Phyllis Wong and the Waking of the Wizard

by Geoffrey McSkimming

  Clem puffed out his chest. ‘Well, madam, have you come to the right place!’ He reached down into his backpack and pulled out his long, flat box of disguises. Shifting along the sofa, he plonked the box between himself and Phyllis and Daisy. ‘What can we transform you into today?’ he asked, opening the expandable trays inside the box and speaking in the way Miss Evangeline Hipwinkle from Thundermallow’s spoke whenever she sold him a new item of disguise.

  ‘Well, all I was thinking was—’

  ‘Y’know, I’ve often thought you’d look good with a moustache. How about this Poirot number?’ He pulled out a neatly trimmed moustache with the ends curled upwards in perfect points. ‘Human hair, of course, I never buy synthetic. And you’re in luck—this black model goes perfectly with your hair, and—’

  ‘Clem, I’d look like a freak!’

  He considered the moustache carefully, ignoring her remark. ‘No, perhaps it’s not for you. Let me think . . .’

  Phyllis and Daisy watched him poking about in the trays and drawers in the box of disguises.

  ‘I know! How’s about we tie your hair up and put it under a cap—you know, that big cap with the small brim at the front that you sometimes wear to school?’

  ‘I like your thought,’ Phyllis said.

  ‘That’s a good start,’ Clement said, nodding. ‘With all that hair out of the way, you’ll look different immediately. Ha! I’ve got an idea!’

  ‘Inform me, Clement, my man, inform me.’

  ‘Well, what if they all thought that you were some boy who worked backstage? Like a stage sweeper or something? There’re so many people backstage they’d never know. You could blend in. Melt into the scenery, if you see what I mean.’

  Phyllis smiled. ‘You are too, too clever.’

  ‘Yes, I too, too am. Now, tie your hair up; you can get the cap later, after I’ve transformed you.’

  For the next twenty minutes, Clement reshaped Phyllis’s eyebrows, shaded one side of her nose so that it looked a bit crooked near the tip, gave her a very light beard stubble with some stick-on fine liquid latex and stuck a large but not too prominent artificial wart on her left cheek. (The wart was a compromise; he’d originally wanted to give her a long scar running from her temple to her jaw, and a set of false teeth more suitable for a gopher than for a young stage sweeper, and Phyllis had firmly said no to those two suggestions.)

  When he’d finished, Phyllis did indeed look different. Clement had taken his hobby of disguises seriously and this, coupled with his natural artistic talents, had paid off.

  ‘There,’ he said, holding up a mirror and letting Phyllis look at her new self. ‘Phyllis Wong, please meet Phillip Wong from the Froux-Froux Levité Opera House in Paris.’

  Phyllis saw a young man who appeared a bit older than she was. ‘It’s swell, Clem. Thanks.’

  ‘Remember, we’re a team. I may not be there with you, but’—he said the next bit in a Doctor Frankenstein sort of voice—‘I created you!’

  She laughed, and Daisy pranced around on the sofa, jumping onto Clement’s legs and sniffing about in his box of disguises.

  Phyllis stood, putting the handbill into her bag. ‘I’ll run upstairs and get the cap, then I’ll be right back.’

  ‘And then you’ll be gone again,’ said Clement, quietly. ‘Promise me another thing,’ he added.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’ll go carefully, and come back the same way.’

  The observer

  A lone figure stood across the street from the Wallace Wong Building, sheltering in the doorway of an apartment block directly opposite. From this place there was a perfect view of the Wong Building’s front stairs, sandwiched between Lowerblast’s Antiques & Collectables Emporium and The Délicieux Café.

  The person in the doorway had been watching the front doors of the Wong Building for nearly four hours. So far, there had been nothing to note down. Nothing that was of interest.

  All that had happened that afternoon was that a woman had left the building, carrying a large bag with spangly material and ostrich feathers sticking out of the top. Apart from that, there had been a small procession of customers going into and out of The Délicieux Café, but none entering or leaving Lowerblast’s Antiques & Collectables Emporium, which was closed for the day. And, just fifteen minutes earlier, a boy had come out: a boy wearing glasses and a large backpack. He had sauntered off along the sidewalk, and had tripped up on one of his undone shoelaces, but had not fallen down.

  Nothing remarkable to note.

  The figure in the doorway remained there, watching, shivering in the chill wind. She would remain there for a little while longer.

  She would know when it was time to leave.

  A sweeping trip

  Phyllis stepped out of the Andruseon, turned and hurried up the white marble stairs in the Froux-Froux Levité Opera House’s deserted foyer.

  The Transit hadn’t been too discombobulating, and her hair hadn’t whipped about all over the place, thanks to her cap. She didn’t have to worry about her shoulder bag flapping away, either—since she didn’t need it to carry Daisy around in, she’d decided to Transit as lightly as possible this time, and had put on her knee-length black coat with plenty of pockets in it to store her necessaries.

  Phyllis wondered what the hour was. She searched out the large clock that she’d seen at the top of the stairs the first time she’d arrived here. Its long, sleek black hands told her it was eleven forty-five.

  Morning or nighttime? she wondered. She peered back down the stairs, across the foyer and through the bank of huge glass doors which led outside. Every door was closed, and through the glass Phyllis saw darkness. It was night.

  The show’s over, she thought. I hope I’m not too late . . .

  She pocketed the handbill which she’d clutched during the Transit, and walked mouse-quietly on the tips of her toes. The foyer and the stairs and the first floor corridor were an echoing, empty void. It was so quiet, Phyllis could hear herself breathing.

  Making her way past all the closed doors of the box balconies, she came to the doorway that led down to the stage. She took a last look around, just to make sure she hadn’t been followed; then she ducked through the doorway, down a few steps and emerged onto the stage’s apron.

  The curtains were open, and the vast stage was bare, lit only by a single light bulb on a tall brass stand that cast a dismal light. The corners of the stage were swathed in a deep, murky gloom.

  The young conjuror listened carefully. She couldn’t detect any sign of activity. Her hands were getting clammy, so she wiped her palms against the front of her coat, took a deep breath, tried to ignore the slight throbbing of her Transit-green eyes, and ducked around the curtain into the wings.

  There was a broom leaning against a wall, and Phyllis grabbed it, remembering Clem’s idea that she should be a stage sweeper. She put the broom over her shoulder, the way a soldier would carry a rifle on parade, and skirted the back of the stage.

  As she crept across the empty void, she thought over the plan she’d formulated. She’d worked out a back-up, in case she was interrupted when she got to Sturdy’s dressing room. She’d remembered the layout of the dressing room from earlier—it wasn’t hard, as there wasn’t much furniture in there. But there were enough things for Phyllis to recreate a magic effect she knew, if she had to get away quickly. All she’d need, if somebody walked in on her, were a few seconds, and this effect might just buy her that time . . .

  She came to the top of the spiral staircase and peered down. The curve of the stairs melted away into the dimness below. Hoisting her broom firmly over her shoulder, she went down.

  The dressing room corridor was lit, like the stage above, by a single bulb. Phyllis stopped. She saw the door to her great-grandfather’s dressing room was open, but there was no light coming from inside the room. I bet he’s gone out with that Maracas Estevan, Phyllis thought.

  From nearby, she heard voices. They were coming from H
ercule S. Perkus’s room.

  Silently Phyllis edged up to the doorway, pressing herself close against the wall, trying to melt into the shadows. She noticed something straightaway: the sign below the gold star stuck on the door had been defaced. The name Hercule S. Perkus was still visible, but beneath that, Jaunty Jasper’s name had two red lines slashed across it in a heavy X.

  The voices from the room became louder, clearer: ‘But I tell you, he was here, on that chair. He has been stolen!’ Phyllis heard the desperate, anguished tone of Perkus.

  ‘When did you last see ’im?’ came the stubby voice of the stage manager.

  ‘No more than an hour ago,’ Perkus answered. ‘The door was shut. Someone must have come in and taken him!’

  A chill crept through Phyllis’s veins, as she realised that her hunch had been right. This was what she thought had been stolen—Jaunty Jasper himself.

  She resolved to move quickly. Now she knew that Sturdy had taken Jasper, she figured that Sturdy wouldn’t still be here in the theatre. He would have scarpered. Feeling relieved at this, Phyllis ducked through the shadows, along the corridor, half-creeping, half-running, to the far end.

  Sturdy’s dressing room door was ajar. Slowly she pushed it further open and peeked around it. Sturdy wasn’t there. She ducked inside, carefully closed the door behind her, and flicked on the light switch.

  Sturdy had completely vacated the room, it seemed. His coat wasn’t on the coat stand, his crocodile-skin bag wasn’t anywhere to be seen, and the dressing table had been cleared of his books and stage makeup. Phyllis leant her broom against the wall and got to work, to set herself up so she could begin her search.

  First thing: organise the escape plan. She went to the dressing table and, quietly, she pulled out the chair from under the table and put it against the wall. Then she dragged the dressing table further out from the wall, towards the centre of the room. With that arranged, she went to the tall mirror on wheels and angled that differently, so that it was approximately at a forty-five degree angle to the dressing table mirror.

  She stood in the centre of the room, eyeing those two mirrors and checking the third mirror fixed to the back of the door. Hopeful that the effect would work if she needed to get out quickly, she started searching.

  She knew she wouldn’t find Jasper here; what she wanted to find was a clue. She wanted to find out why Sturdy had stolen the dummy. Phyllis felt that there was more than just jealousy behind all of this . . .

  Sturdy had left nothing lying around on the floor—no scraps of paper, no rubbish. The hat and coat stand looked like a stark wooden skeleton over by the door. The top of the dressing table had been cleared. There was just one place she could really look: in the long, narrow drawer of the dressing table.

  This she opened, slowly, making sure it didn’t squeak or scrape.

  The only thing in the drawer was a pencil—a heavy, red pencil. I bet that’s what he used to scratch out Jasper’s name on Perkus’s door, Phyllis thought.

  She half-closed the drawer, but stopped. Something caught her eye. In the wooden top of the dressing table, right in front of the mirror, there were shallow indentations. Phyllis squinted as she inspected the surface. She moved her head to the side, trying to see what the indentations were. She stepped to the right, so that she could see, at an angle, the way the light spilled down onto them.

  And her eyes lit up. The indentations were handwriting!

  The wood appeared soft where something—perhaps the nib of a pen, or the point of a pencil—had gouged down into it. He wrote something, the conjuror thought. He put some paper on this table, and he wrote . . . and he pressed heavily enough to bruise the wood.

  She knelt and tried to read what the indentations said. But she couldn’t make them out: the wood was too dark. They seemed like a series of scratchings and loopings and etchings.

  Suddenly she remembered something she’d once done on a school excursion to a medieval cathedral. She took out her Transiting journal from her coat and opened it, folding back the covers, separating a single page and laying the page flat on the wooden surface of the table, over the indentations. Then she took the thick red pencil from the drawer. Making sure she kept an even pressure, she started rubbing the tip of the pencil across the paper.

  Slowly, as she rubbed down the length of the page, the paper filled with red. Amid all the red, white patterns began to appear: the words she wanted to read.

  She finished rubbing the words into the paper and held the journal towards the light. Barely breathing, she read the words:

  to wreak Great Whimpering

  obliterate Mantle

  come to my Time! come for

  your magic, Myrddin!

  Phyllis felt dizzy as the words seeped into her mind. It was as if all the dread that she had ever felt in her entire life had, at that very moment, been multiplied and heaped up and crammed into her brain. She was all a-dread and quivering.

  He knows! Sturdy knows that Perkus is Myrddin! He wants to get him! He—

  All at once, the almighty dread was crashed into by something else: voices, coming along the corridor, getting closer!

  ‘I bet eet ees Sturdy,’ the stage manager rasped. ‘I never trusted zat vent. Always shifty and skerlking!’

  ‘Why?’ came Perkus’s voice. ‘Why take him?’

  ‘Let’s see what ’e ’as got to say fer ’imself!’

  Phyllis spun around to face the closed door. She spied her reflection in the mirror on the back of it, and spied that reflection reflected back in the tall mirror on wheels, which in turn bounced back another image of her from the dressing table mirror. She gulped and hoped she’d got the angles right—she wouldn’t know for sure until the door was opened.

  She darted to the wall, snatched up the broom and leant it against the door. Then she darted back to the left-hand side of the dressing room.

  The voices were right outside the door. ‘Erfter you, Monsieur Perkus.’

  Phyllis saw the doorknob turning; she heard the scrape of the metal, and then the squeak of the door’s hinges as it opened swiftly.

  Just as she wanted, the broom fell back as the door pushed it. It crashed to the floor with a loud BANG.

  ‘What ze deuce?’ came the stage manager’s voice. He and Perkus stopped abruptly at the doorway, Perkus in front and the stage manager, clenching his cigar stub in his teeth, just behind him.

  The bang of the broom hitting the floor gave Phyllis a few seconds of distraction—the suddenness of the crashing had made the two men start. They looked into the dressing room, their nerves on edge, and saw Phyllis.

  But they didn’t see her.

  They saw an image of her. She’d angled the tall mirror on wheels so that it was the first thing they saw, and in this mirror they observed Phyllis’s reflection, being bounced across the room from the angled mirror on the back of the door, into the dressing table mirror and then into this tall mirror. It appeared that Phyllis was standing to the right of the doorway.

  But she was over to the left.

  ‘Ah-HA! Maybe zis is our thief!’ exclaimed the stage manager, barging past Perkus and bounding into the room, making for what he thought was Phyllis, standing to the right. Perkus rushed in, hot on his heels.

  One second was all Phyllis needed. With the two men advancing towards the mirror, she ducked behind them, pulled down the coat stand after her, and raced out of the doorway.

  BANG! The coat stand crashed even more loudly than the broom had.

  The men spun round, shocked by the noise and confused by the sudden disappearance of the boy in the cap.

  ‘Where is he?’ gasped Perkus.

  ‘In ze corridor!’ shouted the stage manager, hearing Phyllis’s footsteps retreating. ‘Hurry!’

  He turned and shot through the doorway, hissing over his shoulder, ‘’E ees going to ze stairs, up to ze stage! Follow moi!’

  But Hercule S. Perkus stayed where he was, staring at the empty dressing room, his sho
ulders slumping. ‘More than a dummy,’ he muttered hoarsely to himself.

  The stage manager took off down the corridor. Ahead he could see the boy rushing up the spiral staircase. ‘Sterp, you leettle thief!’ he hollered, his voice echoing.

  Phyllis bounded up the metal stairs, her footsteps clanging loudly. She reached the top, turned and flew across the empty stage.

  The stage manager, who was bigger and heavier, sweated as he climbed the stairs. Puffing and gasping, he got to the top and paused for a moment, peering across the dim stage.

  ‘I see you! Sterp! Sterp now!’

  Phyllis reached the other side of the stage. Cursing, he began after her, then he spied a small lead weight on the floor. It was the sort used as ballast for the canvas scenery, the shape of a hockey puck. He picked up the weight, took aim and pitched it, discus-like, across the stage.

  Phyllis was by the tall, narrow black partition when the puck-shaped weight hit her full against her knee. She let out a shriek of pain.

  ‘Berlls-eye!’ shouted the stage manager. He started coming for her again.

  She clamped her hand to her knee—the pain was sharp, shattering. She felt it come in waves of intense red. But she had to keep going.

  She hobbled around the black partition and, the pain washing over her, struggled as fast as she could up the stairs behind it. She could hear the stage manager lumbering across the stage.

  Tears of pain streamed from her eyes as she came to the top of the stairs. She fell out into the passageway, then half-stumbled, half-ran into the landing, past the box balcony doors.

  Ahead was the white marble staircase. She plunged her hand into a pocket and found her red spangly ball. Clutching it, she hobbled for the stairs, breathing heavily, her cheeks stained with hot tears.

  The stage manager came crashing out onto the landing. He was catching up.

  Phyllis scrunched her eyes and peered down, trying to find the TimePocket on the white stairs. Then she groaned as she again remembered she wouldn’t be able to see it from here at the top of the stairs; she had to find it from below. Bracing herself, she struggled down the staircase.