by Rucker Moses
Maestro was looking into it like he was obsessed. Like he had forgotten all about the audience. Dad looked worried and I knew something was wrong.
Then Maestro walked toward the Mirror. Some energy was surging from within. A blue light appeared deep within the glass that grew and glimmered like a star.
Then Urma Tan dove into the Mirror.
You expected a crash, but she was gone. Just like that, without a sound.
It seemed like part of the act at first. The audience was impressed.
But Maestro looked devastated. Then he dove in right after her. Headfirst, like into a swimming pool. I braced myself for the crash, but again none came. He was just gone.
A beam of blue light flashed from the depths of the Mirror and shined somewhere backstage, behind the curtain. Sparks popped from the Mirror in every direction. The Mirror spat them out like sunflower seeds. They popped like exploding coal on the velvet curtains. The fire flared and spread.
And then, faster than I could think, like his mind had long been made up, Pop glanced to me and Mom with the faintest magical wink and jumped in after Maestro.
And he was gone, too.
Then the Mirror crashed to the floor in a thousand pieces.
I slide my feet along the dusty stage and think about the shards of glass. There’s still black burn marks on the floor from the fire, but no glass. Not even glass dust. Someone must have come and swept it up. Maybe whoever painted that mural? Who would take the time to do something like that, paint a mural with so much care and detail where no one would ever see it?
And really, who would rearrange the letters on the marquee?
Wind gusts through the hole in the dome and swirls debris on center stage. The hairs along my arm tingle. I think about the Mirror and I make out the shape of a trapdoor on the stage floor. I clear the dust and ash with big sweeps of my feet. Magicians were famous for using these kinds of trapdoors in stages for all sorts of tricks. With this and the one I came down, the Mercury must be full of them. I give the stage a few stomps, then remember the levers backstage.
I jet over to them and pull every lever there—the up ones down, and the down ones up.
I hear the sound of old hinges grinding and the slap of the wooden hatch opening.
There, on center stage, the trapdoor hangs open.
I hustle over to it. Thinking, What if it was all a trick?
Like Black Herman’s burial?
What if he’s just . . . been down there all these years?
Just as I’m starting to worry about how he’s been eating, and am wondering if he’s starving or a skeleton or what, I peer down into the open hatch.
The sunbeam from the hole in the roof has a pink-orange glow. It hits just the right spot to light up the chamber below. There’s an old Houdini-style trunk, like the ones he used to chain himself up in and pop out of moments later.
I hop down and barely feel the impact on my feet.
Sure, the chest is a little small for a whole person, but Dad is a great magician and could fold himself up and I’m sure he’s fine in there . . .
I knock on the old wood and say, “Dad? Dad? It’s me.” I try not to be distracted by how I don’t hear anything in response or by thoughts of how anyone could actually be alive after all these years. I just focus on how to get this old thing open.
There are chains wrapped around the trunk and an old padlock. The chains are just for show, I’m sure—the lock is the key to getting the thing open. The padlock has four rotating rings of digits, requiring a four-digit code. Then I see, carved into the wall above the chest, some familiar letters:
Ybbx Sbejneq naq Onpxjneq, Vg’f Nyy gur Fnzr
The same letters from the Watch of 13 plaque in Long Fingers’s workshop. Look forward and backward, it’s all the same.
Forward and backward, it’s all the same . . .
My fingers trembling, knowing this has to be a message meant for me, knowing what the numbers are as I flick the padlock to 1 . . . 3 . . . 1 . . . 3 . . .
Forward and backward, it’s all the same.
The numbers that you count forward and backward on the Watch of 13 are . . .
13, 13!
The padlock clicks open. My hands are a blur as I strip the chains from around the chest, open it up, thinking, Pop, I’m coming, Pop!
But there’s no person inside the trunk.
When I come to my senses, I am relieved he’s not actually in there. I mean, he would be a four-year-old skeleton if he were.
There’s just one small thing at the bottom of the trunk.
It’s a box.
Just a box.
It is a nice box.
Mahogany, well made. Each side has a carving on it. A deck of cards on one, a pistol on another, a skull on the third side, and a square on the fourth. The designs are elaborate, with swirls and flourishes like the box was made way back in the day. But unlike this old theater, the box hasn’t aged at all. There’s no dust, no scratches, no nicks, or any damage at all. I try to open it but there’s no give. The thing feels solid as a log.
I don’t know how long I spend turning the box over, examining it, prodding it, and thinking about how to get in. There’s a complicated brass piece connecting the top of the box to the body, and it looks like some kind of locking mechanism. There’s a circular opening that reveals layers of gears within, like the inside of a clock.
After a quick hesitation, I rotate the top and it moves real smooth, like somebody just hit it with WD-40. As the hole in the top of the box turns, the gears on the inside follow, and those curved brass bars oscillate around and around until the segments all align to form another circle just within the box. A number is revealed in brass in the recesses of the gears that you couldn’t see before: 13. I judge the size of the circle that the curved brass bars just formed and . . .
Could it be?
I take the pocket watch out from around my neck and set it in the circle, just over the brass number 13. It fits like the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle.
There’s a click as the lock releases and the clock hands start moving. The lid of the box parts like lips about to whisper.
Pop, I think. You wanted me to find this.
Or did he, though?
My blood is pounding, like I can feel my pulse with each tick of the clock hand running the circle of numbers, all the way into my fingertips as I raise the lid of the box.
I warn myself not to get carried away.
Maybe other people know about the Watch of 13.
Long Fingers knows.
Others must know.
But another voice says, This is a message from Dad, he’s reaching out to me, from wherever he is, like I always knew he would—
Then I snap out of it as what’s in the box comes into focus.
There’s a sheet of paper, but not like you’d see at school. It looks old, like something in a museum.
And it’s floating.
Right in the center of the box, hovering like a hummingbird in midair.
I’m looking for the strings, the magnets, the part that would explain how this is possible, but there’s just this levitating piece of folded-up paper.
I’m scared to touch it. What if it’s some kind of trap? Who knows who’s been here since my dad disappeared?
I try to slow my thoughts and take in my surroundings. It’s a small space, the sort of spot a magician might hide in after they’ve disappeared onstage. The box isn’t hidden behind some fake wall or bookcase. It’s right here in the open. How has nobody found this thing? Or maybe they have, and I’m just the first one to figure out how to open it?
The first one to come here with this Watch of 13.
So maybe, I think, whatever is in this box is meant for me.
And I wonder what the paper says. I have to see what’s on it
.
I snatch the page out lightning quick, and then wait a moment with my eyes shut for spikes to fly from the wall or a giant boulder to crush me from above.
When nothing happens, I open the paper to reveal a map.
Looks like a map of Echo City, drawn by hand.
Just a map.
No Xs marking any spots.
I reach my hand back into the box. I feel around the felt-lined bottom and corners for vents or magnets or strings or something to explain the hovering map, and I hear—
“Yooo—”
And somebody crashes into me.
A sudden blue light flashes from the box and fills the trap like a light bulb popping.
My face hits the floor. The light hurts my eyes. The box is stuck underneath me. I feel like I just took a clown-size shoe to the back. There is a body on top of me. So much body it can really only be one person.
“King?” Too Tall says, relieved to see it’s me. “Wha—what happened? I’m sorry, my dude, you okay?”
Too Tall’s words sound distant. The wind is knocked out of me. It takes a few breaths for everything to come back into focus. I try to push myself up, but my left hand is stuck in the box.
How is that even possible?
Too Tall is saying, “Am I glad to see you! We went down that chute after you and next thing I know, I’m totally lost and alone. No you, no Veronica. Wandering around, like, man, this place gives me the creeps. And then—I see this mural, I’m backtracking and wham I fall down a hole in the stage! But you already knew that. Need a hand?”
Too Tall is on his feet in a crouch, offering to help me up.
I yank my hand from the box to take his—
—and it’s gone—
Too Tall’s mouth opens but he doesn’t make a sound.
My left hand is gone.
There is nothing there.
There’s no stump. No bones. No blood. Just no hand. There’s a faint blue glow where my wrist ends and the rest of my hand has vanished, like it’s been erased. It’s like those Bunsen burners from science class, just a blue vapor and then nothing.
But I can still feel my hand.
Can’t I?
I hold it up to my face but I just see Too Tall, jaw hanging on for dear life.
“Th-th-there’s no . . .” His words come out at half the speed as normal.
“Shh,” I say, holding a finger to my lips. I realize I can actually feel my finger against my lips.
I can’t see my hand, but I can feel it?
“Shh?” Tall repeats. “Why shhh? You don’t have a hand and you’re worried about me talking?”
“Sorry! I just didn’t want to hear the words don’t have a hand.”
“What else is there to say right now? What other words of all the words would I say? You don’t have a hand!”
“I—I—” I close my eyes.
Calm. Breathe.
Just because Tall is saying I don’t have a hand and I don’t exactly see a hand at the end of my wrist doesn’t mean I don’t have a hand. Maybe if I open my eyes, I will see my hand, and Too Tall and I were just hilariously mistaken . . .
I open my eyes. No dice. No hand. No hand at all.
Then I realize—Too Tall is by himself.
“Wait—where’s Veronica?”
“I don’t know, dude, I was saying before. We all got separated at the chute.”
“You think she’s okay?” I ask.
“Dude—is she okay? Are you okay?”
“Am I?”
Am I okay? I repeat in my head. And then again, Am I okay? Am I?
“I don’t know, Tall. This is beyond insane.” I stare at the empty space that my hand used to occupy.
“Bananas,” he says. “King. What happened?”
I catch my breath and tell him about the chest all chained up, about the code and the box.
“This box here,” I say, and reach for it on the floor. First with my right hand. Then I decide to try to pick it up with my left, my ghosted hand. I grab the box and the sensation of my fingers is there. Thumb, pointer, pinkie, and the others—I can feel them all. The wood is smooth and dense and the metal of the Watch of 13 lodged in the lock is cool.
I glance over at Too Tall and realize by his horrified look that to him the box appears to be floating in the air by the end of my wrist.
“H-how are you doing that?” he asks, spooked out of his mind.
“I—I don’t know. I mean, I’m just holding it. But I can’t see my hand. I can feel it—I just can’t see it.”
“That makes two of us.”
I offer the box to Tall. He hesitates to take it.
“What?” I ask.
“I don’t know. That box cost you your hand,” he says, taking a step back into a corner of grime. “So you found a strange box in an abandoned theater and thought, hey, let me just shove my hand in there?”
“It’s not just some strange box. Well, maybe it is, but Tall, I’m thinking my dad wanted me to find this box. I mean, it was the watch he left me that opened it.”
“Your dad,” says Tall. “The one that disappeared?”
“Yeah . . .”
“That vanished? Ghosted? Went and got gone?”
“Yeah,” I say, my voice shrinking.
What if the rest of me disappears, too? What if the hand is just the beginning? What if this is what happened to Pops?
In all my fantasies of coming to the Mercury, of reliving that night Pops disappeared, it’s always me who stops Pop from vanishing. I’m the one who brings him back. Never, not once, did I disappear, too.
But Pop vanished and so could I.
“Stay with me, King,” Too Tall says.
“I—I’m trying, but what if I can’t help it? What if I go, too?”
“Don’t talk like that. You feel strange? You feel, I don’t know, vanish-y?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what that feels like. I want my hand back. I’d feel better with my hand back.”
“I hear you. But the rest of you. Still here, yeah?”
I put my hand to my face—lips, eyes, cheeks—then the rest of me. Neck. Elbows. Chest. Everything checks out. My heart, beating like a jackhammer. My tummy, turning with the grease from the pizza.
“Everything else’s where it’s supposed to be,” I say.
Tall takes my wrist, braves the weirdness of it, and plants his very visible palm into my vanished one. Our palms collide with a pop. His fingers collapse around my phantom knuckles. He’s gripping my hand—but we can only see his, alone, like a pantomime handshake.
“You still here, King,” he says, “you still here all right.”
New voices crash into the theater. They hoot and echo in chaos and I can’t make out what they’re saying. The theater suddenly sounds like a playground at recess. Could be anywhere from six to twenty noisy kids running down the aisles.
Too Tall’s eyes go wide, like, What now?
Then a thin, commanding voice slices through the noise above like a razor blade.
“Spread out,” it says. “Find them.”
And just those words ghost all that ruckus. Footsteps rush down the aisles toward the stage.
I wonder, Did they get in through the front doors?
Or the chute?
And I remember that I left the code written out on the sidewalk in chalk. Could they have figured out how to read the code and found the brick wall?
I turn to Too Tall in panic. I open my mouth to say something about the code but he puts a finger to his lips.
I nod and keep quiet as a church mouse.
But I look at the sunbeam from above that spotlights center stage and realize it won’t matter. This trap will be the first place they look.
And I remember those white magicia
n’s gloves that Crooked Eye gave me.
I take them out of my backpack and slide one on my ghosted hand. I worry again for a moment that the hand is really gone, but the glove fits right over it and you’d never know . . .
What? That you don’t have but sorta still have a hand? That Ma is going to be like, “King, I know I gave birth to a kid with two hands. Now what in god’s name have you done with the other one?”
I tell myself to breathe.
To calm down.
And after a couple deep breaths I think, How did these kids just happen to show up now? I get a bad feeling that this is no coincidence. They could have been hiding nearby, waiting for me to find this box. They could even know I have the Watch of 13. The timing is too close together. So I slip the box into my backpack and strap it on my shoulders.
“Uh-oh, King,” says Tall.
There’s a kid sitting in the open trapdoor with his legs dangling above us. He has a pair of intense green eyes, and he looks rough.
There’s a scar etched across his neck like a barbed-wire choke collar. He’s a little older than me, definitely a teenager, but beyond that I couldn’t tell his age. Maybe it’s the strange lighting, or the dust and ash surrounding us, but his face is this gray color that looks barely human. There are scars on his cheeks, scribbled symbols like doodles you sketch in the margins of your math textbook. His pupils are tiny pinpricks in the bright meadow green of his eyes. He smiles like a creature that doesn’t smile but has heard about smiles.
He holds out a hand. His boys gather around. They all have that strange ash-gray color to their skin, like you can’t even tell if they’re black or white or what.
“Give me the Lost and Found,” he orders.
I’m speechless. I don’t even know what he’s talking about. Does he want the box? Did he see me put it in my backpack? I can’t say for sure.
“Get outta here, Mint,” says Too Tall. He tries to puff up his chest but his voice is shaky. “How about you get lost . . . and found.”
Mint makes a tried-this-the-easy-way face and simply says, “Smoke them out.”
I hear the flick of a light and something metal lands in our chamber and bounces around, hissing. Too Tall and I watch as two cola cans with lit fuses roll to a stop on the floor between us, spitting out sparks like makeshift smoke bombs.