The Houdini Effect (20 page)

‘
I’d worked that out,’ I
said. ‘My brain is starting to function again, thank goodness. But
will my letter make any real difference even if Mitchell does send
a reply? It may be that I can get to talk with Laurie but what if
he doesn’t know anything, or won’t tell me anything? Why did you
see the picture, too?’ I added. ‘Why you and me and no one
else.’

I saw then what writers mean when they say
that people’s brows furrow when they cogitate. That’s what happened
to Troy’s brow.

‘
Well, we
don’t know for sure that no one else
couldn’t
see it,’ he said, thinking
hard. ‘But perhaps . . .’

‘
Perhaps what?’

‘
Aedi dam a tsuj. Just a
mad idea,’ he said. ‘Perhaps because we reminded Laurie of himself
and Iris. Or perhaps the mirror was reminded.’

We looked at each other and both started

laughing out loud.

‘
What a mad idea!’ I said.
‘As if.’

‘
Fi sa,’ Troy
mirrored.

‘
Just friends,’ I
said.

‘
Friends,’ agreed Troy. He
gazed up at the mirror. ‘But I guess in the end friendship was what
mattered most to Laurie and Iris.’

I was sure he was right. ‘You’re not so
backwards as you let on,’ I said. ‘And you know what, I don’t feel
nearly so sacred anymore.’

‘
Tluser,’ said
Troy.

‘
Tluser,’ I
said.

‘I guess we can’t do anything else but wait
to hear from Mitchell,’ I said. ‘I wonder how long it will take for
him to reply.’

‘
When he does, will you
tell him what’s been happening?’

‘
I don’t think I could do
that,’ I said. ‘I did think about it but: a) chances are he’d think
I was loopy, and b) would he really want to know that pictures of
his parents, and of him, are showing up in the mirrors of the house
where he grew up. It would freak him out to discover that, wouldn’t
it?’

‘
Very likely,’ he
agreed.

‘
What I really need to do
is talk to Laurie,’ I said, ‘if he’s still alive that
is.’

‘
That won’t be any easier,’
he said. ‘Where would you start?’

‘
I don’t know. I haven’t
gone down that track yet. I just hope I can do something sooner
rather than later. I’ve become like a recluse. When school starts
next week, Mrs Tyrell will be demanding how far we’ve got with our
bio projects and at this

rate I won’t have even started mine.’

‘
I remember doing that
assignment last year,’ Troy said. ‘I left it to the last minute,
too.’

‘
Who did you do yours on?’
I asked him.

‘
Leonardo,’ he said.
‘Odranoel.’

‘
DiCaprio?’ I asked. 'I
like his movies.'

‘
So do I, but no. Leonardo
Da Vinci.’

‘
The Mona Lisa man,’ I
said. ‘Good one.’

‘
Not just because of the
paintings,’ said Troy, ‘or because he was the kind of guy who was
into everything and anything. Science, medicine, anatomy,
astronomy.’

‘
What did that leave you
with then?

‘
His mirror writing,’ said
Troy. ‘He was a man after my own heart.’

‘
Backwards,’ I
said.

‘
Backwards for the words
and Reversed for the lettering,’ Troy elaborated. ‘I could lend you
my project. I think I’ve still got it.’

‘
I don’t want to copy
anybody else’s work,’ I said, sounding rather prim even to my own
ears. ‘But it’d be interesting to read. Harry thinks I should do
Houdini,’ I added. ‘He’s given me a book to read about him. Maybe
I’ll end up doing him.’

‘
Why not?’ said Troy. ‘As a
backup if nothing else. Then you’ll have something to show Mrs T
when she asks for a progress report next week, as she will. She was
nice, but very elbatciderp in her expectations.’

‘
Sometimes I prefer
predictable,’ I said.

‘
Fair enough. Give me your
address and I’ll flick Leonardo over in an email anyway,’ Troy
promised. ‘It’ll be something to distract you.’

‘
I badly need distracting.
I’ve got myself tied

up in another big project as well,’ I
admitted,

explaining to Troy how Harry had inveigled
me to be his partner in the talent quest and how I had let myself
bite off more than I had expected to chew.

‘
Wow,’ he said. ‘You’re
game.’

‘
Like I
said, it stared off as a distraction and because Harry really
needed some help. I’ve got kind of excited about it, to tell the
truth. Perhaps it’s another form of escapism. Maybe I
should
do
Houdini.’

‘
Maybe you should,’ he
agreed. ‘Thanks for your letter and the palindrome, by the way. The
palindrome I knew but the letter was the first proper one I’ve ever
deviecer.’

‘
Don’t expect a second,’ I
said, feeling lighter than I had all holidays.

Back to business

After Troy had gone my sense of lightness
dissipated. I’d told him I was feeling less scared, which had been
true, but only when he’d been there and I could talk to him about
the mirror images. The fact that he’d seen one himself made it so
much easier, that and the fact he’d been sincere when he’d said
that he was prepared to believe one impossible thing a day. So I
decided I should go and find Harry, carry on with our rehearsal of
the sub trunk illusion. I found him unusually subdued.

‘
Thought you were never
going to forgive me,’ he said.

‘
I haven’t.’

‘
You said you were going to
scupper my act.’

‘
I asked if that’s what you
wanted me to do?’

‘
I don’t.’

‘
Right. I’m not going to.
Let’s get on with it.’

‘
Really?’

‘
As long as you cut out the
wisecracks.’

Harry nodded.

‘
Well,
try to,’ I said. ‘Some things are just
too
impossible to believe,’ I
added,
sotto voce
.

As we practised the illusion - countless
times it seemed - the word ‘uncomplicated’ came suddenly, unbidden,
to mind. Perhaps the reason for the appearance of pictures was
uncomplicated and it was only my response to them that was
confused. Confused by a complexity I’d generated myself. That was
an interesting notion.

Schedule

The rest of my week looked like this:

waiting anxiously for a reply from
Mitchell

looking over my shoulder at the mirrors

dipping into Harry’s book on Houdini (very
interesting, actually, especially the bits about séances and
Houdini’s abiding love for his wife Bess. They reminded me of
Laurie and Iris)

reading Troy’s project on
Leonardo Da Vinci (A+, timmad)

sending brief, uninformative messages to
Rach and Em, via texts to Em’s phone, just enough to hint that they
shouldn’t turn up unannounced at the front door but that I couldn’t
wait to see them again next week at school, if not sooner. And,

practising the sub trunk routine in
readiness for the talent quest. Now that I was thinking of Harry
and me as partners in escape the act seemed to be

getting smoother. Harry
and I practised for a

couple of hours each day. Harry had
determined that Sunday would be the date of the family dress
rehearsal. He wanted me to read the details of the actual audition
- the ‘real thing’ as he called it - for SHOW US YOUR TALENT.
Apparently one of the letters Troy had brought to the door was from
the producers of the show, containing information about everything
we needed to know. Harry had waved it in front of me a couple of
times. Times, places, confirmation of competitor number,
cancellation rules, TV permissions, what happened if you went
through to the next round and lots of other general stuff, he said,
even about how the prize money would be paid out to the winner.
‘Just give me a précis,’ I said. ‘I can’t be bothered with all the
small print.’

The auditions, Harry said, were being held
at the Town Hall during the last weekend in October. Each
contestant was asked to come at the same time, nine am, although
obviously they weren’t all going to go on stage together.
Performances were going to be staggered throughout the day but the
organisers wanted everyone to be there at the start in case they
(the organisers) changed their minds about the order of events or
if someone (one of the competitors) chickened out at the last
second and had to be replaced with another act of the same sort.
(‘Don’t you dare chicken out,’ said Harry.)

Harry had become super
anxious about the number of magicians there might be (‘Relax,’ I
said, ‘you guys are a dying breed,’ while he said, ‘Magic acts are
two a penny. I’m going nowhere.’ ‘Shouldn’t that be
we’re
going nowhere’, I
reminded him, not that he took any notice) and

about the act that we were going to
perform.

‘Everyone will be doing the same thing as
us,’ he moaned. ‘You can bet on it.’

‘
Highly unlikely if not
impossible,’ I said, ‘but if that’s the case then we’ll just have
to make sure we do it better. Faster and slicker. What if we do get
through the auditions,’ I asked, ‘what then?’ Not much more than a
week ago I wouldn’t even have contemplated this. ‘Do we come back
and do the same thing in the next round?’

‘
No, we have to do
something completely different.’

‘
You didn’t tell me that,’
I accused.

‘
You didn’t ask. Besides,
you’re the one who kept saying I’d never make it past the
auditions.’

‘
But you never believed
me.’

‘
I’m starting to believe it
now,’ he said.

‘
Don’t,’ I said. ‘Instead,
ask yourself what if we do make it through?’

‘
I have more ideas,’ he
answered. This time I think he meant it.

‘
Do they include
me?’

‘
They’ll have to,’ he said
with a return of his trademark smirk. ‘You’re part of the act
now.’

Correspondence

During the week, Troy had texted a simple
question and comment (suitably encoded, but which I’ve translated
here for your benefit), ‘Couldn’t you just throw the mirrors
out?’

Yes, maybe that simple
solution (one I'm sure you’d already thought of) would have solved
the problem -
if
Mum and Dad had been at all likely to dispose of the things.
Trouble was, they wouldn’t

have been, especially not Dad. And even if
they

had been, they (the mirrors) would probably
have ended up in storage in our garage, a place I couldn’t avoid
forever.

If, on the other hand, the
mirrors had been dumped then I might never have had done what I
ended up doing. Because there had to be a reason I was seeing the
images in them. Their appearance was telling me I had to
do
something.

On Saturday morning (the last Saturday of
the holidays) the mail brought a reply from Mitchell.

I’d been chomping at the bit for this letter
but now that it had landed, it seemed too soon. I wasn’t keen to
open it. Either Mitchell’s reply was going to contain information
that could help me or it wasn’t. And, if it didn’t, then what was I
going to do? Was I going to be haunted by the mirrors forever?

I took the letter to my room, closed the
door and rang Troy at the same time as I opened the envelope.

‘
Just listen,’ I said as
soon as Troy answered. ‘It’s from Mitchell.’

Dear Athena,
(I read out loud)

Thanks for your letter. It’s good to know
the old house is being well lived in again. I was surprised you
wanted to write about Mum and Dad, seeing as you never actually met
them, but I guess that’s what a school project encourages you to
do. I remember when I was at primary school our class went out to
some small township, I can’t remember now what it was called, but I
do remember we were split into pairs and had to knock on doors

interviewing any old folks who happened to
be at

home about their lives and times. Later on
we made a school newspaper about the experience. It was fun, I
remember, something a bit different.

Anyway, I’m not sure what you’re after
exactly, stories, memories, photos, or what? If it’s something of
the less tangible variety you’re wanting, like an oral history, you
would of course have been better off talking to Dad. Trouble is,
that’s not really possible. He’s not dead, I hasten to say. And
he’s still all there, mentally, I’m sure of that, but a casual
visitor meeting him would get quite a different impression. As for
talking over the phone, it’s a ‘no go’ I’m afraid.

You see, Dad’s withdrawn into himself. He’ll
answer you if you ask him something but it’s barely more than a
monosyllable these days. All his energy, it seems to me, is focused
on Mum who, as I’m sure you’ll be aware, passed away a good few
years ago. Dad doesn’t get out much anymore. Whenever I see him he
always has a photo album in front of him on the desk in his room
and it’s as if he’s willing those pictures to spring into life for
him.