Stranger Things Have Happened

by Jeff Strand

  “Yep.”

  “When I gaze into his eyes, I see no soul.”

  “Nope.”

  “I don’t want to turn my back on him.”

  “You can turn your back. It’s fine.”

  “I’m hypnotized by his evil.”

  “He’s not evil,” said Marcus. “Believe me, I’ve seen evil, and it’s not in shark form.”

  The shark looked directly at Marcus with the eye on the left side. It seemed to be saying that it would cheerfully devour his arm all the way up to the shoulder, though Marcus supposed he could be misinterpreting the message.

  Marcus and Kimberly kept a close watch on Frenzy until Larry returned with a net that seemed too small to safely transport the shark from one tank to the other.

  “Gonna need your help with this,” Larry told Marcus.

  “I’d rather not.”

  “And I’d rather not get woken up every morning by the guy in the upstairs apartment practicing in his homemade bowling alley. We can’t always get what we want. C’mon, let’s do this.”

  Marcus and Larry both gripped the net by the handle.

  “Don’t let go,” said Larry. “We mess this up, we’ve got a hungry shark flopping around on the floor by our feet.”

  Kimberly stepped off the stage.

  Marcus and Larry dunked the net into the water. It took several tries, but they finally caught Frenzy. They quickly lifted him into the air and into the other tank.

  “I’m glad that worked,” said Larry. “I didn’t want to say anything, but I noticed while we were lifting him that I’d brought the net with the big tear in it.”

  “Is that another joke?” asked Marcus.

  “I wish it had been,” said Larry. “I wish it had been.”

  “So let’s test his hunger,” said Marcus, going around to the back of the tank. He lowered the trapdoor. “First, we have to get him to swim down into the bottom half.”

  “To do that, the food would have to sink down there before he can eat it,” said Larry. “I don’t know about that. He’s pretty fast.”

  “Can we put the food on the end of a stick?”

  “Oh, he’ll eat the stick before it gets down there.”

  “Well, we need him to swim through the hole.”

  “Then you’ve got quite a challenge to… Oh, look, there he goes.”

  Marcus pulled on the fishing line, closing the trapdoor.

  “Frenzy looks angry,” said Kimberly.

  Marcus opened a small cooler that rested on the floor behind the tank and removed a fish gut. (At least he’d been told they were fish guts. In theory, they could be any kind of guts.) He dropped it into the tank and then opened the trapdoor.

  Frenzy immediately swam through the hole and ate the red blob.

  It worked! Marcus wanted to scream with joy.

  “Nice job,” said Larry, wheeling the smaller tank off-stage. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to place a flyer on each seat before people start coming in.”

  Kimberly hurried up on stage and gave Marcus a big hug. “It’s going to work! Nothing can go wrong!”

  “Plenty can go wrong,” said Sinister Seamus. Marcus hadn’t even noticed that he was sitting in the center seat of the front row. He grinned the most evil grin Marcus had ever seen. “Plenty. But don’t let that worry you.”

  26

  The curtain was closed.

  The theater was full.

  Marcus was queasy.

  Peter was in place behind the tank and hopefully would stay invisible to the audience even after the black cloth was pulled away. Kimberly stood next to Marcus on the stage, waiting for their cue. They could hear Bernard welcoming the audience and telling them about the other fine upcoming productions at Pinther Theater, such as Hamlet and Ned’s Pimple.

  “You’re going to do great,” Kimberly whispered.

  A simple response to her comment like saying, “Thanks,” or, “Uh-huh,” or just nodding his head seemed warranted. Marcus couldn’t do any of that though.

  He tried to assure himself that he’d be fine. All he had to do was talk. He talked literally every day. Ever since acquiring the power of speech as a toddler, he couldn’t think of two consecutive days in which he hadn’t spoken. The trick was going to go beautifully, and it would be his first big step to becoming a professional magician.

  “And now,” said Bernard, “before we get to the part you’re here to see, please bear with us as we present…Marcus the Stupendous!”

  The stage curtains opened.

  Marcus stood there, microphone in his hand, staring out into the crowd. It was too dark to see any individual faces, but he imagined the audience as one big face, staring unhappily at him.

  Introduce yourself, said his brain.

  His mouth said nothing.

  He wanted to lift his hand to wipe the sweat off his forehead, but he couldn’t even do that. He was completely paralyzed. He was doomed to stand there until some stagehand took pity on him and closed the curtain again.

  He was able to move his eyeballs enough to glance at Kimberly, who was trying to signal with her own eyeballs that it was time to begin.

  Somebody in the audience coughed.

  At that moment Sinister Seamus coming after him with a knife didn’t seem so bad. No, he had to do this. He’d put too much work into this trick to let the whole adventure end with him standing there looking stupid. It wasn’t fair to his grandpa, Peter, Kimberly, or even the cast and crew of Prairie Dogs: A Musical Journey.

  “Hello,” he said, pleased that he was able to pronounce both syllables. “I’m Marcus Millian the third, but you can call me…Zachary the Stupendous!”

  Wait, had he just introduced himself as Zachary? That was embarrassing.

  “I mean, Marcus the Amazing,” he corrected.

  “I mean, Marcus the Stupendous,” he corrected again.

  “I am a man of many identities,” he told the audience. “It changes from moment to moment.”

  The audience tittered.

  That was a pretty decent ad-lib. Maybe he’d incorporate it into future performances.

  “With me is my lovely assistant, Kimberly,” he continued, pointing to her with a sweeping gesture. She curtseyed to the crowd.

  After saying a couple dozen words in front of the audience, Marcus felt some of the tension ease from his body. Several of his lines had been wrong, but still, he was up on stage, successfully speaking, and nobody had booed him. He wasn’t nearly as nervous as he’d been before the curtain opened. He could definitely do this!

  “Sharks,” he said, gaining confidence. “They are fierce predators. And excluding a couple larger species, none is more dangerous than the hammerhead.”

  With dramatic flourish, Marcus tugged off the curtain over the tank, revealing Frenzy. The audience did not let out a huge collective gasp as he had anticipated, but somebody near the front of the theater exclaimed, “Oh, cool!”

  “Hammerhead sharks are man-eaters,” said Marcus. “I’m taking my own life into my hands by standing up here, and you’re taking your lives into your hands by sitting so close to a tank that may not meet federal regulations.”

  The audience chuckled. Marcus hadn’t meant it to be a joke. He wasn’t kidding.

  “Over the years, magicians have made many things disappear,” said Marcus. “Coins. Cards. An elephant. Their careers.” He paused for laughter. When there wasn’t any, he cleared his throat and continued, “But unless my Google search was incorrect, few of them have ever tried to make a shark vanish.”

  Marcus was doing fine. He might go so far as to say that he was enjoying himself. Why had he been so worried about this performance? It had been a waste of perfectly good stomachaches.

  “And today, before you delight in the musical adventures of a family of prairie dogs w
hose natural habitat is about to be bulldozed, I will make Frenzy the Hammerhead Shark, disappear!

  “Now you see him…”

  He and Kimberly picked up the cloth with a flourish and draped it over the tank. Marcus stepped off to the side so he could watch Peter.

  That was Peter’s cue to pull the chain that would release the hinge. Peter pulled the chain and then frowned. He held out the chain for Marcus to see. “It snapped!” he whispered.

  Marcus didn’t want the audience to see him whispering back, so he settled for using his eyes to convey sheer panic.

  “I have to reach in there,” Peter whispered, not sounding thrilled by the idea.

  Marcus was supposed to tell the audience, “Now you don’t!” but he probably needed to stall, to talk about something else to fill the silence. “Did you know that there are about the same number of sharks in the world as there are automobiles?” he asked.

  Marcus glanced out of the corner of his eyes again. Peter looked like he was psyching himself up. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and slowly reached for the shark tank. Then he opened his eyes again, as if realizing that he should probably look before he reached into a shark tank. Peter reached through the hole. He tugged on the hinge, and it flopped open. Then he yanked his hand out of the tank so quickly that Marcus was worried the audience might hear water splash onto the stage.

  “Almost nobody ever gets eaten by a shark,” Marcus informed the audience. “But for those who do, it’s a pretty bad way to go.”

  Peter tossed some fish guts through the hole.

  Marcus wished Peter could quit moving around so much because he could hear the water dripping.

  No, wait. Was the water was dripping from the bottom of the tank?

  That could be problematic.

  “He’s not going for it,” Peter whispered.

  Had they fed him too much in the test? Was Frenzy full?

  Marcus lowered the microphone. “Add some more,” Marcus whispered through clenched teeth, trying to keep his lips frozen like a ventriloquist.

  Peter added some more guts.

  Marcus knew he shouldn’t keep peeking behind the tank because the audience would find it very suspicious. This was all taking way too long. He was going to have to accept that there was an excellent chance that the patrons of Pinther Theater would think that his magic trick sucked.

  He glanced over to the other side of the stage. Bernard stood in the wings, arms folded angrily over his chest.

  “He won’t swim for the guts!” Peter whispered. “I don’t know what to do!”

  Marcus thought he heard a cracking sound, but it may have been the sound of his mind preparing to explode.

  Kimberly looked concerned. She was probably thinking about the thousands of places she’d rather be than standing on stage while a magic trick did a complete belly flop. She might even prefer to be in the tank.

  “Now you see him,” Marcus repeated, even though the audience couldn’t see the shark since they had covered the tank a good two or three minutes earlier. To Marcus, though, it felt like two or three hours.

  “I’m out of guts!” Peter whispered.

  Marcus wasn’t sure what to do. Should he just apologize to everyone? “Sorry, ladies and gentlemen,” he could say. “My bad. Because of technical difficulties, I’ll be feeding myself to Frenzy now.”

  Maybe he should just run for it.

  He couldn’t see the people in the audience, but he could sense them fidgeting. An illusion was quite a bit less beguiling when there was a curtain draped over the tank for eighty-three hours. This was supposed to happen quickly. They could’ve lifted the shark out and transferred him to another tank by now.

  “Shake it around,” Kimberly whispered, also speaking without moving her lips.

  Peter reached into the tank, grabbed a gut, and shook it.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” said Marcus, “I’d like to apologize…”

  “He’s through!” said Peter.

  “…for blowing your mind!”

  “But I can’t close the hinge!”

  “Just reach in there and close it!”

  “He’s on my side now!”

  Marcus wanted Peter to just do it, but he couldn’t in good conscience order him to reach into bloody water when there was a hungry, man-eating shark swimming around. He didn’t want to make a bad show worse by having Peter lose some fingers.

  Inspiration struck Marcus. If he did this trick again, he’d leave the curtain off and show the audience how the magic was done. He’d put a fake hand on Peter that was hooked up to some tubes that pumped cherry juice, and make it look like the shark bit off his hand. That’s what he should’ve done this time. That would’ve been awesome.

  Kimberly hurried around to the back of the tank, reached through the hole, pulled the panel back into place, wiped her wet hand on the curtain, and then returned to her spot.

  Wow.

  She looked like she was going to keel over from fright, but she’d done it!

  Marcus was so stunned that it took him a moment before he remembered the audience.

  “Now you don’t!”

  Marcus and Kimberly pulled off the curtain with a dramatic flourish, revealing the “empty” shark tank.

  The audience offered up some halfhearted, sympathetic applause. Even if they didn’t know how the trick had been done, the slow pacing had pretty much wiped out any sense of wonder and amazement.

  Marcus grinned.

  It worked! Eventually. With more time to rehearse and perfect the illusion, Marcus’s vanishing shark trick still had potential. As angry as Sinister Seamus had been about the revelation of the secret to all magic, it really was practice. Marcus would get it right the next time.

  And he now knew that he could overcome his stage fright.

  And that Peter and Kimberly were incredible friends who were dedicated to him and the show enough to put their hands in a shark tank.

  If Seamus didn’t kill him, Marcus was confident that he, Peter, and Kimberly could put on an amazing performance next time.

  “Well, that was mildly interesting,” said Bernard, stepping out onto the stage. “Give us a moment to clean up, and then we’ll begin Prairie Dogs: A Musical Journey.”

  Somebody in the front row center stood and applauded. It was a slow, loud clap. It didn’t surprise Marcus at all when the clapper eased toward the light of the stage and turned out to be Seamus. He turned around and addressed the audience.

  “So,” said Seamus, “what did you think of Marcus the Stupendous?”

  Some people in the audience clapped politely, probably because they didn’t think there was any reason to be jerks to a fifteen-year-old. Somebody said, “Eh.” There was some enthusiastic clapping from the back row, which he assumed was his family.

  “Did any of you believe that he made a shark disappear?” asked Seamus.

  The audience made various noncommittal noises.

  “Anybody?” asked Seamus. “Raise your hand if you did.”

  One man in the second row raised his hand.

  Seamus pointed to him. “You bought into the illusion?”

  “Well, I mean, I’m looking at the tank right now, and there’s no shark in it. Obviously, while the curtain was over the tank, they had some shark wranglers sneak behind it and carry the fish off-stage. But the shark disappeared, so in answer to your question, yeah.”

  “Anybody else?” asked Seamus.

  Mom and Dad, who’d gotten terrible seats in the back row because they didn’t have a seasonal subscription to the Pinther Theater, raised their hands. Seamus ignored them. He looked over at Marcus and smiled a wicked smile.

  “I’m sorry, young man, but I must consider your trick a failure.”

  27

  Marcus’s heart raced. Surely, Seamus wasn’t goin
g to walk on stage and slash at him with his knife-wand in front of everyone. That would be crazy. Of course, Seamus was extremely crazy. Still, even he couldn’t reach that height of craziness…could he?

  “I’ve done many bad things in my life,” Seamus told the audience. “I’ve lied, stolen, and yes, taken some human lives. I used to be proud of that. I’m not anymore. There was a time not so very long ago that I’d brag about being evil. I wore my reprehensible personality like a badge of honor. Every time I tossed a handful of ladybugs into a blender to make a smoothie that I didn’t even bother to drink, I’d giggle. But I don’t want to be Sinister Seamus anymore. I want to be Snuggly Seamus.”

  The cracking sound from the tank grew louder. Marcus hoped that Seamus would wrap up his little speech soon so they could drain it. Otherwise, something very inconvenient might happen.

  “I’ve received some bad news from the doctor,” said Seamus. “It turns out I’m unlikely to live more than fifteen, twenty years tops. It’s the kind of news that causes a man to look back and reevaluate his life. I’ll be honest. If this trick didn’t work, my original plan was to murder Marcus and his entire family. But I’ve discovered that I don’t want to murder Marcus and his entire family. I don’t even want to murder Marcus. I don’t want to murder anybody.”

  “Thanks,” said Marcus.

  Snuggly Seamus turned to him. “Congratulations, Marcus Millian III. The illusion wasn’t insanely spectacular, but your great-grandfather would’ve been proud of you anyway. You have a long, prosperous career ahead of you as a magician.”

  The front pane of glass popped completely off. As the water poured forth, the rest of the glass and mirrors crashed to the floor.

  At least 90 percent of the people in the audience screamed as Frenzy the shark was swept forward right off the stage and onto Seamus. The old man shrieked as the shark thrashed and snapped at him.

  Peter, now exposed to the audience, quickly bent down and started picking up pieces of the tank as if he planned to hurriedly reconstruct it.

  “Get it off me! Get it off me! Get it off me! Get it off me! Get it off me!” Seamus shouted.

  Larry rushed out from backstage. “Don’t hurt my shark! I’m coming for you, baby doll!”