Lucas Mackenzie and the London Midnight Ghost Show

by Steven Bryant

  “What was that?” Lucas said as the papers fluttered to earth like large white moths.

  Yorick pivoted wildly from side to side in search for clues.

  As if in answer, a clickety-clack sound, like a novelty shop tumbling-block toy, announced the arrival of one of the McClatter boys, wearing a baseball glove and a cap. The gangly skeleton scooped up his ball, turned, and hurled it back in the opposite direction. He gave a little nod of his baseball cap as he returned to the game.

  The McClatter boys, as Lucas and his pals observed, were happily embroiled in a baseball game with a team of Forest Lawn locals. The flat grave markers that tiled Forest Lawn made lovely bases. The boys themselves, according to legend, had once been six athletic brothers, all part of the same professional farm team. Their stars had been rising until the afternoon that they sought shelter from a sudden thunderstorm beneath a tree near third base. Eyewitnesses said that the bolt of lightning that hit that tree lit them all up like x-ray photographs.

  “Sacré bleu!” Yorick said. “Graveyards are supposed to be places of peace and quiet.”

  Oliver scanned the sky, a concerned look across his huge brow.

  “I daresay I’d feel better if I could see the stars,” Oliver said. “This haze makes it hard to keep an eye out.”

  “For what?” said Lucas.

  “Mon Dieu,” said Yorick. “For flying saucers. Little green men. Space aliens. Our esteemed leading man trembles in fear of invasion from outer space. His fear of Martians has been growing ever since Orson Welles first broadcast ‘War of the Worlds’ on the radio in ’38.”

  “It pays to be vigilant,” Oliver said. “That’s all I’m saying.”

  Yorick shook with laughter, and his beret nearly slipped off. “Ah, mon ami, what are we to do with you?”

  Yorick had been “French” for all of three shows, the lingo easily recalled from the days he lived in Paris, back in 1903. It impressed Lucas that Yorick’s fondness for foreign travel and expressions grew from his one-time occupation as a cruise ship mind reader. Although his mind-reading talent was limited to naming playing cards or any word from a book that didn’t exceed eight letters, he had been a natural entertainer and a favorite among the first-class passengers. Unfortunately, his career ended abruptly on a voyage from New York to Liverpool aboard a British ship called the Lusitania. Those lucky enough to have escaped the explosions wound up as the main course on that day’s shark buffet.

  Oliver dismissed the laughter. “Criticize if you wish,” he said, “but there were photographs in LIFE magazine. From Texas. There were lights. Lights over Lubbock.”

  “Cluck, cluck, cluck,” said Lucas, happy for the opportunity to mock his friend’s rare instance of cowardice. He tucked his hands under his armpits and wiggled his elbows to simulate flapping wings.

  “Oh, ho!” Oliver said. “I am wounded to the quick, Master Lucas. You dare suggest that I am the coward of this unholy trio? And just why is it that you are hobnobbing with an underpaid actor and a talking hot air balloon? When this entire evening is lush with romantic promise? Just where is your girlfriend?”

  “I don’t have a girlfriend. I’m just ten.” Privately Lucas bemoaned, as always, being only ten when Columbine was fifteen. How long had he been ten, anyway? Wasn’t he almost due for a birthday? Hadn’t they celebrated it in April last year?

  That wasn’t his real birthday, of course, as that intelligence was lost in the mists of his unremembered past, but the crew celebrated the occasion every year nonetheless. It was a nuisance that, whenever Lucas tried to recall his former life, his mind would become all fuzz and fog, and he could recall neither where nor when he had lived. In America during the Great Depression? In Europe during the Black Plague? In ancient Egypt during the reigns of the pharaohs?

  Even worse, the harder he tried to remember, the less he remembered to try. Instead his focus would shift to some other concern, some misfortune with the communication network perhaps, or some mooning over Columbine’s face, and then weeks or months might pass before it would even occur to him to try, once more, to remember. And the cycle of forgetting would begin again.

  Yorick began twirling in space like a basketball balanced on the finger of a Harlem Globetrotter.

  “I know where she is,” he said. “I’ll tell you for a quarter.”

  “I don’t want to know,” said Lucas. “And if you keep up that spinning you’re going to be sick. So where is she, if you’re so smart?”

  “Okay, I’ll squeal, since you’re begging to know. She’s down by the pond. Reading. Alone.”

  Lucas didn’t know what to do with this information.

  “You should take her some flowers,” said Oliver. “Girls like flowers.”

  “I don’t have any flowers.”

  “Easily remedied,” Oliver said. He stepped off the path and climbed up the hill to where a resident was standing near his grave, awaiting any passersby. Oliver conducted a brief chat with the fellow and returned with a bouquet of marigolds.

  “Nice chap. Seems he was a song and dance man back in the early days of the talkies. Specialized in romantic comedies. Not terribly famous, but delighted to contribute these blossoms to the cause. He vows they were fresh as of this morning.”

  Lucas implored Oliver and Yorick to accompany him to the encounter, but the two declined, Oliver explaining that “icky love scenes” in the movies always made him nervous. The pair vanished down the path, leaving the boy and his flowers to face the mission alone.

  Tall pine trees circumscribed the Heron Fountain and Duck Pond. There was a white statue of a nude girl reclining on a rock in the water. The fountain and pond lay still at this late hour, except for phantom swans that drifted in romantic pairs across the black surface of the water.

  From the top of a hill overlooking this idyllic scene, Lucas spied Columbine near the water’s edge. As Yorick had specified, she was sitting on a small blanket spread on the grass, absorbed in a book. She wore green plaid Bermuda shorts, and her long thin legs were crossed.

  The girl’s beauty was only slightly more intimidating to Lucas than her history. When Columbine had first lived as a girl of fifteen, she never lost at “Who’s got the pebble?” The game came easy to a girl who could read minds or see the future, and she took delight in casting bones and “telling the fortunes” of her peers. While this would have constituted wholesome pajama party entertainment in 1959, Columbine had first lived in 1692, in Salem, Massachusetts. A girl jealous of Columbine’s beauty and popularity had reported her “powers” to the local authorities, which led to a mean-spirited trial and to a watery resolution. Just before the dunking that might have exonerated her of witchcraft, she pointed a slender finger at her accusers and predicted, with unerring accuracy, their own horrible demises.

  Lucas clutched his marigolds and wondered how best to approach her. He couldn’t just walk straight down to her, offer her flowers, and explain that he was doing so on a dare from Oliver and Yorick. How did these things work?

  A snapped twig behind him startled him from his thoughts. Lucas turned to face the last person he hoped to see at this time and place—Eddie, the Lighting Guy. Eddie had a big stupid grin on his face.

  “Hey, Squirt, what’s shakin’?”

  “Uh, nothing, Eddie. Where have you been?”

  “Oh, I just stopped by the Mausoleum for a little tete-a-tete with Jean Harlow. She gets peeved with me if I don’t pay her a visit whenever we’re in the park.”

  As Lucas knew from previous visits, Miss Harlow had starred in six films with Clark Gable before an early death at twenty-six. “Oh, was she in this year?” he said.

  “Nah. She was at some private shindig Humphrey Bogart is throwing. Tourists aren’t allowed. I’m sure she would have wangled me an invite if she knew we were in town. We’re like that.” Eddie locked his little fingers.

  “Sure, Eddie.”

  “Hey, Squirt, what’s that you’re hiding
behind your back? Flowers? What would you be doing with flowers?”

  Eddie scanned the horizon and quickly homed in on the object of Lucas’s intentions.

  “You wouldn’t be bringing flowers to my sweetie, would you, Squirt? She might get the impression you were getting all mushy. Here, let me do that for you.”

  With a swift grab, Eddie snagged the flowers out of Lucas’s grasp.

  “Hey! Give those back!”

  “Cool down, Squirt. Don’t worry about it. I’ll deliver them personally. I’ll be sure to tell her you helped pick them out.”

  Being older and rather brawny, Eddie was much bigger than Lucas. Eddie was a former Louisiana garage mechanic who liked fast cars. He had been only nineteen the year he tried to see how fast he could drive across the country in a 1934 Ford roadster he had repaired. His driving wasn’t particularly faulty, but he should have paid more attention to that brake job before crossing the San Bernardino Mountains. As Lucas had heard it, Eddie’s scream had echoed across three valleys.

  Lucas was no match for Eddie in a tussle. Still, they were his flowers, not Eddie’s. “Give them back,” he demanded. “Now!”

  “Oh, sure, Squirt. Or else what? You’ll go find your buddies and try to take them from me?”

  Lucas had had enough. He flew at Eddie like a football linebacker tackling a star runner. His head hit Eddie squarely in the solar plexus.

  Knocked backward, Eddie closed his arms about Lucas for balance.

  Tumbling forward, Lucas, in turn, locked his arms around Eddie. Eddie held tight to the flowers as over they went. They became an interlocking jumble of arms and legs and marigolds, rolling like an angry beach ball toward the pond and picking up speed. Incredibly, the last thing that Lucas heard before the splash was a loud whinny.

  Seconds later the two unwitting bathers—their eyes rising barely above the ripples—looked on in wonder as the girl at water’s edge turned to a large beautiful horse with a cowboy astride it. The cowboy doffed his ten-gallon hat to her.

  “Golly!” Columbine said. “Tom Mix!”

  “Why, yes, ma’am. I’m flattered that a young lady like you would recognize me,” the movie-star cowboy said.

  “Oh, I’d recognize you anywhere. I loved you in Destry Rides Again.”

  “Why, thank you. I hope you also took a hankerin’ to Outlaws of Red River and Hidden Gold. I did 336 films in all, and never a one with camera tricks or fake scenes.”

  “Don’t I know it!”

  “Might I ask what you were reading there?”

  “It’s one of the Oz books,” Columbine said. “The second one, The Marvelous Land of Oz. Mr. Baum autographed it for me this evening, near his headstone in G section. He was very nice.”

  “Why, Frank is one of my best pals,” Tom Mix said. “He showed me the ropes when I arrived. He was one of the park’s first guests, shortly after it opened back in 1917. Three hundred sixty acres of the finest grazing land this side of the Pecos. I expect plenty of other famous folks will settle in here eventually.”

  “If you only knew,” said Columbine.

  “Say, I bunk in a section called Whispering Pines. Care to see my spread?”

  “Who wouldn’t?” said the leggy seer. And with a hand from Tom Mix she swung up behind him astride Tony, the Wonder Horse.

  It was this sight, as Lucas and Eddie rose from the pond like twin Creatures from the Black Lagoon, that finalized the evening for Columbine’s two would-be suitors. With spirits as damp as their underwear, Lucas and Eddie watched Columbine bouncing off through the trees and into the thin sliver of light that signaled California sunrise, her arms wrapped round another man.

  Chapter Three

  Bump in the Night

  The London Midnight Ghost Show was a smash with the teens that showed up at the Paramount Theater in Amarillo, Texas. Professor McDuff had introduced Spirit Paintings in his portion of the show, and they had played exceptionally well. The audience would shout out the names of dead celebrities, and the celebrity portraits would appear in slow-motion magic, in mystical swirls of color, on canvases that had been inspected and found to be completely blank. Hank Williams and the more recently departed Buddy Holly were the favorites among the Amarillo teens.

  Following the show at the Paramount, the cast journeyed well past the city lights to the old Lone Star Funeral Home and Mortuary. The establishment had once been a thriving way station for those moving on from the earthly to the spirit plane, but then the moneyed dying began to seek more luxurious departures in town. The old home was three stories high with gables on its upper floor, and it possessed enough unsold coffins that the cast would be able catch a few undisturbed winks come sunrise, should they desire. Dust and cobwebs lent a homey ambience. It was late April, and a brisk night wind whistled off the Texas plains.

  As usual after a show, Professor McDuff and Lucas isolated themselves in whatever room might serve as an office. By candlelight and a mechanical adding machine they tallied up the box receipts and discussed the evening’s performance. Lucas was still ecstatic over how the paintings had been received.

  “I must say it warms my heart when a new piece finds favor with the people,” said the Professor. “Even if it is merely a conjuring trick, a favorite from my years in Europe. Eddie has expressed his disenchantment that we would ‘fake it,’ to use his words, but the effect is so eerie that it looks like genuine spirit activity.”

  Lucas agreed. “I loved how they applauded when Buddy Holly’s glasses appeared. Even before his face.”

  “Yet I despair, Lucas,” said the Professor. “Look at these receipts—a mere shadow of what they amounted to only a decade ago.” He rubbed the back of his head. With his turban off, Professor McDuff was bald on top. His remaining allotments of hair floated like two little white clouds just above his ears, giving him what Lucas thought of as a distinguished look. “These young people today will soon have no interest in ghosts,” the Professor continued. “They have rock and roll now. And Sputnik. There is talk of sending a rocket to the moon. Our world will hold no interest for them.”

  But Lucas was more interested in the past than the future.

  “Tell me again about the first ghost shows,” he said. “The old ones.” Lucas loved hearing about the great midnight spook shows of the past. He could listen over and over.

  In turn it always seemed to please the Professor to revisit the tales of his best friends in the business. He secured the pile of receipts he had been working on with a paperweight, a small skull carved of ivory.

  “Oh, dear, well, of course you know it all began in Paris, with Phantasmagoria. That was in 1798. Etienne-Gaspard Robertson developed a marvelous way of projecting images of spirits onto gauze screens, using what we called a Magic Lantern in those days. Everyone came dressed in his and her best finery. I was an assistant to Robertson, as a lad. Good heavens, I’ve been at this a long while. Ought to be better, I suppose.

  “Eventually, I walked in the spirit world myself, and carried on presenting my magic show for mortal audiences. I wasn’t terribly successful until 1862, in London, when a chemistry professor named John Pepper created a marvelous illusion called Pepper’s Ghost. By using a secret pane of glass, and illuminating a hidden form, Pepper could cause a phantom image of that form to appear before the audience. It’s the same as seeing your own reflection outside a train window at night. It occurred to me that I could present real spirits on stage and those ‘in the know’ would think it was Pepper’s optical trickery. Audiences would accept it as a conjuror’s trick and credit me with being a fine magician. I staged a performance of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol that completely baffled Dr. Pepper and the critics of the day. They couldn’t fathom how I was slipping the large panes of glass in and out, because in fact I wasn’t. It’s in honor of that early performance that I use the term London in our own show.”

  “And in America?” Lucas said. “Tell me about the ghost shows over here.�
��

  “In this country, of course, things didn’t really take off until 1929, with El-Wyn’s Midnite Spook Party. Never forget his name—Elwin Charles Peck. A delightful program. He featured the Dancing Handkerchief, Spirit Slate Writing, the Floating Light Bulb, even a Talking Skull. Of course his, unlike Yorick, merely snapped its jaws once for yes and twice for no. There are times I wish that’s all Yorick would say.

  “Peck opened the doors for all the performers to follow. Soon came Greystoke, Lester Lake, Rajah Raboid—even the great Blackstone presented a spooker. Many became friends of mine through the years, wonderful fellows with names destined for show business. Who could ever forget Stihey Boscart, Fetaque Sanders, Kroger Babb, Card Mondor, Ormond McGill? But, Lucas, you seem distracted this evening. Is anything amiss?”

  Lucas looked about the candlelit office, with its dark patterned wallpaper and mahogany furniture, where funeral directors and families once conducted final transactions. He listened to the fierce wind whistling outside the window and wished he could ride it, hurtling away over the Texas landscape.

  “It’s just that, sometimes,” he said, “and especially tonight, I suppose, I wish I could do something. You can do card magic and ooze through packing cases. Yorick can suspend himself in midair and read minds, kind of. Columbine can read minds and see the future. Oliver can cut his head off and stick it back on. The Gilbert girls can ooze through packing cases and fly, and they can screw their faces up to look like old biddies. Even Eddie…well, at least Eddie is bigger than I am. How can I ever impress anyone?”

  The Professor laughed.

  “My dear, boy. What a thing. First, and this is very important. It’s the same in this world as in the world that came before. We don’t impress anyone, especially beautiful young girls, with tricks and parlor stunts. We do it by being ourselves. That is why people love one another. That is why you are one of the most popular members of our little family. And second, you have powers you have not yet realized. They will come to you when you need them and when you are ready. I daresay it will happen when you least expect it. You, I am certain, are at least a Class III Phantasmagorical Entity, possibly even a Class IV.”