The Houdini Effect (21 page)

I get the impression he’s trying to call
life back into the dead past, especially where Mum is concerned.
He’s never stopped missing her. More than that, he actually told me
recently that he expects to hear from her any day, since she
promised to be in touch from beyond the grave. I couldn’t believe
it when he said that. It wasn’t something he’d ever told me
before.

You’ll know as well as I
do that such a thing is impossible. Deep down Dad knows it, too,
I’m sure, but I suppose it’s one of those fancies that

people get, obsessions I suppose you call
them.

I hope you don’t mind that I mentioned this
but it worries me a lot and it explains why you can’t really talk
to Dad in person. I don’t think hearing this sort of fancy would
help you a great deal with a biography.

I’ll sign off now. If you let me know
exactly what it is you need for you project, assuming the deadline
for handing it in to your teacher hasn’t passed, I’ll do my best to
help. I know when I was a student I always left everything to the
last minute.

Best regards,

Mitchell Laurison

‘
Well,’ said Troy. ‘That’s
a dead end then isn’t it? Pardon the pun.’

‘
Looks like it,’ I
said.

I felt totally let down, and totally down.
From here on in there didn’t seem to be anywhere else left to go.
But, I kept telling myself, this simply couldn’t go on forever. It
had to end sometime. But when, and for how long would I have to
keep seeing the pictures in the mirrors?

‘
I could come over if you
like,’ Troy offered.

‘
There’s nothing you can
do,’ I told him.

‘
There has to be solution,'
said Troy.

‘
Tell me what it is,’ I
said.

There was silence.

‘
Better go I guess,’ I
said. ‘I can always hide out in Harry’s dark trunk to escape Laurie
and Iris. Maybe I’ll do that, and stay there.’

‘
Not a good idea,’ said
Troy.

Before I ended the call I invited him to the
family performance of the sub trunk illusion.

‘
Sure that’ll be okay?’
Troy asked. ‘I got the

impression your Dad didn’t like me very
much.’

‘
That was all a mistake,’ I
said. ‘It was because I was crying when you arrived. He knows it
was nothing to do with you. Come round. You might as well.
Apparently Dad’s invited Barry and May. Don’t mind May coming but I
can’t stand Barry.’

‘
I’ll see you tomorrow
then,’ said Troy. ‘And who knows what we might have figured out by
then. No more pictures in the mirrors today?’

‘
Not so far,’ I
said.

Illusions and solutions

Following Mitchell’s reply, there was
nothing I felt less like doing than the performance for the family.
Only the thought that Troy was going to be there made me carry on
with it; that, and the offer I’d made Harry to help him. It hadn’t
been a promise but he was right about one thing. It was too late to
back out now. Even I understood that.

On Sunday morning I was up early. The rest
of the family was still asleep. As I drifted from my room into the
hall the picture of the lonely, alone Laurie materialised in the
hallway mirror, then faded as I hurried past. In the kitchen mirror
it was back and then it appeared in the lounge and finally in the
laundry mirror. There was no-where for me to hide. Laurie was
following me, sending his sad signal. I started texting Troy to
tell him what was happening but stopped before I was half way
through my message. What was the point? There was nothing Troy
could do to get rid of the photos and he would be here soon enough
to see me make an idiot of myself during the dress rehearsal.

Laurie was alive, Mitchell had confirmed
this. I wondered if the mirror images would finish only when he was
dead. Would I continue to be haunted by them until then?

Laurie, unable to speak and tell me why he
was there and what he wanted.

Of course I didn’t want Laurie to be dead
but I didn’t want to be pursued by him either. I’d just have to
persuade Mum and Dad to get rid of the mirrors, as Troy had
suggested, no matter how difficult (or impossible) that might
be.

That morning, in preparation for the show,
Harry and I went through the act together one more time My heart
wasn’t in it. I was mechanical and dull even though I made no
mistakes. The dark, constricted space in the chest had begun to
freak me out. I hadn’t conquered my claustrophobia after all. Harry
wasn’t happy with me (nothing new there) but at least he was
putting it down to nerves.

I so, so wished Dad hadn’t invited Barry. I
didn’t want to look a fool in front of him.

Troy arrived, followed by
Barry and May. Dad poured B&M a glass of red wine each.
Everyone settled into our old but still-comfy chairs, which Harry
had arranged in a sort of semi-circle in front of the fat-flowered
drapes, the backdrop to our ‘stage’. (The chimney was still there
but the mortar dust had been cleaned up.) Harry had placed
spotlights in strategic places, highlighting the things he wanted
the audience to see, disguising the things he didn’t.

The chest stood
centrestage, light reflecting off

its brass studs as well as from the chain
looped

under and over it. The round curtain rail
with its fold of curtain was neatly arranged around the chest.

‘
Gel a kaerb,’ said
Troy.

‘
What did he just say?’
Barry asked.

Mum and Dad shrugged and looked at one
another, nonplussed. Perhaps I should have warned them. It had
never occurred to me.

I couldn’t concentrate. I
wasn’t thinking much about the act at all, rather about the
pictures in the mirror, going over and over them in my mind, trying
to figure out answers to the same old questions I’d asked myself
dozens of times already. Why had they appeared? What could I do
about them?

Harry had made us dress the parts for the
rehearsal. I guess that’s why he’d called the performance a dress
rehearsal. Harry was in his magician’s outfit, black trousers,
waistcoat and top hat, while I was wearing my red and black top,
the one with a silvery pattern along the waist and sleeves that
caught the light, and loose fitting black jeans.

It had to be clothing that didn’t restrict
movement. The trick needed to be done fast and with precision or it
wouldn’t look any good.

I was aware of the mirror off to one side
and I couldn’t help but wonder if Laurie was going to appear in it
again and, if he did, would anyone else apart from Troy and me see
him?

‘And now,’ cried Harry in the deepest voice
he could manage, ‘here it is. The Houdini Effect!’

(Great minds think alike. Who would ever
have

thought that Harry had a great mind?)

Harry opened the lid of the chest titling
the whole thing forward so Mum, Dad, Barry and May and Troy could
see into its dark depths. Setting it back he folded himself into
its darkness. Shivering inwardly (I’d be in there very soon and I
wasn’t relishing the idea) I shut the lid, padlocked it with a
flourish and drew up the chains to a point where the links met
above the centre of the chest. I pulled another large lock through
the links and turned the key. There, Harry was sealed in.

Now I had to balance on the chest (that in
itself had taken loads of practise) bend down to collect the
curtain track and quickly raise it up and over me, right above my
head. The hardest part followed. Harry was already waiting to make
the change. If I didn’t concentrate, if we got in each other’s way,
risking a curtain collapse, slowing down the change, the illusion
would be a miserable failure.

It wasn’t. I found I could concentrate, do
what I was meant to do. For the sixty seconds or so it took us to
perform the illusion I forgot everything else except what Harry and
I had been rehearsing the week gone past

The curtain fell, and I was gone. Harry had
taken my place.

He had escaped from the chest and, before he
had even revealed himself, I had escaped into it.

The darkness almost
confounded me. I was amazed I’d been able to go through with it
this far. I’d been afraid I would forget everything else

I had to do and had to do quickly. For a
second I

imagined there was no air in the chest and I
was

going to die of suffocation.

But then everything
changed. Having had to force myself to stay calm and rational, to
focus on the trick and on what I had to do to make it a success (in
front of a real, live audience) meant I’d had to completely forget
Laurie, Iris, the pictures, the mirrors. As a consequence the most
amazing thing happened. In that momentary lull, during those
seconds of intense darkness, my mind was able to reassemble the
multitude of unrelated patterns of the past two weeks into new
shapes. And I suddenly heard Dad’s voice, not literally of course,
just in my head, repeating the words he’d said the other
day.

You sometimes have to go into a dark place
to find the light.

By the time the act was over and the
clapping had begun (I was certain that Troy clapped the loudest and
longest of all, and he whistled, too, maybe even backwards) I knew
what I had to do.

First of all, I had to tell Troy as soon as
I could. After all, indirectly and unknowingly, it had been his
idea.

‘That was tremendous.’

May was speaking to Harry and me.

‘
Congratulations. You’re
bound to impress the judges of the talent quest.’

‘
Thanks,’ I said. ‘Where’s
Barry gone?’ I asked.

‘
He’s been on-call this
weekend and had to leave to attend to a blocked river drain,’ she
said.

‘A message came through on his mobile
just

before you vanished behind the curtain.’

‘
And then he vanished,’ I
said.

‘
Yes,’ agreed May. ‘But I
think he enjoyed what he saw.’ (I’m sure she was just being
polite.)

‘
His absence gives me an
opportunity to talk to your Mum,’ May continued, ‘which I think
I’ll take, if she doesn’t mind’

‘
To Mum?’

‘
Yes,’ said May again. ‘I
reflected on what you said the other day about her possibly being
able to give me some advice. I thought I’d give it a
try.’

I smiled at her. ‘Mum’s a good listener. I’m
sure she’ll be able to help.’

‘
Maybe,’ said May. ‘Did you
write to Laurie, by the way?’

‘
No,’ I said. ‘But I wrote
to his son Mitchell. I can I tell you later on what he replied but
I have to talk to Troy first.’

She smiled and nodded. ‘Communication’s a
wonderful thing,’ she said. ‘Never think you can do without
it.’

And she went off and started a conversation
with Mum.

The (real) Houdini Effect

I left her and Mum to it as well as leaving
Harry and Dad discussing what Harry had done to the chest (I
suspected Dad would discover very little about the
modifications.)

I took Troy down the hall to my room.

‘
Well done,’ he said. ‘It
looked ralucatceps. How did you guys do it?’

‘
As if I’d tell you that,’
I said sounding like

Harry at his most secretive. ‘I didn’t think
I’d be

able to go through with it,’ I added. ‘But I
did and because of that and because of what you gave me I think I
may have found a solution to the problem.’

‘
Something I gave
you?’

‘
Yes, I said, excitedly.
‘It’s The Houdini Effect.’

‘
Niaga taht
yas.’

‘
A light bulb moment,’ I
said. ‘Actually, I’ve got a better metaphor. It was like adjusting
the lens of a telescope. Everything suddenly came into
focus.’

I told Troy how I had carried on reading
Harry’s book about Harry Houdini. I’d already enjoyed the few bits
I’d read early on and it didn’t take very long before I’d become
engrossed in it. Harry had been right. It was fascinating to read
about Houdini’s early life, his relationship with his mother (whom
he missed terribly after she died), his great escapes, his campaign
to expose mediums and fortune-tellers as frauds (hey, he and I had
something in common!), and because of the sad, unnecessary way in
which he’d died.

What I found the most fascinating was
Houdini’s marriage to Bess. They loved each other and they worked
together. For years Bess even did the substitution trunk escape
with Houdini, just as I had done with Harry.

After Houdini died, Bess waited to hear from
him. Apparently they’d agreed that if he could ‘escape death’
Houdini would send Bess a pre-arranged message from the afterlife,
a message that only she knew. That would prove there was a spirit
world and a place where they’d meet again.

Sounds crazy but it’s true. Only, poor old
Bess

never received anything from Houdini and
she

gave up waiting and gave up believing that
there was such a thing as a spirit world. She eventually told
somewhat else what the words of the secret message were - her own
name and one other word - and she died soon afterwards.

‘So where does that leave us with Laurie and
Iris?’ asked Troy.

‘
It’s all tied in with
escaping,’ I said. ‘Remember what Mitchell said in his letter,
about Laurie expecting to hear from Iris. Like she could somehow
escape death?’