Slowly, he walked to the hat. He picked it up. It felt damp. He examined the tag. The letters written on there in black ink read MJ
Brains looked at the cap, then at Jason. He said only one thing. “Mike.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
More than fifty relatives and friends showed up for the holiday cookout at Sam’s house. Sam gave them the run of his spacious home, but mostly everyone gathered in the huge backyard, where they socialized and enjoyed the smorgasbord of food: barbecued ribs and chicken; hot dogs, Polish sausage, and hamburgers; baked ham; spaghetti; macaroni and cheese; collard greens; green beans; black-eyed peas; potato salad; sweet-potato pie; chocolate cake; homemade ice cream; and much more—enough dishes to ensure there would be plenty of leftovers for the following week.
Thomas was a true soul-food lover, but he had not eaten anything. He was overwhelmed by the sight of all the people there, most of whom he had seen only a few times in the past several years. Like a fool, he had always allowed the restaurant to take precedence over family social affairs. Finally aware of how precious these occasions were, he worked the crowd as though he were a politician running for election, not interested in eating, deriving pleasure solely from renewing ties with old friends and family.
His enthusiasm didn’t rub off on Linda. She was solemn, almost as though they were having a family meal after someone’s funeral. She avoided Thomas in favor of the company of her relatives and friends.
He sighed. Patience. He would have to be patient and loving to the end.
He found Jason in a remote corner of the yard. Alone, Jason sat in a lawn chair, a plate of untouched food at his feet. He did not turn when Thomas approached.
Linda approached Jason, too. Her attention was riveted on their son, not on Thomas.
Thomas tapped Jason’s shoulder. “The food’s disappearing fast. And I haven’t eaten yet, either. You better clean your plate and get over there again before I do, or I guarantee there won’t be a scrap left.”
Jason remained silent. He did not look at him.
Thomas blushed. After he had neglected his son for years, what kind of response did he expect? Hey, Dad, thanks for letting me know. Wanna race to the table? Last one there’s a dirty rib tip! It was natural for the boy to be standoffish.
Linda touched Thomas’s arm and squeezed gently, as if to say “good try. “He smiled at her, but worry knotted through him. He wondered if they really would be able to draw Jason back into the circle of their family. Jason would turn fourteen this month. Many kids, eager for greater independence, started rebelling at that age. If Jason was already this far from them, Thomas was afraid to imagine how far he might drift in the future, if they did not pull him back. But pulling him back was a delicate, complex matter. If they poured on the love and affection, they might repel him. If they exercised a lighter touch, he might slip away. They had to strike the perfect balance. Linda seemed capable of doing her part, but Thomas doubted that he could fulfill his role. For him, fatherhood was almost foreign territory.
Nevertheless, he had to try.
“Since you’re not hungry, do you want to play volleyball?” Thomas said. “I see your cousins starting a game right now. I haven’t played in a while, but I’d be more than willing to play with you.”
Again, Jason did not respond.
Confused, Thomas glanced at Linda. She frowned. Stepping forward, she rested her hand on Jason’s shoulder.
“Are you okay, honey?” she said.
Jason did not speak, did not look at them.
Maybe Jason was not being stubborn. Maybe his silence had nothing to do with them at all.
Thomas walked in front of him, kneeled so they were face to face ... and flinched when he saw the look in his son’s eyes. He had seen that look before. Ten years ago, he had seen the same look in Big George’s eyes when the physician announced that, because of his stroke, he had to retire from The House of Soul. It was the look of someone who had suffered a crushing loss.
What in God’s name could have happened to Jason?
Searching for evidence that would answer the question, Thomas noticed that Jason clutched a Chicago White Sox hat in his lap. Did it belong to him? Thomas knew little about Jason’s taste in clothes, and he had no inkling of Jason’s favorite sports teams.
What a poor excuse for a father he was. Even he and Big George had shared a love for the Chicago Bears. Knuckles as white as bleached bones, Jason gripped the cap in the manner of a tense child gripping a teddy bear.
“What’s wrong, Jason?” Thomas said.
Jason’s response was almost inaudible: “Nothing.”
Linda bent beside the chair, rested her hand on Jason’s shoulder. “Whatever it is, you can tell us. Talking about it might help.”
“It won’t help,” Jason said. “Because you won’t believe me.”
What a strange thing to say. Linda glanced at Thomas. Her apparent bewilderment mirrored his own.
Thomas pointed to the baseball cap. “Is that yours?”
Jason glared at him. “Do you remember buying it for me?”
‘Well ... no.”
“Then it’s not mine.”
“Your mother could’ve bought it.”
“She could have, but she didn’t. I don’t wear hats, and she knows it. Obviously, you don’t.”
Thomas cleared his throat. Stay cool, he reminded himself. Be patient with the boy.
“Obviously, neither of you can see that I don’t feel like talking.” Jason glared at both of them. “Leave me alone. Please.”
“Son, we only want to help,” Thomas said.
“You can’t help me.” Jason shook his head firmly. “No one can help me.”
“You’re acting weird,” Linda said. “What’s going on?”
Jason dragged his hand down his face. Thomas had never seen a kid appear so wrung out. He looked like a battle-weary soldier.
“Okay,” Jason said. “You’ll probably think I’m crazy, but I’m gonna tell you. It’s gotten too serious. I don’t have anything to lose by telling you about it. You might need to know, too, because things might start happening to you, if they haven’t already.”
“What kind of things?” Thomas said. Inexplicably, he thought about the incident the other night: the strange, sensuous woman calling him in the middle of the night and showing up, like a ghost, in the backyard.
Jason leaned forward. His expression was so intense, it was hard to believe he was only thirteen. He spoke in a whisper.
“A man ... a spirit ... a thing, whatever you want to call it, has been terrorizing me and my friends for the past few days,” Jason said. ‘We call it the Stranger, because we don’t know its name, or what it is. The Stranger gave me the bike that I had always wanted. Remember, Mom?”
“Yes, I do.” Linda’s eyes were wide. “I thought it was only a coincidence.”
“No coincidence,” Jason said. “The Stranger’s done other things, too. He’s powerful, and he knows a lot about me. He says that he wants to fulfill my ‘secret wishes,’ but I don’t know why. I can’t figure out anything about him, and I’m running out of time. Today, he’s ... killed four people so far. Including Shorty.”
“Come again?” Thomas said.
“Call Shorty’s parents if you don’t believe me,” Jason said. “Someone found his body downtown, next to his bike. They’ll probably say he had a heart attack or something, because when you die there, your body in the real world seems to just shut down. No one will ever know who really ... did that to him. Except me and Brains.”
“You can’t be serious,” Thomas said. “Four people dead in a small town like this? It would be all over the news, son.”
Immediately, Thomas regretted making the statement. Jason’s jaws clenched, and he pushed himself out of the chair.
“I knew it would be a waste of time to tell you,” Jason said. “Grown-ups never believe anything kids say. You think we make up stuff like this.”
Linda flashed an a
ngry look at Thomas; then she turned to Jason. “Honey, please, tell us what happened. We’ll believe you. Tell us everything.”
“Sorry, Mom,” Jason said. “Time’s running out. Something’s gonna happen again soon. I can feel it. I need to go.”
“Where are you going?” Thomas said. “What are you going to do?”
“You wouldn’t believe me anyway,” Jason said. “All I’m telling you is, be careful, and pay attention to clocks and thunder. If the clock hands freeze and you hear thunder rumble, you’re in trouble. You better grab a gun and be ready to blow somebody away.”
Puzzled, Thomas began to ask what he meant, but Jason spun around and rushed out of the backyard, dumping his plate in a garbage can. Thomas got up to chase after him. By the time he reached the driveway, Jason was on his bike, racing down the street.
Thomas gave up running after him. What the hell was the boy talking about? His story was ridiculous. Had he always possessed such an overactive imagination?
He and Linda had a lot of work to do with Jason. Not only did they need to reel him back into their family; they had to reel him back to reality.
Shaking his head sadly, Thomas returned to the backyard.
As Jason rode his bike home, consumed with grief and guilt and tormented by questions of what he would do since the Stranger had murdered Shorty, he resolved that he was going to attempt the fall from the tree. Again.
Desperation had pushed him to make the decision. He had to learn the truth about the Stranger before the fiend harmed someone else. Falling out of the tree again was his only hope of restoring his memory and unraveling the mystery.
At home, he parked his bike in the garage. He went into the backyard and walked under the big oak.
This was where it had begun. This was where it had to end.
He jumped up, grabbed a branch, and climbed.
When he estimated that he had climbed about twenty feet, he stopped. He surveyed the ground below.
Although he had been in this same position previously, on the elm at Brains’s house, the prospect of striking the hard earth was no less frightening. His heart clutched, and his throat tightened, making it difficult to breathe.
As he did yesterday, he asked himself if he could go through with this. Did he have the courage? Was it a stupid idea? Should he try something else?
Rather than ponder those questions and risk losing his resolve, he forced himself to act. He closed his eyes, said a short prayer, and pushed away from the tree. For a moment, he teetered among the limbs, leaves brushing his face, and his feet scraping against bark ... then he abruptly pitched forward into empty space.
Falling, he squeezed his eyes shut tighter, as if he could escape into the darkness underneath his eyelids before he experienced the pain of the impact. Although the blackness beneath his eyelids was deep, when he struck the ground, the darkness into which he sank was far deeper.
Jason awoke in his bed. The curtains concealed the windows, enclosing the room in purple-black shadows. Except for distant ripples of thunder, silence governed the day.
Groggy, he blinked. He had no idea how he had got there, or where he had been minutes before. He recalled attending the cookout at Granddad’s house, but the memory was so vague, he might have been there days ago.
He turned to look at his wristwatch and winced. The side of his head ached. He touched the afflicted area. He felt a prominent bump.
As he gingerly rubbed the injury, everything came back to him.
Everything.
Not only the memory of his intentional fall out of the tree earlier that day, but everything he had been searching for. The Stranger’s identity. The details of their relationship. Every piece of information that had been erased from his mind when he plunged into the coma in March. It had all come back.
Heedless of the pain in his skull, he sat up.
His hands shook.
He had solved the mystery. At last.
His jubilation was tempered by the fact that the Stranger had murdered four people before Jason had found the courage to take his revelatory leap from the tree. Four kids killed before he had discovered the simple, obvious truth. His excitement faded.
A clash of thunder rocked the house. Jason took note of his watch. The digits were frozen at 3:21.
He rushed to a window and parted the drapes. Galleons of thunderclouds cruised the sky, and cords of electric-blue lightning sputtered like live wires across the clouds. Trees bucked, punished by the fierce wind.
Once again, he had been cast into Thunderland. He was certain that he had been brought into his room and placed in the bed by the same entity who had thrown him into this world. He was not a stranger anymore.
An acrid odor filled the air. Jason spun around.
Tendrils of black smoke curled under the bedroom door and crept into the room. Fire, he thought with alarm. The house is burning! But this wasn’t the kind of smoke that indicated flames nearby.
Dark, thick, roiling, the smoke billowed under the door and gathered in the center of the room, churning slowly—less like smoke than like a cloud, a miniature thunderhead that had fallen out of the sky.
Amid the swirling mass of vapor, a figure began to materialize. Jason had backed up against the window. He drew short, quick breaths. Amazingly, the visitor appeared to form from the smoke itself; when his body solidified, the cloud vanished.
Jason gaped at him.
Mr. Magic smiled.
“No, you are not dreaming,” Mr. Magic said. “I’m back. And this time, I’m real.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
On the night of July 19, nearly fourteen years ago, Linda Brooks gave birth to Jason Samuel Brooks. Weighing in at seven pounds, Jason emerged with a caul covering his head-a thin membrane of skin regarded in legend as a sign of paranormal ability. His family, though aware of the myth, did not believe in it. After the caul was surgically removed, his parents took him home, and he was a normal child in every respect. For a while.
For Jason’s first four years, he enjoyed an ideal upbringing: a family with sufficient financial resources; a nice house in a peaceful neighborhood; good food always served on time. Most important, closely knit parents who loved him dearly and expressed their love at virtually every opportunity. But in the winter of his fourth year, those blissful circumstances changed.
It began when his grandfather, George Brooks, was struck down by a major stroke that forced him to retire from his restaurant. Assuming the demanding management position that Big George had held, Thomas threw himself into The House of Soul. He worked long, grueling hours, weekdays and weekends, obsessed with continuing the legacy his father had begun. Linda, struggling to cope with her husband’s constant absence, imprisoned herself in her work as a writer, and, consumed by self-pity, acquired a taste for hard liquor.
Jason’s harmonious family life was shattered.
He had always been a shy child. But then, with each of his parents locked within their separate worlds and spending little time with him, his natural shyness increased dramatically.
Even before Jason’s family disintegrated, he had been an imaginative boy, easily enraptured by fanciful tales of kingdoms, dragons, princes, and magicians. Especially magicians. On his fourth birthday, a few months before his grandfather’s stroke, his parents took him to see a famous stage magician performing in Chicago. The show enthralled him, and the magician’s appearance imprinted itself on his mind. Jason was of the age when many children create imaginary playmates. It was therefore natural for that magician, who had thrilled him so, to form the basis of his imaginary friend.
He named his playmate Mr. Magic. The simple name seemed fitting. Playing with Mr. Magic quickly became a daily activity.
In fact, because Jason was habitually ignored by his mother and father, playing with Mr. Magic became his primary activity.
Nearly all children who had an imaginary friend shed those companions for real friends when they began attending school. But not Jason. Lacking the
self-confidence to form friendships with other children, he contented himself with Mr. Magic. Mr. Magic never yelled at him, hit him, broke promises, or made him suffer any of the terrible treatment he had received from his parents—treatment he believed he would get from all other people he dared to open up with. Kind, reliable, honest, funny, and loving, Mr. Magic was perfect—everything he could ever have wanted in a companion. Jason saw no reason to end their relationship and brave the hazards of reaching out to others.
Mr. Magic was real, in Jason’s mind. His powerful imagination had imbued Mr. Magic’s image with a clarity equivalent to anything in the real world. Jason could see him, hear him, touch him, and smell him as though he were an actual person. Nonetheless, he kept Mr. Magic secret from everyone. They would think he was weird. They would not understand.
No one understood.
No one except Mr. Magic.
Jason believed they would be best friends for life and that they would never outgrow each other. Then, on a day in March, as Jason descended from the oak tree during a storm, he fell and hit his head on the ground. After three days in a coma, he awoke—with no memory of Mr. Magic and the special relationship they had shared. He quickly developed the social skills and interests of a healthy thirteen-year-old boy. To him, Mr. Magic was dead and forgotten.
But Mr. Magic had his own plans.
Eyes wide, Jason moved away from the figure standing in front of him. He backed up against the bed and dropped onto the mattress.
He sat up, tried to speak. But he could neither think of anything to say nor draw the breath necessary to form words.
Watching him, Mr. Magic chuckled.
Jason’s imaginary friend, Mr. Magic, had resembled the stage magician whom he had once seen perform years ago. Tall and lean, with chiseled features and chestnut brown skin, his playmate had sported a whimsical costume: a black top hat, black tuxedo with white ruffled shirt, bow tie, flowing black cape, polished black shoes, a thin, dark cane. An almost comical outfit, really, and one that Jason had found amusing and comforting.
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