The Future of Horror

by Jonathan Oliver

  “Very well,” the man said. “Then where?” He searched the audience. His gaze lighted – or seemed to light, because Tommy couldn’t see his eyes, couldn’t see his face at all – on Tommy. “Too young,” the man said, and Tommy’s heart sank. “I fear you would slip straight through the bonds, my boy.” Everyone laughed, but Tommy didn’t.

  “Your father, perhaps.”

  Tommy froze. His dad shifted in his seat. He would say no; Tommy knew he would say no. “Please, Dad,” he whispered.

  At first, Dad didn’t move. Then, slowly, he stood, and the big top burst into applause. “In for a penny,” he muttered, and made his way down into the ring.

  When Dad was standing in the centre of the arena he didn’t look like Houdini. He looked like a man from an office who had found himself in a circus, the spotlights picking out the shine of his balding pate and the sawdust sticking to his shoes. He shifted uncomfortably, picking at his trousers with the tips of his fingers as though he didn’t know what to do with his hands.

  “Just relax.” The voice emerged from the cloak. It was low and quiet, but Tommy heard it.

  The man raised a hand and put it on Tommy’s dad’s head. Dad’s eyes darted around the ring as if looking for an escape. There was no escape. The man in the cloak started to chant, low at first and then higher. There were words in it, but Tommy couldn’t catch them; it was as if they were all blended together. He couldn’t work out if he was speaking English or some other language. It seemed to go on for a long time. Tommy’s dad stood there, quite still, and his eyes were closed, though Tommy hadn’t seen him close them. His face looked sweaty, shining in the spotlights now as brightly as the bald bit on his head. The man sitting in front of Tommy whispered something: he caught the word hypnosis.

  All fell quiet once more. The man in the black cloak drew a deep breath, then he spoke. “Come to us,” he said. His voice was not loud but it was powerful and it echoed about the ring: perhaps beyond the ring.

  Come to us.

  After a moment, Tommy’s dad opened his eyes. He blinked in much the same way a tortoise might.

  The man in the black cloak stepped back and bowed. “Please,” he said, “will you introduce yourself.”

  Tommy’s dad looked up at last. He saw the audience, ran his eyes around it. He half raised one hand, let it fall again. Then he threw his head back, stood up straighter, and glared, his eyes suddenly intense. “I,” he said, “am Houdini.”

  There was no preamble, no great Houdini or incredible Houdini, but Tommy could hear it in his voice: that was who he was. The Great Houdini.

  His father looked up and saw the straitjacket. Slowly, he stripped off his shirt. He stood there, the spotlight picking out each grey hair on his chest, and Tommy looked at them. He wriggled in his seat; but nobody laughed.

  His father walked around the straitjacket. He stood behind it and reached out both arms as if he was going to dive into it, but instead he waited while the cloaked man removed the garment from the chain and started to strap him in.

  Tommy blinked. His dad was standing there in his black suit trousers, his arms crossed over his chest, bound in a straitjacket. He didn’t look like a man from an office any longer. He owned the arena with his steely gaze. He looked up towards the ceiling. “Now!” he commanded.

  The cloaked man took the chain and secured it to Tommy’s dad’s feet. Then he stood back and the chain began to withdraw into the air, taking Dad with it. Eventually he hung there upside down, spinning a little one way and then the other. Music rose from beneath the seats, the kind of music that said something was going to happen; then it stopped, and Tommy’s dad started to writhe, faster and faster, whipping and twisting his body as though a demon were trapped inside. Then a white strap swung free, wrapping itself about him as he twisted some more, and then there was another and Tommy realised his dad’s arms were spinning inside them. Then they were loose and he was pulling the garment from his body, throwing it in triumph down to the sawdust below, flinging it away from him in contempt. He hung there, his body shining with sweat. Tommy couldn’t stop staring.

  But that wasn’t all. Tommy’s dad’s arms hung loose only for a moment; then he lifted them towards his feet. He did something to the chains and they snapped free. Everyone gasped. Tommy inched forward. Surely, his dad was going to fall. And he did fall, he just let go, but he turned in the air, landed neatly on his feet and snapped out a sharp bow.

  The audience erupted in applause and whistles and shouts. Tommy heard the man in front of him mutter, “He’s a plant,” but he didn’t care, was too busy clapping and shouting along with the rest, and grinning, he couldn’t stop grinning, especially when his dad left the ring and climbed back up the steps and took the seat next to his. Tommy was still clapping as he turned to his dad. “That was brilliant, Dad,” he said, and his father kept in role, was so cool about it all, his dad, and he just turned to Tommy and gave a single steely-eyed nod.

  Later, when the show was over and they were filing out of the big top, Tommy was still grinning. “It was real, wasn’t it Dad?” he said.

  His dad just looked back at him, quite calm, still being cool. “Of course not, son,” he said.

  THE NEXT DAY was a Saturday and when Tommy woke, the first thing he thought of was his dad, suspended from a chain, swinging in the air. He grinned and went downstairs and found him sitting at the table, eating cornflakes. His mum was standing by the dishwasher.

  Tommy grinned and sat next to him, poured cornflakes from the packet. He usually had semi-skimmed milk but today he chose skimmed, just like Dad, and he started to eat, kicking his legs. His mum brought him orange juice. Dad just ate, looking at the tablecloth.

  “Shall we try more escapes today, Dad?” Tommy asked. “Did he tell you, Mum? It was incredible.” He relished the word, rolling it around his mouth with the cornflake crumbs.

  “Don’t speak with your mouth full,” she said. She looked tired; there were bags under her eyes.

  “But...”

  “I said be quiet.” Mum started loading the dishwasher, clattering plates into their slots.

  Tommy looked at Dad, but Dad didn’t look back. He wasn’t just looking at the tablecloth, he was glaring at it. Slowly, he turned and looked at Tommy. “I need chains,” he said. “And locks. Where do I buy chains and locks?”

  There was something about his voice. He must have been speaking with his mouth full too, but Tommy didn’t care. “Yes!” he said. “We can go to the hardware shop.”

  “Finish your breakfast first,” said Mum. “And don’t forget to brush your teeth.”

  LATER, WHEN THEY were dressed and their hair and teeth were brushed, they went to the hardware shop. Dad walked in and stood there, staring, but Tommy asked where the chains were and took Dad’s hand and led him to them. Then Tommy’s dad seemed to come alive. He walked along the row of chains – gold ones, silver ones, fine ones, thick ones – and he turned and walked back again. He took hold of the fattest silver chain and yanked it between his hands, testing its strength. He grunted. He started to pull it from the reel, faster and faster, spilling piles of it onto the floor. A couple passing them in the aisle tutted and stepped aside, but Dad didn’t seem to care.

  Someone in staff overalls came by and stopped. “Do you need any help, sir?”

  Dad didn’t answer.

  The lad looked down at the pile of chain. “I’ll get you a trolley, sir,” he said, and wandered off, shaking his head.

  When the chain was in the trolley, Tommy’s dad went further up the aisle. They had rope there, twists and twists of it, fat rope and thin rope and bright, colourful bendy rope. He added lengths of that, too, to the trolley. Then he turned and saw the padlocks and he smiled.

  “What is it, Dad?”

  No answer. Tommy followed his dad as he went to the padlocks, started to throw them, one after the next, into the trolley. Tommy just stood there. He suddenly felt he might as well be invisible.

  “Dad?�
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  His dad stopped throwing the padlocks. He turned and looked at Tommy. No: he glared. His eyes were sharp, piercing. There was no recognition in them. Tommy took a step back. “Dad?”

  Dad looked down at the trolley, at the things he was going to buy, and his gaze became soft. Tommy swallowed. “It was real, wasn’t it Dad,” he said.

  Dad looked back at him. His look was intense; there were depths in it. It was as though his gaze could lead somewhere else; somewhere beyond.

  “Houdini,” Tommy whispered, but his dad didn’t answer. There was no expression on his face at all.

  THEY PULLED UP outside the house and Dad started to unpack the boot, winding loops of rope around his shoulder. When he couldn’t carry any more, he went inside. Tommy watched as Houdini unloaded the rope into the middle of the lounge and went back for the chains. He came back, dumped the whole slithering pile on top of the rope.

  Tommy’s mother came downstairs. She stood in the doorway and her eyes widened. “What on earth is that?”

  Houdini looked at her. His mouth curved into a smile. “Rope,” he said. “Chains.” He said each word carefully, each sound distinct and clear. “Locks.”

  “Well, you’re not putting them in my lounge,” Mum snapped. “You can put them in the garage. Go on.” And she made little shooing gestures with her hands as Dad glared at her, then bent and started looping chains, once more, about his person.

  TOMMY WATCHED AS Dad wrapped the chain around and around his legs, and up, over his thighs, around his waist. He was wrapped tight as a cocoon, and soon he couldn’t go any higher. He held out the rest of the chain towards Tommy.

  Tommy pushed himself away from the wall and took hold of it. Houdini held his arms by his sides, quite still, while Tommy wrapped him the rest of the way. The chain ran out just as it reached Houdini’s neck.

  Houdini nodded towards the padlocks, but he didn’t need to: Tommy understood. He picked up a lock and secured the end of the chain. He told himself it was going to be incredible, and his heart was beating fast, but it didn’t feel incredible: it felt odd. Dad’s balding head shone under the single bulb that struggled to light the farthest corners of the garage.

  Dad nodded. Smiled. There was a faint chink of metal as he flexed his arms. Then, voilà! In one movement the chain fell away from him, landing on the floor at his feet. He smiled, took a sharp bow. Tommy didn’t clap. He didn’t laugh. He couldn’t seem to move; couldn’t do anything, least of all look away from his father’s shining eyes.

  “SO, WHAT HAVE you two been doing all day?” Mum was busying herself about the kitchen, cooking the dinner. Steam rose around her. She wiped her hand across her brow, rubbed them on her apron.

  This time Tommy didn’t answer: his father did.

  “Escaping,” he said. He wrapped his mouth around the syllables, pronouncing each one quite clearly. “I – escaped.”

  “Very nice.” Mum didn’t look as if she thought it was very nice. She wiped her hands again, this time on a tea towel.

  “I am leaving.” Houdini waved towards the door. He smiled a slow smile, but he didn’t look at Tommy and he didn’t look at Tommy’s mum. He kept his eyes on the door, which stood slightly ajar; a light breeze came through it, stirring the steam that filled the air.

  “Not now, you’re not,” Mum snapped. “Now you can sit down and eat your dinner.”

  Houdini turned towards her, a puzzled expression on his face. He met her eye and they stared at each other for a long time.

  Then Houdini sat down and he ate his dinner. He kept looking up as he did it, not at Tommy and not at Tommy’s mum but above them, over them, beyond them.

  DAD DIDN’T GO to work on Monday, or the day after that. He didn’t sit around the house either; he didn’t get under Mum’s feet. He spent his time in the garage. Tommy knew this because Dad was in the garage when he went to school and he was still in there when he came home. He walked in one evening and found him standing with his shirt off, flexing his wrist backwards and forwards, pulling his hand in towards his arm and then back the other way.

  “Flexibility,” he said. “Strength. Courage.”

  “Courage, Dad?”

  His dad bent and picked up the end of the pile of chain and held it out to Tommy. Tommy looked at it dubiously.

  “Courage,” Dad said. It didn’t sound like a statement: it sounded like a command.

  TOMMY WRAPPED HIS dad in a length of chain. This was new chain, stronger than before. He had grown adept, too, at tying knots in rope: his dad had showed him how. Tommy hadn’t known his dad knew how to tie knots, but it seemed he did. He gave Tommy detailed instructions, guiding his hands.

  This time, though, it was chain, and padlocks, and handcuffs. Tommy didn’t know where the handcuffs had come from. He secured one around his father’s wrist, felt the lock snick into place, and he looked up and met his eyes.

  “You’re not really Houdini,” he said. “Houdini lived in America. I know. I looked him up.”

  Dad looked back at him. After a moment, the handcuff fell from his wrist and clattered to the floor.

  “You don’t sound American. You sound posh,” said Tommy, but his dad only smiled; it didn’t look like his old smile.

  “Did you know Houdini didn’t believe in magic?” Tommy pressed. “I mean, he did stage magic. But he didn’t believe in real magic. There were these people who said they talked to ghosts, and Houdini went around proving they couldn’t. He didn’t believe people could talk to the dead. He didn’t believe they could come back.”

  He stopped. Dad was staring at him, and suddenly Tommy felt afraid. He took a step backwards, almost tripped over a pile of rope.

  “Get out,” Houdini said.

  “What?”

  “Out.” Houdini’s voice was white hot; his voice was cold. He shrugged his shoulder and a loop of chain fell to the floor, freeing his arm. He pointed towards the door. “I said get out,” he said, and every single word of it was perfectly clear.

  THAT NIGHT, TOMMY found a recording of Houdini’s voice on the internet. It had first been recorded on wax cylinders in 1914, but there it was, under his hands; he clicked on the file and Houdini’s voice filled the room. Houdini spoke quite clearly. He enunciated each individual sound of each individual word. There was only the slight twang of an American accent when he said the word dollars.

  DAD WAS LIFTING weights when it happened. He had taken to keeping them in the lounge, under Mum’s feet, but she hadn’t said anything about it, hadn’t tried to stop him. She kept to the kitchen these days. Tommy noticed how she would walk out of a room when his dad walked into it. Quite often, Tommy would walk out too.

  This time he’d thought his dad was in the garage, practicing. He wasn’t sure what he was practicing for, only that he was always there. He was building something in there, too: a wooden crate, its proportions a little bigger than a man. Tommy wasn’t sure what it was for, but he thought he could guess.

  Now he walked into the lounge to watch TV and found his dad was there, raising a dumb-bell to his chest. Dad’s chest was naked. Tommy could see the little grey hairs on it, but he could also see that it had changed, was stronger, more muscular. He looked away. His dad didn’t move, didn’t set down the dumb-bell. He made a little sound in the back of his throat. “Tommy.”

  Tommy’s head whipped around. It hadn’t been Houdini’s voice: it had sounded like his dad.

  “Tommy, I’m in here. I can’t get out.”

  Tommy rushed to his dad, put his hand on his arm. “Dad, it’s me,” he said. “Where are you? Where?”

  Dad’s eyes hardened. “Move – aside,” he said, and Tommy jumped away from him, and Dad set down the dumb-bell and then he picked it up and lifted it again.

  LATER, TOMMY GOOGLED the circus. He had found the old flyer, smoothed it out, read the words through the smudges of ink. The circus didn’t seem to have a name. He searched for the dates it had visited, for where it might have gone. He couldn’t se
em to find it. He examined the flyer again.

  Amazing feats, he read. Amazing feats and mind-blowing escapades.

  He felt tears stinging his eyes. He didn’t want amazing feats or mind-blowing escapades. He didn’t want to see magic; he certainly didn’t want anything hitherto unknown to man. He only wanted his dad back again, the one who wore a suit and went to work and who liked to play Scrabble, and that was all.

  ONE DAY, TOMMY’S dad was gone. Tommy looked into the garage to call him in for tea and he found the room empty, the bare bulb a single spotlight shining on a chipped concrete floor. The chains had gone too, as had the rope and the locks. He had vanished, just like that: escaped, leaving not a trace of himself behind.

  SOMETIMES TOMMY TRIED to talk to Mum about his dad, but she wouldn’t have it. She’d purse up her mouth and sniff, or start talking about something else very loudly, even if she had her mouth full. He’d hear her on the phone sometimes, talking to her own mother, something about strumpet, or hussy, and he didn’t know what those things were, except that they were bad. If he tried to mention it, though, she’d leave the room and slam the door. Sometimes she’d just look at him, and there would be such sadness in her eyes, such an emptiness, that Tommy would shut up all on his own.

  There was once, though, when his mother broached the subject. “He wanted to be like Houdini,” she said. “He wanted to get away.” They were having their supper, and Tommy had been miles away in his thoughts, or wanted to be; but as it turned out, they hadn’t been so very far from each other after all.

  “No, Mum,” he said. “He was Houdini.”

  “Stop that nonsense,” she replied, although her voice was kind, quite unlike the way it usually sounded these days. “He wasn’t Houdini, he was your dad. But he wanted to be.” Her voice went distant. “He wanted to be, didn’t he.”