Order of the Majestic

by Matt Myklusch

  “Going all in on the sarcasm, I see.”

  “A keen observer, as well! You’ll go far.”

  “Stay with me here. This is the cool part. Check out the first three cards I dealt in each of these piles. What do we have? A jack, a king, and a two. Ten plus ten, plus another two equals twenty-two.”

  Redondo suppressed a yawn.

  “Which means, the twenty-second card in this deck, is going to be…” Joey made a show of trying to conjure up the image of a card in his mind. Really, he was thinking back to the seventh card in the pile he had dealt out at the beginning of the trick. “The twenty-second card will be…” Joey snapped his fingers. “The three of diamonds.”

  Redondo inspected his cuticles, disinterested. “Is that a fact?”

  “Don’t believe me? Watch.”

  Joey started dealing out the cards. But when the twenty-second card turned over, it was not the three of diamonds. Redondo drew in a sharp breath at the sight of the card that had taken its place. It was solid black and bore the image of a single hand, drawn in a white dotted line. The fingers on the hand were bent in a clawlike grabbing motion. “Huh?” The strange card’s appearance took Joey by surprise. He didn’t understand. This trick always worked. It couldn’t not work; it was a mathematical certainty. The seventh card he dealt back at the beginning of the trick should have been there. Instead he got this… What was this? The grabbing-hand image looked sinister, the kind of symbol an evil army might have stitched on its flag. Joey didn’t know what it was supposed to be, but it clearly meant something to Redondo. The old man cautiously picked the card up and turned it over. One word was written on the other side:

  Soon.

  Redondo dropped the card as if it were hot to the touch. He looked up at Joey with fear in his eyes. “Get out of here.”

  Joey picked up the card, stunned. “What…? What just happened? Did I do that? Was that me?”

  “Leave now.”

  “Wait a minute. You’ve got to tell me what this is. Did I just do real magic?”

  Redondo pounded the table with his fist. “I SAID NOW!”

  There was a loud crack, and a disorienting sensation stole through Joey’s body. He thought he might fall over, but he spun around, stabilizing himself. Once he had restored his lost balance, he tried to get a fix on Redondo, but all he saw were the plain white walls of Mr. Gray’s testing room.

  “What the…?” Joey did a double take. “No!”

  Joey was right back where he started, which was the last place he wanted to be. “What’d I do?” he asked, hoping Redondo could still hear him. Something told Joey not to hold his breath waiting for an answer.

  The timer Mr. Gray had set earlier went off. Joey jerked as if he’d been jolted with electricity. He settled his nerves and patted his clothes and hair. They were bone-dry. The magic tricks were all arranged neatly on the desk, just as he had left them. He looked inside the case. The golden string was back in place, fully restored, key and all. “I don’t believe this.”

  The video camera stared down from its perch near the ceiling. He looked up at it, wondering what the tape would show. For the second time that day Joey worried that the whole experience was the result of an overactive imagination. Then he realized he was still holding the creepy black card he had pulled from Redondo’s deck.

  Mr. Gray opened the door and poked his head inside. “Time’s up! How’d you do?”

  “Honestly?” Joey looked down at the strange card in his hand, wondering what it meant. “I have no idea.”

  4 Strangers in the Night

  “What’s in the case?” Joey’s father asked as they walked through the pristine waiting room to the elevator. All of the kids in plastic suits were off taking their tests, but Mrs. White was still there, giving Joey the evil eye.

  “It’s a magic set,” Joey said, giving the lid a pat, ignoring her.

  “A magic set?” Joey’s father bunched up his lips. “Why do you have a magic set?”

  “They let me keep it after I finished my test.”

  Joey’s father tilted his head to the side, clearly confused.

  “Wasn’t that nice of them, Dad?”

  “Uh… yeah. Very nice. Can I take a look?”

  Joey passed his father the magic set and hit the call button for the elevator.

  “This is a Mystery Box,” his father said, looking over the black trunk case, utterly astonished. “I don’t believe this… Redondo’s Mystery Box. I had one of these when I was a kid!”

  “Get out of here,” Joey said, genuinely surprised. “Really?”

  “Really,” his father said, looking at the magic set like a long-lost dog that had unexpectedly found its way home. “It’s in amazing condition,” he added, turning the Mystery Box over in his hands, keenly inspecting every surface. “You could probably get a lot of money for this thing. Not that you should sell it.”

  “I’m not selling it,” Joey said instantly.

  “I wouldn’t let you,” his father replied. “What were they doing with this?”

  Joey didn’t answer right away. “It’s complicated.” The elevator doors opened. “I’ll tell you on the way down.”

  But once they got in the elevator, Joey was the one asking the questions—about Redondo. He wanted his father to tell him everything. His father obliged, but there wasn’t much to tell beyond the fact that Redondo used to be famous. “Real famous, not Internet famous,” his father stressed. It made Joey’s father so mad that people could become famous because of things like reality TV shows, having a massive social media following, or by posting videos of themselves playing video games online.

  “How come I never heard of him?” Joey asked.

  Joey’s father gave a shrug. “I guess his fifteen minutes were up. There aren’t really any big magicians left, are there? You kids all have your phones and tablets these days. You can find out how everyone’s tricks are done online. There’s no mystery anymore. Not unless you count this.” Joey’s father handed him back the Mystery Box, still waiting for Joey to explain its presence.

  By the time they made it out the front door of the building, Joey had managed to describe the strangest day of his life in a way that his father could understand, but he had to leave a lot out, as he was having trouble with it himself. Mostly, Joey talked about Mr. Gray and the Department of Alternative Testing. His father found it all very interesting, not to mention terribly confusing.

  The first thing Joey did when he got outside was look across the street. The Majestic Theatre wasn’t there. In its place was a vacant lot with a restaurant on one side and a hotel on the other. An aged plywood fence, painted blue and papered with advertisements, sealed off the sizable space in between. The ads were for movies that had come out last summer and concerts with show dates well in the past. Joey wondered why the theater still stood in that strange dark world he had visited but was long gone from here. Had he traveled back in time? That didn’t seem right. And what were those shadow things that had come after him? What had Redondo meant when he’d said they weren’t really there? Where were they? Where was Redondo, for that matter?

  “So, they used this magic set to measure what, exactly? Your ability to think creatively?”

  Joey snapped back to reality. “What? Oh… right. Yeah, I think that was the idea.”

  “And that takes the place of the PMAP?” his father asked. “How do they grade a test like that?”

  “I asked the same thing. Mr. Gray told me not to worry about it. He said he was going to watch the video of me doing the tricks and send his job recommendation to the people at Exemplar Academy tomorrow.” Joey gave a disinterested shrug. “It’s all good. I’m sure he knows what he’s doing.”

  “You’re not worried anymore?”

  Joey shook his head. “Not about that.” He held the magic case tight in a viselike grip. He was ecstatic that Mr. Gray had offered to let him keep it. He couldn’t have known what it was he was giving away.

  “I’m gla
d you’re feeling better about all this. I just hope the folks at Exemplar Academy are on board with this Mr. Gray’s methods.”

  “Me too,” Joey lied. He didn’t really care if they were or not. It was hard to be concerned about things like that after his encounter with Redondo. The world was suddenly bigger and full of more possibility than it had been when he’d gotten out of bed that morning. Magic is real, Joey told himself again. He was struggling with the revelation and what it all meant.

  The Earth Day marchers were still out in full force, so Joey and his father took the subway back to Penn Station. Later, as they boarded the PATH train to Hoboken, Joey’s father tapped him on the shoulder. “I have another question for you.”

  “Dad, no more quizzes. Please.”

  “Not that kind of question. I want to know why you’re wearing only one shoe.”

  Joey grimaced. “I was hoping you wouldn’t notice that.”

  His father looked around the train platform, trying to spot the missing shoe. “Did you walk this whole way with just your sock? On New York streets? That’s disgusting.”

  “Don’t be such a germophobe,” Joey said, trying to downplay the oddness of the situation.

  “I’m not a germophobe. This city is filthy. What happened to your other shoe?”

  Joey bit his lip. He wanted to tell his father everything. In fact, he was dying to tell him, but how could he do that? The story was too wild to share with anyone. Joey’s father liked magic, but he didn’t believe in it. Joey could hardly believe it himself, and he had seen it up close. His father couldn’t handle the truth.

  “You’re going to laugh, but I actually forgot to put both shoes on before we left the apartment this morning. Funny, right?”

  His father stared at him, waiting for the punch line. “You forgot your shoe?”

  “I know, it’s ridiculous.”

  “You forgot your shoe.”

  “I was stressed out, okay? All these tests… It’s a lot of pressure.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything after we got outside?”

  “Honestly, I didn’t even notice until we got to the city.”

  “Didn’t notice?” His father’s eyes bulged. “How could you not notice something like that?”

  Joey turned up his palms. “I told you I wasn’t a genius. You didn’t notice, either.”

  His father touched a hand to his forehead and let out a weary sigh. “Do me a favor. Don’t say anything to your mother about this.”

  “Don’t worry.”

  Joey’s father grunted. “I worry. Believe me, I worry.”

  * * *

  That night Joey couldn’t sleep. Rain pounded hard against his bedroom window as he sat in bed, scrolling through search results on his phone, determined to learn everything he could about Redondo the Magnificent. He didn’t have to look very hard. Joey’s father was right. Once upon a time, Redondo had been kind of a big deal. Twenty years ago he’d been touted as the next Houdini. He had toured the world, hosted specials on television, and of course, launched his own successful business—a line of novelty magic tricks bearing his name. According to one article Joey read, Redondo’s Mystery Box had been the must-have toy of the 1984 Christmas season. Children couldn’t get enough of them, or him. He was that popular. Critics had hailed Redondo as a master of illusion, going so far as to call seeing him in person a “profound, life-changing experience.” So what happened to this guy? Joey wondered. Why’d he stop performing? The answer was a few clicks away. Redondo’s glowing reviews and meteoric rise to fame came to an end after a disastrous performance at the Majestic Theatre in New York.

  Joey clicked on old news links with headlines such as LANDMARK MAJESTIC THEATRE DESTROYED IN FIRE and FRIGHTFUL BLAZE TERRORIZES BROADWAY. Apparently, the theater had burned down as a result of an accident during Redondo’s grand finale. After that there was nothing. The Majestic Theatre had gone up in smoke twenty years ago, and Redondo’s career had gone with it. Joey kept digging, but he couldn’t get the full story on what had happened at the theater that night. A headline that read CHILD MISSING AFTER THEATER FIRE caught his eye, but the link went to a dead URL.

  The closest Joey got to an answer was a scanned image of an old tabloid newspaper.

  DISAPPEARING ACT!

  “REDONDO THE MAGNIFICENT” IGNORES SUMMONS, WARRANT ISSUED.

  Joey zoomed in on the article and read as much as he could. A twelve-year-old boy named Grayson Manchester had yet to be found a week after the fire. Joey looked a little while longer, but he wasn’t able to find out what happened to him. Just the odd fact that the Majestic Theatre lot—a piece of real estate valued in the millions—was still empty twenty years later. It was a detail Joey already knew, having seen the vacant lot himself, but it was only part of the story. Why had no one else ever tried to build on that spot? Joey wondered if the theater might still be there in some strange, mystical way. After all, if magic was involved, anything was possible. The theater could have been invisible from the outside, but Joey dismissed that idea as quickly as it came to him. Not because it was too “out there,” but because it wasn’t “out there” enough. He had gone somewhere that morning; he was sure of it. Some kind of other dimension, or reality… someplace cold and dark. Where had he been that he was able to stand in the ruins of a theater that had burned down long before he was born? Was it some kind of ghost world? Was that how Redondo knew Houdini, a man who, according to Joey’s online research, died in 1926?

  Joey stayed up late into the night, hunched over his phone, googling in vain. He kept at it until his eyes drooped and his vision blurred, but his search seemed to turn up more questions than answers. Outside, a howling wind added its voice to the rain. Joey was tired. His brain was mush. He was about to give up and go to sleep when lightning flashed, flooding the room with flickering light. The momentary strobe effect revealed a man in a top hat sitting at his desk.

  Joey flinched. He rubbed his eyes and squinted in the darkness, trying to focus on the figure at the desk. “Redondo?” he asked hopefully.

  There was a brief silence, then, “No,” an unknown voice replied. “Not Redondo.”

  The man’s eyes lit up with an eerie glow, and Joey’s heart lurched. His neck and shoulders tightened and he screamed, but a chorus of thunder followed the lightning just in time to drown out the sound. “Shhhh,” the man whispered after the moment had passed. He sat in the darkest corner of the room, where he wasn’t much more than a silhouette. “No need to raise your voice, Joey. I can hear you just fine.” The stranger had a British accent, soft, sophisticated, menacing. He sounded like a Bond villain.

  His hand shaking, Joey turned his phone on the man, shining its weak light in his direction, trying to get a better look at him. The intruder wore a black suit with a black overcoat and top hat. A long green scarf was wrapped high around his neck, covering the lower half of his face like a mask. He made no move against Joey. He just sat there at the desk, staring. The man’s calm, reserved demeanor inspired the opposite emotion in Joey. For him the mood was tense and threatening despite the quiet. Joey cleared his throat. “Am I dreaming?” he asked in a fragile voice. “Please tell me I’m dreaming.” He was breathing very fast.

  “Heh.” The man chuckled in his seat. “I thought you might say something like that.” He tugged down gently on the scarf as he spoke, but not enough for Joey to see his face. “If you don’t want to believe your own eyes, that’s fine. Most people don’t. When I’m gone, you can tell yourself this was nothing but a dream, but I’m here, Joey. Not like those friends of mine you met outside the theater today. I’m here in the flesh.”

  Joey scooted back in bed, pulling the blankets up to his chin. “You’re with them.” A cold feeling churned in the pit of his stomach. The shadows had followed him home. “What do you want?”

  “From you? Nothing. Redondo on the other hand… He has something that belongs to me. You’re going to help me get it back.”

  Joey clutched his blanke
ts. “Who are you?” he squeaked. He was so scared he could barely get the words out.

  “I’m your benefactor,” the man said coolly.

  Joey backed up all the way to the wall. He felt as if his intestines were tied up in knots. “What does that mean?”

  “You know the answer to that, don’t you? A bright boy like yourself? It means I make things possible. You didn’t see me today, but I was right there with you. Even gave you my card.”

  The man picked up the creepy playing card that Joey had produced that morning. Joey had left the card on top of the magic set, which was also there on the desk. The man in the top hat and scarf moved the card across his hand, flipping it from pinky to pointer, then snapped his fingers. Just like that, the card was gone. The man stood up, patting the breast pocket of his coat. Joey felt something inside the pocket of the T-shirt he was wearing. The card was there now. He took it out and stared at the strange image printed on its face.

  “The Invisible Hand, at your service.” The man took a bow. “You never see us coming.”

  Joey remembered the look on Redondo’s face when he saw the card. Like he’d seen a ghost. At the moment Joey felt the same way. “What are you talking about? What is this?”

  “I helped you.” The man threw Joey a wink. “No need to thank me.”

  “Right.” Joey grimaced. He didn’t need to be told that. He would thank the man to leave, but that was about it. There was a darkness about him that chilled Joey to the marrow. He was tall and thin like a skeleton with long, spindly arms and legs. As for his face… Joey couldn’t see any of it. His top hat cast a shadow over his eyes, and the scarf covered up the rest. He looked like the kind of guy who went on picnics in the graveyard, and that wasn’t even the scariest thing about him. He knew Joey’s name, where he lived, and apparently, had the power to drop in anytime he felt like it. Joey wasn’t sure he’d ever feel safe in his room again. How could he, with this guy out there? Who was he? And his “friends” outside Redondo’s theater… the shadows… What did they want with him?