The Houdini Effect (19 page)

‘
On my talent quest entry,’
said Harry.

‘
Our
entry,’ I corrected him. ‘Does
that mean we’ll share the prize money?’

‘
No way,’ Harry
said.

‘
We’ll see.’

‘
And
you’re not getting your hands on it either,’ Harry said to Dad who
had opened his mouth to speak. Dad threw up his hands as if to say,
‘
Me
? Want
your
money? Whatever
gave you
that
idea?’

‘
When
will we get to see this marvel?’ was what he actually said. ‘Or do
we have to join the
hoi polloi
at the theatre?’ (More Ancient Greek. I refer you
to the Epigraph. I recognised those particular words from one of Ms
Kidd’s scintillating classes. It means ‘the many’ – the crowd; the
ordinary, common folk.)

‘
All will be revealed at a
special family showing,’ said Harry.

‘
Will it?’ I asked. ‘I
didn’t know that.’

‘
Why not?’ said Harry.
‘Makes sense to practise it in front of a live
audience.’

‘
I suppose so. You didn’t
tell me, that’s all.’

‘
Let calmness prevail my
children,’ said Dad, in case the new peace shattered.

‘
All is calm and serene,’
said Harry.

We had just sat down to lunch together
when

the front door bell rang.
Harry got up to answer.

‘
Just say we’re not
interested,’ Dad instructed him (Dad's usual admonition to cold
callers) so I suppose you can’t entirely blame Harry for what
happened next although naturally (and quite rightly too, as I’m
sure you will agree) I did.

‘
Okay,’ said
Harry.

We heard his voice clearly in the hall but
the caller’s voice was indistinct.

‘
Okay,’ Harry repeated.
‘Thanks. We're not interested but yes, I’ll tell her.’

We heard the door close. Next minute Harry
was back, a bundle of letters in his hand.

‘
Who was it?’ Dad
asked.

Harry’s mouth twitched. I was immediately
alert. ‘Just some guy,’ he said. That made me even more
suspicious.

‘
And?’ I asked. ‘What is it
you have to ‘tell her’? And whose letters are those
anyway?’

‘
These? They’re
ours.’

‘
Our mail?’ said Dad, as
bemused now as I was.

Harry nodded. ‘He brought them to the front
door.’

I got up from the table to peak out of the
window.

‘
Oh my god!’ I yelled. ‘You
little turd, it’s Troy!’ I could see Troy in the driveway, looking
uncertain. His head turned from the door to the window and then
back down the driveway. He was obviously wondering what to do next.
Stay or go.

Harry nodded. ‘Oh yeah, that’s right. He
said something along the lines of he thought you wanted to see
him.’

‘
Who the heck’s Troy?’ said
Dad.

‘
Someone Athens fancies, I
reckon,’ said Harry.

‘
I don’t,’ I shouted at
him, muttering, ‘Well, I did, but not anymore.’

‘
Bet that’s because he
didn’t fancy you,’ said Harry.

‘
I’ll never forgive you for
this,’ I said to Harry.

‘
Calmness my child,’ Harry
said.

‘
Do you want me to scupper
your stupid act?’ I snarled at him.

‘
Harry, that’s enough,’
said Dad, taking charge. ‘Stop winding her up. Go and catch up with
this mysterious Troy for goodness sake,’ he said to me, ‘before he
takes off thinking we live in some sort of a madhouse.’

‘
We do,’ I said. ‘You go.
Quickly. Please. Tell him I’ll be there in a second. I’ve got to
run a comb through my hair. After all that practising, I look a
mess.’

“
Don’t say another word,’
Dad ordered Harry as Harry opened his mouth to aim an obvious
insult at me.

While Harry looked abashed
and Dad went after Troy, I dashed to my room to look in the
mirror.

What a fool I was.

Did I imagine that reaching hand? I don't
know. I never will. All I know is that at the time it seemed to
have life and movement in it and that was enough to bring me to the
brink.

Iris and Laurie. Older again, both more
faded than before. Sitting on a two-seater couch, looking up at a
camera (as I surmised) that was being pointed at them, presumably
by Mitchell. Laurie’s hand was folded over Iris’. Iris was looking
pale (it was a

bleached colour picture
this time), ill almost. There was a deep sadness in both pairs of
eyes. The sadness of knowing that something was coming to an end.
When I saw the picture I couldn’t help it. I started to cry.
Immediately, the single picture seemed to separate into two layers.
In the foreground layer Laurie raised the arm that wasn’t linked to
Iris. It took form and substance, became three-dimensional. His
hand reached in the direction of the camera, went beyond it,
towards me. It seemed at the point of breaking through the
mirror.

My tears of sadness turned to tears of
terror.

Troy, the Backwards Boy

I didn’t hear Dad come into my room.

‘
Athens, love, what on
earth’s the matter?’

‘
Nothing.’

‘
I could hear you bawling
clear down the hall. Troy seems a nice young man but appearances
can be deceptive. You don’t have to look any further than the
chimney.’ (Oh, for heaven's sake Dad, does everything have to be
compared to DIY!) ‘Is he responsible for you being so upset? If he
is . . .’

‘
No. No! Harry’s right. I
asked Troy to come.’

‘
Well, what is it then? Do
you want me to call your mother.’

‘
She’s in court. You
couldn’t get hold of her if you tried. Not easily, anyhow. And
there’s no reason to call her. I’m okay. I’ll be fine. Honestly,
I’m crying about nothing.’ (I told you long ago that writers are
liars. Have I convinced you yet?)

Dad shook his head, giving up.

‘
I asked Troy to come over
so he could help me

. . . help me with my biography project,’ I
said. This time the lie was also the truth.

I made myself look respectable as I could
and went back to the kitchen where Troy was waiting. Dad and Harry
had both retreated to their individual sanctuaries. ‘Thanks for
coming,’ I said. ‘Sorry I kept you waiting.’

‘
Seirrow on,’ he said.
‘What it’s all about? What sort of pleh do you deen?’

‘
You’re seriously weird,
yob sdrawkcab,’ I said. ‘Have I got that right?’

‘
Tceferp,’ Troy
replied.

‘
But
you’re going to think
I’m
seriously weird, too.’

‘
Yhw em llet.’

I took a deep breath, so deep it almost made
me faint. ‘It’s the mirrors in this house,’ I said.

‘
What about
them?’

How did one tell another person the about
impossibilities they’d been witnessing? That scenario was another
near impossibility in itself. But it was either that or holding
onto the secret alone and going quickly mad. There was nothing for
it but to blurt it out. ‘I see people in them.’

Troy sucked in his bottom
lip. ‘Yeeess . . .’ he said. ‘That’s what mirrors are for . . .
elpoep gniees. Usually yourself.’

‘
I
don’t
just
see
me,’ I burbled. ‘I see
other
people. The people who used to live here before
we came.’

This time Troy didn’t say anything. Not a
good sign. I went on. ‘What I see are still images, like
photographs. They don’t move or anything like that,’ I explained.
‘At least they didn’t until the last

one. Just when you arrived. Then one of them
did move. Laurie reached his hand out towards me. I thought it was
going to come through the mirror.’

I couldn’t help it. I started blubbing
again.

Poor Troy. He might have been a year ahead
of me at school but he seemed so much younger than me in terms of
maturity. He looked ready to run a mile. Many miles. It was his
turn to take a deep breath. (Pardon the clichés. Sometimes there’s
nothing else left.)

‘
Photographs?’ he
repeated.

I nodded, doing my best to stifle the sobs.
‘Pictures. You already think I’m crazy, don’t you?’

‘
Os kniht t’nod I,’ Troy
said, shaking his head so I didn’t have to interpret what he’d just
said.

I calmed myself down.

‘
Do
you
think you are?’ he asked me.

‘
No!’

‘
There you go then. You’re
ton. So, you’re saying that these serutcip are of the people who
owned this house. How do you know who they are?’

‘
May, next door, showed me
a photo of Laurie . . .’

‘
Laurie. You mentioned him.
Eh si ohw?’

‘
Um . . . the husband.
Actually, would you mind not doing that for a bit, Troy. It’s doing
my head in, trying to work out what you’re saying. It’s been bad
enough trying to work out the mirrors.’

‘
Yrros. Sorry. It’s just
erutan dnoces. Sorry. Second nature. I’ll try.’ He grinned. ‘Who’s
the crazy person around here?’ he said.

I managed a smile as well. ‘No comment. I’ll
fill in the details for you. Laurie’s in a rest home now, up north.
We think. Or he might be dead. He

was married to a lady called Iris. They had
a son, Mitchell. He’s the one we bought the house off. I recognised
May’s photo as being of the man in the mirror. Each time one of the
pictures appears he and Iris are a little bit older. Last night
there were dozens of photos. Going crazy, like a merry-go-round out
of control. Then, just a little while ago, another photo . . . the
one that moved.’

I stopped. I could hardly believe what I’d
been saying, so how could Troy.

‘
What was happening on this
photo?’

‘
I could tell that Iris was
sick,’ I said. ‘She looked thin, gaunt, cancerous. She died, you
see, and Laurie was left alone for years until he became a grumpy
old man.’

‘
And now he and Iris - or
rather their pictures - have come back to haunt this
place?’

‘
You don’t believe me, do
you?’

‘
Why shouldn’t I?’ said
Troy. ‘Everyone’s allowed to believe at least one impossible thing,
that’s what I eveileb. Believe.’ (Troy must have read Alice, too)
‘Has anyone else seen the pictures?’

‘
No, only me. Yesterday
Harry came into the lounge - I see the pictures in different
mirrors - but the picture disappeared when he did. I mean when
Harry came into the room, not when he dis-appeared. Although he
does that as well,’ I said. ‘He’s good as escaping.’

‘
I’m not sure I understood
that last part,’ Troy admitted.

‘
Harry’s a magician, a
prestidigitator,’ I explained. Then I said, ‘It’s okay, I’ve told
someone, that’s all I really wanted to do. You don’t have to
believe me if you don't want to. If it

had been the other way round I mightn’t have
believed you. I’m sorry to have off-loaded this stuff onto you,
Troy. Just try to forget about it and please don’t tell anybody
else. I don’t want to be carted off somewhere.’

The silence that followed suggested that
Troy’s one-impossible-thing-philosophy had been him being kind to
me, or simply patronising. I wondered if he was calculating how
quickly he could get away. But that turned out not to be the case
at all.

Is that him?

‘Is that him?’ he said.

I’d actually forgotten the kitchen had a
mirror of its own. It hung above our china cabinet. Gazing out of
it was the face of Laurie. He was alone, looking stricken.

‘
It is!’ I yelped. ‘It’s
exactly the same one.’

‘
Exactly the same as what?’
said Troy.

‘
It’s the Laurie in May’s
photo. Post-Iris. On his seventieth birthday. May must have given
him a copy.’

If I needed absolute proof that these were
old photos I’d been seeing and that they’d been of Laurie and Iris,
this was it.

Laurie looked out of the photo, and faded
away.

‘
Zeeg!’ said
Troy.

‘So, what do I do?’

‘
Aedi on,’ said
Troy.

‘
I’ve written to Mitchell,
Laurie and Iris’ son,’ I said, explaining my rationale for having
done so. I also told Troy about Harry and his magical

illusions and that I’d ruled him (Harry) out
of having had any hand in what I’d been seeing. Then I went on to
explain how the images had progressed, from young to old. ‘I think
this last one was the saddest one of all,’ I said, ‘despite the
fact that it was taken on a significant birthday. Iris wasn’t with
him any more.’

The last picture had been so much less
threatening than the last. It had faded quickly, almost as if it
regretted having shown itself to Troy.

I showed Troy the scan of my letter to
Mitchell. Thank goodness I’d made a copy.

‘
Esnes doog sekam,’ he said
automatically, reading over what I’d written. ‘Sorry. Makes good
sense.’