The Magician (longer version)

I heard my son scampering home moments before he flung open the front door, his small, wooden shoes clomping loudly on the cobblestone road outside.

"Papa, Papa!" Blake cried over and over as he whirled through the house searching for me. He quickly found me upstairs in my study. I turned away from my writing just in time to see him trip over his own two feet when he spied me. As he stumbled forward, I reached out to steady him and he breathlessly tumbled into my arms. "Look, Papa, look," he gasped between big gulps of air, "there’s a ‘gician comin’ to town." He thrust his little hands toward me. He was clutching a thin scrap of paper.

"Calm down, son," I said. "Breathe, nice and slow. That’s it." I gently rescued what turned out to be an advert from the town newspaper from his stubby, newsprint-stained fingers. "Now, what do you have here?"

I leaned back in my chair and arranged the boy comfortably in my lap. I positioned the piece of paper in front of us and began to read: "Presenting, for the first time in over twenty years, the Inexplicable Erskine, Europe’s most prominent and prodigious prestidigitator, performing phenomenal feats certain to fascinate and captivate. One night only."

Erskine, I thought. Erskine...from where do I know that name?

"A real live ‘gician, Papa," Blake squealed as he squirmed around to face me. "Can we see ‘im?" His eyes were bright and round, hungry with anticipation and excitement.

I lightly tousled his fair, almost white, hair. "Well, I don’t see why not. Why don’t we ask your mother during dinner tonight? Speaking of which, go wash up. She’ll be home from the market shortly."

Blake hopped off my lap as if his rear was on fire. "Yay! I get to see the ‘gician! I get to see the ‘gician!" he chanted as he hurried off to wash basin.

I was never that young, I chuckled softly to myself and turned back to the desk. I looked at the advert again, trying to remember where I knew the name of the magician from, this Erskine. "For the first time in twenty years..."


When my wife Kaelyn returned from the market Blake helped her unload her purchases and prepare dinner, all the while nattering on and on about the magician.

"What kinds of tricks do you think he’ll do? Will he wear a top hat and cape like in my picture book? The ‘gician in my picture book made a lion disappear," said Blake, wide-eyed with wonderment.

"It’s pronounced ‘magician,’ sweetheart," Kaelyn corrected our son. "It certainly sounds like it will be an interesting performance. The ‘Inexplicable Erskine’ must be quite good."

"Have you ever seen a m‘gician, Papa?" Blake asked between mouthfuls of bread.

"I...don’t know, son," I said with uncertainty. The advert that still lay on my desk upstairs nagged at my memories. "Seems like something one would remember, doesn’t it, but I can’t say for sure."

Blake jumped up on his chair, arms held wide. He held his fork in one hand, like a magic wand, waving it around his head. "We’ll see the ‘gician together, Papa. He’ll do all sorts of tricks for us an’ we’ll always remember it."

"Absolutely, son," I said, laughing, as Kaelyn seated the boy properly in his chair and urged him to finish his meal. Though I wished to be, I wasn’t nearly as certain as feigned.


Later that evening, after putting Blake to bed, my wife found me seated in front of our closet, rummaging through old, dusty boxes that once belonged to my father.

She kneeled behind me, kissed the top of my head and began to rub my shoulders. "What are you doing, dear?"

I leaned back into the ministrations of her nimble fingers and sighed. "That advert, the one Blake brought home, I don’t know, every since I read it I’ve been haunted by it. By Erskine. I think I’ve seen him perform before, but it’s hazy, like my mind’s been clouded over with a thick fog. I’m looking for something, a playbill, anything that my father might have kept from when...if," I corrected myself, "if we might have seen him."

"My poor husband," Kaelyn said, folding her legs underneath herself and laying my head in her lap. She continued to rub my scalp and forehead with her expert touch. "It will come to you, in time. You cannot force the memories to surface. You will remember when your mind is ready."

"I know." I opened my eyes and looked at her upside-down face, her fiery red tresses framing her head like a scarlet halo, lightly tickling my face as they would brush against me. Her eyes, verdant as a lush summer meadow, soothed and calmed my nerves. I felt the day’s tension melt from my body.

"Come to bed, love," Kaelyn said. "Let Erskine trouble you no longer this evening."


I awoke with a start, shivering, and my body covered with gooseflesh. I had been dreaming. Horrible, though faint, images danced macabrely behind my eyes, taunting and teasing, just barely without my grasp. I clutched my hands to my face in a futile attempt to ward off the darkness, but to no avail. "Er...Erskine..." I muttered through clenched teeth, for I knew it was he who filled my mind with such terrors.

Sleep eluded me the remainder of the night. After the initial fright, I simply lay in bed, trying desperately to remember the magic show of my youth, despite Kaelyn’s earlier counsel. I envied her peaceful slumber beside me.

I stared at the walls and ceiling, calmed by their security and protection; moonlight coruscated through the window, shapes forming and dissolving in the shadows quicker than my mind could recognize them. The ceiling...

That was his trick, his final trick. It came to me in a flash, as if lightning had struck my brain. I roused Kaelyn. "I remember! Not all of it, of course. Most is just bits and pieces, fragments, but I remember the final trick!"


We were sitting toward the rear of the great theatre, in one of its highest balconies. We needed my father’s field glasses to see the stage, but I didn’t care. I was overjoyed at the idea of seeing a real, live magician.

We sat through an evening’s worth of hoaxes and illusions that remain obscured by time, waiting for Erskine’s grand finale: the disappearance of the grand theatre itself. Yes, he pledged to displace the walls and ceiling, to expose us to the elements, all while we sat comfortably in our plush velvet chairs. A most audacious and improbable feat, my father had said. That is why we were there. My father wanted to laugh and crow and jeer when the trick surely failed, as he wholeheartedly believed it would.

The lights dimmed and we were plunged into near complete darkness, save for a narrow shaft of light that illuminated the wizened old man on stage. My mother cried out in alarm before my father could reassure her it was all part of the performance. Erskine stood nearly immobile on stage, a strange, thunderous language I’d never heard before or since enveloping us like a warm blanket on a cold winter’s eve. Using the field glasses, I could barely see his lips moving, yet the strange tongue boomed and echoed all around us.

The rhythmic cadence mesmerized me. I leaned back in my chair and felt as though I were floating. I stared at the ceiling, transfixed by what appeared to be tiny swirling lights amongst the ornate carvings. I tried to point them out to my father, but he shushed me, staring at Erskine, intent on discovering the truth of the trick.

I blinked rapidly, trying to chase away the small, undulating pinpricks of light, but each time I opened my eyes there were more of them. The ceiling began to take on a translucent quality. It would fade away slightly, as if out of focus, before becoming whole once again.

Erskine slowed his strange speech and it became little more than a murmur. Then he started again, faster and faster, building to a deafening crescendo. I started to raise my hands to my ears, but stopped short. There, above my head, I saw the moon, bright and full. I grabbed at my father’s arm, to show him, but he ignored me, still fixated on the stage. I looked around, to grab the attention of another patron, but none would pay me any heed. All around me people were focused on Erskine himself and nothing else.

In awe, my mouth agape, I realized I was the only one who was noticing. To my left, where a sturdy wall had once been, I could see the marketplace down the street. To my right, the church spire jutted tall, overlooking the town. Behind Erskine, where once had been a curtain of the deepest blue, I could now see the lake, the moon reflected in its calm surface.

Erskine suddenly stopped his chanting. He had a strange, bemused look on his wrinkled, weathered face. The lights came up and everyone started booing. I didn’t understand. Had they not seen what I saw? How could they not have? My father stood up, threw one final epithet toward the stage and ushered my mother and I outside and away from all the "foolishness."

I tried to explain to my father what I had seen, but he derided me, told me I was imagining things, to stop lying. But I knew. I knew what I saw. I knew what Erskine had done, even if nobody else did…


"He made the building disappear, Kaelyn," I said, standing by the window, watching her reaction in its reflection. "I know he did. But why...why had I forgotten about it until now, until Blake resurrected the memories with that advert?"

Kaelyn was sitting up, cross-legged under our comforter, illuminated by the moonlight that shone through the window. She beckoned me to sit beside her. She took my hands in hers, her thin, lithe fingers entwining with my own, and leaned forward and kissed me with more passion than I’d ever felt before or hence. She pulled back after what felt like an eternity and looked at me. I wanted to lose myself in her gaze, her emerald eyes burning in the darkness. "It’s time, my love. Time for you to learn the truth."