by Alan Finn
I almost did, too. The only thing that stopped me was the thought of Violet and how she’d react when word got out about my true identity. She would be crushed, I knew. And I refused to cause her such pain if it was in any way avoidable.
In this case, it was.
I therefore had no other choice. If I went along with Mrs. Collins’s plan, my secret could remain just that.
“Fine.” I addressed the wall instead of Mrs. Collins, simply because I couldn’t bear to look at her or the newspaper in front of me. “This evening, then. We’ll visit the medium of your choice.”
Mrs. Collins, a satisfied smile creeping across her face, snatched the newspaper and stuffed it back into her satchel.
“I thought you’d see it my way, Mr. Clark. I already have the perfect medium in mind. I’ll stop by in my coach promptly at seven.”
“Fine,” I said again, having little energy to utter much else. “Good day, Mrs. Collins.”
“And a very good day to you, Mr. Clark. I’ll see myself out.”
So she did, leaving the parlor without a backward glance and probably filching some of my more expensive knickknacks on her way to the door. I stayed seated, not caring one way or the other. I was too stunned to care about anything other than how her knowledge of my life had the potential to utterly ruin me.
Despite my agreement with Mrs. Collins, I knew that she wasn’t to be trusted. I knew there might come a day when she’d break our pact, revealing everything.
What would I do if that happened?
I had two options, both equally disheartening. I could admit to everything and face the repercussions, however harsh they might be. Or I could flee the city, without warning or explanation, heading westward until I came to a place where no one had heard of the Amazing Magellan.
Yet this no longer affected just myself. I had Violet to think about now. Poor, innocent Violet, who had no idea what she was getting herself into when she agreed to marry me. Would she still love me if she learned the truth? Or would her family forbid our union and whisk her away? The thought of losing her filled me with dread.
The longer I remained in the parlor, the more I felt my past pulling at me like invisible ropes tied around my wrists and ankles. Eventually, the tug was so strong that I had to stand and move unsteadily out of the room. Too shaken and shamed to face either Lionel or Mrs. Patterson, I headed up the back steps, twisting my way to the fourth floor. It was always dark up there, so I grabbed a lamp along the way, letting it spring to life outside the door to the attic. Then, fortifying myself with a deep breath, I entered.
The attic felt, for lack of a better word, haunted. Everything up there was dark, dusty, and still. Each crumbling crate and dust-grayed trunk acted like a tombstone, marking the resting place of some memory or another.
Many of the items stored in that lightless space beneath the eaves once belonged to the previous owner. Collections of romantic poetry. Dusty instruments with broken strings. Silk dresses that had become feasts for moths. But there were a good many of my own possessions, as well—childish items I had outgrown decades ago. I was inundated with memories as I passed crates of adventure tales and toy soldiers and shells gathered during visits to the seashore. Soon I was at the rear of the attic, not only the darkest corner of the house, but the place where my blackest memories were stored.
It was there that I sat upon a chest of old clothes, raised my lamp and gazed at an object I hadn’t viewed in years. It was a poster, propped against the wall and coated with an inch of dust. I wiped the grime away with my palm, revealing the image of a dashing man dressed in a black tuxedo and a cape lined with red silk. He held a silver hoop, through which a woman passed, floating on air.
The Amazing Magellan.
The floating woman was his equally amazing wife, Annalise.
And that poster was an advertisement for what ultimately became their final performance.
II
I’m going to assume that you’ve never heard of the Amazing Magellan.
The infamy of Magellan Holmes—his real name, by the way—has long faded. But for a time, he and Annalise were one of the most famous couples in the nation. Everyone knew their names.
On Independence Day in 1854, Magellan and Annalise took to the stage of the Walnut Street Theatre for what would be the thirteenth and final time. Anticipation for the performance had been building for weeks, with all of Philadelphia jostling for a seat. Tickets were being resold for ten times their worth. Confidence men made small fortunes hawking fake ones. Those who didn’t have tickets attempted to sneak into the theater through back doors and upper windows. One woman was even caught trying to smuggle her husband inside the theater beneath her voluminous hoopskirt. Yet for each attempt that was foiled, another was successful, and by the time Magellan and Annalise stepped onto the stage, the crowd inside the theater was almost twice as large as seating allowed.
This, of course, was no ordinary performance. It was Magellan’s return to his hometown of Philadelphia after three years spent traveling the globe. During his time away, he had performed for kings, czars, and maharajas, leaving each royal and dignitary he met awestruck by his singular illusions.
The longer he was away from home, the greater his legend grew. Rossetti painted him. Whitman wrote about him. Newspapers and periodicals at home and abroad detailed his every trick. No less a publication than Scientific American proposed that he be studied by physicians at Princeton University.
When he left Philadelphia, he was known simply as Magellan Holmes, magician. By the time he returned, he had been given a new, more flamboyant name—the Amazing Magellan.
While he was abroad, everyone, it seemed, had learned of his accomplishments. People spoke in awe about how he made the hats of the ladies in the audience float on their own accord and hopscotch around the theater, landing from head to head to head. How he caused the lovely Annalise to fly over the crowd, letting skeptics reach out to feel for hidden wires and lifts. How he could make objects levitate—heavy things that grew in proportion to his fame. Horses. Carriages. Elephants.
But that alone isn’t what turned the good people of Philadelphia into hucksters and fools. From the moment his homecoming performance was announced, there was talk that the Amazing Magellan was planning his most jaw-dropping feat yet. Something that the audience had never seen before and would never forget.
To prevent even the slightest bit from being revealed, Magellan made sure this grand new trick required no stagehands in the wings. It would just be him and his wife. Together, they practiced for weeks, going over every aspect until it was, in his mind, the most perfect illusion ever devised.
The performance on that steaming Fourth of July began small, with the Amazing Magellan warming up the lucky audience with a few standard illusions. Pulling rabbits out of hats. Vanishing inside a wooden cabinet. Fiddling about with a twist of rope until it suddenly straightened and pointed upward on the tip of his finger. Soon, though, he went into the more amazing feats that had prompted his new name. The crowd greeted each one wildly, thrilling especially to the floating ladies’ hats, which climaxed with dozens of them bouncing around the theater, and the levitating object, this time a hippopotamus.
But soon, the moment came for his brand-new illusion—the one the audience had been waiting for. The crowd watched with rapt attention as stagehands wheeled out a large tank made of glass on all four sides and filled with water. Standing at the edge of the tank, the Amazing Magellan was constricted in all manner of ways. Rope was wound around his arms and legs. His wrists were confined by iron manacles and fixed into place with a padlock. Chains heavy enough to tow a Pullman car were slung over his shoulders and crisscrossed his chest. Once he was soundly ensnared, the stagehands retreated to the back of the theater. Magellan Holmes then told the crowd that he was about to immerse himself in the water and have a red velvet curtain pulled around it for thirty seconds. About what was to happen after that, he would say no more.
The i
llusion was supposed to proceed in this manner: After Magellan dropped into the water like a two-ton rock, Annalise would stand in front of the tank and draw the curtain around them. Thirty seconds would pass, during which the audience neither saw nor heard a thing from the stage. When time was up, the Amazing Magellan would appear suddenly in one of the theater’s box seats, as if he had been sitting there enjoying the show all along. He would then jump to the stage, open the curtain, and reveal Annalise inside the tank.
But that was only the first half of this two-act illusion. The second portion would involve the glass-walled tank rising five feet off the stage with nothing supporting it. Annalise, still submerged in water, would swim around the tank, as beautiful and transfixing as a mermaid. When the tank slowly returned to the stage, she would remain at the same height, swimming first in water, then in nothing but air.
It was an ingenious illusion—certainly one of the greatest ever devised. Unfortunately, it was never seen in its entirety.
Not on that steamy night in July.
Not ever, in fact.
The audience indeed saw the water-filled tank being wheeled onto the stage. They watched the Amazing Magellan remove his cape and tuxedo, revealing a purple bathing suit underneath. When he was being tied, chained, and otherwise weighted down, he stared at the crowd, the perspiration on his face brightened by the gaslights lining the stage’s edge. Then the stagehands left and Magellan Holmes hopped into the water, sinking immediately. Standing at the bottom of the tank—eyes open, a triumphant smile playing across his lips—he nodded first to the audience, then to his wife. On cue, Annalise stood in front of the tank and pulled the curtain closed.
A deep hush fell over the theater as every man, woman, and child looked to the stage. Watching. Waiting.
A man in the third row opened his pocket watch and began to silently count the passage of time.
Five seconds.
The crowd leaned forward, listening intently. Was that a noise coming from the stage? A splash of water? A clank of chain?
Ten seconds.
A few stared at the red curtain until their eyes hurt, straining to see even the faintest rustle, of which there was none.
Fifteen seconds.
A man in the balcony coughed, startling those seated around him. A woman nearby, index finger pressed to her lips, turned to shush him.
Twenty seconds.
More sounds rose from the audience. Shiftings and tappings and the cracking of knuckles as nervous hands gripped armrests.
Twenty-five seconds.
All noise ceased once more as everyone began to hold their breath, bracing themselves for the incredible, the stupendous, the amazing.
Thirty seconds.
The man in the third row snapped his watch shut with a tinny click that echoed to the farthest reaches of the balcony. Onstage, the red velvet curtain remained closed.
When it stayed that way for several minutes, the mood of the audience shifted. Anticipation turned to boredom, which soon became discontent. It was only after a chorus of boos arose that a single stagehand approached the curtain and whipped it open.
There was a collective gasp as the audience took in the gruesome sight displayed on that stage. A woman near the back screamed. Another fainted. Several men, so shocked by what they saw, stood and peered at the stage to make sure their eyes weren’t playing tricks on them.
Onstage, Annalise Holmes was in the tank of water, floating lifelessly. One of the ropes that had once bound her husband was now drawn tightly around her throat. The Amazing Magellan was nowhere to be found.
More stagehands rushed from the back of the theater, bearing hammers and fire axes and sharpened bars of iron. They beat upon the tank until its glass resembled a hundred frozen cobwebs. When the tank wall facing the audience shattered, a cascade of water and glass shards rushed over the stage and into the crowd. Annalise was carried with it, flopping onto the stage like a fish tossed onto dry land. As the shocked and soaked patrons ran from the theater, a stagehand placed an ear against the water-slicked flesh over Annalise’s heart, checking for signs of life. There weren’t any.
While this was happening inside the theater, another drama was taking place directly outside it. News of the tragedy traveled instantly, being passed from an usher to a ticket taker to people passing on the street. Within minutes, the crowd rushing to the theater collided with those fleeing from it—a conflagration of humanity that filled Walnut Street. To avoid running down pedestrians, carriages traveling the thoroughfare were forced to quickly stop, horses rearing, passengers jostled.
By the time the police finally arrived, the scene outside the theater had devolved into utter chaos. Panic seemingly spread like smallpox, hopping from one person to the next. Women shoved. Children fell into the muddy street. Men started to throw punches. And for a moment it seemed that the melee going on outdoors had eclipsed the very event that had prompted it.
That all changed, however, after a lone man entered the fray. When people saw him, they stopped their pushing, their yelling, their general unruliness. A hush spread through the crowd, radiating outward from the man like water into which a pebble had been dropped. Soon everyone on the street, just as they had done so in the theater, fell silent.
The man was the Amazing Magellan, reappearing at last.
The manacles around his wrists were gone. Police inspectors later found them behind the theater, just outside the stage door. The ropes, too, no longer bound him, although one snaked around his right ankle, trailing behind him. The chains, though, remained, weighing him down and digging into the skin of his shoulders until they were raw and bleeding.
Stumbling in a daze, his eyes unfocused, he cried out, “She’s gone! My love is gone!”
When a group of policemen approached, he let himself be taken into custody. A new set of manacles was placed around his wrists and he was led to a waiting wagonette.
He was never seen in public again. The Amazing Magellan had, intentionally or not, pulled off his greatest trick.
He had vanished for good.
Since then, little is known about what really happened backstage at the Walnut Street Theatre. Because all the stagehands had been dismissed prior to that final illusion, there were no witnesses. Still, whispers persisted throughout the city that Magellan Holmes had grown unhappy in his marriage. Some said he had met another woman while overseas and wanted to begin a new life with her. The grand new illusion he had been working on was merely a ruse, designed to give him just enough time to strangle his wife and flee the theater.
These stories seemed to match official accounts by the police, who claimed to have proof of his plan in the form of the iron shackles found outside the stage door. They claimed two people in a nearby alleyway—a man and a prostitute, rumor had it—witnessed Magellan running past, yanking away the ropes tangled around his limbs. The only thing that kept him from getting away was the unexpected crowd in the area. They came from all points of the city, filling the streets and forcing Magellan to run first one way, then the other, until he was suddenly and unluckily back at the theater.
It came as no surprise to anyone when word got out that Magellan Holmes had confessed to the willful murder of his wife.
Many assumed he would hang for his crimes, but that day never came. The scuttlebutt around the city was that a stay of execution had been signed by President Franklin Pierce himself, an admirer of the magician since his performance at the White House. Yet others said he was spared the noose because the police wanted to prevent any embarrassment—they didn’t know if it was possible to hang a man who could levitate. And so the Amazing Magellan was ordered to spend the rest of his days incarcerated at Eastern State Penitentiary, on the northwestern edge of Philadelphia.
Forgotten amid all this drama, like a lone card that had fallen out of a playing deck, was Columbus Holmes, the ten-year-old son of Magellan and Annalise. He had been by his parents’ side during their trip around the world, seeing Paris and London
, Munich and Rome. He had shaken hands with Czar Nicholas and bowed before Queen Victoria.
And he had been in the audience at the Walnut Street Theatre on that infamous Fourth of July, witnessing the entire scene.
For a few months after the crime, his image was everywhere. People gazed upon newspaper illustrations of the dark-haired, serious-faced boy and wondered what would happen to him now that he was essentially an orphan. But as Magellan Holmes sat in prison and the entire incident became a distant memory, no one attempted to find out more.
If one were to bother, it could be discovered that Columbus Holmes was sent to stay with his only living relative—his father’s maiden aunt in Buffalo. Not wanting to be reminded of her shamed nephew or his crime, she, in turn, shipped Columbus off to an elite all-boys school in New England, where he became an outcast among his classmates.
When that cold and unloving aunt died, Columbus returned to the house in Buffalo only long enough to sell it and most of the possessions contained within its walls. By then, the War Between the States had broken out, and he enlisted in the Union Army, succumbing to dysentery before ever seeing battle. Because there was no one left to receive his body, he was buried in an unmarked grave somewhere in the foothills of Virginia.
The lineage of Magellan Holmes ended there.
But a strange thing happened to Columbus Holmes during his final days on earth. In a bustling and chaotic field hospital, he was placed beside another sick young man of the same age, also without any relatives. When dysentery claimed the life of that soldier, a harried and war-weary doctor misidentified the young man, confusing him with Columbus. It was, truth be told, an easy mistake to make. The field hospital contained a great many sick and dying men, with little in the way of identification, and the two ill soldiers did bear a slight resemblance to each other, which their unshaven faces made all the more prominent.
Delirious with fever and on the verge of death himself, Columbus Holmes nevertheless sensed an opportunity in the doctor’s error. Since the death of his mother, he had longed to change identities, to be known as anything other than the son of the infamous Magellan Holmes.
