Rituals

by Mary Anna Evans

  So Faye waited. Willow dried Debbie’s tears by telling her that Kevin was watching over her, and that he was happy where he was. He said they’d be together again on the other side, which drove Debbie to tears of joy. Then he let her sit down as the crowd applauded…something. But what? Willow’s talent? Kevin’s steadfast love? Debbie’s cooperativeness in providing entertainment for them all?

  Faye couldn’t say.

  Willow moved on to a man who had come to Rosebower in hope of relief after years of pain. Willow correctly guessed that the man’s pain was in his hip. Had he seen the man favor his hip as he rose? Who knew? But Willow got a big round of applause for putting his hand on the offending hip, while looking appropriately intense for a minute or two. Maybe the man’s hip felt better when he sat down, but he didn’t say so.

  Then Willow told a teenaged girl that the boy she was dating was wrong for her. The right man would cross her path in five years, he would have red hair, and he would love books. By this time, Faye was getting bored.

  As if sensing that he was losing his audience, Willow announced that he felt called to return to Debbie. As he returned to her front-row seat, he pulled a small box out of his breast pocket, ostentatiously breaking the seal close enough to his face that the microphone hanging from his ear picked up the sound of tearing paper. From the box, he produced a deck of tarot cards, apparently unused.

  He shuffled them so expertly that his hands barely moved. Faye noticed Toni sit up straighter, craning to see his every motion.

  “My wife has a gift for reading tarot. I want to know more about your future, Debbie, now that Kevin has passed over, and I think you do, too. We all do, don’t we?”

  The crowd applauded warmly and a few people expressed their empathy for Debbie vocally. “Yes! We do!”

  Willow held up the newly opened tarot deck, and the rapt crowd settled. “Let us ask the cards for guidance. Dara will tell us what they say.”

  He fanned the cards open and urged Debbie to pick a card, then a second one, and then a third. Holding her three cards in one hand, he snapped the fanned cards shut with the other, before sliding the unused cards back in his pocket. Then he handed the three chosen cards back to her, one at a time, without looking at their faces.

  “You drew them in this order. Don’t show them to anyone. Hold them over your heart while my wife does her work.” On cue, the spangled curtain at the rear of the stage parted.

  Dara took the stage. In so doing, she woke up the room. If Willow’s stage presence was a warm, steady glow, Dara’s was like a laser beam. If pressed, Faye might have been willing to say that Dara’s presence was like a thousand laser beams fanning out in all directions. She owned the stage.

  Her brilliant red curls danced. The scarlet scarf tied around her full hips glittered. The jewel-toned panels of her long flared skirt swirled as if she were dancing, though she was doing nothing more than walk. She stepped through one of the huge glass dome’s open panels and paused beside the table at its center. On cue, the globe began to spin slowly, and Dara went with it.

  She let it make one full revolution before speaking or acting. Standing relaxed and confident, Dara looked less disoriented by the movement than Faye felt. It seemed unnatural to watch a performer onstage, turning her back to the crowd and then reappearing. This was an act that wanted its audience to feel unnatural, off-balance, disoriented.

  Dara slid gracefully into the chair and laid her hands on the table where a tarot deck waited. She scattered them across the table, moving them randomly and occasionally sliding a card to the side. After laying her hand atop that chosen card for a moment, she would go back to sliding the other cards around in circles and spirals.

  Once, she paused and stared deeply into the glass bowl centered on the table. Using a slender brass rod no longer than her thumb, she disturbed the surface of the water in the bowl and studied the ripples. Then she went back to sliding cards around, choosing one and sliding it aside, then changing her mind and sliding it back.

  The room was dead silent. When Willow was performing, the audience had been attentive and interested. Maybe even fascinated. He was very good at what he did, no question about it. But Dara was better. There were no feet shuffling on the floor, no butts shifting in the seats. There was almost no motion at all. The crowd sat as if they’d been hypnotized.

  Except for Faye. Maybe. She wasn’t completely sure whether she’d been hypnotized or not. And except for the physics teacher at her side.

  Faye felt Toni move slightly, placing one hand on her arm. Looking at Amande, she saw that Toni had a hand on the girl’s arm, too.

  One tap means “Look left.”

  She looked to her left and all she saw was Willow. Willow seemed to be doing nothing but working his suit. He spent a few long minutes with a hand on his right hip, which caused the beautifully made jacket to gather behind the hand and drape gracefully. Then he shifted his weight and put the other hand on his left hip. The changes in position came slowly, so he didn’t look fidgety in the least. He looked like a male model doing a photo shoot.

  Faye shot a look at Toni. The woman’s eyes were fastened on Willow, and she seemed to be counting on her fingers.

  Then Dara said in a deep voice completely unlike the one she used when gossiping with her sweet Aunt Myrna, “Now!”

  She raked almost all the cards onto the floor, holding three flat on its surface with her right hand. One by one, she flipped the three remaining cards over.

  Willow extended a hand and Debbie looked at it, as if awakening from a trance. She handed him the cards she’d been clutching to her bosom.

  He showed them to her, one by one. “Death.”

  Debbie put her hand to her chest.

  “The Ace of Swords.”

  Debbie was shaking now. Willow put a hand on her shoulder to calm her.

  “The High Priestess.”

  Dara sat at her table, staring into space as if she hadn’t heard. She disturbed the water in her glass bowl again, and studied the patterns on its surface. Then she flipped the three cards in front of her. She did this silently, because the camera focused on the cards did her talking for her.

  There was no denying the cards on the table. Faye could see Death, a skeletal rider on a pale horse. The Ace of Swords was unmistakable, with its single blade reaching for the heavens. The High Priestess, shrouded in blue robes, stared implacably at the camera.

  Faye glanced at Toni, whose face did not show the victory of a scientist who has discovered how something mysterious was done. Toni looked frustrated.

  Dara stared at the cards in front of her without acknowledging the audience. She and the stage set continued to spin slowly, sometimes facing the audience and sometimes giving them her back. Still speaking in an odd, husky voice, Dara began to interpret the cards in front of her. “Death is not the cataclysmic card that it seems. It signifies change, rebirth, a total break from the past. For you,” and now she finally looked at Debbie, “whether you like it or not, Death has brought a new beginning.”

  “The Ace of Swords is a card of hope, but it is a hard and sharp hope. It demands focus. It cuts to the heart of a problem. It points to the future, demanding that you rise to the occasion. You have the strength of will to start again, now that the Ace of Swords has separated you from your past.”

  Faye could see Debbie’s back shaking. The poor woman had progressed from simple tears rolling down her cheeks to full-out weeping.

  “The High Priestess shows that you are your own haven. You need to retreat into yourself for a time of healing, but you need to listen for the voice that will tell you when the healing is done. When that day comes, wield the Ace of Swords. Do what you need to do to be happy again.”

  With this, the house lights went out and the dome stopped spinning with Dara facing front. Only the floodlights on Dara and the glassy dome remained…until someth
ing else appeared. The audience let out a collective gasp.

  Transparent and dimly lit images flashed around Dara, so quickly that Faye couldn’t distinguish them all. Sometimes she saw colorful orbs very like the ones that had visited her during her session with Tilda. Once or twice, she thought she saw human shapes, tiny but fully formed.

  Then the floodlights came up again, drowning out the flickering images. Dara was speaking. “Is James here?”

  A voice answered her from the back.

  Dara faced the direction of his voice, saying, “Your grandmother…or perhaps it is your mother…is aware that you have broken the truth. Go and make amends.”

  Dara looked deep into the glass bowl, then she reached to the floor and picked up a discarded tarot card without looking at it.

  “Someone here is seeking to repair a marriage.” She looked straight back into the darkened room, and two people sprang to their feet as if they had no choice in the matter.

  “Justice,” she said, holding the card to the camera. “Can you both honorably say that you have shown the other justice? If not, then do so. If you have exhausted the limits of your own justice, then the court will wield it for you. Would you rather make your peace with each other and enter the future in justice and love? Or would you rather watch a judge divide your lives? Decide.”

  And on it went. Dara called out to audience members, sometimes by name and sometimes by situation, saying “Speak up, Jennifer, and tell me why you’re here,” or “Someone here is carrying a deep guilt.” Somebody was always willing to stand up and take the medicine Dara dished out, and Dara always had a tarot card ready to sweeten that medicine.

  The Four of Pentacles proved that Jennifer was clutching at the past because of her need for security. The Nine of Wands showed the guilty person that he had behaved badly because he felt threatened, and that he shouldn’t run away from the results of his actions. Faye found herself wishing that Dara would call on her, but the flamboyant psychic never said, “Stand up, unbeliever, and let me solve all your problems for you.” So Faye stayed in her seat.

  On and on she went, and never once did Dara lose her theatrical presence. Just when Faye wondered how long the woman could do this, the floodlights dimmed again and she noticed something luminous swirling on the floor around Dara’s feet. It was more than fog. Faye could see shapes coalesce in the light, then vanish. They were reflected in the lenses of the glasses perched on Dara’s nose.

  Dara picked up one more card from the floor and laid it on the table for the camera to see.

  “This card is for us all—The Chariot. Events are rushing toward us, breaking over our heads like waves. If we are strong, we will take these things as they come. We will make each new difficulty our own and vanquish it. Only a fool lets life roll past, unheeded.”

  The stage went black, the house lights came up, and the people in the audience were left to find their own way out. Willow was gone.

  Faye looked Toni in the face and said, “Tell me what I just saw.”

  “I will. Most of it. I haven’t quite figured out the card trick yet. But we can’t talk here. Look at all these people.” She gestured at the dazed people walking slowly out of the building. “You know how much you paid to get in the door. Multiply that number by a full house attending nine shows a week. Dara and Willow are raking in some serious money. They do not want me to explain to you how they do it.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Toni’s rental house was almost as old as the homes of the Armistead sisters, but it was smaller and less sumptuously furnished. Somehow, though, its old wood floors and white plaster walls managed to give the modest house a solid and prosperous feel. Its tiny kitchen proved perfectly adequate for brewing tea and opening a box of store-bought cookies. As Faye lifted her thousandth cup of tea of the week, she wondered whether the residents of Rosebower were trying to poison her with theophylline and tannins.

  Amande could hardly wait for Toni to set down the teapot. As the retired schoolteacher leaned back comfortably in her chair, the girl demanded impatiently, “So how did they do it?”

  “I presume that you use the word ‘they’ out of politeness. Willow didn’t actually do anything.”

  Amande bristled.

  “Yes, I know that he is a very pretty man. But did he tell poor Debbie anything that you couldn’t have guessed?”

  “Um…no.”

  “Are you psychic?”

  The words flooded out. “I wish I was! Their show was just so mysterious. And exciting!”

  “You mother paid thirty dollars for the two of you to watch Willow play his guessing games. Now, I’ll grant that Dara’s part of the show may be entertaining to the tune of thirty dollars, but how many hours would you have worked to earn your fifteen-dollar ticket if your mother hadn’t been so generous? Do you get minimum wage?”

  Amande nodded.

  “Less payroll taxes?”

  She nodded again.

  “Did Willow really do anything that was worth more than two hours of your time?”

  After a pained moment, Amande said, “No.”

  “You’re a wise girl. So now let’s look at Dara’s performance.”

  This was what Faye had been waiting for. “The floating orbs and the tiny transparent people. How did she do that?”

  “Have you ever been to Disney World? Specifically, have you ever been to the Haunted Mansion?”

  Faye nodded yes and Amande shook her head, saying, “No, but I’ve seen pictures.”

  “Have you seen pictures of the dining room, where you can see through a bunch of waltzing green ghosts?”

  “I always heard those were holograms,” Faye said.

  “Did they have holograms, way back in the sixties when Disney World was built?” Amande asked.

  Toni-the-physics-teacher shook her head. “Not moving ones. And not at theme parks. The notion that the Haunted Mansion uses holograms isn’t a new one—it’s all over the Internet—but the geniuses who built the Haunted Mansion didn’t need cutting-edge technology. They used a magician’s technique that goes back to the 1600s. It’s called the Pepper’s Ghost illusion. All it takes is a pane of glass and a hidden room with controllable lights.”

  Faye closed her eyes and pictured the auditorium. “Dara was surrounded by panes of glass. Where was the hidden room? Under our seats? Or was it above the ceiling, hidden from us but in full view of the stage?”

  “Yes and yes. Very good. I’m sure that you both noticed that the mysterious images were very small. They flickered on and off, and they didn’t last long.”

  Faye and Amande nodded.

  “I think there are spaces below and above the stage. They’re not tall enough to be called ‘rooms,’ but they serve the purpose for the Pepper’s Ghost illusion, if you’re willing to settle for tiny images. The items she wants us to see are in those spaces. She’s got miniature human figures and ‘floating’ spheres, for sure. My guess is that the spheres are actually hanging from fine wires. A fog machine or two is probably enough to make those swirling colors at her feet. Those spaces above and below the audience must be fitted with lights that are set on timers synchronized with Dara’s spinning cage. When she wants you to see a person or a sphere, the lights come up.”

  “When that happens, the hidden object is reflected in the glass?”

  Toni smiled at Amande and said, “Precisely. Have you taken physics?”

  “Last year, I took high school physics. I’m taking an advanced placement course this year.”

  Toni kept smiling. “Then you know more than enough optics to understand the Pepper’s Ghost illusion. So tell me this: Why doesn’t Dara use the technique throughout the show?”

  Faye shrugged. “I have an answer, but it doesn’t have anything to do with physics, just with common sense. If magicians have been doing this Pepper’s Ghost thing for hundreds o
f years, then you’re not the only person who knows about it. Given time, anybody with eyes will eventually notice that they’re only seeing ghosts when they’re looking through a glass pane. She doesn’t want to give the audience a chance to figure it out.”

  “Bingo. You can only misdirect an observant person for so long. Dara is shrewd. She baffles the crowd, then skedaddles before they figure out her secrets.”

  “But the tarot cards.” There was a furrow between Amande’s eyebrows. “How could she have known which cards Debbie drew? Then how could she have drawn the same three cards herself? That was amazing.”

  “I’m still working on that trick, but I’m certain of one thing. Dara and Willow are not doing magic. Think about it. People do card tricks because they’re easy to handle. They’re flexible. You can palm them. You can stick them up your sleeve. But they only work for close-up magic. That’s why Dara has a camera to show people her tricks. If she could do the same thing with…say…china teapots or books or flaming torches, then that’s what she would do. Big, bulky objects would look way better onstage than a few cheap cards. Have you ever seen a book trick?”

  Amande shook her head.

  “Well, that’s why. Books are too big to stick up your sleeve. Never believe a card trick. If the performer could really work magic, why waste it on something flimsy like cards?”

  Faye had never questioned why magicians used cards. They just did. They also pulled rabbits out of hats. Why? Probably because a hat was an easy place to hide something the size of a rabbit. Accepting the status quo without question was generally the first step to being fooled.

  “But you don’t know how they’re doing the card trick?” Faye asked, hoping she was wrong.

  Toni shook her head. “No. But I can guess. First of all, Willow has to know which cards Debbie drew. Maybe he did something to force her to pick those three cards. Or they could be marked. More likely, he took a peek, maybe through sleight-of-hand or maybe with a mirror. Just because I didn’t see him do it…again…doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. After that, all he has to do is let Dara know which cards his sucker drew.”