Night Magic (14 page)

Then came the strangest part. They had gone many blocks since crossing Broadway, not along any direct path but by erratic jigs and jogs, two blocks west, then two south, one west again, then another three south, and so on. Never once had the man looked back, never paused at a store window to catch their reflections, but only continued on. It seemed to have become some sort of game for him. Emily’s nervous giggling had turned to outright laughter. Then, suddenly, in the middle of a crosstown block, they saw him veer abruptly, his head still screened from them, and move quickly to the side of the pavement away from the curb, up against the buildings; then he passed from view.

Michael, letting go Emily’s hand, started running, going fast but ready to turn suddenly or step into a doorway should the man reappear. Only he did not. The point at which he’d made his turn from the street was just a trifle beyond a sign, a long thermometer advertising witch hazel and set in a rectangular metal frame. When Michael got there he found, not the entrance to a store, as was to be expected, but an alley. He stopped, looked around, motioned to Emily to wait on the sidewalk by the entrance, and then ventured cautiously down the alley, beyond some stacked wooden skids. There lay the mystery, for the alley went, as Michael quickly discovered, nowhere. A cul-de-sac. The sides of three buildings, two of brick, one of concrete, the brick walls blank, the concrete one pierced by two windows, but each of these protected by stout vertical bars. To prove what he already knew, he gripped them, bracing himself against the wall and yanking with all his strength; nothing could budge them. He looked down toward his feet: solid paving, no grate or manhole cover. Above: sky, roof edges, no fire escape or ladder. The three sides, brick and cement. Behind him, the opening to the street.

Slowly and cautiously, Emily had arrived next to him, as breathless as he and equally mystified. “Where’d he go?”

“Damned if I know.” He put a hand out and touched the brick, as if reaffirming for himself its solidity. “He must have gone up in thin air.”

And they laughed together this time, for they both knew that was impossible.

Several days later, as if by accident—but not quite—the Queer Duck drifted into view again. Michael and Emily were at the Central Park Zoo, kibitzing while Dazz sketched parrots and macaws. (Samir, convinced that his new dimensions would upset the balance in his portrait, had insisted that empty spaces in the background should be filled with tropical birds.) The old man must have come up alongside them without realizing it, for soon after Michael spotted the shiny patent-leather shoes, their owner, lost in deepest thought, had moved on past the birds. He stopped at the pool to watch the seals cavorting, and then he started off again.

Clapping on his top hat, Michael turned to speak to Emily, but her wide eyes were already on the retreating black figure. Leaving Dazz, they followed the old man at a distance, keeping well behind him, stalking his footsteps as he picked his way along the walk. Moments later he came to another halt, his back to them; then slowly his head swung around. His single eye connected with Michael’s two, maintaining contact for perhaps a couple of seconds. With a visible effort, the old man disengaged his look and shuffled off toward the zoo’s exit. Pleasant agitation animated his stern features, as though he were an athlete thrilled at the prospect of starting up the game again; his bearing suggested that he considered himself no one’s quarry, that he himself was the pursuer.

He continued along the winding path, emerging finally into the open field that fronted on the merry-go-round. The calliope’s sound was far away, then nearer. When the man stopped again, without turning toward them, Michael seized the opportunity to close the gap, grabbing Emily’s hand and sidling behind some trees, closer to the carousel, which was housed under a pointed roof supported by octagonal brick walls, but open to view on the side Michael and Emily were approaching from.

The merry-go-round slowed, stopped. Children got off and came through the exit, while others, holding their tickets ready, passed through the entrance and got on. The old man stepped up quickly, put down money, took a ticket, and hurried in as the merry-go-round began to revolve. Moving closer, Michael peered through the archway. There was no way out except through the exit gate. This time, Michael thought gleefully, they had him; he was trapped.

Round and round the painted horses went, and the children with their mothers, and the old man in black. There he was, coming around again, standing straight and holding on to a stationary vertical pole, looking out (at Michael?) with his features composed, bland, impassive, almost meek. There he went, the black shoulders whirling past, receding, now hidden behind the central cylinder containing the machinery and the calliope. He appeared, disappeared, reappeared, disappeared again. Michael glanced at Emily, shrugged his shoulders as if to say, “What’s this old fool doing on a merry-go-round?” They waited. Round and round and round went the carousel, like a miniature world, spinning through space. The music banged and clanged like orchestrated tin, the horses pranced tirelessly, rhythmically, up and down. The man came around yet again, clutching the brass pole, then spun out of sight once more as the carousel made another revolution.

When the brass pole swung into view again, he was no longer holding on to it.

He wasn’t there!

Michael ran up to the exit gate. As the merry-go-round slowed down, he stepped inside.

“Hey!” the ticket-taker called. Ignoring him, Michael made a rapid circuit of the slowing machine, came out on the other side, at the entrance.

He stopped and stared at Emily, palms thrown up in futile amazement. Together they peered back in through the portal, Michael even looking up at the overhead rafters, as if the man might have somehow and for some reason climbed up there. Each hurrying in opposite directions, Emily and Michael made a circuit of the carousel house, meeting at the far side. Michael walked up and stared at the brick walls, then touched one of them, but it was as unyielding as the ones at the end of the alley. While Emily went back to the parrot house to get Dazz, Michael sat under a tree, toying with his top hat, trying to think. There was no way he could have gotten out, no way at all, and yet he was gone.

Just gone.

L
ENA HAD THE TELEVISIONN
on, a cops-and-robbers show, as she thought of it. But she wasn’t really watching, only listening to the soundtrack while she stitched and occasionally glanced at the glowing little screen. She couldn’t sew and watch at the same time, for she needed two pairs of glasses to handle the diverse tasks, and it was too much trouble to switch them back and forth. Bifocals, the obvious solution, had for some reason never come under consideration. So she sat and sewed, intent on her work, while the sounds echoed in the room: police squad cars with straining engines and squealing brakes careened through city streets. There were spurts of gunfire, shouts, an occasional scream; sometimes Lena wasn’t sure whether what she heard came from the television set or the city outside her windows.

She looked to the doorway. Max was probably down in the basement, and who could say how long he would remain there? It didn’t matter; he could stay as long as he chose. She assumed that the work in the basement, insofar as she understood anything about it, would come along as it might. She was not terribly interested in that particular enigma just now.

Just now she was more interested in the writing. Each night she had tried again but was unable to make contact. Carsin had reasserted herself and was refusing to relinquish her control; the result was sheaves of yellow pages denouncing the “Saskia in Tears” trick. Lena chose to ignore this otherworldly nagging. She had not questioned Max again about the matter, it was his business and did not concern her. But the paragraph she had received from the new control, before Carsin and her prissy remonstrances took over again, that was another thing. The money was to be returned.
All restored as was.
And she must remember the Archangel,
of celestial armies Prince.
He was coming and must be—marred? or warned? None of this was clear to her. The clue was in John. Ask of John. The numbers were verses. And the other key words: James; John; Scriptures. Obviously the King James translation, accounting for the name James. She had pored over the Scriptures, 1 John, 2 John, 3 John. But these were concise, even terse epistles, and their chapter and verse numbers didn’t tally. 1 John had only five chapters, the others but a single one each. She had searched her Bible, an offering of the Gideon Society removed from some hotel room vacated in the distant past—she also owned a copy of Conrad Hilton’s rather less inspired
Be My Guest
—but her diligence had so far gone unrewarded.

It occurred to her that it might be mere capriciousness, or worse. Sometimes the controls liked to have their little joke, pull her leg a bit. Maybe making her read the Bible was their idea of amusement. Still, she didn’t think so. And there was the matter of the clock’s having stopped at the precise moment she had gone under control, or at least as closely as she could place it.

Ignoring the yammering television, Lena laid aside her sewing and thumbed her Bible’s pages again: 1 John, 2 John, 3 John. She flipped the pages, her eyes occasionally veering upward over her eyeglass-rims to the curio cabinet and the silver cup on the shelf. John’s Third Epistle was followed by Jude, this followed by the last book, The Revelation of…She adjusted her glasses, her heart fluttering.
All will be revealed by John.
The Revelation…of Saint
John
the Divine. She knew the numbers by heart: 21:6 and 8; 22:18–19. She turned quickly to these sections and read:

And he said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.

“Alpha and Omega,” she repeated aloud,
“alpha and omega…”
Gunfire spattered briefly. Galena shook her head and read the eighth verse:

But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.

Whoremongers,
and
sorcerers…
The words jumped out at her, powerful, compelling. But they made no sense. She moistened her finger, turned the page quickly to chapter 22, found verse 18:

For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book:

And 19:

And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.

Her eyes traveled along briefly: “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen,” she read.

She closed the book and sat holding it in her lap. The television, as if exhausted from so much mayhem, had now switched over to a comedy, and the unnatural sound of canned laughter stirred Lena from her reverie. She rose from her seat, flicked off the set, and gathered a few throw pillows from the sofa. Placing these on the table, she sat down and waited. When she felt ready, she took up the pen, put it to the top line of the yellow pad, and waited some more.

But nothing came. The pen remained poised, unmoving. It was her implacable rule to write nothing that was of her own volition. It must come from Elsewhere. Resolutely, she continued to wait. She listened to the ticking clock and wondered if it would stop again. She put down the pen, wishing she had the wallet in her hand, feeling that it would help. Then a thought occurred. Sometimes she stared into a crystal egg; it induced a kind of mild hypnosis. But instead of the crystal egg, she brought to the table the silver cup from the cabinet, holding it in her hand for a time, feeling the metal sides, the bottom, the rim, running her finger around the gold-washed lining. Then she placed the cup under the light and stared at it.

Presently the familiar empty, magnetized sensation mounted inside her, and she took up the pen again and placed it on the pad. She was fearful, not only of the pain she knew would come, but of the words that would come with it. Her hand began to tremble, there was a rush through her body, and she felt the seizure in her chest. Each breath ended in a hoarse, guttural gasp. She could sense them, officious and importunate, shoving at her, vying for her attention like rude children. Carsin came and wrote briefly, then stopped; then someone else, whose handwriting was unknown to her. She started to hear voices but rejected them, demanding written, not spoken, communication. Carsin came back, gave it up, and then a name appeared on the yellow page.

Miss…James.

Had she been wrong, then, about the King James version? The Bible clue was in John and Revelation; the James was the control? Miss James? Even though she was in pain, it amused her that it had all come to the same thing in any case. But why must they always make a game of it, why must they have their little mystery? Such silliness. Was it possible that not even death made anybody any wiser?

Miss James—what?

Nothing more came. She was staring hard at the silver christening cup when, involuntarily, her hand began moving again. Then the writing came faster and faster, until she was writing as quickly as she could—not her handwriting, of course, but Miss James’s, and Miss James tearing off the pages and strewing them over the writing table—and she could hear the sound of her own hoarse breathing and the lamplight seemed to grow dark and her head fell with a soft thump on one of the pillows.

When she came to and lifted her head, she could smell the same floral scent in the room; lilies, she thought. “Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.” She put away the pillows, then gathered up the pages, sorting them as best she could. Then she put on her glasses and read: