea and send us back to Ma.
But instead she says, “Hey, tall guy, let me ask you something. Are you hurting, or are you helping?”
Too Tall is confused by her question. “I have hurt exactly no one. Why? What have you heard?”
Veronica shrugs and says to me, “I don’t know, King. He sounds guilty about something.”
Too Tall looks bewildered. He turns and says to me, “King, what is she talking about?”
“Somebody wrote Are you hurting? Are you helping? on the sidewalk by our house,” I say. “And now she’s asking people, I guess?”
“You were the one obsessed with it,” V grumbles.
“I’m helping!” Tall insists.
“I believe you,” I say to Tall.
“Good. You should,” he says.
“How about you, V?” I ask. “You helping, or hurting? Are you coming, or staying?”
She holds up her hands in surrender. “You gonna finish that crust before we go or nah?”
We’re under the marquee in front of the once-majestic entrance of the Mercury Theater. The chains roped around the doors seem to grind and tighten. The shade beneath the sign feels like the sort of gloom where ghosts gather. The shattered glass bulbs hang above us like they could drop at any moment. I step up to the glass and peer through. I’m looking for that figure in the Prince Albert coat. All I see is darkness.
“One thing I never understand is creepy gargoyles,” says Too Tall. “Like, why would anyone put those crazy-lookin’ demon-monsters up there in the first place?”
I look up to the stone-carved creatures. Their eyes are round and bulging above snarling fangs and forked tongues, long like frozen snakes. “I don’t know,” I say.
“I like them,” says Veronica.
“You do?” asks Tall.
“Yeah. They look like they dine on human hearts or something,” she says like that’s a good thing.
“Just what I was thinking,” Too Tall mumbles.
I’m waiting for one to spring to life. “Maybe they’re supposed to be, like, guarding something.”
My eyes then drift to the random letters left splashed on the marquee. Something feels off about them.
“Why do you suppose those letters are like that?” I ask.
Veronica squints up. She reads, “O-E-V-P-X . . . J-N-Y-Y . . . Seems pretty good and nonsensical to me.”
“Yeah. I mean, isn’t that weird?” I say. “Shouldn’t it say something like ‘Magic Show,’ but with letters missing?”
“Like, ‘Mgi how’?” says Tall.
“Yeah. Or something. I mean, why those letters?”
Veronica stares at the sign. “Like, I can’t tell what the sign ever said. Strange, since the theater hasn’t been touched since the fire.”
“Exactly,” I say. “It’s almost like somebody got up there and put those letters—specifically those letters—like that. I wonder? Nah, it’s too crazy.”
“You wonder what, King?” says Veronica.
“Look forward and backward, it’s all the same,” I say, almost to myself.
“Um, you want to try making some sense to us here on the planet Earth?” says V.
“There’s this code my dad taught me. In fact, your dad told me they came up with it together.”
“You talked to my dad?” Veronica asks, astonished.
“Well, yeah. I found his workshop, you know? And he had this watch there.” I take out the pocket watch from around my neck. “It goes up to the number thirteen, just like mine.”
Tall and Veronica check out the numbers going all the way around.
“It’s kind of cool, how it looks like a normal watch face, then it’s like, no, the numbers go to thirteen, not twelve, and that knocks the three, six, and nine off-center,” says Too Tall.
“See, thirteen—it’s like half of twenty-six, the number of letters in the alphabet. So to crack the code, you take the numeric value of each letter, and either add or subtract by thirteen. Then that’s the decoded letter. Make sense?”
“Not really,” says Tall.
“And your father taught you this?” asks Veronica.
“Well, yeah. You ever see that watch to thirteen your dad has in his workshop?”
“Honestly, I never go in there. Like, never.”
“My pops used to write me notes in the code,” I say, and I take in the random letters on the marquee once more. “Anybody have a pen and paper?” I ask.
“We’re in the middle of the street, dude, not class,” says Too Tall. “I got a phone, that help?”
“I don’t think so. Think I need to draw on something.”
“How about this?” Veronica digs in her pocket and comes up with two ground-down sticks of chalk, one pink, one yellow.
“Okay, wait a minute . . . ,” I say. “You write that stuff on the sidewalk?”
She shrugs. “Keeps people honest.”
“Okay, wow. Well, why didn’t you say anything?”
“It was fun watching you think it through when you thought it was a message from beyond. Now come on, cuz, show me this code.”
I take the chalk and draw a circle on the sidewalk. I don’t think anyone will mind. Then I imagine the circle like my watch and put t
he number 13 at the top, and draw each number counting all the way around. “Okay, so here’s the Watch of 13. With me so far?”
“Right there with you,” says Tall.
“Then you go around with the alphabet,” I continue, and I write an A beside the 1, a B beside the 2, and all the way to the M beside the 13.
“Okay,” says Tall, “looks like you ran out of numbers for letters.”
Veronica smirks like she’s getting it.
“Right, then you finish the alphabet around the circle like this,” I say, and keep writing another row of letters around the last row. So now the A has an N beside it, the B has an O beside it, all the way to the M that has a Z beside it, above the number 13. “The code works where you just sub one letter for the one beside it. So the first letter on the marquee is O, so sub that with a—”
“B!” Tall says, looking at the sidewalk drawing, and he shoots a fist up like he hit a buzzer beater.
“Not bad, cuzzo,” says Veronica. “Look forward and backward.” She repeats the phrase I mentioned earlier.
“It’s all the same,” I say. “Right. If you go clockwise or counterclockwise, the code letter is thirteen letters away, forward or backward. It’s all the same.”
“Okay, okay, I like this now,” says Tall. “Next?”
We decode the rest of the letters, and Too Tall types them up on his cell phone as we go.
O = B
E = R
V = I
P = C
X = K
As the first word begins to form, my fingers tremble with adrenaline.
O-E-V-P-X from the marquee becomes B-R-I-C-K.
“Brick,” says Veronica.
“Brick?” says Tall.
“Brick,” I repeat. “Well, it makes more sense than oevpx, anyway. Let’s keep going.”
The last four letters:
J = W
N = A
Y = L
Y = L
W-A-L-L.
“Looks like we’ve hit a brick wall,” Too Tall cracks.
“Ba-dum-bum,” says Veronica.
I stare at the words Too Tall has typed up on his screen.
“This is crazy,” says Veronica. “I mean, you realize what this means?”
“That someone who knows the code put those letters up there like that? Yeah, V. That’s, like, all I can think of. I mean, the only people who know that code are my father and yours. And Crooked Eye, I suppose.”
“That we know of . . . ,” says V.
“True . . . But then, what’s this message mean?”
“Has to mean something,” says Veronica.
I pace and tap a finger to my skull.
“Does putting your finger on your head really help you think or nah?” asks Veronica.
But I ignore her.
Brick wall . . . Brick wall . . . must be a reference . . .
“Got it!” I shout. “It’s a trick!”
“What’s a trick? It’s not really a brick wall?” says Too Tall.
“Sorta. It’s a classic Houdini trick. Houdini’s Brick Wall. He’d fool the audience into thinking he’d walked through a solid brick wall by escaping through a trapdoor covered by a carpet in front.”
And there I see it—a little ways down from the chained-up doors, there’s a moldy old rug lying by the exterior wall.
I rush to it and throw it back.
There’s a small chute tunneling under the theater.
“Pop,” I whisper.
“You’re not for real going down in there, right, King?” Too Tall asks in a shaky voice.
By the time he finishes his question, he’s got his answer.
I slide in, feetfirst.
The light from the summer city day vanishes as I plunge down the throat of the chute.
The chute takes me down a ways, then switches directions, like gears somewhere have moved the chamber around. There’s a sudden drop directly down, and I finally land in absolute darkness.
I call out to Veronica and Too Tall.
I hear bodies sliding down the chute above me, and muffled yells. Gears move again from the upper levels. I step out of the way, hoping they’ll come after me, but they never show.
Then it’s quiet again.
I wonder if the chute took them somewhere different.
Wish I had Tall’s phone.
Wish Ma had let me have a phone already.
Wish I had light, I mean any sort of light.
And eventually, I think, What am I even doing here?
I shout some more for Tall and Veronica, but my words seem to bounce right back, like wherever I am, there’s layers of hard, old metalwork that likes sound about as much as it likes light.
I turn and try to climb back up the chute, but the opening is closed now. I press my fingers against the grime of metal and there’s no give.
It seems there’s only one way to go, and that’s forward.
Once, I would have been so psyched to be in the bowels of the Mercury Theater, free to explore. But this dark is so dark it’s weird. I hold my hand out in front of my face, waiting for my eyes to adjust and hoping to make out the shape of my fingers—the fingers I know are right there . . .
But nothing. I can’t even see my own hand.
So I walk, and trust—no, hope—that my outstretched hand will stop anything from hitting my face before my face hits it.
The floor feels uneven beneath my feet, gravelly and dusty. I kick something squishy and hope it doesn’t have fur, a tail, and a heartbeat. I blink and blink and begin to see things. Or think I see things.
My hand hits something. An old metal rod, by the feel of it—rusty, but sturdy, like a fire escape. It’s hovering at about eye level. I give the rod a good shake, and the structure it’s attached to rattles. I reach up higher and find another rod—or, rung—to the ladder I’m pretty certain I’ve just discovered.
I climb up, trusting, hoping the next rung will be there as I reach, one at a time, up to an old wooden trapdoor, and I heave my shoulder into it. The hatch opens and light spills in, and I’m backstage at the Mercury.
A sunbeam slants through the hole in the roof above like a spotlight. The rest of the dome is in darkness. A pigeon passes through the light from outside and casts a long, bat-like shadow. It flaps into the heart of the dome and vanishes. Suddenly a chorus of flaps sets off, one after the other, fluttering in fury and echoing like the old theater is a bat cave.
I look around. There’s no color anywhere. Just long shadows that ripple and breathe. Ash layers everything, gray and bumpy like I imagine the surface of the moon. I remember backstage, how it once was. The endless velvet curtains that hung. The spiderweb of ropes that were strung up on pulleys to the rafters, all of them gone. There’s a set of old levers where a stagehand could, I guess, work the pulleys and traps that once made the show go on.
I make my way to center stage and look out at where the audience would be. The auditorium is stark and still as an old black-and-white photograph. Rows of seats line the walls all around like a cylinder up to the dome. They watch like frozen spectators—or specters . . . I wonder why those two words are so close. Is it because what ghosts really do is watch?
But I can hear something. Not sure what it is. Like the phantom of a thousand sounds that never died all the way out. Applause, overtures, whistles, shouts all pour down.
I see the seat in the front row where I sat the last time I ever saw my father.
I think of my father standing right here, and imagine what he looked out on before he vanished. The hundreds of astonished faces. His brothers. Mom. Me.
Something tells me to turn around and there’s something that wasn’t there before.
I think—There’s people behind me—
But no. It’s a mural on th
e back wall. My father and the Maestro are squared off in graphic, bright colors.
There’s a strange backdrop. A dark landscape with mist rolling over end-of-the-world cliffs. A branch of lightning splits clouds that billow in midstorm. Even the pitch-black empty spaces have depth, like I could step inside and walk there forever.
Pop is in his all-black suit, hands summoning light. I see myself in his face. There’s my cheekbones, my dimple. I raise a hand, almost to say Hi.
My stomach grows cold when I look over at Maestro.
The magician’s half-mirrored mask covers the left side of his otherwise plain face. Eyes like he’s peering into a universe that’s darker than the one we know.
I hate him.
It’s his fault my dad’s gone.
Pops disappeared going after Maestro. Vanished into the same Mirror before it shattered on the stage.
It was all set to be an amazing night. Magic Duel of the Century. I was there, in the audience, just eight years old. The memory feels new. Maybe not like it was yesterday but last week at the latest. The best and brightest of Echo City were there. Brooklyn glitz and style and swagger, all enchanted like.
But it went bad.
Pop—he owned the crowd with his routine. His floating light bulb trick. His vanishing, reappearing cards that no magician could ever figure out. That old creepy skull he had that let him read people’s thoughts.
Then Maestro’s turn. His assistant rolls out three large cabinets. Urma Tan, with eyes like frost and blond hair so pale it’s almost white. Dressed in all black, with red fingernails long and curling like small serpents. They do Maestro’s famous teleportation trick, where he would vanish Urma Tan from one cabinet to appear in another.
But then Maestro revealed his new trick. Urma Tan wheeled out the Mirror.
The Mirror was set in an elaborate carved-wood frame with a serpent eating its tail at the top, but the glass was what stood out to me. The surface didn’t just reflect the world. It was another world, if that makes sense. The audience reflected in the Mirror was us, but wasn’t us. It moved less like how a reflection moves and more like how a shadow moves, just a step behind its maker.