Shadowland

PETER STRAUB

 
Shadowland

 
FONTANA/COLLINS

 
First published in Great Britain by

 
William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1980

 
First issued in Fontana Paperbacks 1982

 
Fifth impression July 1986

 
Copyright © 1980 by Peter Straub

 
Made and printed in Great Britain by

 
William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd, Glasgow

 
The author is grateful for the permission to quote

 
from the following materials:

 
'Fish for Supper' (Cooper, William & Guy)

 
Copyright © 1942 by American Academy of Music Inc.

 
Copyright renewed. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

 
'Sweet Sue—Just You' (WillJ. Harris and Victor Young)

 
Copyright MCMXXVIII. Renewed by Shapiro,

 
Bernstien & Co. Inc., New York, N.Y.

 
Used by permission.

 
Conditions of Sale

 
This book is sold subject to the condition

 
that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise,

 
be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated

 
without the publisher's prior consent in any form of

 
binding or cover other than that in which it is

 
published and without a similar condition

 
including this condition being imposed

 
on the subsequent purchaser

 
For Benjamin Bitker Straub

 
Little Red Riding Hood was my first love. I felt that if I could have married Little Red Riding Hood, I should have known perfect bliss.

 
—Charles Dickens

 
The key to the treasure is the treasure.

 
—John Barth

 
CONTENTS

 
NOTE:
Tom in the Zanibar

 
PART ONE:         
The School

 
         He Dreams Awake

 
         The Magic Show

 
PART TWO:       
Shadowland

 
         The Birds Have Come Home

 
         The Erl King

 
         The Goose Girl

 
PART THREE:    
"When We All Lived in the Forest . . ."

 
         The Welcome

 
         Flight

 
         Two Betrayals

 
         Shadow Play

 
The End of the Century Is in Sight

 
The two schools, old and new, are inventions of the author and should not be confused with any existing schools. Similarly, Shadowland, its location and inhabitants, are entirely fictional.

 
I owe many thanks to Hiram Strait and Barry Price for their advice and comments about magic and magicians, and to Corrie Crandall for introducing me to them and to the Magic Castle.

 
NOTE

 
Tom in the Zanzibar

 
More than twenty years ago, an underrated Arizona schoolboy named Tom Flanagan was asked by another boy to spend the Christmas vacation with him at the house of his uncle. Tom Flanagan's father was dying of cancer, though no one at the school knew of this, and the uncle's house was far away, such a distance that return would have been difficult. Tom refused. At the end of the year his friend repeated the invitation, and this time Tom Flanagan accepted. His father had been dead three months; following that, there had been a tragedy at the school; and just now moving from the well of his grief, Tom felt restless, bored, unhappy: ready for newness and surprise. He had one other reason for accepting, and though it seemed foolish, it was urgent — he thought he had to protect his friend. That seemed the most important task in his life.

 
   When I first began to hear this story, Tom Flanagan was working in a nightclub on Sunset Strip in Los Angeles, and he was still underrated. The Zanzibar was a shabby place suited to the flotsam of show business: it had the atmosphere of a forcing-ground for failure. It was terrible to see Tom Flanagan here, but the surroundings did not even begin to reach him. Either that, or he had been marked by rooms like the Zanzibar so long ago and so often that by now he scarcely noticed their shabbiness. In any case, Tom was working there only two weeks. He was just pausing between moves, as he had been doing ever since our days at school — pausing and then moving on, pausing and moving again.

 
   Even in the daylit tawdriness of the Zanzibar, Tom looked much as he had for the past seven or eight years, when his reddish-blond curling hair had begun to recede. Despite his profession, there was little theatricality or staginess about him. He never had a professional name. The sign outside the Zanzibar said only 'Tom Flanagan Nightly.' He used a robe only during the warming — up, flapdoodling portion of his act, and then twirled it off almost eagerly when he got down to serious business — you could see in the hitch of his shoulders that he was happy to be rid of it. After the shedding of the robe, he was dressed either in a tuxedo or more or less as he was in the Zanzibar, waiting patiently to have a beer with a friend. A misty Harris tweed jacket; necktie drooping below the open collar button of a Brooks Brothers shirt; gray trousers which had been pressed by being stretched out seam to seam beneath a mattress. I know he washed his handkerchiefs in the sink and dried them by flattening them onto the tiles. In the morning he could peel them off like big white leaves, give them a shake, and fold one into his pocket.

 
   'Ah, old pal,', he said, standing up, and the light reflected from the mirror behind the bar silvered the extra inches of skin above his forehead. I saw that he was still trim and muscular-looking, in spite of the permanent weariness which had etched the lines a little more deeply around his eyes. He held out a hand, and I felt as I shook it the thickness of scar tissue on his palm, which wasalways a rough surprise, encountered on a hand so smooth. 'Glad you called me,' he said.

 
   'I heard you were in town. It's nice to see you again.'

 
   'One gratifying thing about meeting you,' he said. 'You never ask 'How's tricks?'

 
   He was the best magician I ever saw.

 
   'With you, I don't have to ask,' I said.

 
   'Oh, I keep my hand in,' he said, and pulled a pack of cards from his pocket. 'Do you feel like trying again?'

 
   'Give me one more chance,' I said.

 
   He shuffled the cards one-handed, then two-handed, cut them into three piles, and then reassembled the pack in a different order. 'Okay?'

 
   'Okay,' I said, and he pushed the cards toward me . . .

 
   I picked up two-thirds of the pack and turned the card now on top. It was the jack of clubs.

 
   'Put it back.' Tom sipped at his beer, not looking.

 
   I slid the card into a different place in the deck.

 
   'Better watch closely.' Tom smiled at me. 'This is where the old hocus-pocus comes in.' He tapped the top of the deck hard enough to make a thudding noise. 'It's coming up. I can feel it.' He tapped again and winked at me. Then he lifted the top card off the deck and turned it to me without bothering to look at it himself.

 
   'I can't figure out how you do that,' I said. If he had wanted to, he could have pulled it out of my pocket, his pocket, or from a sealed box in a locked briefcase: it was more effective when done simply.