Strange Magic (14 page)

“Oh, I almost forgot. He gave me something to give to you, Dad. Said it was important. I put it into my backpack…just a sec.” Amanda tore off into the kitchen to retrieve her book bag, and came back into the living room with a white letter-size envelope in her hand. “Here, Daddy.”

Wilson took the letter with a shaking hand. The envelope was sealed and had his name written on the front. With no other option, he tore it open and read the short one-line message typed on the center of the page. In bold capital letters, the message said:

SOON, THE ICEMAN WILL DIE!

Wilson froze for a moment, unable to move or think. If he’d had his wits about him, he’d have crumpled up the paper, ripped it to shreds, and destroyed it before anyone else could read it, but he didn’t. Susan grabbed the sheet out of his hand and stared in puzzled shock at the cryptic message in front of her. Unlike Wilson, she had no idea what it meant or why it had been delivered to her estranged husband through their daughter.

“What the heck is this?” she asked Wilson, but he wasn’t in any condition to answer her. His only thought was to get out of this house and get as far away from here as he could before it was too late. He couldn’t stay with his wife and daughter another second—he’d already jeopardized them enough just by knowing him.

“Wilson?” Susan asked, shaking his arm. “What’s the matter? You look like you’ve seen a damn ghost again.”

“I…I gotta go, Susan. Right now.” Wilson ran for the front door, knowing his fear was contagious and he was scaring his wife and daughter but he couldn’t help
himself. He needed to get home. He needed to find a place to hide.

He needed a drink.

Halfway out the door, Susan caught his arm, begging him not to run off. “Don’t leave, Wilson. Please. You’re scaring me. Tell me what’s going on? Who sent this letter? I know you know him. Tell me, damn it!”

Wilson shrugged her off and was down the stairs heading for the sidewalk but his wife’s sobs stopped him. He hated the way he was treating her right now and wished there was some way to keep all this grief away from her and Amanda. Neither of them deserved the black cloud that was descending on them, but there was nothing Wilson could do to stop it. He turned back to face Susan, but could only shrug his shoulders in defeat. No words came to him that could soothe her or make her understand. The truth would only make things worse.

“Who’s the Iceman, Wilson?” Susan pleaded.

More afraid for his family’s lives than he was for himself, Wilson finally admitted to a part of his past that he hadn’t shared with anyone in over twenty years.

“I am, Susan. I’m the Iceman. You and Amanda have to stay away from me.”

Wilson was spiraling down a cold, dark staircase collecting his daughter’s bloody fingers again, when an incessant shrill thankfully brought him out of a deep, alcohol-induced slumber. He had no idea how long the phone had been ringing, but he was damn happy the person on the other end was persistent enough to hang on long enough to drag him out of his nightmare. The last thing Wilson had wanted to do was follow that dream staircase to the bottom and see Amanda decapitated again. His nerves were already shot without having to experience that again.

Sitting up and reaching for the phone, Wilson’s eyes burned like they’d been dipped in lighter fluid, and his aching head felt like it just might explode if he was forced to endure one more loud noise this morning. He lifted the receiver off the cradle before it could send another needle of agony into his brain, but hesitated putting the phone to his ear. He felt nauseated all of a sudden and had no desire to talk to anyone today. He knew it was probably Susan on the phone and, to be honest, didn’t want to have to lie to her about what had happened last night or why he’d raced home and drank himself into a
deep sleep. Still, he’d already picked up the phone. It was a bit late to hang up now.

“Hello?” Wilson finally said.

It wasn’t Susan.

“Morning, asshole!” the Stranger said. “Thought you could hide from me forever, did you?”

“Who’s this?” Wilson said, simply to stall for time.

Obviously he knew who was on the other end of the line; he just didn’t know what to do about it yet. “Take your crank calls and go bother someone who cares. I’m hanging up now.”

“You do…and I’ll go slit your pretty little wife’s throat. I’m parked on Derby Hill Road already, in fact.”

Wilson badly wanted to slam down the phone and yank the cord out of the wall, but he knew there was no way he could do that. His old friend would keep his word and Wilson wouldn’t be able to save Susan in time. “You can’t be here,” he said, fear constricting his throat down to a whisper. “It’s…it’s impossible.”

“Is it now? You mean you
hoped
it was, but you were wrong, old friend. It’s taken me forever to find you but I did. Now you’re going to pay the price!”

“What do you want from me?”

“Everything!” the Stranger hissed. “More than I can ever take, but I’ll start with your miserable life. Then maybe I’ll move on to your wife and kid.”

“You leave them out of it, you bastard. They’ve got nothing to do with this. They don’t even know you exist. I’ve told them nothing about…about us. This is between you and me, and no one else.”

“Is it? You sure about that? Maybe. I haven’t decided yet. Either way, it won’t matter to you. I’m coming for you, shithead. Today! I wanted to scare you first but I’m
tired of fucking around. I waited too long to get my fingers around your lying, treacherous throat. Today is your last day alive. I’ll be there to see you…soon!”

“Wait! I never lied to you. Not once. What happened to you was your own damn fault. You can’t blame me for—”

But the line had gone dead, the silence on the other end of the line heavy, suffocating, crippling, a grand piano dropped onto his head from a thousand feet. Wilson couldn’t take the receiver away from his ear, hoping his enemy would come back on the line and threaten him some more. Maybe Wilson could talk some sense into him. Maybe he could…

Today is your last day alive!

The phone dropped from his hand to the floor, and Wilson raced to the bathroom to be violently sick. He buried his head in the porcelain bowl for a long time, his hands shaking, barely able to keep his aching head up out of the foul water as his stomach heaved again and again.

Wilson was still curled in a ball on the bathroom floor, halfway between sleep and death, when the front doorbell rang forty-five minutes later. Although his head felt like it were filled with concrete and his legs barely seemed to have the strength to support him, he somehow made it to his feet. He had no choice. The hair on the back of his neck was standing straight up and he felt like he either had to get up and be ready to fight, or close his eyes and wait to die. Coward or not, that was something he wasn’t ready to do. Wilson wasn’t worried about himself, but his family needed him to be strong and do the right thing for once in his life. If that meant taking on a madman, so be it.

But first, Wilson needed a weapon.

Back in his bedroom, Wilson went directly to his closet and quickly found the aluminum softball bat he stored in there. He and Susan had tried joining a mixed league several years ago, before Wilson’s drinking had gotten out of control, but they’d never really fit in with the other couples and had only lasted about half a season. The bat had been stuffed in this closet ever since Wilson had moved out and rented this dump. He’d nearly
thrown it away on half a dozen occasions but today he was damn glad he’d kept it.

In his hands, the heavy aluminum club felt pretty good and he took a few tentative practice swings to get a feel for it. He’d prefer to defend himself with a shotgun or maybe a Dirty Harry .44 Magnum, but he’d never been a big believer in firearms and had never bothered getting one. The bat would have to do.

The doorbell rang again.

I’m coming…you son of a bitch
, Wilson thought, creeping as quietly as he could to a spot just on the edge of the front hallway. From there, Wilson could peek around the corner and see the door rattling quietly in its frame. The Heatseeker was trying to get inside. From his vantage point, Wilson could see the dead bolt wasn’t even latched. In his rush to start drinking last night, he’d completely forgotten to lock the door. Inevitably, the second his eyes fell on it, the doorknob slowly began to turn.

Wilson pulled back into the hallway and waited until the Heatseeker was inside the house and quietly closing the door. Steeling his nerves, Wilson raised the baseball bat and lunged around the corner, ready to bash in his enemy’s skull with one smooth strike.

“Motherfucker!” he screamed.

Susan was standing in front of him, shock and terror in her eyes, and she threw her arms up in front of her face to protect herself. “Wilson, don’t! It’s me!”

Wilson stopped his swing—but only barely. Staring down at his wife and contemplating what he’d almost done, he tossed the bat to the floor, dropping it like it were something slimy and alive. “I’m sorry, Susan. Bloody
hell! I…I thought you were someone else. You know I’d never hurt you. Shouldn’t you be at work or something?”

“Christ Almighty, Wilson.” Some of the fire was back in Susan’s eyes. “I’m going into work late. After last night, I wanted to see how you were doing, but apparently you’ve lost your freakin’ mind. Whose head were you planning on busting open?”

Wilson had no answer for her. He felt like such a failure. Such a fool. “I can’t tell you, honey. I can’t.” Tears welled in his eyes and he turned away from her so she couldn’t see his shame. “You have to stay away from me, Susan. For your own good. Take Amanda and get as far away from Billington as you can.”

“What are you talking about? Why? You’re not making any sense.”

“None of this makes any sense, damn it! You have to trust me though. Get out before it’s too late.”

“I’m not going anywhere, Wilson. Forget it. Tell me what’s going on and I’ll help you.”

“You can’t. Not with this.”

“Try me. There’s been too many lies lately. Too many secrets. I’m not leaving here until you tell me the truth. I’m your wife, for God’s sake!”

“I can’t tell you, Susan. You’d never believe me. It’s total fucking madness and…” Wilson’s voice dropped to a whisper, fresh tears pouring down his cheeks. “…and you’d never forgive me if you knew the truth.”

Wilson broke down then, dropping to his knees in the hall, weeping into his hands. He didn’t want her to see him like this, a drunken wreck, but he couldn’t help it. Part of him hoped she would be disgusted by his weakness
and walk out on him—but she didn’t. Susan held him close and stroked the back of his head as she held him against her stomach. For a few blissful moments, time stood still, but then she broke their embrace and helped Wilson to his feet.

“Come on,” she said. “Let’s get you to the couch.”

“Okay,” Wilson said, allowing himself to be led into the living room and over to the ratty old couch he’d picked up at a nearby yard sale. “Man, I don’t think I’ve ever needed a drink so badly in my whole life.”

“And I’ll get you one…of coffee. Couple of cups, by the look of those red eyes and the smell of your breath. And then we’re getting to the bottom of this.”

She was out into the kitchen before Wilson could object. Ten minutes later she was back with a large steaming mug of strong java, with cream and two sugars, just the way she knew he liked it. She let him drink the entire cup in silence, then refilled him another, not bothering him until she saw him relax a little and his hands had stopped shaking. That was when she pounced.

“Okay, Wilson. Listen close. I love you. I’ve loved you since the minute I laid eyes on you, I think. We’ve been through a lot of crap together. Some great times, sure, but a lot of nasty days too. Agreed?”

“Of course. And I love you too but—”

“But nothing. I’ve been beside you through thick and thin and now you have the nerve to try and shut me out. That’s not fair. You tell me to take Amanda and run away? To where? Our entire life is here with you. We’re a family, damn it, and families stick together. I’m not going anywhere, Wilson. Not until you tell me the truth.”

Wilson put down his coffee and closed his eyes for a
moment. How could he possibly tell her the things she wanted to know? She’d hate him forever. Wouldn’t she? Or was he underestimating her love again?

“I’ve been hiding things from you about my past. Dark, dark secrets, worse than you can possibly imagine, Susan. You prepared for that?”

“Anything, Wilson…as long as it’s the truth.”

Where can I even start
? he thought.

“Okay. First things first. Everything you think you know about me is a lie.”

“My name isn’t Wilson Kemp.”

“It’s not?” Susan asked, already stunned. She wasn’t sure what her husband might have to tell her but she wasn’t expecting this. “I think I better take a seat for this.”

“Good idea,” Wilson said. “My real name is…or I should say
was
, Brendan Wilson. You thought I grew up in Ohio, but I really grew up in upstate New York, in a little place called North Tonawanda. It’s near Niagara Falls. Everyone used to call me Wilson anyway, using my last name, so when I went into hiding I figured I’d use that as my first. I was used to hearing it and I wouldn’t get caught staring into space forgetting my new name when someone was trying to talk to me. Kemp was the last name of a friend I’d had in junior high. I was trying to keep things as simple as possible.”

“When you went into
hiding
?” Susan asked. “Jesus! Why did you have to hide? Did you rob a bank or something?”

“Do you want to hear this or not? Let me get it out before I change my mind, okay?”

“Okay. Sorry. I’ll shut up and listen.”

“Thanks. No, I didn’t rob a bank. It was nothing like
that. But let me start from the beginning. I think you’ll understand it better. Maybe.

“I was a bit of a loner as a kid. No brothers or sisters. Just me and my parents, and they seemed to have more important things on the go than worrying about me. I don’t remember having too many friends, and we never took a family vacation. Not that I remember, anyway. Basically I was on my own. I did decently in school, okay grades, and it wasn’t like people didn’t like me. I wasn’t bullied any more than any other skinny little kid, so school wasn’t really the problem. It was after school ended and I had to spend hours alone waiting for my parents to get home from work and then waiting for bedtime.

“I started getting in trouble. Nothing major. I’d steal a candy bar at the convenience store, or pull out the carnations in our neighbor’s flower garden. You know…stupid shit. I think I was trying to get my parents’ attention, even if it meant negative attention. And trust me, my dad could dole out the negative love in bunches. I used to get the belt a lot.

“When I got a little older, maybe eleven or twelve, I broke into a car and tried to hot-wire it. I had no idea what I was doing and all I did was rip all the wiring to hell and cause a lot of damage. My dad had to pay five hundred dollars to get the guy’s car fixed. One thing led to another and pretty soon my dad started locking me in the house after supper, to keep me out of trouble. He was convinced I was a bad apple and was destined for a jail cell but he was wrong. I wasn’t a bad kid…I was lonely. I just needed attention. A friend, or a grown-up to spend time with me. Hard to have that though, when you’re locked in your room every night.”

“That’s terrible, Wilson,” Susan said. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be. It was the best thing my parents ever did for me. Seriously. It directly led me to the one great love of my life…other than you and Amanda, of course.
Magic
. It started simple enough, with me just picking up a silly card-trick book while at school. I brought it home just to have something to kill some time with after supper in my room. I devoured it though, and every other book on magic and magicians I could get my hands on. I loved magic. Became obsessed with it, and before long I was putting on little magic shows at recess and trying to impress the girls with the things I could do.

“Eventually things like card tricks and making things appear or disappear out of a hat bored me. I was damn good at them, but what really excited me was escape tricks. In truth, I probably only wanted to figure out a way to get out of my locked bedroom. If I could become a great escape artist, my dad could never lock me up ever again. It was the perfect thing for me and although I was still young, I knew I’d found my calling in life. Handcuffs, ropes, straitjackets, boxes, safes…anything that could draw a crowd; I wanted a part of it. Houdini was a god to me. Blackstone too. I studied all the greats, and maybe it was arrogance, but I thought I could be just as good. All I needed was time…and a good mentor.

“I dropped out of school and ran away from home when I was sixteen. All I took with me was a small suitcase filled with T-shirts and jeans, and a couple of my favorite magic books. For money, I’d saved up nearly two hundred dollars doing odd jobs in the neighborhood and a paper route after school. I was smart enough to realize that wasn’t a whole lot of money and it wouldn’t last me long, so I didn’t run too far. I ended up thumbing
my way to Jamestown, New York, knocking on the door of Lucius Barber, a retired magician I used to see all the time at the state fair and on the local cable network. He was a hero of mine, sort of, a local guy who’d made it big, touring his act as far as New York City, performing live on TV and at Radio City Music Hall. His illusions weren’t spectacular, but his escapes definitely were. In my corner of the world, Lucius was as good as it got, and I desperately wanted him to take me into his confidence and teach me everything he knew.

“I’m not sure how old Lucius was at the time, midthirties, I’d say; still fairly young. He hadn’t been a working escape artist in several years though, and with his dark bushy beard and his large beer belly hanging over his belt, I hardly recognized him when he answered the door. Not wanting to waste his time, or my own, I told him straight out what I wanted. He had his doubts, of course, but once I’d performed my act for him, simplistic and raw as it was, he saw potential in me, and probably more importantly, my passion for learning magic. We talked for hours about the history of magic and again I impressed him with my knowledge of our profession’s early greats; legends like Joseph Pinetti, Alexander Herrmann, and Horace Goldin. By the end of the first day, he’d agreed to take me in and put me to work.

“I hadn’t know it then, but I wasn’t his only student. The following morning I was introduced to another teenage boy named Douglas Williams. Doug was a year older than me and a hell of a lot better than I was. His sleight-of-hand tricks and one-on-one illusions were damn near brilliant. I’d never seen anyone that good and that fast up close before, and he was only seventeen at the time.

“Together we trained hard, and Lucius brought out the strengths in both of us. Doug stayed with his incredible talent for illusions, while I concentrated on becoming the escape artist I’d always dreamed of. Month after month we trained, year after year, both of us obsessed with our growing skills. We did dozens of small shows, performing at private parties, malls, outdoor carnivals, or wherever Lucius could get us booked. It was terrifying going onstage but we were good and were meant to be there.

“The happiest day of my life was the day Lucius handed me his entire collection of handwritten journals he’d spent a lifetime collecting and writing. Inside them were the really special illusions and escapes, the ones only masters of the art would even try attempting. That was the day I knew I had arrived as a magician.”

“That’s incredible, Wilson,” Susan said. “Why would you hide all this from me?”

“I’m getting to that. Be patient a bit longer.”

“Okay. Let me just refill our coffees.” Susan ran into the kitchen and was back on the couch in less than a minute. Wilson had a drink from his mug and carried on.

“Back then, the popular magicians were guys like Doug Henning, and The Amazing Randi. David Copperfi eld was starting to make a name for himself too. Lucius was always looking for an angle for us, a way to get our foot in the door, and it was him who suggested we team up to give the crowds something they’d never seen before. Sure, there was Siegfried and Roy in Vegas, but what Lucius was planning was miles away from their family-friendly show.

“He suggested we go a darker route than most magicians had ever tried. Back in the seventies and early
eighties, musicians like Alice Cooper, Kiss, and Mötley Crüe had taken the world by storm with their theatrical live shows, mysterious face makeup, and incredible pyrotechnics…so why couldn’t we? No one said magic had to be boring, or that we had to dress up in black tuxedos and top hats. No, we were going to do it our way, with a show so dark and edgy we’d scare the crowd as much as thrill them.

“We worked on the show together, tried a million different things, but in the end we agreed on something called Fire and Ice. The deal was we’d wear masks to conceal our identities. You know those theatrical yin-and-yang masks? They’re opposites of each other, representing comedy and tragedy? We used them but had them custom-made slightly skewed, a bit cruel and sinister. To the crowds, we would almost appear to be the same magician, and in our press releases we played that up even more, explaining how we were one magical entity, but polar opposites of each other, two halves of one bastardized soul…one the master illusionist, the other the master escape artist. Him, the Heatseeker…and me, the Iceman.”

A chill ran down Wilson’s back and he shuddered just saying those names out loud again. Susan noticed but remained silent, swallowing down her own taste of fear.

“The fans couldn’t get enough of us, Susan, but more importantly, neither could the critics. We’d turned a magic show into a rock concert, and they loved us for it. I was twenty-one when we did our first full-blown gig, and we kicked ass, Susan. It was
SHOWTIME
and man did we deliver. Ha! We used to say that all the time.
It’s SHOWTIME, baby!
I’d forgotten all about that. Anyway, we closed the night with my version of Houdini’s
Metamorphosis, where I amped up the illusion by not only changing places with my assistant in a heartbeat, but did it chained up within a glass water-filled box. The reviews were off the charts, we had a full tour booked, and we were finally on our way. We’d punched our ticket to fame and fortune and it was only a matter of time until we started reaping the rewards.”

“Oh come on, Wilson,” Susan interrupted. “You guys couldn’t have been
that
famous. I’ve never heard of either of you and you’re obviously not rich and famous, so maybe you’re exaggerating things a little, huh?”

Her skepticism didn’t bother Wilson at all. In fact, he’d been expecting it. “Actually, no…and I can prove it. Just a sec—” He left Susan in the living room and went to his bedroom, to a box he kept hidden on the top shelf of his closet, wrapped in an old pillowcase. Taking the box down, he carried it to the bed and carefully opened the lid.

Inside, the first thing his eyes landed on was a small glass jug—Teflon-coated on the inside, it contained every magician’s friend, Aqua Regia—a mixture of nitric and hydrochloric acids, one of the most corrosive liquids on earth, and a lot of magicians the world over—the serious ones—often kept some handy because it could eat through steel chains, metal locks, and damn near anything else it touched. In the James Bond film
Octopussy
, Bond is provided a fountain pen containing a mixture of this nasty acid, which he uses to cut his way through metal prison bars. Magicians used it the same way. In a tough bind, when an escape had gone really bad, potentially deadly, this clear liquid could be a lifesaver. Wilson set it carefully to the side. After all these years it might not be as corrosive, but then again, it
might be even worse—what did he know? Best to be careful with it anyway.

Besides the acid, there were several mementos from Wilson’s glory days as an escape artist; things like a pair of platinum handcuffs given to him by the chief of police in New York City, a first-place ribbon and medallion he’d won at the Erie County Fair talent show when he was nineteen, Lucius Barber’s collection of magic journals, and the two other things he’d come in to get: a scrapbook of pictures and press clippings from back in their brief heyday, and one of the multicolored masks he’d worn during his final tour all those years ago. Wilson removed those two things, being careful not to smash the acid, put the box back onto his top shelf, and returned to the living room.

“Here, have a look at these.” Wilson handed the items to Susan, who took them with trepidation. Just the sight of the white leather mask with a gold, red, and green distorted sad face printed on it was almost enough to make her believe everything her husband had said. Why else would he have kept this creepy thing?

Inside the scrapbook, she flipped through page after page of news clippings and press releases from all over New York State and the East Coast. There were pictures of Wilson and his one-time partner dressed in their ghoulish stage personas, their hands raised in triumph at the end of one performance or another. Mixed throughout were brightly colored ticket stubs and other promotional material like stickers and buttons; all of which prominently displayed the Fire and Ice logo.

“It’s true,” Susan said, closing the book and setting it to the side. “All of it, right?”

“Every word,” Wilson said, taking a seat.

“Well, that explains how you pulled that great trick in the park the other day, but it still makes no sense. If you two were partners and on the verge of stardom, why did you have to change your name and go into hiding? More importantly, why is this bastard here in Billington all these years later, threatening to kill you?”

Wilson considered his answer carefully before saying, “The question isn’t as much
why
, Susan. It’s
how
. You see, there’s something else you don’t know. Douglas Williams, my partner, died twenty-two years ago in 1988. I’m being hunted by a dead man.”

“But…that’s insane, Wilson. Obviously you’re wrong.”

“No way. I wish I was, but I’m not. The Heatseeker died a long time ago.”

Susan had no idea how to respond. She didn’t like talking about any of this craziness but she felt compelled to ask, “How can you be sure?”

“Easy,” Wilson said, taking his wife’s hand in his own.

“I was the one who killed him.”