by Gord Rollo
“I’m not sure how old Lucius was at the time, midthirties, I’d say; still fairly young. He hadn’t been a working escape artist in several years though, and with his dark bushy beard and his large beer belly hanging over his belt, I hardly recognized him when he answered the door. Not wanting to waste his time, or my own, I told him straight out what I wanted. He had his doubts, of course, but once I’d performed my act for him, simplistic and raw as it was, he saw potential in me, and probably more importantly, my passion for learning magic. We talked for hours about the history of magic and again I impressed him with my knowledge of our profession’s early greats; legends like Joseph Pinetti, Alexander Herrmann, and Horace Goldin. By the end of the first day, he’d agreed to take me in and put me to work.
“I hadn’t know it then, but I wasn’t his only student. The following morning I was introduced to another teenage boy named Douglas Williams. Doug was a year older than me and a hell of a lot better than I was. His sleight-of-hand tricks and one-on-one illusions were damn near brilliant. I’d never seen anyone that good and that fast up close before, and he was only seventeen at the time.
“Together we trained hard, and Lucius brought out the strengths in both of us. Doug stayed with his incredible talent for illusions, while I concentrated on becoming the escape artist I’d always dreamed of. Month after month we trained, year after year, both of us obsessed with our growing skills. We did dozens of small shows, performing at private parties, malls, outdoor carnivals, or wherever Lucius could get us booked. It was terrifying going onstage but we were good and were meant to be there.
“The happiest day of my life was the day Lucius handed me his entire collection of handwritten journals he’d spent a lifetime collecting and writing. Inside them were the really special illusions and escapes, the ones only masters of the art would even try attempting. That was the day I knew I had arrived as a magician.”
“That’s incredible, Wilson,” Susan said. “Why would you hide all this from me?”
“I’m getting to that. Be patient a bit longer.”
“Okay. Let me just refill our coffees.” Susan ran into the kitchen and was back on the couch in less than a minute. Wilson had a drink from his mug and carried on.
“Back then, the popular magicians were guys like Doug Henning, and The Amazing Randi. David Copperfi eld was starting to make a name for himself too. Lucius was always looking for an angle for us, a way to get our foot in the door, and it was him who suggested we team up to give the crowds something they’d never seen before. Sure, there was Siegfried and Roy in Vegas, but what Lucius was planning was miles away from their family-friendly show.
“He suggested we go a darker route than most magicians had ever tried. Back in the seventies and early eighties, musicians like Alice Cooper, Kiss, and Mötley Crüe had taken the world by storm with their theatrical live shows, mysterious face makeup, and incredible pyrotechnics…so why couldn’t we? No one said magic had to be boring, or that we had to dress up in black tuxedos and top hats. No, we were going to do it our way, with a show so dark and edgy we’d scare the crowd as much as thrill them.
“We worked on the show together, tried a million different things, but in the end we agreed on something called Fire and Ice. The deal was we’d wear masks to conceal our identities. You know those theatrical yin-and-yang masks? They’re opposites of each other, representing comedy and tragedy? We used them but had them custom-made slightly skewed, a bit cruel and sinister. To the crowds, we would almost appear to be the same magician, and in our press releases we played that up even more, explaining how we were one magical entity, but polar opposites of each other, two halves of one bastardized soul…one the master illusionist, the other the master escape artist. Him, the Heatseeker…and me, the Iceman.”
A chill ran down Wilson’s back and he shuddered just saying those names out loud again. Susan noticed but remained silent, swallowing down her own taste of fear.
“The fans couldn’t get enough of us, Susan, but more importantly, neither could the critics. We’d turned a magic show into a rock concert, and they loved us for it. I was twenty-one when we did our first full-blown gig, and we kicked ass, Susan. It was SHOWTIME and man did we deliver. Ha! We used to say that all the time. It’s SHOWTIME, baby! I’d forgotten all about that. Anyway, we closed the night with my version of Houdini’s Metamorphosis, where I amped up the illusion by not only changing places with my assistant in a heartbeat, but did it chained up within a glass water-filled box. The reviews were off the charts, we had a full tour booked, and we were finally on our way. We’d punched our ticket to fame and fortune and it was only a matter of time until we started reaping the rewards.”
“Oh come on, Wilson,” Susan interrupted. “You guys couldn’t have been that famous. I’ve never heard of either of you and you’re obviously not rich and famous, so maybe you’re exaggerating things a little, huh?”
Her skepticism didn’t bother Wilson at all. In fact, he’d been expecting it. “Actually, no…and I can prove it. Just a sec—” He left Susan in the living room and went to his bedroom, to a box he kept hidden on the top shelf of his closet, wrapped in an old pillowcase. Taking the box down, he carried it to the bed and carefully opened the lid.
Inside, the first thing his eyes landed on was a small glass jug—Teflon-coated on the inside, it contained every magician’s friend, Aqua Regia—a mixture of nitric and hydrochloric acids, one of the most corrosive liquids on earth, and a lot of magicians the world over—the serious ones—often kept some handy because it could eat through steel chains, metal locks, and damn near anything else it touched. In the James Bond film Octopussy, Bond is provided a fountain pen containing a mixture of this nasty acid, which he uses to cut his way through metal prison bars. Magicians used it the same way. In a tough bind, when an escape had gone really bad, potentially deadly, this clear liquid could be a lifesaver. Wilson set it carefully to the side. After all these years it might not be as corrosive, but then again, it might be even worse—what did he know? Best to be careful with it anyway.
Besides the acid, there were several mementos from Wilson’s glory days as an escape artist; things like a pair of platinum handcuffs given to him by the chief of police in New York City, a first-place ribbon and medallion he’d won at the Erie County Fair talent show when he was nineteen, Lucius Barber’s collection of magic journals, and the two other things he’d come in to get: a scrapbook of pictures and press clippings from back in their brief heyday, and one of the multicolored masks he’d worn during his final tour all those years ago. Wilson removed those two things, being careful not to smash the acid, put the box back onto his top shelf, and returned to the living room.
“Here, have a look at these.” Wilson handed the items to Susan, who took them with trepidation. Just the sight of the white leather mask with a gold, red, and green distorted sad face printed on it was almost enough to make her believe everything her husband had said. Why else would he have kept this creepy thing?
Inside the scrapbook, she flipped through page after page of news clippings and press releases from all over New York State and the East Coast. There were pictures of Wilson and his one-time partner dressed in their ghoulish stage personas, their hands raised in triumph at the end of one performance or another. Mixed throughout were brightly colored ticket stubs and other promotional material like stickers and buttons; all of which prominently displayed the Fire and Ice logo.
“It’s true,” Susan said, closing the book and setting it to the side. “All of it, right?”
“Every word,” Wilson said, taking a seat.
“Well, that explains how you pulled that great trick in the park the other day, but it still makes no sense. If you two were partners and on the verge of stardom, why did you have to change your name and go into hiding? More importantly, why is this bastard here in Billington all these years later, threatening to kill you?”
Wilson considered his answer carefully before saying, “The question isn’
t as much why, Susan. It’s how. You see, there’s something else you don’t know. Douglas Williams, my partner, died twenty-two years ago in 1988. I’m being hunted by a dead man.”
“But…that’s insane, Wilson. Obviously you’re wrong.”
“No way. I wish I was, but I’m not. The Heatseeker died a long time ago.”
Susan had no idea how to respond. She didn’t like talking about any of this craziness but she felt compelled to ask, “How can you be sure?”
“Easy,” Wilson said, taking his wife’s hand in his own.
“I was the one who killed him.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
DIGGING UP CORPSES
“Don’t stare at me like that, Susan,” Wilson said, shocked at the look on his wife’s face. “I didn’t actually murder him, for God’s sake! It was an accident…but I was the one who got blamed for it.”
“What happened?” Susan asked, relieved to hear her husband wasn’t a killer like she’d started to think.
“Well, our ride to stardom took a lot longer than we thought. We were still making headway and starting to make excellent cash but we couldn’t seem to get on televi sion like we needed to get national exposure. We were huge along the Eastern seaboard and in our home state of New York, but man it was hard breaking ground anywhere else.
“On top of that, Doug was starting to get pissed off I was getting the lion’s share of the interviews, publicity, and applause. He was a brilliant illusionist, but people seemed to want more and more escape tricks, where the thrills and potential for blood and excitement were better. It was completely unfair; Doug was a far better magician than me, but there was nothing I could do about it and to tell you the truth, my ego was growing along with my bank account and I loved it. There’s nothing like the roar of crowd inside a packed house when you’ve defied death for another day, and everyone there is wondering how the hell you did it. The adulation from the fans and press was intoxicating…addictive even.
“I barely noticed Doug was sliding into depression, and I might not have cared even if I did. I was young, and far too busy having a good time living the dream, you know? He started drinking a lot more and it messed with his illusions. Slowed down his mind, and hands.
“I can still remember the first few nights the crowds started booing him, unimpressed by a drunk in a creepy mask who messed up most of his tricks. I tried to talk to him, get him to lay off the booze, but he wouldn’t listen. He started screaming at me all the time, nonsense stuff, or saying I was jealous of him and trying to steal all his fans. It wasn’t true, I still considered him my best friend, but the bridge between us was burned, the gap in our relationship widening by the day.
“Even with our act spiraling out of control, I had no idea how bad things had actually gotten for Doug. In my heart I’d always assumed he’d get past it, sober up, and we’d carry on as always. Wasn’t going to happen though. Doug lost his mind. It’s the only explanation I have; the only way I can understand what he eventually did.”
“What happened, Wilson?” Susan asked. “Did he try to hurt you?”
“No. Sometimes I wish he had though. It was the spring of 1988, March tenth to be exact, and we were on tour in Baltimore, Maryland. The Inner Harbor wasn’t as touristy as it is now, but we still used to pack in the crowds there. Locals, mostly, but I think people came from as far away as Washington, D.C., too.
“Before the show, Doug came into my dressing room with two mugs of coffee and said he wanted to talk. I took it as a good sign he was drinking coffee, not whiskey, but it was all a sham. He’d drugged my coffee and laughed as I slipped off my chair and slumped to the concrete floor. When I woke up, I was alone, my mask was missing, and I could hear the crowds cheering wildly out in the concert hall. Part of me knew what he’d done but my groggy brain was trying to deny it, hoping Doug wasn’t that stupid. I knew he wanted the cheers I’d been getting, but it wasn’t until I heard Alice Cooper’s ‘Welcome to My Nightmare,’ the theme music for the new escape I’d been working on, that I realized just how far off the deep end Doug had slid.
“The escape was called the Devil’s Drill Bit, and it was the most dangerous escape trick I’d ever attempted and even I hadn’t performed it live yet. In the trick, I would be chained and handcuffed to a thick wooden table while a huge six-inch-diameter spiral drill bit pushed steadily closer to me, aimed directly at my exposed chest if I couldn’t get out of the chains in time. The drill was real too. Nothing fake about it. Solid steel and sharp as a razor. Once activated, I’d have about fifty seconds to get off that table. If everything went well, I’d slip off the table just as the spinning bit chewed into the wooden table and drilled a massive hole clear through it. If I didn’t get clear of the chains, well…”
“Oh my God, Wilson!” Susan gasped. “Your partner was going to try it himself?”
“Yes. And Doug was a brilliant illusionist, no question, but he wasn’t an escape artist. He could slip a knot or get out of some simple rope and chain tricks, but he wasn’t trained to do the things I could do. He couldn’t get out of the handcuffs, and I knew as soon as I heard the music he was in huge trouble.
“I raced toward the stage, hoping I could stop things in time, but the loud buzz of the drill bit whirling to life told me I was going to be too late. When I got there Doug was still trapped in the chains, the handcuffs still around his wrists and ankles, and the drill bit was less than a foot away from bare skin. The secret to handcuffs is you have to be double-jointed, or be able to dislocate the lower joint at the base of your thumbs, or depending on where you’re cuffed, your ankles so you can slip them free. Houdini was a master at it, and I could do it too. He used to escape from straitjackets by dislocating both his shoulders. It hurt a bit popping the bones back in place, but it allowed a magician to do what seemed like the impossible. It was the only way off that table and Doug couldn’t do it. He was trapped, as the drill kept getting closer and closer.”
“What about your stage crew? Couldn’t they shut down the drill? Pull the plug or something?”
“No, they all thought it was me. Doug was wearing my mask, and everyone thought I was just hamming it up for the crowd, waiting until the last few seconds before making my escape. The audience was eating it up too, cheering exactly like Doug had always wanted. Over the howl of the drill I could hear him laughing, clearly out of his mind and enjoying the roar of his fans right up until the drill bit dug into his chest and chewed his heart out in front of two thousand shocked people.”
Wilson was about to say more but decided to leave it at that. Susan didn’t need to know how the geyser of blood had sprayed everywhere, the high RPM of the drill spewing bones, skin, and other chunks of gore across the stage and more than twenty rows out into the crowd.
“Couldn’t you have helped him?” Susan asked quietly. “You knew he was in trouble. Surely you could have shut off the drill. Couldn’t you?”
It was a question that had haunted Wilson every day of his life since then, a question he’d asked himself a million times as he’d lain awake in bed shaking from yet another nightmare reenactment. Vodka had been the only way to shut down those dreams, to push back those awful memories at least temporarily. No amount of booze had allowed Wilson to forget though, or to forgive himself.
“I couldn’t, Susan. I don’t know why. I was terrified, I guess, and I just…froze. No other word for it. I just stood there and watched that drill shred him apart, but I couldn’t make my feet move onstage to help. You have no idea how many nights I lay awake wondering how my life might have turned out differently if only I’d done something…anything to try and help. Even if I’d failed and he’d still died, at least I could have lived with the fact I’d given him a chance. But I didn’t. I stood offstage and did nothing. I’ve never forgiven myself, and neither did anyone else.”
Susan took her husband’s hand. It was sweaty, but cold as ice. “That’s crazy talk, honey. No one could blame you. Doug lost his mind. He drugged you and t
ried an escape he wasn’t trained to do. How can that be your fault?”
“I said and thought the same thing, Susan. Doug basically committed suicide, but some of the crowd had spotted me offstage and blamed me for not helping him. Right or wrong, our fans were fanatical and Doug had more of a following than he thought. People started screaming at me and pointing fingers and soon it was bedlam in there. Everything was covered in blood and people were crying and working themselves into a frenzy. They were heartbroken, shocked, and angry, and there was no one else to blame really. I barely made it out of that building alive. Wouldn’t have, probably, if not for the police and emergency crews that showed up on the scene.”
“But that’s crazy, Wilson. There’s no way any of it was your fault.”
“Wasn’t it? You sure about that? I could have saved him, Susan. Could have saved him easily…but I didn’t. I let my best friend die, and I’ve been on the run, paying the price ever since. Now it seems he’s come back from the dead to get his revenge. Part of me thinks I might even deserve it.”
“Don’t talk like that,” Susan said, lifting Wilson’s chin to look him in the eye. “You’re a good man, and a good father, and we’re not giving up. No way! We just have to find out who this clown is. Obviously it can’t be your partner. The dead stay dead, Wilson. End of story.”
“That’s not what Harry Houdini believed. He always said if there was a way back from the grave, he’d find it and return some day.”
“Well, last I checked, Harry’s still dead too, so what’s that tell you?”
“It tells me the Heatseeker found a way back before Harry did. I’ve talked to him, Susan, on the phone. It was him. For sure. Somehow he came back. I don’t know how, but it’s true.”
“Jesus, Wilson!” Susan shouted, standing up to pace the room. “Stop it. That’s insane and you damn well know it. It’s impossible!”
