Shadowghast

by Thomas Taylor

  And she hurries to the stage.

  “Who?” Violet calls, the last to sit, her hands clenched at her sides. “Who is this local expert?”

  “I’m sure you’ve heard of him,” the magician replies, climbing up the steps to the stage. “He was an author—quite famous before he disappeared—and a specialist in the folklore of your town, Violet. His name was Sebastian Eels.”

  Violet sits down heavily beside me.

  We stare at each other.

  “Eels again!” Violet mouths.

  Sebastian Eels, as you’ll know if you’ve been to Eerie-on-Sea before and heard all the rumors, is more than just the owner of a boarded-up house. He’s Violet Parma’s sworn enemy—and the main reason she’s been left without parents. To have his name come up twice in one day is a shock.

  Up on the stage, Rictus brings a lighted taper to the open lantern and places the flame inside. Tristo, beside him, squeezes a bellows, and—with a crackle and a fizz—thick smoke begins to billow out from the chimney of the lantern and escape in hot gouts from around the silver orb in the bronze dragon’s mouth.

  “I should have known.” Violet tears her eyes from the extraordinary sight and hits me with a frown. “It makes perfect sense that Caliastra and Eels would be working together.”

  “Except,” I reply, “it doesn’t! Eels is gone, Vi. Forever. Caliastra said herself he’d disappeared.”

  “She said that, yes,” Violet agrees, “but his house isn’t gone, is it? Or his stuff. Someone has been in there, and Jenny found out. And now Jenny is missing! It’s all connected. It must be.”

  I open my mouth to say the one true thing that will stop Violet’s suspicion of Caliastra once and for all and make it all OK.

  But nothing comes out.

  “Besides,” Violet continues, “I’ve seen enough of this magician to know she’s good at saying exactly what needs to be said to get her own way.”

  I cast a desperate glance at Caliastra, who is preparing herself on the smoky stage, and Violet catches me doing it.

  “Herbie?” Violet grabs my arm. “Please don’t tell me that you’ve fallen under her spell, too.”

  I manage a shrug—not a very reassuring one, but it’s the best I can do right now. I’m just about to add a small grin, for good measure, when Vi and I jump in our seats as a loud musical note reverberates around the auditorium.

  “Golly!” cries Mrs. Fossil beside us, pulling the flaps of her middlemost hat over her ears.

  From down in the small orchestra pit, in front of the stage, Mr. Mummery’s head and hat have appeared, rising up jerkily. Then his shoulders arrive, still clad in the candy-striped blazer. Before him, rising also, is a large, dusty, white object, spotted with seagull droppings. The man continues to ascend, wreathed in smoke from the lantern, while all the time a jolly fairground tune—slightly out of key and far too loud—blares out. Then he comes to a halt, and we see that the object is some kind of musical organ. Mr. Mummery is playing it, his fat fingers leaping around the keyboard, while his feet jump around the pedals.

  He turns, gives his small audience a leering, over-the-shoulder smile that he clearly doesn’t mean, and then finishes with a flourish and at least one wrong note.

  “Golly!” says Mrs. Fossil again. “The old Wurlitzer organ! I haven’t heard that since I was a little girl. Sounds a bit rough these days. That settles it, I’m definitely bringing my gurdy tomorrow night.”

  Now our eyes are fixed on Caliastra, who is standing before the fiery lantern, shepherding the clouds of perfumed smoke with motions of her cane as she begins to tell the tale of the first Ghastly Night in Eerie-on-Sea. Then, at just the right moment, Rictus reaches forward and plucks the silver orb from the bronze dragon’s mouth, releasing the strange light of the magic lantern.

  “Ooh!” gasps Mrs. Fossil. “Isn’t that lovely?”

  The light is bright and shifts and shimmers as if alive. I’m not sure lovely is the word I would use to describe it. Supernatural would be better.

  Where the lantern light hits the clouds, they fill with a diffuse glow, as bright as Dr. Thalassi’s canvas screen. Shapes creep in the billowing clouds—shadow shapes that seem almost as if they are trying to find a way out—and I wonder what’s causing them. Something mechanical inside the lantern? Something on the lens?

  But then Caliastra lays aside her cane and thrusts her hands into the light, changing everything.

  The magician shapes and commands these creeping, cowering shadows, casting them into sharper, more vivid forms. One of them—the portly silhouette of a tall, whiskered man—strides into center stage and strikes a haughty pose.

  “Old Mayor Bigley!” cries Mrs. Fossil, clapping her hands.

  Then other shadows come, creating the story as Caliastra speaks it aloud. One becomes the Puppet Master, holding in his arms the mysterious lantern. Others are shaped into the people of Eerie-on-Sea, gathering on the pier to watch the first Ghastly Night show. And all of it is seemingly formed and cast by nothing more than the dexterity of Caliastra’s hands.

  “That’s amazing!” Violet gasps, her suspicion of the magician, even her worry about Jenny, temporarily forgotten. “How can she do that? It’s so . . . so real!”

  But nothing we’ve seen yet prepares us for what happens next.

  One of the shadows flies into the air, changing and reforming, until . . .

  A mermaid appears!

  A curvaceous and tangle-haired siren, who swims through the cloud with a flick of her tail.

  Then another shadow becomes a giant squid, its tentacles rearing high above the stage before crashing back into a sea of smoke. In its wake comes a succession of legendary creatures, dancing and cavorting and prowling among the roiling cloud, as Caliastra tells the story and Tristo works the bellows.

  Finally, before our disbelieving eyes, the silhouette of a creature we thought we’d never see again creeps across the misty scene, its spines quivering, its tail swishing from side to side, its mouth hanging loose to display row upon row of terrible tooth needles.

  “The malamander!” Violet and I gasp, shrinking back in our seats.

  “Oh!” Mrs. Fossil’s quivery voice reaches us. “Oh, the poor doc! If he saw these . . . these wonders . . . he’d be embarrassed for our poor little lamp show of sticks and cloth. This is truly magical!”

  But I think back to what Caliastra said to me just a little while ago: “People are so eager to see the magic that they forget to look for the trick.”

  So what, I ask myself, is the trick we’re missing here?

  How can a magician, no matter how skilled, make shadow shapes like this using only her fingers?

  I look deep into the smoke, searching for some clue—for some hint that Rictus and Tristo are helping somehow, or some sign that Mr. Mummery is pulling strings from offstage. And that’s when I see it.

  “What’s that?” I grab Violet’s arm and point into the smoke.

  “Shadows,” Vi replies. “It’s all just shadows.”

  But then it’s there again, a spindly, crooked shadow that doesn’t seem part of the carousel of creatures conjured by Caliastra. It stoops forward, snatches a shadow that has crept to the edge of the cloud, and whirls it up into the spectacle.

  Then the crooked shape shrinks back into the dark, as if it had never been there. But not before Vi and I both get a good look at it.

  It is the shadow of a grinning man with horns upon his head.

  Did you see that?” Violet turns to me, blinking.

  All I can do is blink back.

  I scan the clouds of smoke carefully, but the crooked form is no longer visible. Then I remember I haven’t told Vi about the scare I had with the Space Invaders game . . .

  “Vi, earlier on, in the arcade, I think I saw . . .”

  But my voice is drowned out by another blast of organ music as Mr. Mummery digs his fingers into the keys of the Wurlitzer again.

  Above him, Caliastra commands the shadows back into th
e light, before parting the clouds of smoke with expansive motions of her glass cane. The menagerie of magical creatures is gone, and Rictus deftly replaces the silver ball in the mouth of the dragon. The music dies, and the magician addresses the audience.

  “Ladies and gentlemen! Now we come to the moment in our show where you, too, can play a part. We need volunteers! From the audience! Volunteers to take their place for one magical moment among the shadows of Ghastly Night. Raise your hands! We will call you up, one by one.”

  Then she adds, in a lower voice, because during this rehearsal there are actually only three people in the audience, “Don’t worry, we’ll settle for just one today, so . . .”

  I put my hand up.

  “Actually, Herbie,” Caliastra says, “I wondered if Violet might like to volunteer.”

  I lower my hand. I only put it up because being onstage is probably my best chance of seeing how this trick of light and shadows is done. But, of course, now that Caliastra has started revealing her secrets to me, maybe she prefers someone who is still in the dark. Maybe that’s why she’s pointing her cane at Violet so definitely, and lifting her free hand as if willing her to rise.

  Hesitatingly, shakily, Violet gets to her feet.

  “Herbie . . . ?” She turns to me, her eyes round beneath her tangled hair.

  “Me, me!” cries Mrs. Fossil, jumping to her feet just then. “I volunteer! Pick me!”

  And before anyone can stop her, she starts pushing past us, filling our nostrils with the smell of old waxed coat and beachcomber’s pocket, as she squeezes down the row of seats.

  “I really think, Mrs. Fossil . . .” Caliastra starts to protest, looking taken aback. “That . . . that Violet would be . . . Oh, you’re already here.”

  Mrs. Fossil is indeed already there, puffing up the steps to the stage, her rubber boots squeaking on the wood. Tristo steps forward, ushering her to center stage with beckoning mimes.

  Violet sits back down again.

  Caliastra darts a look at my friend—a look I don’t quite understand—before turning to welcome Mrs. Fossil into the act. And I wonder why the magician seems reluctant to have Mrs. F volunteer. Mrs. Fossil, though excellent in many ways, is the least likely of us to spot any tricks, and she is easily the most likely to be amazed and bamboozled by everything.

  But I don’t have time to wonder. The show is already moving on. Tristo is working the bellows again, and Caliastra is once more gathering smoke with her cane, returning to the story of Ghastly Night in Eerie-on-Sea. The silver orb is removed from the teeth of the dragon, and eerie light spills back across the stage. The beachcomber is caught in the full beam of it, raising her hands to shield her eyes. Her tatty and over-hatted shadow stretches out behind her.

  Then the smoke closes in, and Mrs. Fossil disappears.

  Except, not entirely. Her shadow is now contained wholly in the clouds—standing nervously in the smoke as if trapped there.

  “Golly!” comes Mrs. Fossil’s echoing voice. “It’s strange in here.”

  Then she coughs.

  “And tickly . . . on the tonsils . . .”

  Mrs. Fossil’s hesitant shadow is joined by another, spikier one that flicks between the clouds and then rises up beside the beachcomber with a terrible grin.

  “Behold!” declares Caliastra. “The Shadowghast!”

  “It’s all part of the trick,” I say, clutching the seat in front of me. “Isn’t it?”

  The Shadowghast reaches out to the shadow of Mrs. Fossil and makes her jump.

  “Who’s that?” comes the beachcomber’s voice, from inside the smoke. “Who’s there? Oh!”

  The Shadowghast seizes Mrs. F’s shadow hands in his own. As Mr. Mummery strikes up another ghastly tune on the Wurlitzer, the horned man whirls Mrs. Fossil’s shadow away in a dance. Soon the two of them are spinning like waltzers—the Shadowghast, leggy as a spider, and Mrs. Fossil, plump with too many coats, her hats coming off in all directions.

  And then they are flying!

  In front of our bulging eyes we see Mrs. Fossil’s silhouette leave the stage to be whirled and whirled high into the smoky air—her terrifying dance partner pulling her ever upward. He spins her again and again, till—as the music reaches a climax—the Shadowghast leaps back into the lantern, dragging our friend’s shadow behind him.

  Then the music dies away.

  Caliastra steps forward, slicing the clouds of smoke away with swoops of her cane, as the orb is placed once more in the lantern’s dragon mouth. Tristo slams shut the back door of the lantern with a metallic CLANG, and all falls silent.

  On the stage, standing alone in the center as the smoke clears, Mrs. Fossil sways from side to side in her boots, staring into space. Her hats are lying all around her, as if they really did fall from her head as she swooped into the air and flew.

  “G-g-golly!” she manages to say.

  I jump to my feet, my hands clapping madly. Beside me, Violet claps, too, but as if she’s in a daze.

  Caliastra opens her arms to acknowledge the applause, and Rictus and Tristo begin a little clown act as each tries not to trip over the other. Even Mr. Mummery gets to his feet and takes a bow, though he bumps the keys of his Wurlitzer with his bottom as he does so, causing a musical honk. Something tells me this is deliberate, though, and I clap all the more.

  “So, Herbie,” Caliastra calls to me. “A little proud of your aunt, I hope.”

  “It was amazing!” I call back. “You were amazing.”

  Caliastra beams at me, though I can’t help noticing she darts the briefest of glances at Violet.

  Beside me, Violet gets to her feet.

  “Are you OK, Mrs. Fossil?” she calls. Then she turns to me. “Stop clapping, Herbie! Something’s wrong.”

  Up onstage, Mrs. Fossil sways to the left, then to the right. Then, before either Rictus or Tristo can reach her, she spins on one rubber-boot heel and topples over in a dead faint.

  Mrs. Fossil!”

  Violet and I race down the aisle and up the steps to the stage. By the time we get there, Rictus has propped the beachcomber up on one elbow, and Tristo is fanning her with an imaginary sheet of cardboard.

  “Oh!” Mrs. F manages to say. “Oh, my dears! What just happened?”

  “You very kindly volunteered to be part of my act, Mrs. Fossil,” says Caliastra, helping the beachcomber to her feet. “An important part, too. But do you see now why I thought Violet would be better? Dancing through the air, arm in arm with the Shadowghast himself, can be a little taxing for someone of your, um, more senior years.”

  And the magician aims a wink in my direction.

  “You’ll be all right again in no time,” says Mr. Mummery, entering stage left with a glass of water. “Won’t you,” he continues, forgetting to add a question mark and making it sound like an order instead. “We need to be careful who we call up onstage tomorrow night, Caliastra,” he adds quietly to his employer. “The last thing we need is to kill off any of the local fogies and get ourselves sued.”

  “I promise to choose only the more vigorous members of the audience,” Caliastra replies testily. “Everything will be fine, Mummery.”

  “But what did happen to her?” Violet demands. “Why is Mrs. Fossil so dizzy?”

  “You’d be dizzy, too,” I say, “if you’d been danced off the ground like that.”

  “She wasn’t really danced off the ground!” Violet snaps. “Herbie, it was a trick, remember? We saw shadow puppets dancing into the air, not actual people. I just wonder what made the actual Mrs. Fossil so wobbly.”

  “It was so strange,” Mrs. F explains. “And with the smoke, I found it so hard to breathe! I did feel myself being spun around and around, and something definitely touched me, but I couldn’t see properly. I expect I’m just a bit bamboozled, that’s all. I’ll be right as rain in a jiffy.”

  And she drains the glass of water in one go.

  “Thanks,” she says, handing the empty glass back to Mr. Mummery. �
��I don’t suppose anyone’s put the kettle on? I’d love a cup of tea and a nice sit-down. And if you’ve got a biscuit, I won’t say no.”

  “There, you see?” Caliastra turns to Violet. “Mrs. Fossil is fine, and no harm’s done. And now, maybe you could escort the brave volunteer home, Violet? My fellow performers and I need to get back to our rehearsal.”

  Violet takes Mrs. F’s arm and leads the beachcomber toward the doors.

  “Come on, Herbie,” she calls over her shoulder.

  “Oh, Herbie can stay,” Caliastra says in a casual voice that almost—almost—masks the division that has opened up between her and Violet. Violet stops and turns back to look at me.

  “Herbie?” she says. And in just such a way, and with just such a look in her eyes, that memories of our amazing adventures together flash across my mind in a warm rush of friendship.

  I clutch my buttons.

  I try to do a grin as I glance apologetically back at my aunt.

  The raven-haired magician smiles her most dazzling smile at me. Then she moves one of her hands at her side like she’s conjuring a perfectly Herbie-shaped hole right there, and as if the universe is just waiting for me to fill it.

  My knees start to tremble.

  One of my feet steps toward the stage, but the other turns back toward Violet, near the exit. I’m just about to get my knees in a tangle and become the second person to fall over today in the Theater at the End of the Pier, when Caliastra laughs.

  “I’ll see you very soon, Herbie,” she says with a wave of her cane. “Go! Help your friend. Make the most of your time here. We will be together again soon enough.”

  And just like that, I’m released.

  I run after Violet.

  “Herbie, there’s something really not right about all this,” Violet says as we head back down the pier toward the town, Mrs. Fossil walking unsteadily between us.

  “It’s just a magic trick, Vi,” I reply. “You said so yourself.”