Harry had become super anxious about the number of magicians there might be (‘Relax,’ I said, ‘you guys are a dying breed,’ while he said, ‘Magic acts are two a penny. I’m going nowhere.’ ‘Shouldn’t that be we’re going nowhere’, I reminded him, not that he took any notice) and
about the act that we were going to perform.
‘Everyone will be doing the same thing as us,’ he moaned. ‘You can bet on it.’
‘Highly unlikely if not impossible,’ I said, ‘but if that’s the case then we’ll just have to make sure we do it better. Faster and slicker. What if we do get through the auditions,’ I asked, ‘what then?’ Not much more than a week ago I wouldn’t even have contemplated this. ‘Do we come back and do the same thing in the next round?’
‘No, we have to do something completely different.’
‘You didn’t tell me that,’ I accused.
‘You didn’t ask. Besides, you’re the one who kept saying I’d never make it past the auditions.’
‘But you never believed me.’
‘I’m starting to believe it now,’ he said.
‘Don’t,’ I said. ‘Instead, ask yourself what if we do make it through?’
‘I have more ideas,’ he answered. This time I think he meant it.
‘Do they include me?’
‘They’ll have to,’ he said with a return of his trademark smirk. ‘You’re part of the act now.’
Correspondence
During the week, Troy had texted a simple question and comment (suitably encoded, but which I’ve translated here for your benefit), ‘Couldn’t you just throw the mirrors out?’
Yes, maybe that simple solution (one I'm sure you’d already thought of) would have solved the problem - if Mum and Dad had been at all likely to dispose of the things. Trouble was, they wouldn’t
have been, especially not Dad. And even if they
had been, they (the mirrors) would probably have ended up in storage in our garage, a place I couldn’t avoid forever.
If, on the other hand, the mirrors had been dumped then I might never have had done what I ended up doing. Because there had to be a reason I was seeing the images in them. Their appearance was telling me I had to do something.
On Saturday morning (the last Saturday of the holidays) the mail brought a reply from Mitchell.
I’d been chomping at the bit for this letter but now that it had landed, it seemed too soon. I wasn’t keen to open it. Either Mitchell’s reply was going to contain information that could help me or it wasn’t. And, if it didn’t, then what was I going to do? Was I going to be haunted by the mirrors forever?
I took the letter to my room, closed the door and rang Troy at the same time as I opened the envelope.
‘Just listen,’ I said as soon as Troy answered. ‘It’s from Mitchell.’
Dear Athena, (I read out loud)
Thanks for your letter. It’s good to know the old house is being well lived in again. I was surprised you wanted to write about Mum and Dad, seeing as you never actually met them, but I guess that’s what a school project encourages you to do. I remember when I was at primary school our class went out to some small township, I can’t remember now what it was called, but I do remember we were split into pairs and had to knock on doors
interviewing any old folks who happened to be at
home about their lives and times. Later on we made a school newspaper about the experience. It was fun, I remember, something a bit different.
Anyway, I’m not sure what you’re after exactly, stories, memories, photos, or what? If it’s something of the less tangible variety you’re wanting, like an oral history, you would of course have been better off talking to Dad. Trouble is, that’s not really possible. He’s not dead, I hasten to say. And he’s still all there, mentally, I’m sure of that, but a casual visitor meeting him would get quite a different impression. As for talking over the phone, it’s a ‘no go’ I’m afraid.
You see, Dad’s withdrawn into himself. He’ll answer you if you ask him something but it’s barely more than a monosyllable these days. All his energy, it seems to me, is focused on Mum who, as I’m sure you’ll be aware, passed away a good few years ago. Dad doesn’t get out much anymore. Whenever I see him he always has a photo album in front of him on the desk in his room and it’s as if he’s willing those pictures to spring into life for him.
I get the impression he’s trying to call life back into the dead past, especially where Mum is concerned. He’s never stopped missing her. More than that, he actually told me recently that he expects to hear from her any day, since she promised to be in touch from beyond the grave. I couldn’t believe it when he said that. It wasn’t something he’d ever told me before.
You’ll know as well as I do that such a thing is impossible. Deep down Dad knows it, too, I’m sure, but I suppose it’s one of those fancies that
people get, obsessions I suppose you call them.
I hope you don’t mind that I mentioned this but it worries me a lot and it explains why you can’t really talk to Dad in person. I don’t think hearing this sort of fancy would help you a great deal with a biography.
I’ll sign off now. If you let me know exactly what it is you need for you project, assuming the deadline for handing it in to your teacher hasn’t passed, I’ll do my best to help. I know when I was a student I always left everything to the last minute.
Best regards,
Mitchell Laurison
‘Well,’ said Troy. ‘That’s a dead end then isn’t it? Pardon the pun.’
‘Looks like it,’ I said.
I felt totally let down, and totally down. From here on in there didn’t seem to be anywhere else left to go. But, I kept telling myself, this simply couldn’t go on forever. It had to end sometime. But when, and for how long would I have to keep seeing the pictures in the mirrors?
‘I could come over if you like,’ Troy offered.
‘There’s nothing you can do,’ I told him.
‘There has to be solution,' said Troy.
‘Tell me what it is,’ I said.
There was silence.
‘Better go I guess,’ I said. ‘I can always hide out in Harry’s dark trunk to escape Laurie and Iris. Maybe I’ll do that, and stay there.’
‘Not a good idea,’ said Troy.
Before I ended the call I invited him to the family performance of the sub trunk illusion.
‘Sure that’ll be okay?’ Troy asked. ‘I got the
impression your Dad didn’t like me very much.’
‘That was all a mistake,’ I said. ‘It was because I was crying when you arrived. He knows it was nothing to do with you. Come round. You might as well. Apparently Dad’s invited Barry and May. Don’t mind May coming but I can’t stand Barry.’
‘I’ll see you tomorrow then,’ said Troy. ‘And who knows what we might have figured out by then. No more pictures in the mirrors today?’
‘Not so far,’ I said.
Illusions and solutions
Following Mitchell’s reply, there was nothing I felt less like doing than the performance for the family. Only the thought that Troy was going to be there made me carry on with it; that, and the offer I’d made Harry to help him. It hadn’t been a promise but he was right about one thing. It was too late to back out now. Even I understood that.
On Sunday morning I was up early. The rest of the family was still asleep. As I drifted from my room into the hall the picture of the lonely, alone Laurie materialised in the hallway mirror, then faded as I hurried past. In the kitchen mirror it was back and then it appeared in the lounge and finally in the laundry mirror. There was no-where for me to hide. Laurie was following me, sending his sad signal. I started texting Troy to tell him what was happening but stopped before I was half way through my message. What was the point? There was nothing Troy could do to get rid of the photos and he would be here soon enough to see me make an idiot of myself during the dress rehearsal.
Lauri
e was alive, Mitchell had confirmed this. I wondered if the mirror images would finish only when he was dead. Would I continue to be haunted by them until then?
Laurie, unable to speak and tell me why he was there and what he wanted.
Of course I didn’t want Laurie to be dead but I didn’t want to be pursued by him either. I’d just have to persuade Mum and Dad to get rid of the mirrors, as Troy had suggested, no matter how difficult (or impossible) that might be.
That morning, in preparation for the show, Harry and I went through the act together one more time My heart wasn’t in it. I was mechanical and dull even though I made no mistakes. The dark, constricted space in the chest had begun to freak me out. I hadn’t conquered my claustrophobia after all. Harry wasn’t happy with me (nothing new there) but at least he was putting it down to nerves.
I so, so wished Dad hadn’t invited Barry. I didn’t want to look a fool in front of him.
Troy arrived, followed by Barry and May. Dad poured B&M a glass of red wine each. Everyone settled into our old but still-comfy chairs, which Harry had arranged in a sort of semi-circle in front of the fat-flowered drapes, the backdrop to our ‘stage’. (The chimney was still there but the mortar dust had been cleaned up.) Harry had placed spotlights in strategic places, highlighting the things he wanted the audience to see, disguising the things he didn’t.
The chest stood centrestage, light reflecting off
its brass studs as well as from the chain looped
under and over it. The round curtain rail with its fold of curtain was neatly arranged around the chest.
‘Gel a kaerb,’ said Troy.
‘What did he just say?’ Barry asked.
Mum and Dad shrugged and looked at one another, nonplussed. Perhaps I should have warned them. It had never occurred to me.
I couldn’t concentrate. I wasn’t thinking much about the act at all, rather about the pictures in the mirror, going over and over them in my mind, trying to figure out answers to the same old questions I’d asked myself dozens of times already. Why had they appeared? What could I do about them?
Harry had made us dress the parts for the rehearsal. I guess that’s why he’d called the performance a dress rehearsal. Harry was in his magician’s outfit, black trousers, waistcoat and top hat, while I was wearing my red and black top, the one with a silvery pattern along the waist and sleeves that caught the light, and loose fitting black jeans.
It had to be clothing that didn’t restrict movement. The trick needed to be done fast and with precision or it wouldn’t look any good.
I was aware of the mirror off to one side and I couldn’t help but wonder if Laurie was going to appear in it again and, if he did, would anyone else apart from Troy and me see him?
‘And now,’ cried Harry in the deepest voice he could manage, ‘here it is. The Houdini Effect!’
(Great minds think alike. Who would ever have
thought that Harry had a great mind?)
Harry opened the lid of the chest titling the whole thing forward so Mum, Dad, Barry and May and Troy could see into its dark depths. Setting it back he folded himself into its darkness. Shivering inwardly (I’d be in there very soon and I wasn’t relishing the idea) I shut the lid, padlocked it with a flourish and drew up the chains to a point where the links met above the centre of the chest. I pulled another large lock through the links and turned the key. There, Harry was sealed in.
Now I had to balance on the chest (that in itself had taken loads of practise) bend down to collect the curtain track and quickly raise it up and over me, right above my head. The hardest part followed. Harry was already waiting to make the change. If I didn’t concentrate, if we got in each other’s way, risking a curtain collapse, slowing down the change, the illusion would be a miserable failure.
It wasn’t. I found I could concentrate, do what I was meant to do. For the sixty seconds or so it took us to perform the illusion I forgot everything else except what Harry and I had been rehearsing the week gone past
The curtain fell, and I was gone. Harry had taken my place.
He had escaped from the chest and, before he had even revealed himself, I had escaped into it.
The darkness almost confounded me. I was amazed I’d been able to go through with it this far. I’d been afraid I would forget everything else
I had to do and had to do quickly. For a second I
imagined there was no air in the chest and I was
going to die of suffocation.
But then everything changed. Having had to force myself to stay calm and rational, to focus on the trick and on what I had to do to make it a success (in front of a real, live audience) meant I’d had to completely forget Laurie, Iris, the pictures, the mirrors. As a consequence the most amazing thing happened. In that momentary lull, during those seconds of intense darkness, my mind was able to reassemble the multitude of unrelated patterns of the past two weeks into new shapes. And I suddenly heard Dad’s voice, not literally of course, just in my head, repeating the words he’d said the other day.
You sometimes have to go into a dark place to find the light.
By the time the act was over and the clapping had begun (I was certain that Troy clapped the loudest and longest of all, and he whistled, too, maybe even backwards) I knew what I had to do.
First of all, I had to tell Troy as soon as I could. After all, indirectly and unknowingly, it had been his idea.
‘That was tremendous.’
May was speaking to Harry and me.
‘Congratulations. You’re bound to impress the judges of the talent quest.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Where’s Barry gone?’ I asked.
‘He’s been on-call this weekend and had to leave to attend to a blocked river drain,’ she said.
‘A message came through on his mobile just
before you vanished behind the curtain.’
‘And then he vanished,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ agreed May. ‘But I think he enjoyed what he saw.’ (I’m sure she was just being polite.)
‘His absence gives me an opportunity to talk to your Mum,’ May continued, ‘which I think I’ll take, if she doesn’t mind’
‘To Mum?’
‘Yes,’ said May again. ‘I reflected on what you said the other day about her possibly being able to give me some advice. I thought I’d give it a try.’
I smiled at her. ‘Mum’s a good listener. I’m sure she’ll be able to help.’
‘Maybe,’ said May. ‘Did you write to Laurie, by the way?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘But I wrote to his son Mitchell. I can I tell you later on what he replied but I have to talk to Troy first.’
She smiled and nodded. ‘Communication’s a wonderful thing,’ she said. ‘Never think you can do without it.’
And she went off and started a conversation with Mum.
The (real) Houdini Effect
I left her and Mum to it as well as leaving Harry and Dad discussing what Harry had done to the chest (I suspected Dad would discover very little about the modifications.)
I took Troy down the hall to my room.
‘Well done,’ he said. ‘It looked ralucatceps. How did you guys do it?’
‘As if I’d tell you that,’ I said sounding like
Harry at his most secretive. ‘I didn’t think I’d be
able to go through with it,’ I added. ‘But I did and because of that and because of what you gave me I think I may have found a solution to the problem.’
‘Something I gave you?’
‘Yes, I said, excitedly. ‘It’s The Houdini Effect.’
‘Niaga taht yas.’
‘A light bulb moment,’ I said. ‘Actually, I’ve got a better metaphor. It was like adjusting the lens of a telescope. Everything suddenly came into focus.’
I told Troy how I had carried on reading Harry’s book about Harry Houdini. I’d already enjoyed the few bits I’d read early on and it didn’t take very long before I’d become engros
sed in it. Harry had been right. It was fascinating to read about Houdini’s early life, his relationship with his mother (whom he missed terribly after she died), his great escapes, his campaign to expose mediums and fortune-tellers as frauds (hey, he and I had something in common!), and because of the sad, unnecessary way in which he’d died.
What I found the most fascinating was Houdini’s marriage to Bess. They loved each other and they worked together. For years Bess even did the substitution trunk escape with Houdini, just as I had done with Harry.
After Houdini died, Bess waited to hear from him. Apparently they’d agreed that if he could ‘escape death’ Houdini would send Bess a pre-arranged message from the afterlife, a message that only she knew. That would prove there was a spirit world and a place where they’d meet again.
Sounds crazy but it’s true. Only, poor old Bess
never received anything from Houdini and she
gave up waiting and gave up believing that there was such a thing as a spirit world. She eventually told somewhat else what the words of the secret message were - her own name and one other word - and she died soon afterwards.
‘So where does that leave us with Laurie and Iris?’ asked Troy.
The Houdini Effect Page 15