The Vanishing Trick

by Jenni Spangler

  ‘It’s not dirt,’ said Felix. ‘Hold it by the firelight. Not too close. See?’

  The smudges on the jacket began to glow as they caught the light – an eerie whitish yellow colour Leander had never seen before.

  ‘Phosphorescent powder.’ Felix beamed. ‘Good, isn’t it? Imagine how it looks when you appear out of the darkness and glow in the candlelight.’

  Energy crackled through the camp. It seemed even Charlotte was caught up in it and forgot to be cross when dinner burned and stuck to the bottom of the pan. They ate it anyway – it tasted like charcoal and anticipation. A home-cooked supper, Leander thought, was better than a stolen pie any day.

  The sun was almost down when Pinchbeck declared they were ready to depart. Pink-streaked clouds hung low overhead and the last beams of the sunset stretched the dead trees into long, sinister shadows. Pinchbeck was adorned with jewels, the rubies at her neck matching the red of her gown. She pulled out a little black notebook, and checked it against a map. From the undergrowth the black rat emerged, walking right up to the hem of her dress, as bold as anything. Pinchbeck didn’t seem bothered. She swished her skirts and the creature departed. Leander moved a little further from the bushes in case it should come back.

  ‘Will she really conjure ghosts?’ he whispered to the others as they waited in the cold.

  They had shown him some tricks, but surely they weren’t enough to make people believe they had seen real spirits? There had to be some truth behind it all . . . and maybe then he would see his mother again, as Pinchbeck had promised him. It seemed impossible, but if she could make the children disappear, as the others claimed, perhaps it wasn’t so far-fetched.

  Best not to get my hopes up, he thought. People always let you down. But it was hard to resist imagining his mother’s voice, the nursery songs she used to sing . . .

  Charlotte gave him her now-familiar look of scorn. ‘I told you. It’s trickery and games. There’s no such thing as ghosts. We’re the apparitions.’

  He scowled back and turned away from her.

  Pinchbeck clapped her hands together. ‘Leander, into your Cabinet.’

  He froze. ‘Umm . . . You see, miss, I’m not sure—’

  ‘What? Did the others not teach you how to vanish into your Cabinet?’ She cast a meaningful gaze on Charlotte and Felix. ‘Have you been sitting idle, children?’

  Charlotte twisted her mouth and stared at Leander in an I-told-you-so way.

  ‘Then you must learn this instant. Mustn’t keep our audience waiting.’

  Everyone looked at Leander. His neck and ears felt hot.

  ‘Just try to imagine yourself as smoke,’ said Felix. ‘Picture the inside of the locket.’

  ‘Think of emptiness,’ instructed Charlotte, arms folded.

  ‘I can’t,’ Leander protested, feeling foolish.

  ‘Time is short,’ said Pinchbeck, returning her black book to a pocket in her dress. ‘The horses are hitched and the carriage packed.’

  Her tone was much sharper now. She frowned at Leander and he felt ashamed at disappointing her so soon. He should have tried to practise the vanishing trick, as the others had told him. Still not quite believing it possible, despite everything he had seen, he resolved to try his best.

  He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Picture the inside of the locket and think of smoke . . . emptiness . . .

  Something happened. A lightness in his feet. The ground beneath him was softer – no, it wasn’t there at all.

  ‘I don’t like it!’ He clenched his hands into fists and the earth became solid again. Charlotte tutted.

  ‘Nearly,’ Felix said encouragingly.

  Pinchbeck looked up at the darkening sky and held her hand out to check for rain. ‘Abeo,’ she said in a bored tone.

  Lightness, again, but this time Leander wasn’t doing it. He resisted, pushing back with his limbs, feeling frantically for something to anchor him to the world.

  ‘Don’t fight,’ Felix’s voice floated from beyond, but Leander couldn’t help it.

  His skin burned and froze; grinding pressure gnawed at his bones as though they would be crushed to powder. Air was squeezed from his ribcage and his stomach turned over violently like he was vomiting, but nothing came out of him because there was no him. He had no control at all as the world darkened and his flesh became smoke.

  Then he was in the locket – or so he assumed. He felt like air and space and nothing more.

  The sensation was peculiar. Or rather there was no sensation at all. He had taken for granted the weight of fabric against his skin, the pressure of the ground beneath his feet, the rush of air in and out of his lungs. Now he could hear, but see nothing. It was strange, but not so bad as the vanishing.

  So this was the magic he would do for his new mistress? It was terrible. What had he got himself into?

  ‘Come out, Leander,’ came Pinchbeck’s voice from far away. ‘Your Cabinet is open – you can emerge by yourself.’

  Would appearing hurt as much as vanishing? But he didn’t want to stay inside. He tried to hold his breath, braced for pain, but there was no breath to hold.

  ‘Just imagine yourself free,’ Pinchbeck pressed. He could hear irritation creeping into her voice again.

  He thought out and out he came, hair and bones and skin real again. It didn’t hurt this time, only a strange rushing sensation and a shock of cold, like jumping into the river. The earth felt good beneath him. Smell was the last sense to return, the dry soil and decaying leaves and the exotic spices of Pinchbeck’s perfume.

  ‘Thank you, Leander,’ Charlotte said haughtily as she appeared beside him, smoothing out her dress. She climbed into the carriage and let the door slam behind her.

  ‘The “abeo” command works on all of us at once,’ offered Felix by way of explanation. ‘When Madame Pinchbeck pushed you into your Cabinet, she pushed us into ours, too.’

  ‘It hurts,’ said Leander.

  ‘Only if you resist,’ said Pinchbeck casually. ‘Practise a few times.’

  Leander swallowed hard. He didn’t want to go inside the locket again, but the memory of the pain of being forced to vanish made it hard to refuse. Felix watched, quietly urging him on, and Leander didn’t want to look cowardly.

  Deep breath. In. Feel for the locket, think of air . . .

  His insides tingled, his head became light and the world around him became dark.

  Not painful. Not anything.

  And out . . .

  Leander tried a few more times, finding he could do it more quickly with each attempt. Now he wasn’t so afraid, he could reach for the locket with his mind and slip inside without any resistance. The pain was gone, but vanishing was still unnerving and unpleasant, like he was breaking the rules of reality, and the air itself disapproved.

  When Pinchbeck gave the order to leave, the three children climbed into the carriage. He placed his locket into the chest alongside Charlotte’s lantern and the violin case.

  ‘You did well, Leander,’ said Felix.

  ‘And now I can vanish and come back whenever I like?’ asked Leander.

  ‘Only as long as your Cabinet is open. Remember what we told you? Once the latch is closed, only Pinchbeck’s command will allow it. Always be careful. You might need to hide there, or shelter if we have nowhere to sleep. You don’t want to be stuck outside.’

  ‘Or inside,’ muttered Charlotte darkly.

  7

  Seven of Cups:

  Fantasy, Imagination, Illusion

  Leander sat squeezed between the other two inside the carriage. It wasn’t a comfortable fit, and over every bump in the road he was poked by an elbow or a pan handle, or hit in the face by a bundle of herbs. The carriage would have been big enough for four or five passengers if it wasn’t for all of Pinchbeck’s jars and drawers.

  ‘It’s all about getting people to believe in Pinchbeck – that she’s able to reach across the void to the realm of the dead,’ Felix told Leander, explaining h
ow the seances worked.

  Leander shivered. ‘That’s creepy.’

  ‘It’s not real,’ sighed Charlotte, lifting a corner of the velvet drapes to look out of the window.

  ‘People pay her to come into their homes and pass them messages from those they’ve lost. They all sit round a table with just a few candles for light. She goes into a trance—’

  Charlotte snorted.

  ‘Well, that’s the idea anyway,’ continued Felix. ‘And then I appear and play my music. She tells them that I’m her guide.’

  ‘Why do people pay money to be scared?’ asked Leander.

  ‘Not just scared,’ said Felix. ‘Amazed. Delighted. Surprised. People like to be scared sometimes. A safe kind of scared. Have you never felt that?’

  Leander nodded. He supposed that was how he had felt when his mother told him the story of the Rat King as they basked in the warm firelight. But, since she’d gone, there had only been bad-scared. Scared of Mrs Smart, or of being caught stealing, or starving to death. He thought how lucky these people were to live such lives that they needed to invite horror and fear into their houses to amuse themselves.

  ‘So, should I try to frighten them?’ Leander asked.

  ‘When Pinchbeck summons you out of your Cabinet, all you need to do is stand on the table. You don’t say anything; you don’t move. They’ll think you’re a ghost.’

  ‘But I’m not see-through,’ protested Leander, pulling a stray sage leaf from his hair. ‘They’ll know I’m just a boy.’

  ‘A glowing boy, who appears from thin air in the middle of their dining table,’ said Charlotte. ‘They’ll believe it, trust me.’

  The carriage was riding over cobbles now. It rattled their teeth and the bottles and jars.

  ‘Don’t let them touch you, though,’ said Felix. ‘It spoils the effect.’

  ‘What if I do it wrong?’ said Leander.

  ‘There’s nothing to get wrong,’ Felix reassured him. ‘Charlotte and Pinchbeck and I will do all the tricks this time. All you have to do is appear and disappear.’

  ‘How does she talk to the real ghosts?’ asked Leander.

  ‘She doesn’t,’ said Charlotte. ‘How many times? It’s like putting on a play. There’s no such thing as ghosts.’

  But Leander refused to let his hope die. Maybe these seances for the rich were nothing more than clever tricks and children in costumes, but that didn’t mean Pinchbeck couldn’t talk to the dead at all. She clearly had magic at her disposal: the vanishing trick alone was proof of that. And she knew things that surely proved some special skills beyond normal understanding – the fact that Leander was an orphan, that the locket was his mother’s – so Leander held on to the flicker of hope that Pinchbeck would keep her promise that he could talk to his mother again.

  A short distance from their destination Pinchbeck told them all to go inside their Cabinets. It was important that her customers didn’t see the children before they appeared as spirits. Nervous and excited, Leander could barely wait. He listened to the oddly distant sounds of the world beyond. A knock on the door. The scrape of furniture being arranged. Voices greeting Pinchbeck and each other as people took their seats.

  ‘ . . . something quite remarkable, I hear . . .’

  ‘ . . . never seen anything like it . . .’

  ‘ . . . of course, I don’t normally believe . . .’

  At last something was happening. A hush fell. Pinchbeck began speaking in a low, melodic voice, but Leander couldn’t understand the words.

  ‘Exsisto.’ Like a carp on the fisherman’s line, he was pulled from the cool depths at Pinchbeck’s command. A queasy sensation, but he didn’t dare fight it. He stepped out on to the table, relishing the weight of his own body. The air smelled of vinegar and spent matches.

  Leander gasped along with the spectators; the ritual was eerier than he’d imagined. He was standing on a round wooden table, surrounded by three men and four women, including Pinchbeck. A ring of candles threw enough light to see their pale faces cast with harsh shadows.

  Pinchbeck was chanting, almost singing, in a dark voice, head thrown back as if in a trance. The cards she had used earlier with Leander were spread out before her, overlapping in a complicated star-shaped pattern, gold leaf twinkling in the candlelight.

  He remembered Felix’s instructions. All he had to do was stand there, say nothing and keep still until he was told to return to the locket.

  A long, ghostly wail rose in the darkness, trembling like the clasped hands of the people at the table. Leander couldn’t tell where it was coming from. The elegant room beyond the candle beams was so dark he could almost believe they had fallen off the edge of the world into nothingness. The wailing climbed and dipped and Leander realized it was a violin. Felix was playing in some hidden corner, his melody dark and unsettling.

  Faster and faster the violin laughed and cried its unearthly song. The man in front of Leander was stony-faced, but his eyes were wide and shiny, and Leander detected a twitch of nervousness at the corners of his mouth. A woman in a red dress whimpered and closed her eyes, hiding against the man’s shoulder. The man’s eyes moved, but his body remained rigid as though he was afraid the slightest movement might break the spell.

  A deep, hollow knocking sound came from the table beneath Leander’s feet. It was answered with a series of lighter taps, like fingernails on glass, from the other side of the room. Knock, tap, tap, back and forth like a conversation. Leander turned round in a circle; the sitters were all holding hands on the tabletop, Pinchbeck included. Who is knocking, then? Leander wondered. It couldn’t be Felix since his music was still playing. Which left Charlotte. But the noises came from opposite ends of the room – how could she be in two places at once?

  There are no ghosts here. Charlotte said it’s all pretend, Leander reassured himself, but the sitters obviously believed it. The knocking became a scraping.

  ‘The veil is thin tonight,’ said Pinchbeck softly. ‘The spirits are strong.’

  There are no ghosts. There are no ghosts. Leander wasn’t scared. He wouldn’t let himself feel scared. His mouth was dry. The room was so dark.

  ‘If there is someone here who would like to make contact, please give us a sign,’ Pinchbeck called.

  A candle went out. Then another, at the other side of the table. A collective gasp rose, the trick candles doing their job of convincing the party. Four more candles went out, one by one, until only three remained. The growing gloom made the room feel smaller.

  There was a softening in the violin music and then a moment of stillness. Goosebumps formed on Leander’s arms and he clasped his hands together to stop them from trembling. An image came into his mind, unbidden, of a real spirit, ancient and awful, lingering in the thick darkness, waiting its turn to reveal itself.

  There are no ghosts, he told himself again.

  Something brushed his ankle. He yanked his foot back with a yell and nearly lost his balance.

  The woman beside Pinchbeck had touched him. She was smiling, open-mouthed, and the knuckles of her other hand were white from clutching her neighbour so tightly.

  ‘He’s real!’

  There was a ripple of excitement and Leander felt like a fox surrounded by dogs as they leered at him. What should he do? Would he be in trouble if he returned to his locket before Madame Pinchbeck gave the command? Or would she be even more angry if her tricks were discovered?

  Charlotte appeared behind the sitters, at the edge of the circle of light, unnoticed by the men in front of her. She lifted both hands, then brought them down on to their shoulders, hard. Both started, one standing up from his chair so rapidly that Charlotte had to hop back. The woman in red fainted.

  ‘Abeo!’ came the shouted command. The pressure on Leander’s bones and the stinging pain began to rise. Don’t fight. He relaxed, let his body go limp and the pain ebbed away. With no small sense of relief, Leander’s flesh became mist and he returned to his locket. The violin came to a harsh,
screeching halt. Outside he could hear great confusion. Heavy, hurried footsteps, the scraping of furniture and agitated voices. Muffled speech was punctuated with little bursts of nervous laughter. What queer things the upper classes did for entertainment.

  *

  Later that night, when Leander felt himself pulled from his Cabinet at Pinchbeck’s command, he didn’t fight it. He let himself pour out of the locket and breathe the November air into his still-forming body.

  ‘Home sweet home,’ Pinchbeck said. She took Leander’s hands and spun round in a circle as though they were dancing. ‘Wasn’t it marvellous? They adored me.’

  ‘Home’, it seemed, was a large brick farmhouse, with a sturdy oak door and many darkened windows staring down at them like empty, glassy eyes. The carriage stood on the paving stones, hidden from the road by overgrown hedges.

  ‘Whose house is this?’ said Charlotte.

  Pinchbeck wasn’t listening or didn’t care. She released Leander and strode over to the front door, lantern in hand, and ushered them inside.

  It was as though the house had been lost in time. Curtains still hung at the windows, though here and there they were rotted to rags by years of neglect. The kitchen had plates and bowls on the table, pokers by the stove, a single teacup left in the sink. Sturdy work boots waited by the back door. The parlour was the same – candlesticks sat on the mantelpiece, a blanket hung over the back of a chair and a thick layer of dust covered everything. It was as though the owners had gone for a walk twenty years ago and never returned.

  ‘What is this place?’ Charlotte asked again.

  Leander picked up a ceramic milkmaid ornament from the sideboard and the arm came off in his hand. He hastily put it down.

  ‘A secluded little spot for us to rehearse,’ said Pinchbeck. ‘It’ll be a very pleasant stay once you get the place cleaned up.’

  The house smelled of mould, and the cold had settled deep into the stone, but it wasn’t so bad. If they could get a fire going in the hearth, it might even be cosy. Leander had slept in worse places.