Metamorphosis

by Sesh Heri

  “He struggled violently,” Morrell said. “He dashed himself against the walls. His reddish-blonde hair stood out on his head like the hairs of an old paintbrush. He frothed from his mouth and it drooled down upon his chin and chest. His face was beet-red. His pale green eyes bulged from their sockets.”

  “He screamed for me to help him,” I said.

  “He couldn’t scream,” Morrell said. “His mouth was gagged— a white rag tied around to the back of his head. You watched this man struggle for several minutes. The image of him stayed in your mind long afterward. You dreamed of this man for several nights. They were not dreams. They were nightmares. In some of the nightmares you changed places with the man. You were inside the cell confined and he watched you through the little barred window.”

  I looked away from Morrell, absolutely shocked. I knew for certain that I had never told anyone the details of those particular nightmares, not even my wife Bess. It was those nightmares that spurred me onward to master the straitjacket escape. If I knew I could escape from a straitjacket in waking reality, no nightmare version of straitjacket confinement would ever hold any terrors for me. I worked hard to learn the straitjacket escape. The jacket taught me with painful lessons, and even when I made the jacket escape a part of my show and found that the audiences were less than thrilled with my efforts, I still clung to a fascination with that instrument of confinement and torture. I realized that there were many different kinds of straitjackets, each with its own particular obstacles to freedom. Even as I took the straitjacket out of my stage shows, I continued to practice and study the escape from every straitjacket I could find. Eventually my brother Dash would show me how to sell the straitjacket escape to a theatre audience: the escape had to be made in full view; the audience saw that it was not the usual magic trick, not an illusion; it was the real magic of human will pitted against impossible odds. The same thing that had riveted my attention— had gripped me in— shall I say it?— gripped me in an obsession— this same thing also gripped the audience. So— there was the straitjacket escape in full view of an audience— and then— the straitjacket escape while hanging upside down above the surging crowds of a city. My efforts dispelled the straitjacket nightmares, but I felt I had to master all straitjackets in all places to be completely free of straitjackets as such— straitjackets as an idea. I suddenly realized that not only had Morrell seen into one of my most secret fears, he had watched me with an impossible intimacy as I had tried, time and again, to free myself of it.

  “You see,” Jack said, “Ed is not a spiritualist.”

  Our taxi drove on toward the Oakland pier, while I sat dumbfounded trying to make sense of Morrell. Either he was the craftiest trickster I had ever encountered in my life— or he was a real “Star Rover.”

  The driver stopped the automobile and Jack opened his door on the left and Morrell opened his door on the right. I got out on the left with Jack and he reached down to the driver’s window with a rolled bill.

  “Thanks,” I heard the driver say, and he pulled the taxi away from the curb. The three of us, Jack, Morrell, and I went and boarded a car to go out to the terminal at the end of the pier. When we got to the terminal we purchased our tickets, and then boarded the ferry.

  When we got on board the ferry Jack walked along the deck and then stopped suddenly and leaned on the railing. I could see that he didn’t want us to go inside. He wanted the three of us to stand there alone, and he wanted Morrell to continue to talk.

  But Morrell only looked out across San Francisco Bay. I suddenly realized that he was waiting for me to talk. He had already said enough, I am sure he reckoned. He had already said plenty.

  Finally I said, “You have seen into my nightmares.”

  “It has been given to me to see into much of you,” Morrell said.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “It was meant for me to try to help you,” he said.

  “You can help me?” I asked.

  “I didn’t say that,” Morrell answered. “I said it was meant that I try to help you. I’ve been given an opportunity to try to be of service. It is one of many opportunities that have been given to me.”

  “Why you?” I asked.

  “Why not me?” Morrell asked. “Yes, I’m of no particular importance, that is, no more importance than anyone else, but of no less importance, either. The task at hand has been given to me, perhaps, because I am able to do it. Or, perhaps, because in attempting to do it, something of value can be achieved despite my manifest failure.”

  “So you don’t know,” I said.

  “No,” Morrell said, “I don’t.”

  “All right,” I said. “I can accept that. So—Morrell— is that your real name?”

  “Why do you ask that?” Jack interjected.

  “Because,” I said, “Spiritualists often use fake names to cover their tracks from city to city.”

  “Still making Spiritualist accusations,” Jack said with a disappointed weariness.

  “That’s all right,” Morrell said. “Let him find his own way, Jack.”

  “Oh, you needn’t worry about that,” I said. “I’m an expert at finding my own way, Morrell. Or is it ‘Morrell’? You never answered my question. You can slip around it, but such slippage will give you no creditability in my eyes.”

  “He told you your deepest nightmares,” Jack said. “Now you tell me— and no slippage on your part— can you explain that at all?”

  “No,” I said. “I can’t. But just because I can’t explain something doesn’t mean that it’s supernatural. There are many unexplained things which I have witnessed in my life which, at a later time, I could explain with a little experience and knowledge.”

  Jack threw his cigarette butt over the railing of the ferry boat, and said, “From where do you think Ed cribbed your nightmares— the city directory?”

  The ferry blew its horn several loud blasts and started away from the dock. Those blasts almost seemed to be answering Jack, or perhaps answering me. I waited for the noise to cease and then said:

  “I believe this man would be too smart to waste his time with city directories. He has other methods, quite advanced methods.”

  “They are incredibly advanced,” Jack said.

  “He still hasn’t answered my question,” I said. “Does my question bother you?”

  “No,” Morrell said. “But, at one time, your question would have bothered me a good deal. At one time I would have answered you with a lie and told you, ‘Yes, my real name is Ed Morrell.’”

  “But it is not,” I said.

  “No,” Morrell said, “it is not. In my youth I was a criminal by trade and inclination and I used many aliases. ‘Morrell’ was my last alias and as everyone came to know me by that name, I have kept it. But I make no secret of the fact that the real name I was born to was Brennan, Edward Brennan.”

  “How did you come by the name ‘Morrell’?” I asked.

  “It is a long story,” Morrell said.

  “Tell it,” Jack said. “We have a long trip, and Houdini must hear it.”

  Here follows the story of Ed Morrell’s life, told to me while we were traveling on the ferry boats plying the waters between Oakland, San Francisco, and Tiburon.

  “I was born Edward Brennan in Pennsylvania. I had a little schooling when I was very young, but I’ve forgotten it all now, and to this day I can hardly read or write. When I was nine, I was put to work in the coal mines. Coal mining is a terrible life for a grown man. Can you imagine what it would be for a boy of nine? I had no boy’s life.

  “As soon as I got big enough to run away from the people I was working for, I took to the road, on foot. I was afraid I’d be caught and brought back to the coal mine. So I stole a horse and rode it as fast as I could. Outside of Jersey City, I let the horse go and walked on into the town. There, I found work, made a few dollars, and then ran away again. I got to New York City, went down to the docks, and stowed away on a cattle boat.

  “The
boat was bound for England. We got to London. I managed to escape detection by jumping off the boat before it reached the inspectors. I swam across the Thames, and eventually found my way to the hells of the East End. Jack knows all about the East End, as you may know, and we have had some interesting conversations about it. Our paths crossed in many spots there, though at different times, and I think there is destiny in that, even.

  “I eventually left London. Like Jack, I became a sailor of sorts, working my way on various ships to far-flung ports of call. These travels finally took me to India where I lingered awhile, for I became fascinated with the fakirs on the streets who performed seeming wonders and who made claims to even greater wonders. In a short time, I saw through their clumsy artifices. Most of them were only very poor stage magicians. But I followed one old man up into the hills to a temple. This old man did not perform magic tricks, but talked like one who knows, not a philosopher in the strictest sense, but what would more correctly be termed a ‘sage.’ In the temple I sat and observed while the old man went through various kinds of exercises, sitting in certain positions, and even standing on his head. The old man spoke flawless English and he had the kind of easy way with words that told me he had read a great deal. He wasn’t an Englishman, but an Indian, an East Indian. I don’t think he was a Hindu or a Christian. In fact, I never found out what his religion was, or what religion that temple was associated with. But, anyway, that old man showed me a number of exercises. They were all designed, he said to get the ‘wheels’ opened and moving. He called them ‘wheels’. He showed me where they were located in my body. The two most important ‘wheels’ were located in two separate spots. One ‘wheel’ was located just above the area between the eyebrows, and the other ‘wheel’ was in the abdomen, what is called ‘the solar plexis.’

  “He showed me how to get those wheels moving, and what to do with them once they started moving. The wheel in the stomach could be made to spin so that your whole astral body could lift out and pivot upright above your physical body. The old man was teaching me how to do this when he suddenly died. With my teacher gone, I could not continue my lessons, for the other men in the temple said that the death of my teacher was a sign that my teaching should cease. They even said that I was not worthy to be a student, and until the day I could make my self worthy, I could progress no further along this path of learning that I had taken.

  “I left the temple, and after wandering through the countryside awhile, I left India, taking a ship to Australia. There, I went to work again. However, unlike in London, an unusual set of circumstances brought me to the attention of a very wealthy man named Morrell. He saw in me a certain native intelligence and shrewdness, qualities that he found lacking in his own family. I had certainly by that time learned how to survive in the world, and I feared no man. Perhaps it was this quality that made Morrell single me out. He came up with the idea that he would adopt me, send me to England for education, and then would bring me back to Australia whereupon I would become manager for all his many enterprises, businesses that were now on the wane for lack of will and foresight among those who were running things.

  “I made the mistake of biding my time, of not holding Morrell to his word and making quick arrangements to fulfill his brain storm. Before I could make such arrangements, Morrell had suddenly changed his mind. He now found that I was not the hoped-for genius that would bring a firm hand to his business. In fact, he denounced me one day as a shirk and an idler— and he was right. That’s exactly what I was. I had promised myself that I would never stick to any drudgery, for I had quit that with the coal mining. Morrell withdrew his offer to adopt me, and I withdrew from Morrell’s employ. I rode horseback across Australia and reached Sydney. There I took a steamer bound for San Francisco.

  “When I got here to San Francisco, I took the name of Martin, Ed Martin, and before long I was tried and convicted of grand larceny. This led me to eventually becoming involved with the Evans and Sontag gang who were fighting the Southern Pacific Railroad with the help of many of the ranchers who had been cheated and robbed by the railroad company. Most people think that Butch Cassidy started the idea of blowing up railroad boxcars with dynamite, but he got the idea from the Evans and Sontag gang after they started blowing up boxcars in retaliation for Southern Pacific agents killing all those ranchers down there in Mussel Slough.

  “Well, I met Evans in the Fresno jail where I had been incarcerated on a misdemeanor. I eventually helped Evans escape. By then he had his arm amputated. They had shot up his arm and put one of his eyes out when they captured him. For many weeks Evans and I evaded the lawmen and bounty hunters who searched for us all over the Sierra Nevada Mountains. They finally laid a trap for us by sending out a false report that Evans’ baby boy was sick and dying. I tried to argue against us going back to town, but Evans was determined to see his child. And that’s where they got us, there at Evans’ house in Visalia. Things went bad there, and I did some bad things there, things I’m not proud of. I was desperate and I was a criminal and I really cared for nobody but myself. I did care for Evans. I always thought he got a raw deal. He loved his family with all his heart, especially his little baby son.

  “Well, the maximum sentence for holding up the county jail and freeing a prisoner was ten years, and that’s what I thought I was going to get. But at the trial, I was only charged with highway robbery— they let the county jail thing go. So by a loop in the law, and the will of a railroad-controlled jury, I was sentenced to life in Folsom Prison.”

  San Francisco’s Ferry Building loomed before us. Jack and I had been transported around the world and back by Morrell’s words. Our boat docked, and we got off and boarded the Tiburon ferry boat. Again Jack led us along the deck, found a railing that suited him, and lit up another cigarette. Morrell and I stopped next to Jack and we watched the sea gulls wing in circles over the bay to the north.

  “So they put you in Folsom,” Jack said.

  “Yes,” Morrell said. “Folsom— that was my second hell on earth after the East End. But Folsom I could not escape, so it was much worse. And the warden was an ex-railroad detective, and he let me know that since I was ‘the San Joaquin train robber’ I was a special case. He invited me to escape. He said he wished I would escape so he could kill me. Then he sent me out to the yard to break rock, morning to night.

  “I had to climb to the top of a giant boulder and then stand there all day long and chisel a hole in it with a point and a four-pound hammer. The guards told me that if I slacked off for one second from swinging that hammer, they would cut me down where I stood with their Gatling guns mounted on the prison walls. I swung that hammer for four months and eleven days before a state official intervened and put a stop to my torture.

  “But that only ended that particular form of torture. The warden was determined to destroy me. He had sold his soul to the Octopus— the railroad. He had the guards continually bait me and tell lies about me. They put me on the derrick where I hung by metal handcuffs— a sentence of five hours a day for ten days. By the seventh day my kidneys were bleeding and the prison doctor ordered the guards to take me down.

  “Finally, being unable to bait me into attacking them, being unable to break my spirit and will with torture, the guards framed me with organizing a prison break. They put me in a cell where the floor had been covered with chloride of lime and before they locked me in they sprinkled water on the stuff. Fumes rose up from the floor and entered my lungs and burned me with the fire of molten lead. My legs gave out, and I dropped to the floor, which only put me closer to that volcano of fiery death. My fingers, hands, arms became numb. Cramping pains tore at my bowels. I would have gladly drunk poison then to end my torment. Then the room seemed to spin; my legs felt like they were going up in the air. I was spun around by some centrifugal force— and then shot off into the air. The door opened and the guards pulled me out with a hook. The dungeon tender played the hose over my body, stifling the fumes and bringing my body back to lif
e. I was told later that I’d only been in the cell barely six minutes, but to me, I had lain dead in that cell for ages. I’m not smart enough or educated enough to know the right words to tell you how I suffered for the next ten days as the fire in my throat, mouth, and nose raged away within my flesh. When I finally mended up and was well again I was not the same man. I had nothing in me but hate and the steel-hard determination to rain down vengeance upon my torturers and escape my hellish confinement.

  “Unlike other prisoners I knew how to plan. And as Morrell recognized in Australia, I had a mysterious power to make men do my bidding. I began organizing a prison break— a mutiny unlike any before in any prison anywhere. I was no longer satisfied with merely escaping and running away like a scared animal. I was going to destroy Folsom Prison itself, from the inside out. I was going to take hold of every prison guard in that place, and every administrative worker, and the warden himself. With the speed of lightning I would do this before the warden could even know what was happening, before he or any of his men could send a word of distress to the outside world. I would lay hold of these men and have them brought to the rock yard and there all of them would be hung by their necks until they were dead. Then with dynamite and guns we would blow the walls of the prison before scattering into the hills and mountains of the Sierras where we would elude our pursuers until hell itself iced over.

  “This plan was no idle dream. I sent a prisoner who was just up for release to the San Joaquin Valley where I had plenty of friends who hated the railroad and hated what it had been done to me. My friends came up to northern California and hid a large cache of pistols, rifles, and ammunition in the hills surrounding the prison. They located all the telegraph and telephone lines going from the prison to Sacramento and Reno and we worked out a plan where from a flash of a mirror coming from the prison, they would have some of their men standing ready to cut those lines. So you can see that my plan of prison mutiny was no idle dream. I had twenty-four men under me in Folsom that I had organized to carry out specific actions at specific times like clock-work.