Metamorphosis

by Sesh Heri

  “Good,” Jack said. “Maybe if Morrell takes you to the dungeon where he made his astral projections he might find a power there that could help you return to your universe.”

  I asked, “What do you think, George?”

  “I think, considering everything, it is certainly worth a try,” George said. “You, Jack, and Morrell will have to go to San Quentin without me, though. I’ve got to catch an early morning train back east. The Commander of the Cypher will be sending all your underwater photos and ether field readings back to Washington and New York by Tesla Wireless. In fact, Mr. Tesla has probably already received your photos and is studying them now as we speak.”

  Our driver turned off San Pablo. We had come to the edge of town. Only a few houses and buildings stood upon the sloping hill which disappeared before us in the fog.

  “Turn around up here at the next intersection,” George said, “and drive back to Oakland.”

  The driver slowed down and made a wide circle in the intersection, and then started back down the hill.

  “Well, there they are,” George said, watching the headlights of two cars pass us, going on up the hill.

  “They’re wondering if we’ve made their tail right now. They’ll pull back and let another team pick up the tail down on the avenue. All so painfully obvious, it’s silly. Oh, well.”

  George Ade stifled a yawn. He had traveled to the edge of space and time, but the old tricks of spies were still the old tricks.

  Our driver turned left back on to San Pablo Avenue, and he accelerated our car back up to sixty miles an hour.

  “We’ll drop you at your hotel, Harry,” George said.

  “It’s still the Adams, isn’t it?” I asked.

  “That’s right,” George said. “I think you’re universe is just next door to ours. Everything will probably be exactly the same for you as it was before. The question is: what happens next? Will everything proceed in this universe as it is proceeding in the one from which you came? Are parallel versions of us moving along San Pablo Avenue right now? Or are our duplicate selves still on Jack’s yacht? Or some other place?”

  “Good questions,” I said. “But I don’t have any good answers.”

  “We’ll just have to get by without any answers at all,” Jack said. “I don’t think we’ve ever had any good answers to anything that is important in our lives.”

  “I think you have something there, Jack,” George said.

  “We’ve picked up another tail, Mr. Ade,” our driver said.

  “Throw a little variety into our route,” George said. “We’ll insult them if we don’t make some appearance of trying to shake their tail, and we don’t want to insult them, do we?”

  “No sir,” our driver said.

  Our driver turned off on to a side street and made several turns in a winding course. The driver kept on making turns. He slowed down and took us through an alley, then out and along another street, and then several more turns and we came out somewhere on Broadway.

  “Take Harry on back to his hotel,” George said.

  The driver stepped on the gas pedal and we sped down Broadway to 12th Street. There at 12th we turned right and the driver slowed our car to a stop in front of the Orpheum.

  “Well,” I said, “I’ve had a grand old time, boys.”

  “It was good to meet you, Houdini Number One,” George said.

  “Yes,” Jack said. “But I can’t get over the feeling that you are only an imitation of the Houdini we have all known. Are you certain you are Houdini Number One?”

  “Absolutely,” I said.

  I shook Jack and George’s hands and opened the door and got out of the car.

  “I will be by in the morning with Ed Morrell, Houdini Number One,” Jack said. “We will see you about seven o’clock— or I should say we hope to see you about seven unless Houdini Number Two shows up first.”

  “I don’t think he will,” I said.

  “Just a feeling?” George asked.

  “Just a feeling,” I said.

  “So long, Harry,” George said. “One, Two— or whatever number you are.”

  “So long, George,” I said.

  I nodded to Jack and he nodded back. I closed the car door and the car pulled away from the curb. As soon as the car went up the street, another car sped by in front of me. I turned, and went in to the Adams.

  Inside, the night clerk dozed behind his desk. The dimly lit lobby had an oppressive air. I looked over to the stairs, and a sense of uneasiness came over me. What would I find upstairs? Would Bess be the same Bess I had always known and loved— and what of everyone else in the world— and everything in it?

  I went up the stairs with a heavy feeling, and finally got to the fourth floor after what seemed a long climb. I went to my room and put the key in and opened the door.

  Inside, the parlor was dark and quiet. I tiptoed to the bedroom, and found Bess sound asleep in her bed. She looked exactly like the same Bess I had left behind earlier that evening. Bobby raised his head up over the edge of his basket, his eyes glittering in the dark. He jumped out on to the floor, opened his mouth to bark, and then stopped, staring at me. His head cocked to one side, and then lowered. He stepped back and began shaking all over. His tail went between his legs. He backed up all the way to his basket, then jumped into it and ducked down. He stuck his snout up and sniffed the air, whimpered, and then ducked down again. The room became very still.

  I took off my hat and dropped it on the table and then went over to my bed across the room from Bess’ bed, and sat down on it. I felt very tired. I felt very strange. My eyes cast vacantly about the dark room, only dimly lit by the glow of the streetlamps coming from beyond our curtained windows. In a moment, my eyes adjusted to the dark, and my glance fell upon the table across the room, the table where I had been leaving my hat. I had automatically taken off my hat and dropped it on the table when I had entered the room. I now could see my hat sitting there on the table and next to it— another hat— another hat— exactly like mine. Our birds fluttered in their cages.

  I stood up, went over to the table and picked up that other hat. It was an exact duplicate of my hat. I took it to the window, and pulled back the curtain so that the light from the street could fall inside the hat’s crown, to its leather band. I saw the monogram initials “HH”. This hat was an exact duplicate of my hat, exact even down to its subtle patterns of wear; it was exactly like the hat I had just taken off, the hat that I had just placed on the table only moments earlier. This hat I now held in my hands was just like the duplicate I had encountered on the previous Sunday, the hat that the fry-cook had given to me at that little lunch-counter, the hat that had disappeared from the same table where this one had now appeared. It suddenly occurred to me that this hat I was now holding in my hand was my own hat from my home universe; it had been drawn across the veils of space and time to this universe where my mind and soul now resided.

  “Hey, Number Two,” I whispered. “I’ve got both of our hats again.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  To Win to the Mystery at the Back of Life and Behind the Stars

  “Balance— and tempo— and nerve— the three

  things we all need in the profession. Sometimes

  an acrobat will lose his tempo, the time he

  carries in his head for every trick; he does not

  know why. It is like a verse of poetry you

  cannot remember. What is it? What is it?

  You knew it yesterday; but today! and the

  audience is waiting. Pass!— better luck next

  time.”

  Houdini

  The knocking at the door pulled me up from a bizarre dream.

  I opened my eyes and saw a dull glow of sunlight cast upon the blankets that were covering…covering Houdini Number Two’s body. I knew it wasn’t my body. I could feel that it was the body of another man that I inhabited. The bizarre dream that I had been experiencing was rapidly fading from my memory, like I w
as leaving it behind as I stood on the platform of a train’s caboose which was hurtling away down tracks leading to an unknown destination. I tried to look back at that rapidly receding dream-image. When my mind cast its glance backwards, I could see that what I had been confronting in the dream was a monstrous fish-like head.

  I sat upright in bed.

  That dream I had just experienced had been nothing more than a re-viewing of the previous night’s events down on the bottom of the ocean. The fish-like head was the monstrous thing I had encountered down there where the bell-shaped object spun its electric web of forces. In the dream the fish-like head had been speaking to me. I could not recall the words of the monster, but I knew its intent: it was mocking me, daring me to return to its presence; it seemed to take a thrilling joy at the prospect of torturing me further.

  The knock at the door sounded again with a greater insistence.

  I reached up and rubbed— my face— or his? That is, I rubbed the face of Houdini Number Two who now was in my home universe. I took my— his— hands away and looked at them. They looked just like my hands, but I knew they were not. I bent and straightened the fingers; they responded to the command of my will— like a puppet would. I thought: I’m the puppet-master of a body that is not my own.

  Again the knock sounded at the door. I threw off the blankets and swung my legs— or his— to the carpeted floor. I stood up, grabbed my bathrobe— his bathrobe— from the closet, and slipped it on and tied the belt around my— his— waist.

  I then went into the parlor to the hall door. Bobby was scratching at the door and whimpering. When he saw me, he jumped away and ran back into the bedroom. I opened the door. Jack was standing in the hall.

  “It’s past seven,” Jack said. “How are you feeling?”

  “Bad,” I said.

  “Are you Number One or Number Two?” Jack asked.

  “I’m the same one you dropped off here last night,” I said. “Number One.”

  I opened the door all the way and saw that another man was standing next to Jack.

  “Ed Morrell,” Jack said.

  Morrell didn’t move, but looked right at me.

  “Come on in,” I said to them both.

  Jack and Morrell came in, and Jack closed the door behind them.

  “I want you to take a look at this, Jack,” I said, and I went into the bedroom, picked up the two hats on the table, and brought them back with me to the parlor. I handed both of them to Jack. He held one hat in each hand and looked back and forth at them.

  “That one in your left hand was sitting on the table when I got back last night,” I said.

  “It’s like it was drawn along with you,” Jack said.

  “That’s my thought,” I said.

  “Mr. Tesla would understand this better,” Jack said.

  “That’s what I’m hoping,” I said, taking the hats back.

  “Give me a couple of seconds to get dressed,” I said, and I carried the hats back into the bedroom.

  Bess was still heavily asleep. I threw on some clothes rapidly, and then scribbled a quick note telling her that I was going up to San Quentin to do a show and would be back at the theatre by one o’clock. I went over to the two cages where we kept our birds, our parrot Pat in one cage and our two white pigeons Nip and Tuck in the other.

  I opened Nip and Tuck’s cage door. Both birds flew out and landed on my shoulders.

  “Come on,” I whispered to them, “let’s do a show.”

  I slipped the two pigeons into their loads fastened to the inside of the lapels of my coat.

  “Now go to sleep there,” I said to them. I looked back over at Bess; she hadn’t stirred. Bobby cowered in his basket, with only his nose protruding.

  I turned, and came back out to the parlor. Jack and Morrell were standing over by the window. They turned around. Morrell stepped forward, staring at me.

  “You’ve got an ache in your neck,” Ed Morrell said to me.

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  “I can see it in your aura— the etheric energy field that surrounds you,” Morrell said. “There’s a muddy spot around your neck. Your astral body is pinched up there. It can’t fit into your physical body’s energy stream. Usually a muddy spot like that means a loss of energy. But your case is different. I see plenty of energy, but it can’t flow. That’s bad. It needs to flow.”

  “You said he wasn’t a spiritualist,” I said to Jack.

  “He’s not,” Jack said. “What he’s telling you is on the up-and-up. He’s seeing something real.”

  “Oh, it’s real,” Morrell said. “I wished it wasn’t. I don’t like the looks of that. You’ve got to get that corrected or you’re going to be a very sick man.”

  I held my finger up to my lips, stepped to the door of the bedroom, pushed the door open, and looked in on Bess. She was still asleep. I turned back to Jack and Morrell.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  The three of us went out and down the stairs and out the front entrance of the hotel. Jack had a taxi waiting at the curb and we all got into it.

  “All right,” Jack said to the driver. “Down to the ferry dock.”

  The driver slipped the automobile into gear and we started off down the street.

  “You’ve had some hard times,” Morrell said, looking over at me.

  “That’s true,” I said. “That’s true of most people. Life is hard, and then you die.”

  Jack lit a cigarette and sat back and watched Morrell and me. I could sense that he was going to say very little on our trip up to San Quentin. I had already witnessed part of the secret workings of Jack’s authorial labors— his rapid writing without erasure or pause. Now I was seeing another aspect of his work: intense observation. Jack “the chatterbox” was not along on this trip, and I suspected that such talkativeness was itself only a kind of mask for him, perhaps only a different mode of observation. First: draw out the subject. Second: sit back and observe reactions. Was Morrell and I the subject of one of Jack’s future books? Or was Jack thinking beyond books, trying to solve some private puzzle of his own which he would never desire to publish? Or was he only trying to help me find a way out of the terrible puzzle in which I was now trapped? I, myself, turned back to Morrell and studied him with my own intense scrutiny.

  Morrell was a smallish man with a face that looked younger than his years. His physical type was not what one would expect for a hardened criminal. If a cinema play were to be made about Morrell, some actor quite different from him would be chosen to play his part. But the real Morrell who sat next to me in the taxi, this slight, blue-eyed man with an innocent, smiling face— this Morrell might have been a country schoolmaster, or a bookkeeper. He seemed completely harmless. Yet, as Morrell would tell me his life story, I would realize that this quiet, reasonable— even kindly gentleman— had at one time struck an ice-cold terror into the heart of the warden of Folsom Prison. Morrell was a man of incredible power, but now he had dedicated that power to the side of good. My extreme suspicion of him would, in the next few minutes and hours, give way to perplexity, astonishment— and ultimately— awe.

  “I’ve observed you over the years,” Morrell said.

  “You have observed me?” I asked.

  Morrell nodded his head, and said, “For a long some time I didn’t know who you were, or why I had traveled to where you were in order to observe you.”

  “But now you do,” I said.

  Morrell nodded his head again.

  “I first observed you struggling to free yourself from a straitjacket,” Morrell said. “Your particular confinement was an obvious correspondence with my own. My own physical body at that time lay back in my dungeon in San Quentin where I was also confined in a jacket. I knew that this correspondence at least explained part of the reason for my observation of you. My astral body was attracted to a similar life-situation. For quite a time, I thought that it was only this material similarity which induced my observations of you. I was able
to go back through time and observe when you first encountered a jacket.”

  “And where was this?” I asked. “Where was I when I first encountered a straitjacket?”

  “I don’t know the exact location,” Morrell said. “In an astral projection one often appears instantly at a place. Unless the place is familiar to the traveler, it can be difficult to identify the exact location.”

  “It’s an answer,” I said, “a convenient answer, convenient for one who does not know the answer, an answer of the sort that a spiritualist would give.”

  “You were in Canada,” Morrell said. “I had a definite sense you were in Canada.”

  “That would be easy enough to know,” I said. “I have discussed my first encounter with a straitjacket a number of times. That bit of information has gotten into general circulation.”

  “You were visiting a large insane asylum under the direction of a Dr. Steeves,” Morrell said.

  “Go on,” I said.

  “He was taking you through the closed wards,” Morrell said. “These were padded cells with small barred windows in the doors. I saw you look in one of these windows. You were fascinated with what you saw. Dr. Steeves had to stop and wait while you looked. You didn’t notice, but he got quite impatient with you. He looked at his watch and cleared his throat, trying to get your attention.”

  “What was Dr. Steeves wearing?” I asked.

  “A dark gray wool suit,” Morrell said. “And he wore a wing collar and cravat, not a necktie.”

  “And he had a beard,” I said.

  “No beard,” Morrell said. “But he wore spectacles.”

  “Sandy haired,” I said.

  “Black haired with some gray at the temples,” Morrell said. “Thinning hair on top. He had thin lips and a hawk-like nose and a high forehead.”

  “Go on,” I said. “Tell me what I saw through the window.”

  “A man confined in a straitjacket,” Morrell said.

  “He lay quietly,” I said.