Going Dark

by Robison Wells

  “How much money did you spend on those tricks?” she asked, crossing her arms.

  “I didn’t spend anything on them.”

  “So you looked them up on the internet? Our family is going bankrupt and your answer is to learn a card trick.”

  “This wasn’t a card trick.”

  “Do you know how many things light on fire in that show? You’ve been there—of course you know. Do you think they need someone new who can light trash on fire?”

  “It’s more than trash—”

  She cut me off. “Do you know that they levitate people? You’ve seen the finale, where they make an entire tank of water, filled with a magician and a live shark, disappear? And you want me to take you to my boss—who isn’t even in charge of the magic show, so I’d need to take you to my boss’s boss’s boss—and introduce you and say, ‘Here’s my sister; she can light paper on fire.’”

  “Will you listen to me?” I said, but she talked right over me.

  “I’m going inside, and I’m going to bed so that I can get up in the morning and work a double shift tomorrow. You know, I’m supposed to be saving up for college, and I just gave all my cash to the family.”

  “What do you want me to show you?” I asked, looking around. “This isn’t a trick.”

  She began to turn and I stepped in front of her. “If you don’t care about me getting a job, then at least pay attention to me being sick,” I pleaded. “I don’t know how I’m doing this.”

  Celia scowled and started to walk, but I ran two steps past her to the trunk of a tall palm. I yanked at the loose, brown fronds at the base of the tree, pulling them free and instantly setting them ablaze. They burned in my hand, embers dropping between my fingers until the quick-burning kindling was gone.

  Celia just looked at me. “It’s a trick.”

  “It’s not a trick,” I said, throwing the remaining ash to the ground and holding up my hand. “Look, I’m not burned.”

  She shook her head, her stubborn denial finally changing to . . . I don’t know. Concern for her crazy sister?

  “We have a magic shop right there at the exit of the theater,” she said. “I’ve seen all of this stuff.”

  I could feel the anger welling up in me, and I tried to push it back down. I didn’t know what else I could do to explain to her.

  “Let’s go inside and get something to eat,” she said, reaching for me. I shook her arm away.

  “I’m a freak,” I said. “I burned down the house.”

  “What? No, you didn’t. Is that what this is about?”

  I laughed out of exasperation. “No! That’s not what this is about. It’s about the fact that I can light things on fire with my brain. That I can break things without touching them. What will it take to convince you? Come on, put something in my hand, anything, and look all around for fireworks or a lighter or whatever else I might be using to make it burn.”

  “Krezi,” she said firmly. “I think you need to lie down. Maybe go back to the doctor.”

  I could feel the energy building up inside me, and I had to prove to her what I could do. I ran to the gated pool and stuck my arm between the bars.

  Celia followed. “Krezi.”

  It came from deep in my stomach, from down in my intestines, and I felt it grow, tensing every muscle as it rose, accelerating my heart rate and choking me as it moved past my lungs. Sweat broke across my face.

  And I shoved.

  This was no trick bought in a casino gift shop. This was something more, something big.

  I felt the energy leave my hand, leave my whole body, and the pool exploded as though an elephant had dropped in from the sky. A huge, heaving wave pushed away from me, throwing the chlorinated water up and out onto the cement and lawn. When the air was clear of mist, Celia and I were both soaked and the pool was half-empty.

  There was silence. Beyond the pool, a few apartment windows lit up and faces peeked through the blinds.

  “What was that?” Celia finally asked.

  “It’s not all fire,” I said. “It’s . . . energy. I don’t really understand it. But I can make things hot, or I can make things break, or I can make loud noises, or . . . I just don’t know.”

  And suddenly I was crying, and I didn’t know what else to say except to tell Celia that I was sorry for burning down the house and ruining the family, and that it wasn’t my fault. Only it was my fault, and I didn’t know how to stop it, or what was wrong with me or why God had cursed me with this.

  Celia hugged me as I shuddered.

  “It’s okay,” she whispered. But there was fear in her voice. Because it was not okay.

  Nothing was okay.

  EIGHT

  THE LUXOR CASINO IS A giant pyramid, thirty stories tall and dominating the south end of the Vegas Strip. The outside is entirely glass, topped with a light that, from what I’ve heard, is the brightest light on Earth. I don’t think I would feel at home in the city if it weren’t there every night, a massive beacon, like a flagpole marking this as my town.

  The inside of the Luxor is amazing—totally open, all the way up to the point at the top. Hotel rooms line each of the inclined walls, so that every floor hangs out farther than the floor below it, and on every balcony you can look straight down to the casino hundreds of feet below. This requires the elevators to move at an angle, from each of the four corners of the building up to the peak. They’re not even called elevators; they’re inclinators. At least, that’s what Celia calls them.

  “You’re going to wait outside the theater,” Celia told me for the hundredth time as we stepped inside the casino. “Until the show is over and the room is empty.”

  “I know.”

  “And I can’t guarantee that you’ll even get to see the managers.” She was walking so fast I almost had to jog to stay next to her.

  “Okay.”

  “And if they don’t want to meet with you, or if I can’t get a chance to talk to them, then we’ll just do this another day. I don’t want you trying to get their attention by doing some . . . whatever it is you do.”

  “You’ve already told me all of this,” I said, wiping sweat from my neck. I’d worn my best outfit—a dress that had been in the boxes of clothes my cousins had brought to us after the fire. The dress was maybe a size too big, and it looked like something you’d wear to prom—black and shimmery—but I wanted to stand out. Not that a fifteen-year-old who didn’t know how to walk in heels was very glamorous, but hopefully I could impress them with my magic.

  Magic. Was that what it was?

  I crossed myself and kissed the gold crucifix hanging around my neck.

  Celia had taken me to the doctor earlier that day—not to our family doctor, or the hospital where we’d gone after the accident, but the free clinic. I used a fake name to check in, and we sat in the waiting room for three hours before a tired nurse called me into the back. I told him about the concussion and the fever, and that I wasn’t getting better, and I made up some other symptoms just to get the doctor to spend more time with me. When she eventually showed up, she looked in my eyes and ears, and she checked all my reflexes and nerves, and finally said that if it didn’t let up in a few days I’d need to go to the ER and get a CT scan.

  And that had been the end of it. I didn’t dare tell the doctor about what I could do. I didn’t know how she would respond. I assumed she’d lock me up and perform tests and prove that I’d burned down our house. At least for the moment, my parents could fight. But there was no insurance that would cover whatever I was.

  “I’ll show you where to wait,” Celia told me. The place smelled of stale cigarette smoke, but the air-conditioning felt good on my skin.

  It had been a while since I’d been in the hotel, and I’d forgotten how big it was—the peak of the pyramid seemed impossibly high. Everything looked like ancient Egypt—the walls were styled to look like the weathered sandstone blocks I’d seen on the History Channel, and statues of Egyptian gods stood like guards along th
e path to the casino floor and up the stairs to the theater. I stayed on the marked path on the carpet where people too young to gamble were supposed to walk, and I watched the dazzling lights of slot machines all around me. It was dim and noisy and sparkling and smelly.

  We climbed the stairs to the upper level—a platform just above the casino where the theaters were. The cigarette smoke wasn’t as bad up there.

  Celia pointed to a bench flanked on each side by obsidian-black statues—one was an Egyptian idol with a head like a hawk, and the other had the head of a dog.

  “I won’t come get you until after the show, once the theater has cleared out. And I’m only going to do it if everyone seems like they’re in a good mood.”

  I nodded, and wiped sweat from my temple with the side of my hand.

  Celia looked like she wanted to say more, but then she turned and left, greeting another theater employee and walking through the dark doors.

  I reached down to the floor and picked up an old ticket stub. I held it between my thumb and forefinger and lit it on fire, watched it burn, and then crumpled it in my hand to douse the flame.

  I ran through my plan in my head. Celia had brought a backpack full of glass bottles that we’d gathered that morning, and that was going to be my first “trick.” Stack them all up—or, better yet, have one of the bosses stack them up so they could see there was nothing fake.

  Maybe I’d tell them to choose which one I was going to break first.

  No, I wasn’t that sure of my aim yet. Better to wow them with something big and cool instead of screwing up something simple. Stack the bottles like a pyramid, and shatter them all.

  I’d show them how I could make bright light explode from my hands, how I could produce the boom of thunder out of thin air. And then I’d move on to fire. First by igniting papers and then finally by torching an entire piece of wood and holding it in my hand as it burned.

  Oh, Lord. Let this work.

  I slumped back on the bench. The crowd entered the theater one by one, and it seemed to take forever to get the doors closed and the show started. It lasted more than an hour, and I’d have to wait even longer than that for the seats to clear out and Celia to get me inside.

  I played with my powers, holding my hand down low and making a loud pop that caused everyone around me to jump. It was probably stupid. But I was bored.

  I stood up and walked to the edge of the raised platform in the center of the pyramid, and looked below. Along the far wall was a row of check-in counters, and a winding snake of tourists who seemed like they were waiting in line to get on a ride at Disneyland.

  I wandered downstairs to check out the casino floor. It was a strange mix of people—some of the prettiest girls I’d ever seen in some of the skimpiest clothes I could imagine, standing at tables next to overweight old men in Bermuda shorts and fanny packs.

  I wondered what they’d do to me if I did get a job here. All the girls in the shows were the “lovely assistants,” who were supermodel gorgeous and who wore slinky evening gowns or bikinis. And here I was. Fifteen, could barely fill out my bra, and had never been asked out on a date.

  I wasn’t ready for a Las Vegas magic act. I’d be better off in a freak show—the Girl Who Can’t Be Burned!

  What was I doing here? They weren’t going to care about me. Celia was putting her neck out for me, and that could cost her her job, which was the last thing my family needed right now. This was all a foolish dream. I wished I could tell her to call it off, but I didn’t think she’d come out for me until she’d already talked to her boss.

  I heard muffled screams, and wondered what had just happened in the theater. It had to be the tiger trick.

  I sat back down on the bench between the two Egyptian gods.

  But the screams continued—they got louder. They weren’t coming from inside the theater. I stood back up and tried to see what people were freaking out about.

  For a moment, everyone on the platform seemed as confused as I was. Some walked to the edge to look down, and others peered along the hallway toward the shopping center. I couldn’t see anyone screaming, but the noise seemed to be coming from everywhere.

  And then a tourist pointed up.

  At the top of the pyramid, someone was hanging on to one of the giant support beams. He—I thought it was a he—was moving from beam to beam with ease, while someone else stood on the highest floor, watching him.

  A pair of security guards appeared, running past me and then stopping to stare up at the man. What could they do about him? He was at the peak, thirty floors up.

  A woman asked the guards if this was part of a show, and one of them ignored the question and raised his radio to his mouth.

  Before he said anything, I heard it squawk.

  “L Three and L Four, this is dispatch. Get to the thirtieth floor and see what’s going on.”

  The man in front of me spoke. “Dispatch, this is L Eight. We have eyes on them. There are two people up there. One must be using climbing gear, and the other is just watching. He’s standing in front of the rooms on the north side.”

  A group was gathering around me as we stood and watched the tiny dot of a man pivot from one beam to the next. I couldn’t see anything happening other than his peaceful movements around the supports. He didn’t look like a criminal, but he didn’t look like a thrill seeker, either.

  “All units, this is dispatch,” the radio crackled. “Be advised: we’ve had reports of suspicious activity at the Stratosphere and the Bellagio. Get those two down from there.”

  The man moved to the next beam.

  He had a kind of grace to his movement, not like he was hanging from a harness and rope, but like he was simply playing up there—like a bug on the ceiling.

  “L Three and L Four, this is dispatch. Report.”

  “Dispatch, this is L Four,” the radio said. “The elevator isn’t working.”

  “Keep trying, L Four. All other units, get in place for Code One.”

  Code One. I could tell from the guard’s face that those words meant something important. What could it have to do with the guy at the peak of the pyramid? That was too weird—too unusual—to have some emergency code attached to it.

  One guard jogged to the entrance to the RealityFlux show and slipped inside. The other guard ran toward the second theater on the platform—an exhibit on the Titanic.

  The man at the peak started to move down one of the supports, almost like a monkey, swinging from one handhold to another. Only it didn’t look like there were any handholds up there.

  There was a flash of light, and then the sound of two cracks—barely audible over the noisy casino—but I was certain they were gunshots. I don’t know how I knew. I just did.

  The man on the beam kept swinging down, stopping every few floors. But the figure on the thirtieth floor was gone.

  A voice broke through all of the noise, bellowing across the pyramid, echoing and garbled.

  “Patrons of the Luxor Las Vegas: circumstances require that we evacuate the premises. Please leave in a quick, orderly fashion, following the exit signs. We assure you, this is only precautionary. You are not in any danger.”

  As soon as the voice stopped, the entire pyramid seemed to get brighter, emergency lights flickering on and illuminating the usually shadowy interior. A fire alarm began to blare.

  The door to the theater opened, and I waited for Celia. I’d evacuate with her. I was losing my chance at auditioning for the show because a couple of dumb pranksters were rappelling. They probably had friends down here with cameras, and this would all be on YouTube before the day was over.

  Everyone was hurrying, running out of the theater, clutching their bags and purses. I waited quietly and watched. The climber got to about the eighth floor, and then clambered off the support beam and onto a balcony. He ran to a door, pounded on it, and someone came out.

  “Krezi!” I heard Celia behind me, but I kept my eyes on the climber and his friend. I counted the numbe
r of doors from the end, so I could report it to the police in case no one else had seen it.

  “We have to get out of here,” Celia said, tugging my arm.

  But then the man was up on the edge of the balcony again, pulling the other person—a girl—with him. She was doing something—strapping herself onto him, in some kind of harness.

  And then she pointed down and a blast of light fired from her hand—her empty hand—and the floor exploded below.

  Celia stopped tugging and we both stared. That girl was like me.

  She fired again, and then the man swung back to the support beam and climbed down it as if he were on a ladder. They hit the floor of the casino, and Celia and I ran to the edge of the platform, surrounded by fleeing people as we watched the man and girl take off their harnesses and join the throng that was pressing toward the exit.

  A guard pushed through the crowd toward them, but before he got within five feet, she blasted him, knocking down a dozen people and sending the rest of the crowd running.

  The guard wasn’t getting up. Neither were the others she’d knocked down.

  Had she killed them?

  My stomach dropped. I raised my hand, suddenly wanting to fire back, but Celia grabbed me.

  “We have to get out of here,” she said, her face pale.

  “She’s . . .” I started, but didn’t finish. The platform was nearly empty now, but a mob was still crowding out the front doors. The girl began firing ahead of her, creating a path of fallen bodies. In a moment, the climbers were out of the building.

  “Come on,” Celia said, and we spun to run the other way.

  And as we turned, I was looking at the support beam just in time to see the flashes of light and fire that exploded all the way down where the man had climbed.

  We were thrown to the floor by the force of the blasts, and the next thing I knew Celia was pulling me under the bench where I’d sat before. Cement and steel were tumbling down around us.

  I screamed and clutched Celia’s hand as the heavy debris hit the bench. One of the statues—the one with the hawk’s head—fell in front of us, smashing in half, revealing its hollow interior. This was where I was going to die.