Houdini and Me

by Dan Gutman

  “Give it back, Simon!” I shouted, pretending to be assertive.

  “What are you gonna do with this,” he asked. “Call the 1990s?”

  Then he opened the phone and pretended to talk into it.

  “Hello 1990s?” he asked. “I have one of your cell phones. Do you need it?”

  “Give it back, Simon!” I shouted.

  “Maybe I will and maybe I won’t,” he said. “Maybe if you give me the five bucks I politely asked for, I’ll give back your antique phone.”

  I thought about giving him the five bucks. I could just give him the money and he’d give me my phone back. What’s the big deal? I was going to pay more than five bucks for the phone charger anyway. But I just couldn’t do it this time. It was the principle of the thing.

  “No,” I said firmly, trying to snatch the phone out of his hand. He yanked it away.

  “Okay, then nobody gets it,” Simon said. He reared back and heaved the phone into the woods.

  “Noooooo!” I shouted.

  I desperately tried to follow the trajectory of the phone until it landed in some bushes. Then I ran off in that direction.

  “Ha!” Simon said. “Play fetch, Mancini.”

  Simon walked away, cackling the whole time like the jerk he is.

  I spent about a half an hour searching through the bushes. It wasn’t easy, because the ground is really steep. Also, the sun was getting lower in the sky and it was starting to get dark out. I didn’t think I would ever find my phone. But finally, miraculously, I kicked a clump of leaves and there it was. I grabbed it and tapped the power button.

  Thankfully, it turned on.

  METAMORPHOSIS

  I spent a lot of time working on my math homework when I got home, but I just couldn’t focus on it. I was thinking about Houdini the whole time. He told me he was going to contact me that night, but I didn’t know when.

  The more I thought about texting with Houdini, the more I thought how crazy it all was. Maybe Zeke was right. Maybe Houdini was some kind of imaginary father figure to me. Maybe I was the son he never had. Maybe I was crazy.

  And then, just before ten o’clock…

  Bzzzzz…bzzzzz…bzzzzz…

  Yes!

  I yanked open the drawer of my night table and grabbed the flip phone.

  “HARRY?” it said on the screen.

  It still freaked me out that he just called me “Harry.” I thought about calling Zeke and telling him to come over to my house right away. It would be great if he could witness one of my text sessions with Houdini. Then he would know I’m not making it all up. But it would be too risky to call Zeke. I’d have to go downstairs, make the call on our landline, and explain to my mother why I needed to have Zeke come over so late at night. I decided against it.

  “I’m here,” I tapped on the keypad.

  “REMEMBER ME?” Houdini texted.

  “Of course,” I tapped. I thought of adding an exclamation mark at the end, but I didn’t want to let him know how excited I was.

  “DO PEOPLE REMEMBER ME?”

  That threw me. He really wanted to be remembered. It seemed important to him. And Houdini was remembered. He’s been dead for close to a hundred years, but whenever somebody walks by my house and sees the plaque by the front door, they tell me they know who he was. Even little kids know about the great Harry Houdini. He was sort of like Elvis, JFK, and Marilyn Monroe. Everybody knows who they were even though they’ve been gone for a long time.

  Houdini’s name had even entered the language. When you say that somebody “pulled a Houdini,” everybody knows it means he or she escaped from a seemingly inescapable situation.

  “Everybody remembers you,” I tapped.

  A pause. And then…

  “HOW IS LIFE?”

  “Okay,” I tapped.

  I thought about asking him “How is death?” But that would have been obnoxious.

  Little by little, we were getting to know each other. It wasn’t like Houdini to make small talk. I had the sense that he had a message to deliver, or there was something he wanted me to do for him.

  “BUT LIFE COULD BE BETTER, RIGHT?” he texted.

  “I guess,” I tapped.

  Sure. Life can always be better. My mom could win the lottery. That would make life better. I could become the centerfielder for the Mets. That would make life better. What was he driving at? My screen was blank for a while, and then…

  “WHAT DO YOU WANT TO ESCAPE FROM?”

  Weird question. What was he talking about? Handcuffs? Jail cells? I didn’t want to escape from anything.

  “Huh?” I tapped.

  “EVERYBODY WANTS TO ESCAPE FROM SOMETHING,” he texted. “IT’S HUMAN NATURE. WE ARE NEVER SATISFIED WITH WHAT WE HAVE IN THE PRESENT. MAN HAS ALWAYS DREAMED OF ESCAPING FROM WHERE HE IS PRESENTLY.”

  Houdini’s words kept scrolling up my screen.…

  “FREEDOM AND LIBERTY ARE WHAT AMERICA IS ALL ABOUT,” he said. “WHEN I DID AN ESCAPE, IT GAVE PEOPLE HOPE. IT MADE THEM BELIEVE THEY COULD ESCAPE FROM THEIR DISMAL LIVES.”

  I didn’t know how to respond. My life wasn’t dismal. I was pretty happy, actually. I felt like tapping out “What’s your point?” But again, that would seem obnoxious.

  “THERE IS ONLY ONE THING I COULD NOT ESCAPE FROM,” he texted.

  “What was that?” I tapped.

  “DEATH,” he texted. “I SPENT MY LIFE ESCAPING FROM DEATH. BUT WHEN IT CAME FOR ME, THERE WAS NO WAY TO ESCAPE.”

  Now he was creeping me out. I decided not to reply. I’d wait and see what else he had to say. But he didn’t text anything more. I stared at the blank screen on my phone. Finally, I couldn’t resist responding.

  “Why did you contact me?” I finally tapped.

  “THERE IS SOMETHING THAT I WANT TO DISCUSS WITH YOU,” he texted.

  Aha. It was about time he got to the point.

  “What?” I tapped.

  “METAMORPHOSIS.”

  I knew that word. It’s a fancy way to say “change.” I had learned in science class that many animal species in the world go through some kind of metamorphosis during their lifetime. Caterpillars change into butterflies. Tadpoles change into frogs. But I also knew that Houdini wasn’t talking about the metamorphosis of an animal species.

  Metamorphosis was one of Houdini’s earliest and most famous tricks. He began performing it with his wife Bess back in 1895. It was a big part of his act for the next thirty years.

  Here’s how it worked:

  A trunk was hauled out onto the stage. You know what I mean by a trunk, right? It’s not a suitcase. It’s bigger. The trunk was more than big enough to hold a man. Houdini would open the trunk and climb into a large black flannel sack that was inside. Bess would put heavy tape over Houdini’s mouth. Then she would tie Houdini’s hands behind his back with rope. Bess would make a knot in the top of the sack and seal it with wax. Then she would close the trunk’s lid. Then she would lock the trunk with six padlocks. Finally, she would wrap a rope around it and knot it tightly.

  Simply escaping from the trunk would have been pretty remarkable, but what Houdini did was even more amazing.

  Bess would wheel out a large curtain and place it in front of the trunk so the audience couldn’t see it anymore. Then she would climb up on top of the trunk and clap her hands three times. On the third clap, the curtain would open, and instead of Bess standing on top of the trunk, it was Houdini!

  To completely blow the audience’s mind, Houdini would then jump down off the trunk and remove the rope, unlock the padlocks, and open the lid. Out popped Bess from inside the flannel sack, with the knot and seal unbroken.

  How did they do it? Audiences were so stunned by Metamorphosis that many times they didn’t even applaud. It was sort of like when Houdini was locked in a trunk and thrown into the river. Nobody could explain how he escaped. The only logical explanation—and some people believed this—was that Harry and Bess had found a way to deconstruct the atoms of their bodies
so they could switch places.

  The most amazing thing about Metamorphosis is not that the Houdinis did it, but how fast they did it. The whole trick seemed to take just three seconds. One moment Bess was standing on top of the trunk with Houdini locked inside it, and a few seconds later Houdini was standing on top of the trunk with Bess inside the sack.

  I had watched a bunch of magicians duplicate Metamorphosis on YouTube. You can watch them yourself. But I could never figure out how they pulled it off. Obviously it was a trick, but how was it done? How did they make the switch at all? How did they do it so fast? The trunk was padlocked and bound with ropes.

  “What was the secret to Metamorphosis?” I tapped.

  “SIMPLE,” Houdini replied. “THE BOX HAD A REAR PANEL THAT OPENED INWARD. I’D CLIMB OUT OF THE BOX WHILE BESS WAS TALKING AND THEN BESS WOULD CLIMB IN.”

  Smart! If the panel opened in, it wouldn’t affect the ropes that were wrapped around the trunk.

  “But how did you get out of the sack and get Bess into it so fast?” I tapped.

  “THERE WAS A SLIT IN THE BOTTOM OF THE SACK,” he replied. “I WOULD CLIMB OUT WHILE BESS WAS LOCKING THE TRUNK AND SHE WOULD CLIMB IN WHILE I WAS UNLOCKING IT. THE TIMING HAD TO BE PERFECT.”

  “But what about the clapping?” I asked. “Bess clapped her hands three times, and then instantly she was in the box.”

  “THAT WASN’T BESS CLAPPING,” Houdini texted. “IT WAS ME. BESS WAS ALREADY IN THE TRUNK BY THEN.”

  Of course!

  Once you knew how a trick worked, it seemed so obvious. I slapped my forehead.

  But what did Metamorphosis have to do with me? I wasn’t going to go on a stage and get locked inside a trunk. I was about to tap in words to that effect when Houdini sent me another text.…

  “HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO DO A METAMORPHOSIS?”

  What? I couldn’t imagine what he had in mind.

  “That’s impossible,” I tapped. “We exist in different centuries.”

  “NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE,” Houdini tapped right back. “YOU SHOULD KNOW THAT BY NOW.”

  Yeah, nothing is impossible…for him. For an average person, it sometimes seemed impossible to escape from the problems in his or her life. But Houdini could escape from anything. If he could escape from handcuffs and jail cells and padlocked trunks, maybe it made people believe they could escape from whatever was confining them. Poverty. Depression. Disease. Nothing was impossible.

  I was finally beginning to put two and two together.

  “Are you saying you want to switch places with me?” I tapped.

  “YES.”

  Aha. At last I understood the real reason why Houdini had contacted me. It seemed crazy, but he wanted me to help him get out of the only thing he could never escape from.

  He wanted to escape his own death.

  “I…don’t think that’s such a good idea,” I tapped.

  “WHY NOT?” he texted. “YOU CAN BRING ME BACK. I DIED YOUNG. I WANT TO BE ALIVE AGAIN.”

  This was getting scary. I wanted to help the guy, but what if I did and Houdini was alive again? Would that be legal? What if I changed history for the worse? I was beginning to regret that I had ever communicated with Houdini in the first place. I didn’t know what to do.

  “I AM DESPERATE,” he texted.

  “I have to go,” I tapped.

  “DON’T!” he texted. “STOP! DON’T LEAVE ME HERE!”

  He was freaking me out. Instinctively, I snapped the flip phone shut and hung up on him. I didn’t want to deal with this right now. But a few seconds later…

  Bzzzzz…bzzzzz…bzzzzz…

  He wasn’t going to give up. I thought about ignoring the text. What could he do? Come and get me? Make me disappear, like he famously did with an elephant in 1918?

  Bzzzzz…bzzzzz…bzzzzz…

  Against my better judgment, I opened the phone again.

  “WE MUST HAVE HAD A BAD CONNECTION,” he texted.

  “So let me get this straight,” I tapped. “You get to come to the 21st century. And what? I get to be dead? That doesn’t sound like much fun to me.”

  “NO,” he replied. “YOU DON’T GET TO BE DEAD. YOU GET TO BE ME!”

  “Huh?” I finally tapped, after looking at the phone for a long time.

  “DON’T YOU WANT TO BE THE MOST FAMOUS MAN IN THE WORLD?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  That was the truth. I’ve often thought it would be cool to be a famous celebrity. But then, it would be a drag to have people following me around and asking me to sign autographs and stuff all the time. Who needs that aggravation?

  “IT WOULD JUST BE TEMPORARY,” Houdini texted.

  “How long?” I tapped.

  “ONE HOUR.”

  “So you would be in my century for one hour and I would be in your century for one hour?”

  “EXACTLY,” he texted. “I CAN MAKE THAT HAPPEN.”

  One hour. That didn’t seem very long. It could be fun. That is, if he could pull it off.

  “How do you do that?” I tapped.

  “THROUGH METAMORPHOSIS. I AM HOUDINI, REMEMBER?”

  It sounded like a lot of crap to me. How could he possibly send himself to my time and send me to his? But then, how was he texting me in the first place? It was like magic. He was a magician, after all. Nothing was impossible.

  “When?” I tapped.

  “THERE IS NO TIME LIKE THE PRESENT,” he texted.

  “Give me a minute,” I tapped.

  I needed to think things over. If we did a Metamorphosis right now, I would just be gone for an hour. Then I’d be back. My mother would never know I was gone. Nobody would know. I could just get up in the morning and go to school like nothing had happened. It could be cool. I’d have a memory to last a lifetime.

  “What do I have to do?” I tapped.

  “NOTHING,” he texted. “HANG UP. LIE DOWN. LEAVE THE REST TO ME.”

  “Okay,” I tapped. “I trust you. Goodbye.”

  “THANK YOU,” he texted.

  Why was I trusting him? I asked myself. I didn’t know this guy. Oh, what difference did it make? He probably can’t do it anyway. What did I have to lose?

  I closed the phone and put it back in the drawer. This was it. I couldn’t believe I was actually going to do it. It was risky, I knew. Maybe I would regret it. But my mom always told me you’ve got to take some risks in life if you want to get anywhere. You’ll never remember all the times you played it safe and everything worked out fine. What you’ll remember will be the times you took a risk and something good happened.

  I lay down on my back and closed my eyes. I took a deep breath.

  Nothing happened. Not at first. Maybe nothing was going to happen. Maybe Houdini didn’t know how to do Metamorphosis after all.

  And then I noticed a rumbling. An earthquake? My bed wasn’t shaking. I was. It was very gentle at first, and gradually it became more powerful. It didn’t hurt. It was sort of like one of those coin-operated vibrating chairs they have in airports and furniture stores.

  I wanted to open my eyes to see what was happening to me, but I didn’t dare. I didn’t want to mess things up.

  It felt like the room was spinning.

  And then I was gone.

  MISDIRECTION

  When I opened my eyes, I was outdoors. It was daytime, and bright. I had to shield my eyes from the sun. I didn’t know where I was. It didn’t look like New York City.

  There were people all around me. There must have been hundreds of them. And they were all staring at me, buzzing with conversation and excitement. I looked around quickly for clues. There were lots of tall buildings. I was downtown in a big city somewhere, but I didn’t know where. It sure didn’t seem like the 21st century. All the men were wearing those old-time hats I’d seen in movies. Nobody wears those hats anymore.

  I scanned the advertising signs: COFFEE 5 CENTS. CHEVROLET. BROMO-SELTZER. GAYETY THEATER. LOEW’S STATE. A movie theater was playing something called The C
abinet of Dr. Caligari. A street sign read MCGEE. I didn’t remember any McGee Street in New York.

  Three tall guys walked over to me. One wore glasses, and one had on some sort of military uniform. He had a pleasant smile on his face.

  “Where am I?” I asked.

  “Hahaha!” laughed the guy in the uniform. “Very funny.”

  He said it as if it was totally obvious where I was.

  “Kansas City, of course,” said the guy with glasses.

  I noticed the big sign overhead—KANSAS CITY STAR. That must be the name of the local newspaper.

  I looked down to see that I didn’t have on my regular clothes. I was wearing a pair of striped pants, black shoes, a white shirt, and a jacket and tie. I would never have picked out these clothes. And I hate wearing a tie.

  “Are you ready?” asked the guy in the uniform.

  “Ready for what?” I asked.

  He laughed again.

  “What’s happening?” I demanded. “What am I doing here? What year is it?”

  “It’s 1921, of course,” said the guy with glasses.

  So Houdini had done it. He had somehow pulled off Metamorphosis, just like he said he would, and sent me to Kansas City a hundred years in the past. I wondered where he was. Maybe he was sitting in my house at the same instant, watching my TV or playing with my computer.

  I took a deep breath. I had known that Metamorphosis was going to happen, but it was still a shock to my system.

  “Can I have a mirror?” I asked the guys.

  “Get the man a mirror!” barked the guy in the military uniform. In seconds somebody hustled over with one of those little circular mirrors that ladies use to put on their makeup. He handed it to me and I looked at myself.

  Oh no. I was Houdini.

  My head was big, with piercing, penetrating blue-gray eyes that looked almost frightening. My hair was thick, bushy, and curly, and parted in the middle. My forehead was big, my eyebrows were wide, and my chin and cheekbones were sharp. I didn’t look anything like the real me. And I was a grown man.

  Not that grown. The three guys around me were all much bigger. I couldn’t have been taller than five foot six. My legs seemed a little bowlegged. I knew Houdini was a short man. That was one of the advantages he had when it came to escaping from enclosed spaces.