Fearsome Magics

by Jonathan Strahan

  “But you survived.”

  “I did. I was the only one who came out alive.”

  He gave the rocking chair a push. “Who would like to be first? Who wants to experience the pure calm of the Nursery Corner?”

  I did. “Me first!” I said. He glanced at my mother, who nodded indulgently.

  He said, “Not yet for you. Not yet. You’re happy, and innocent, and have a life to live. There is nothing to calm in you.”

  John John, up the hall in his room, screamed as he did every five minutes or ten, often enough to make me want to scream myself.

  “Let’s start with him,” Mario said. He wriggled his fingers like a puppet master. Two of the nurses wheeled John John down the hallway, his arms strapped to the chair but his fingers reaching for them as if they could stretch beyond their means and scratch eyeballs out.

  Four nurses lifted him into the chair in the Nursery Corner, one for each limb to keep him still. Mario set it rocking as they held him down. The rhythm of it did calm him, and one by one, the nurses tentatively let go. John John sat quietly, eyes closed, rocking, rocking, finding muscles he hadn’t used in months.

  This seemed to quieten all of the residents, and they mimicked his movement back and forth, back and forth.

  “How long does he get to stay there?” Aunt Em said. She’d elbowed others out of the way to stand in front.

  “As long as he likes.”

  It was over an hour before the man stirred and lifted his head. His face seemed gentler, and there had been silence from the moment he sat in the chair.

  “He’s happier now,” Mario said. “Now, who is good at sharing? Sharing is Caring!”

  THE NURSERY CORNER worked on all of them. If they started to throw a tantrum, if they screamed, became violent, if they attacked a staff member, they were placed in the Nursery Corner and they would come out softer, quieter. It was a godsend, my mother said, and she said that Mario was a godsend as well.

  I didn’t like it. To me, it was like they became puppets. Diminished.

  “Where did you go?” I asked when they came out. “What did you see?”

  Many forgot instantly, their eyes clouding over. Others remembered long enough to say, “The air was fresh,” or “I saw my father there,” before memory was gone. I didn’t keep a record, but I reckon many of them gave up the ghost not long after a visit to the Nursery Corner. As if they’d seen heaven and no longer feared it.

  ONE NIGHT, I heard a creaking sound. I crept out to have a look at the Nursery Corner. The hallway was lit only by the floor lights set to guide the staff in the dark.

  The Nursery Corner seemed to glow, but I knew that wasn’t possible. It made me think of when the circus was in town, set up in the school’s playing field. From home, at night, the lights of the circus set a halo of light around the school, and this was how the Nursery Corner seemed, as if there was something bright and exciting beyond it.

  I heard creak creak. It was Aunt Em, gently rocking. She clutched the soft white blanket and her mouth drooled.

  There was a noise behind me and it was Mr Simons, completely naked, pulling at his penis in a way I have never seen since, stretching it almost to his mouth. I was enthralled, and that’s where my mother found me, staring, open mouthed, and Aunt Em, rocking and drooling, and Mr Simons, tugging and tugging.

  She bundled me up and put me to bed. She stayed and talked with me for an hour. My sleepiness, and the shock, and her quietness as I was talking led me to say more than I should have about the things I saw and heard.

  “I hadn’t quite realised. I’d forgotten how young you are,” she said.

  “It’s okay, Mum. It doesn’t bother me,” but still she spoke to my teachers, and to the nurses, and between them they decided the home was not a good place for me, at least until I was older. Mario said he was jealous I was going to boarding school; best years of his life, bar none.

  “Until it burnt down,” I said.

  “You be careful. No smoking in the cupboards,” he said, and I shook my head, because I knew what smoking did and that I’d never do it. He was a private school boy and Mum was too. Fancy schools, they both went to. My father went to the nasty local, my mother said, and she always said it in that way of knowing.

  “You’ll make connections for life at these schools,” Mario said, but he appeared to have no friends from childhood at all.

  I had time to say goodbye to all my substitute grandparents, but none of them really noticed. Aunt Em complained that her arms hurt. She held them out, weeping, and the nurse in attendance said, “There is nothing wrong,” like the doctors told her to say, but gave Aunt Em pain relief nonetheless.

  So many of these old people felt pain others saw no reason for.

  My cat was old and slow and I couldn’t consider taking her. Besides, she loved it there; so many laps. So many hands to stroke her. And she knew, she had learnt, when a person was about to turn nasty.

  She knew when it was time to get off a lap.

  BOARDING SCHOOL WAS not all that, but it was okay. It was boring compared to the old people and what they told me. Those secrets and outrageous stories.

  My mother’s letters grew increasingly bizarre, listing all the deaths, first up, before anything else. Then it was all about Mario and how wonderfully the Nursery Corner worked to calm people down.

  She spoke of aches and pains her patients suffered that the doctors couldn’t identify. The doctors never listen, is the problem. They think these people are making it up, but none of them have the imagination any more. Mr Simons left us the watch collection he was always talking about. Turns out it was worth money after all.

  At first, I visited every term break; less often as I got older. Mario looked after Mum and he wanted me to understand that, to the extent that he kept his hand firmly on her arse, as if to let me know the story, in case there was any doubt. Mum looked happier every time, less severe, more full of genuine laughter. She worried over her patients, always, but she somehow seemed to believe they were safer now.

  “He’s a wonder,” everyone told me. “What he does for these people,” and truly, the place was far quieter. They all sat in their chairs, smiles on their faces. Some played with toys, holding them weakly in their laps. Others gazed at the TV, especially if a singing show was on.

  WHEN SCHOOL WAS done I moved back home. After starring in the drama productions for two years I thought my path was set, but finding work as an actor proved to be soul-destroying (“Lose some weight and get back to us”) and not what I thought it would be. I moved back to help Mum out and bide my time, waiting for Hollywood to call.

  “How’s my favourite audience member? My favourite movie star?” Mario said most mornings, winking at me. He knew I was worldly wise, now, not the innocent I once was.

  I wondered what he got out of it all. What he gained. Was it just the adulation? The love of a good woman like my mother? He still travelled, giving shows around town and sometimes further afar, but he was always there for her, he always called if he was late.

  The staff still rolled residents into the Nursery Corner if they got a bit bolshie. The nasty ones, the whinging ones, they’d get sat there every few days, because after an hour, they’d come out child-like. Happier. More willing to work at the repetitive tasks and activities that were supposed to help them. Vaguely useful things, like making lavender bags or packing candles. Sometimes they tied bows for funeral homes, black ribbons needed in the hundreds. Cruel but they have to face it, Mum said. She didn’t think you should pretend death isn’t going to happen. It wasn’t like other places, where people simply ‘went away’, as if they moved to a pleasant place we’d never visit. Here, we had wakes.

  We had a lot of wakes.

  There was always movement in the Nursery Corner. A trick of the light, the nurses said (the doctors were never there long enough) more so at night when the whole floor flickered with shadow as if there were candles but there were none.

  Sometimes I watch
ed it like a movie, straining my eyes to identify shapes.

  Sometimes my old cat curled up on the chair, emerging hours later with fur ruffled and a wild look in her eye.

  NO VISITOR WANTED to stand in the Nursery Corner. Sometimes it happened by mistake and they’d shiver, look up and down for a draught, a fan, an explanation. But there was also a sense of comfort. Of well-being. Like the good days of childhood. Warm summer holiday mornings. Nights when dinner was your favourite meal. A birthday when you liked every present so didn’t have to lie. Those moments when your mother was her real self, laughing like a young girl. This is what they told me; I never stood there myself. The breeze of the corner, and the scent I smelled there put me off. Sometimes it was new books. Sometimes it was boiled cabbage.

  Grandchildren and great grandchildren brought in to visit were sent to the Nursery Corner as if it was a treat.

  They sat on the edge of the rug, bunched up. “Go on, have a rock in the chair,” but you couldn’t get many of them to step into the corner or sit in the chair. Those who did would come out quiet, very quiet. What would a child see, if an adult saw childhood? Past lives?

  I HEARD THE chair rocking late some nights and wondered who was in it. I’d find out the next day; the one who was the most vacant.

  I thought they sank into dementia with greater speed and less resistance once they’d been in the Nursery Corner.

  “What do they see?” I asked Mario.

  “Lots of friendly people; you’ve never felt so welcome.”

  “Have you ever been?”

  He said he hadn’t, but I knew he had. I’d seen him rocking there at night, especially on nights my mother was out shopping, or visiting her sister. Not often.

  “Are there other places like this one? Other Nursery Corners?” He still travelled to perform, but rarely spent more than a night away.

  “A few. I like to help where I can.” He listed them and there were more than a few. He had Nursery Corners set up wherever he visited.

  Mario told me that, depending on the sort of person you are, you’ll find peace or sorrow in the Nursery Corner. “You might see battered children, lost to a parent’s fury. Or tiny babies, sucked from life like metal filings to a magnet. Or a train filled with laughing families, or a table laden with sweets. Each of us sees something new in there, something different. You, I think you will see a thing of great beauty. You will feel more loved and needed than you have ever felt before. You will be at the very centre of the universe. A star. Like moi.”

  I’d missed out on a dozen auditions (“lose some weight”)and was beginning to think I was kidding myself, so this fantasy of his resonated with me.

  I never bothered Mum with my audition woes. Tried to help out where I could. We attended to Mrs T, who had stripped naked and was attempting to climb onto the table.

  “Come on, now, into the Nursery Corner. Let’s have a nice sit.”

  Mrs T sat in there, folded into a blanket, rocking, tears coursing. “They’re good tears,” Mum said. “Best to have something to remember with sadness than to have no memory, no sorrow at all.” She looked me straight in the eye as she said this. She thought I needed to get a life, or I’d have nothing to cry about when I was that age. “You’re twenty-four, Jessie. What have you experienced? Who have you loved? You need to take chances.”

  I thought, I’m going to see what I see when I sit there. See how I feel. I wasn’t sure if she was right or not. Had I lived, yet? Was Mario right, and I’d feel fulfilled after sitting in the corner? Would I come out knowing what to do with my life?

  I’d wanted to try for a long time, had been tempted to send my friends in when we were younger, just to freak them out. But it had never happened.

  I SAT DOWN on the chair in the Nursery Corner and began to rock.

  Within moments, I heard music, but so faint it was like an echo. The smell of soap, age and toilets lifted and it was dusty, mostly, outside road dust, pollen and, I thought, frying bacon. We had bacon twice a year at the home, on Mothers’ Day and Fathers’ Day. It made them cry every time. “It’s like the old days, going back,” one told me, “it’s as if all the rest of my life hasn’t passed yet.”

  I could still feel the press of wood against my arms, the scratch of wool from the blanket on my leg, the soft give of the cushion, but what I saw was far different.

  Lit by bright sunlight, shaded by ancient oak trees, the two buildings sat low and long in lush, green lawn. One painted red, the other yellow, even at a distance I could see they were well maintained.

  My feet were bare and as I walked towards the buildings (because where else would I go?) the softness of the lawn tickled my soles and I began to run, filled with a sense of pure joy the like of which I had never felt before. The sun was so bright my eyes teared up.

  The sound of laughter, and voices chanting, the smell of baking bread and of rich, red roses led me on. Children played on swings and slides and as I watched a boy fell off and sat in the dirt, dusting himself off. One girl seemed to hurt her arm badly and if I hadn’t seen the other children helping her, I would have run over.

  I reached the red building. A sign by the door said, ‘St Lucia’s School’ with the motto beneath: There is a Light at the End of the Tunnel and I thought, This is the school I would have loved to go to.

  I pushed the door open.

  “There you are, Jessie!” It was a girl I didn’t know but who seemed familiar. She had clear blue eyes and her cheeks were flushed. “Come on, come and play. We have to do Maths soon, yuck, but we can play for a while.”

  She took my hand and led me to a vast playroom. Many other children were there, and they all looked up at me and smiled. “It’s Jessie!” they said, as if I was a long-lost friend. They seemed happy but, on closer inspection, some had marks around their wrists, bruising around their eyes. All of them looked tired.

  My new friend led me to sit among the toys. Robots, hoops, pirate costumes. ‘SHARING IS CARING’ a handwritten sign said.

  I wondered why the children would welcome me, an adult, so delightedly, then realised that I, too, was a child. Was I eight? Six? My father was alive, then, and I wondered if I could find a phone and call him, just to hear his voice, see if he was sorry.

  There were no phones, though. No television, no computers.

  In the corner sat a large beanbag, jellybean print. The small table beside it had a box of jellybeans and some tweezers next to it. I wanted one of those jellybeans, wanted to have the taste of sugar, the memory of home. My friend stopped me. “That’s Mario’s. He’ll give you one if you wait till he gets here.”

  Time passed. I don’t know how long. I slept. I ate. There was custard, hot dogs, there were cheese sticks and there were beautiful peaches. I watched the others playing and sometimes joined in. Sometimes they would stand in one place for hours as if waiting. Or they played skip rope for hour after hour after hour, tears running down their cheeks as their arms tired. They didn’t respond when I told them they should stop, have a rest. My cat was there, young again, chasing butterflies and purring so loudly you could hear her in the other room. She didn’t know me, though. She wouldn’t sit on my lap.

  Sometimes I would rock on my heels and remember; there is another place. Not this one. I knew that in that place, people had to be shaken awake, physically carried out of the Nursery Corner, and I wondered if anyone would do it for me.

  They did, at last. My own mother, giving me a poke in the Nursery Corner.

  On my lap was the banana I had been holding when I sat in the chair and it was rotten, after being a perfect piece of fruit. “You’ve had a good nap!” Mum said, as if I’d been gone only moments. “You look so peaceful I barely wanted to wake you. But I need to sit Mrs Allan down. She’s a bit agitated.”

  Mrs Allan winked at me. “See you there,” she said.

  I stepped away, feeling shaky, but with a deep sense of peace.

  “DID YOU LIKE my school?” Mario asked. He sat closer to me th
an he normally would, as if our relationship had changed.

  “I had a pretty weird dream.”

  “Not a dream. Ask all of them.” He waved at the room, all the old people and, I thought, the wall of the dead, all the photos of long-gone and recently departed. I walked along the wall until I found her, my new friend. A woman who’d lived with us for only two months before she died of an infection. I remembered her as being a great lover of the Nursery Corner. I remembered her clear blue eyes.

  There were others, too; they played as children, fell, sang, learned, ate as children in that other place.

  “A little piece of you with me forever,” Mario said. “In my place, waiting for me, with all the others. I don’t take it all. Just a glimmer, an echo, a hint.”

  He was a hypnotist, and he had finally managed to crack me. I backed away from him, my eyes downcast. I knew I could clear my head of him, and of that place, that I would not be diminished by it.

  I also knew I wanted my mother to get rid of him. That he shouldn’t be among these people.

  “You didn’t say if you liked my school. It’s an exact replica of the one that burnt down.”

  “It was fine. Quite lovely, actually. No sign of flames, or burning.”

  He had tears in his eyes. “Thank you. Thank you. None of them ever remember.”

  I thought of the patients, how much emptier they seemed. He thought he stole very little but I thought he stole the last of them. He took any dreams they had of their own heaven and made them vanish completely.

  MUM WOULDN’T GET rid of him. She said he made her happy and this was true; he adored her, treated her like a princess. He adored her so much, he never asked her to sit in the Nursery Corner. He never tried to take that part of her.