Magician

by Timothy C. Phillips

  Suddenly, the van veered off the paved road, and headed out into the open country. Having little choice, I followed, and the rocks jarred the small car mightily.

  I guess he knows a shortcut.

  I whipped the wheel first one way, then the other, in a vain attempt to avoid the ruts.

  Several bumps threatened to jar my teeth loose. The car seemed on the verge of shaking to pieces. I thought longingly of Traci’s four-wheel drive jeep.

  The car suddenly slammed into a deep rut, hoisting the passenger side violently into the air. I threw the car into reverse, but I knew it was hopeless. Both of the right hand wheels were off the ground. The van vanished into the deepening gloom.

  Well, now what?

  I checked the glove box. Wherever Tiller had gone, his gun had gone with him. Sighing, I pulled myself up to the passenger door, flung it wide open, and jumped down from the car. The car was securely wedged in; it would take a tow truck to get it out of there.

  I looked ahead into the darkness, in the direction Fain had gone. I started walking, tripping over the uneven features in the terrain. The land fell away after several hundred yards, and I was aware that I was walking down into a floodplain, though I could not see it. The land began to rut, and the ruts widened into small ravines. I eventually came to a large cut in the terrain, which formed a passageway, and slid down the slope and walked through. I found myself in a natural corridor of red clay, with walls rising up on either side.

  The bottom of the ravine was a dry washout. Beyond lay an open space. Trying to make as little noise as possible, I passed through this space, and found that it widened into a large round area. The rock fell abruptly away on either side of me.

  I squatted down and peered over a boulder. Below me the land fell away into vast open space. There were buildings down there, and lights.

  It was a ghost town, but this one wasn’t on any guided tour. Most of the buildings were crumbling. A metal storage building squatted incongruously next to the largest building that was still relatively intact. There were a couple of lights on, but nothing was moving. I eased down from my hiding place and crept closer. I caught sight of the black van, parked outside one of the old buildings.

  The moon was hidden behind high clouds. I could barely see where I was putting my feet. The gravelly sediment underfoot crunched with every step. The slightest noise was like a gunshot in the still desert night. I came to a crumbling outhouse and crouched in its shadow.

  There were two buildings that it used to serve about thirty feet away, both in a similar state of advanced collapse. The one to the right of me still boasted two vertical walls, and I ran, crouched over, for the deep shadows that welled around them. I got there, panting, and listened to the black night. Nothing. And then, faraway; laughter.

  I looked over in the direction of the largest building. It was in the center of the town. There were two others that were in some semblance of good repair, in addition to the metal building. There was yellow, flickering lantern light coming from the large building, and from the open door of the metal building.

  I sat for several minutes, listening, and then I heard laughter again, then a voice speaking. I realized I was listening to a recording.

  Plato they say could stick it away

  Half a crate of whiskey every day

  Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle

  Hobbes was fond of his dram

  And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart

  I drink, therefore I am

  Yes Socrates himself is particularly missed

  A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he’s pissed

  There was a gruff voice repeating some of the lines aloud. And laughter—the laughter was real. I started to move again and stopped. There were two people laughing. One, the owner of the gravelly guffaw he’d heard first; the second, a higher pitched cackle. I looked around for a weapon, cursed when I found none, and rose and made a dash for one of the closer structures.

  I tried to be stealthy, but it was nearly impossible. As I neared the wall, there was a sudden lull in the raucous tape. At that precise moment, I stepped on an ancient board that cracked with a report like a rifle. The sharp snap seemed audible for miles.

  I paused. Could Fain have heard the crack of the board? I had no guarantee that he was even present, but rational thought had ceased to mean anything in the surreal place I found himself. I drew up close to the wall and took a deep breath, then let it out, slowly.

  Listen. Listen for footsteps, for voices, for anything.

  I stood there for a long minute, but suddenly the sounds switched to a local radio station, and a hard rock song began playing. The volume suddenly increased to quite a bit louder than it had been previously. With cautious steps, I edged to the broken corner of the wall, and peered around. The light still flickered from the open doorways; there was no other sign of occupation.

  Enough of this. Let’s go see what in hell is going on.

  Trying to feel less afraid than I really was, I pushed away from the wall and walked slowly forward, toward the central building. There was only the lurid yellow and red of the firelight to guide me. I was halfway there when the music stopped.

  I stopped again, shrugged, and went on. The dry pebbly ground crunched like ancient bones beneath my feet.

  “Fain!” I shouted, my voice seemingly echoing for miles across the vacant land, “Samson Fain! I’m here! I’ve come for you, for all the things you’ve done! You’re through!”

  I ducked back down, and listened.

  No answer.

  I reached the open doorway of the old building, which I now saw was an ancient jail. A row of thick steel bars ran parallel to the wall in the back. Tied to the bars by his wrists was Detective Sergeant Tiller. A bloody rag gagged his mouth. He eyes were red and runny, but they looked past me with a strange intensity. I spun around, but it was too late; Fain was already on top of me.

  I ducked instinctively, a bad move when someone so big is charging you. He seemed to tower above me, a living wall of flesh. He hit like a freight train, sending me flying into the decrepit building, toward Tiller. I landed with an involuntary oof, wiping out the tape recorder and the small table it sat on. Fain stood in the doorway, his head almost touching the top of the frame. In his hand he held a pickaxe.

  This is for keeps. He means to kill me.

  And then Fain charged, an inhumanly loud roar bursting from him, his eyes wild and rolling in the red light. I picked up the little table and held it before me, like the world’s most timid lion tamer. Fain drew back with the pickaxe. I rushed forward, shoving the table into Fain’s chest. It threw us both off balance for a moment. The legs snapped off the table, and I threw it down, my eyes casting about desperately for any kind of weapon.

  I grabbed the tape player and came up with it, striking hard at Fain’s face. He recovered, and the head of the pickaxe arced past me, and buried itself deep in the dirt floor of the building. Fain grunted as he tried to pull it free. I drew back like a punter to kick Fain away from the weapon, but slipped on the shattered remnants of the table and the tape recorder. I fell back, my foot striking Fain a glancing blow on the chin.

  I rolled and came up, while Fain bellowed and resumed trying to pull the pickaxe free. I yanked a board free from the wall and struck Fain hard over the head. The board flew into dry splinters, with little effect. The wood had lost its weight and strength many years before.

  “They don’t make ’em like they used tah, do they!” Fain smiled, with a comical twist of his head. He freed the pickaxe with a final pull. “Now, let’s get this show on the road.”

  I backed away from him, feeling my way behind me as I went. My hand fell on the lantern just as Fain swung again.

  I grabbed the lantern and threw it outside. It exploded when it hit the ground, illuminating the weird tableau momentarily, but then burnt out quickly, leaving only a vague glow from the other building.

  I ducked just as Fain’s swing too
k out the roof’s sole remaining support. There was an immediate loud groan, and the beams began to snap, showering us with dust and splinters. The roof caved in down the middle, making a giant ‘V’ as it knocked Fain to the ground.

  I crawled out from under the debris and lunged to my feet and ran for the metal storage shed. Fain was tearing through the dry-rotted wood of the roof; it would not hold him for very long.

  I entered the storage shed and looked wildly around. It was full of large metal touring cases, speakers, and public address equipment—and a shovel. I grabbed it, then stepped back and smashed the lantern that hung from the top of the doorframe. The crumbling ghost town was now plunged into total darkness.

  I heard Fain grunt as he gave a mighty final heave, and I knew that he had freed himself from the collapsed building. The cell, I hoped, had protected Tiller. In any case, the wreckage was probably too desiccated to harm him; I would just have to dig him out later, if he were alive.

  I hefted the shovel and stepped to one side of the storage shed, my mind racing. Had Fain been hurt by the building’s collapse? Did he still have the pickaxe?

  Suddenly the entire area was bathed in light. I suddenly knew the answer to both questions, and I didn’t like either one. The light was from the van’s headlights. Who had turned them on, I had no idea.

  The other laugh. There had been two people laughing.

  Fain was coming toward me again, the pickaxe drawn back over his head, roaring like a lion. This time I was ready. Fain drew very close before he saw that I now had a shovel. He rushed toward me. I faked a lunge, stepped to one side and hit him in the chest with the shovel’s blade as he went past me, his three hundred pounds giving him plenty of inertia. He howled in pain.

  Fain staggered ten feet or so, then wheeled around. A long ugly scratch showed through a tear in his black T-shirt. He stood for a moment, breathing heavily. His eyes darted behind me one quick time. I resisted the insane urge to look behind me, but turned sideways just in case. Fain laughed.

  “Old trick. Worth a try,” he said between heavy breaths. Then he rushed forward again, this time more warily, the pickaxe held to one side, his shoulders low. He had learned the blitz attack would not work. Instead, he drew up just out of reach, and the two of us began to circle each other.

  “You know, Errol Flynn and his co-stars really hated each other sometimes. That’s the reason that the fencing in his movies looked so real.” Fain shifted from one foot to the other while he talked. He was far more nimble than I would ever have supposed by looking at him.

  “And another thing—” he began, but then lashed out suddenly with the pickaxe. He telegraphed it, just enough for me to get under it. The pick buried itself in the metal of the shed with a long tearing sound that rang like a gong in the silence that surrounded our desperate little struggle.

  “Shit!” Fain spat. The pickaxe was once again stuck. I brought the shovel around in a wide circle, striking at the handle of the pick as Fain wrestled desperately to free it. There was a loud snap, and my shoulders were almost jarred from their sockets. The handle of the shovel had snapped off, but I had also chopped off the handle of the pickaxe. Fain tossed the useless stub of wood to the side. The shovel handle, though broken, was longer and a much more formidable weapon.

  But Fain was backing away. “Conrad!” He called, in his fog-horn of a voice. The lights began to get closer. I recognized the name. The dwarf from back at the Proscenium Ballroom had been sitting there, watching the gruesome contest, impassively. Now the van was rolling toward them both.

  “It pays to have friends,” Fain observed, beaming.

  The van surged forward, and I tried to dodge. The dwarf screamed with laughter from behind the wheel, and spun to try to hit me again. I lost sight of Fain in the darkness. I ran, stumbling out into the sand. Conrad was herding me, running me back toward the ghost town.

  Suddenly Fain was in front of me again, with the shovel handle. He ducked and swiped my feet from underneath me. I tried to roll to escape him, but the van swept by, narrowly missing running me over. Fain hit me, once, twice, across the back of the head.

  I sank into blackness.

  Chapter 27

  I was waking up. I had no right to, I knew. I had let Tiller down. I had needed to go back and rescue Tiller from the caved-in jail. But wait. I was lying in the back of the black van. Tiller was next to him. People were moving around outside the van.

  Fain was talking to someone, somewhere, far away.

  “I’ll take these two to the mine. You meet me there, and bring the four by four. We ditch the van.”

  Both Tiller and I were tied up. Tiller looked very beat up. His glasses were gone. I couldn’t tell if he was breathing, or not. I looked down past my feet. It was early morning, and the doors to the van were open. Fain and the dwarf were doing something. Moving things. The dwarf was climbing into a big red four-wheel drive that was as imposing and large as he was small.

  There was digging equipment in the back of the van with me and Tiller. Two shovels, and I knew what they were for. The bastard was going to make us dig our own graves.

  Apparently he’s done this before. Knows how to plan. I just hope he’s made a mistake.

  My eyes tried to close, and I searched within myself for whatever strength remained.

  Close your eyes and you die. You may die anyway.

  I tried to sit up, but could not. I was tied in the same fashion as Tiller, with a tight length of rope linking the bonds around my neck to that around my ankles. Movement was painful, and cut off my air. I lay back and tried to concentrate. And then my heart almost stopped.

  She was standing there, smiling at me. She looked like the police age progression photo had looked. But different, wise beyond her years.

  Georgia Champion. She winked at me, and smiled. And then Fain slammed the door and she was gone.

  “Wait . . . ” I tried to shout, but the sound died in my throat. The van’s engine roared to life, and suddenly we were moving. I bent double, and turned so that I could see Fain. He began speaking aloud, while driving jarringly over the bumpy ground.

  “I really have to hand it to you, whoever you are. I mean, you are good. Here I am, safely hidden away from the world, and you go digging in the past and come up with the one mistake I made. Very good. Or possibly, you’re nuts. Me, I would have brought more help. No offense, but your friend is sort of old and slow.”

  Fain held up his hand, so that I could see. Between his thumb and forefinger, he held the post card that he had sent Viv so long ago. He had apparently searched them both very carefully.

  “The police put their best people on the Champion thing, and I have to give them their props, they were very thorough. But they never questioned little old me. Because I wasn’t there, remember? So it cooled off, and I drifted out of Birmingham. I came way out here, and thought that I’d made the proverbial clean getaway. And what do you know? I stay here for three years, pretty much out of sight, and just when I am really ready to reestablish myself, here you two come, and muck everything up. I guess nobody’s safe nowadays.”

  With a flick of his wrist he flipped the postcard out of the vent window.

  “Abracadabra!” He sang, in a freakish echo of Tiller. “That’s the way of the world,” he went on, his voice becoming heavy and sad. “Things vanish. Postcards, guys like me. Little girls. And you and your friend. They all vanish, and none of them are never seen again.”

  All the while Fain spoke, we were heading somewhere out into the barren desert. I had the feeling my time was running out.

  Fain chuckled giddily. “By the way, since this means that I’ll probably have to be moving along again, thanks for the cabbage.” He nodded toward the dash, where Horace Champion’s money lay in the manila envelope. “Quite a haul. Couldn’t have done it without yah.”

  I was fighting my grogginess. The shovel. Maybe I could cut my ropes with the edge of the shovel.

  Keep him busy. Keep him talking.
>
  “What . . . what did you do with Georgia Champion?” I asked, and my voice sounded like rusty bedsprings.

  “Ah, the Champion girl. My little princess. Such a tragedy. The old man, he doesn’t have a clue.” Fain’s voice changed, became lower. It was unlike any voice I had ever heard. There was something inhuman about it.

  “What happened to Georgia is something neither you or the old man can ever understand. I alone understand that. I won’t waste my breath trying to explain it to you.”

  I was rubbing my hands up and down on the shovel’s edge. It felt pretty dull.

  “Was she . . . I saw her back . . . there . . . ”

  Fain threw back his head and let out a long howl of laughter.

  “Saw her? You really are a nutcase, mister.”

  The van turned off the rough bramble onto harder ground. A few high weeds scraped against the windows. Some sort of structure was up ahead, a platform on high supports, built on a small hill. The road ran around and up to it. Fain was taking them up there.

  “This is my other little hideaway. That’s another thing I’m good at, finding places off the beaten path. That’s what this whole thing, me leaving and coming out here, has been about.”

  I squinted up at Fain. I felt my strength slowly returning, but my bonds were quite tight. There was no way I was going to cut through them with the dull shovel.

  “Misdirection?” I asked the back of Fain’s bald head.

  “Misdirection.” Fain repeated, with a note of finality.

  Fain stopped the van suddenly and stared straight ahead. “Well, this is the place.”

  He sat silently for a moment, took a deep breath, and reached and got something from beneath his feet. He got out, and came around to the rear of the van and unlocked the door.

  The light flooded in, as Fain yanked the door open.

  Fain was holding a large hunting knife.

  I held my hands up, as much as the bonds would allow.

  “Wait . . . you took the girl. How did you do it? How did you get out of there with her?”