Metamorphosis

by Sesh Heri

  “Before it was all over,” Charmian said, finishing my thought. “You’re like him in that way. You live your own life at top speed. Like now. Right now you’re living at top speed.”

  Charmian came toward me. I suddenly realized why she had told me of Jack’s death. She was saying goodbye to Jack. She had to say goodbye to Jack one last time, we both had to say goodbye to Jack, before we could do what we were about to do.

  Charmian was close to me. Her perfume engulfed me. Then we joined, flesh and spirit, blooded fire beating a secret rhythm, joy and guilt, hunger and satiation, all fused together in a single, measured instant.

  And afterwards as we lay together, I looked up at the ceiling above Charmian’s bed and said:

  “Bess must never know.”

  So my affair with Charmian London began. Jack was gone, but I was still married to Bess. It was Bess who was constantly in the background of my thoughts as winter became spring that year of 1918.

  One day at Charmian’s apartment, I said to her:

  “I’m tired of all these stolen moments. I can’t go on this way.”

  “What do you want to do?” Charmian asked.

  “I want the world to know that we love each other,” I said. “I don’t want our love to be a secret. I’m not ashamed of it. I’m just ashamed of lying to Bess.”

  “What are you saying?” Charmian asked. “Are you going to ask her for a divorce?”

  I thought about that a moment, and then shook my head.

  “No. I couldn’t do that. When I think about doing it…I know what would happen.”

  “What?” Charmian asked.

  “It would kill her,” I said. “If I left Bess, it would kill her. She’d drink herself to death— or worse. She might kill herself.”

  “You really think so?” Charmian asked.

  “I know her,” I said. “It would destroy her, I would destroy her. I couldn’t do that to her.”

  “You love her,” Charmian said.

  “Yes,” I said. “I suppose it’s strange that a man should say in the apartment of his mistress that he loves his wife. But I do. I love Bess. She’s my wife. She’s…she’s family. I don’t betray my family. At least not so much that I’d….”

  I shook my head.

  “We both need some time,” Charmian said. “We’ll decide what to do when I get back from Boston.”

  Charmian soon left on that Boston trip. When she returned, I called her on the telephone. Something had changed, but I couldn’t understand it, only feel it. I would call her almost every day, but one thing or another would always come up, and we could never meet.

  One day on the telephone I asked her: “Am I never going to see you again?” It is significant that I don’t remember what Charmian said to me in reply. When she wanted to, she had a way of saying nothing when she seemed to be saying something. In later years I have reflected that Charmian was much trickier than me. I have also reflected that I never remember her saying to me even once: “I love you.” Perhaps she reserved that sentence for Jack, if she ever said it to anyone at all.

  And then she was suddenly gone. She had left on the train for California, to return to Beauty Ranch. I didn’t even see her off at the station. She was gone, gone out of my life, gone as my secret mistress. There would be cards and letters from her over the years, and even Bess and I would see her again in California. But the affair was over. The affair was a living thing to itself, and it had died. I told myself it was for the best and that I was over and finished with Charmian. But later when I heard rumors of other men in Charmian’s life, I knew I was not over and finished with her. I knew Charmian would remain in my heart for the rest of my life, and there was nothing I could do to remove her from that place.

  This was how it was on the morning of March 27th, 1923 as I looked up at a blue, still sky. I was standing alone at the point of that triangular plaza— that street corner in Oakland, California where that bronze sculpture of the Cupids holding up the basin stood— what Charmian had called “the big babies.” This day I had another outdoor straitjacket escape scheduled, but this time the exhibition would not be held here. I would present my spectacle a block over and around the corner. The Tribune had moved its offices to 13th Street across from The Saddlerock, and the Tribune’s publisher, Joseph Knowland, was constructing a large tower atop the existing building. Part of the tower had been completed and was already being used as a studio for radio station KLX. I was scheduled to escape from a straitjacket while hanging from the tower at noon, and then give a radio interview in the KLX studio.

  I looked across the city of Oakland and thought about everything that had happened that November of 1915. Measured in years of the calendar, it was but a short time ago. Measured in thoughts and feelings, it was now a lifetime. Jack was dead. Charmian was gone, gone in a way that could not be measured in space or time. At this moment I thought I would never see her again. I did not know that the next year, in San Francisco, I would see her. Bess would be with me when I would meet her. The old feelings would still be alive, stirring against the old impossibilities.

  I looked to the sky. I knew that somewhere out there above the blue airships patrolled the vacuum of space miles over San Francisco Bay. The Martian invasion of earth had been defeated, and their tenuous alliance with Germany had been severed with the German defeat of the Great War, but Majestic Seven remained vigilant. Would the Martians return to earth someday? And what of NYMZA? Could it be possible that one day NYMZA would reach out to the minds of men and with deceptive promises and illusory powers destroy our world and possess our souls? I could not answer those questions that day, nor can I answer those questions this day, as I write these words.

  I, Houdini, who have told this tale, can only watch, wait, and wonder.

  EPILOGUE

  Upside Down

  “…I always wanted to be a surgeon,

  but I never could. I have always

  regretted it.”

  Houdini

  June 7th, 1943

  The old man’s cabin near the slope of Pike’s Peak

  “Well, hell,” the old man said. “That’s it. That’s the end of the story, end of our picture show.”

  The blank-faced man sat unmoving in his chair.

  The old man rose from his seat, and went to the chest of drawers and opened the top drawer. He brought out a small mirror with a stand and set it up on top of the chest of drawers. Then he went over to the table and picked up a small basin of water and brought it back over to the chest of drawers and sat it down next to the mirror. He reached back down into the top drawer, brought out a pair of scissors and a straight-razor and placed these next to the basin. Then he shut the drawer. He went back over to the table, picked up a newspaper, and then went back over to the chest of drawers and spread the paper out in front of the mirror and water basin.

  “What are you doing?” the blank-faced man asked.

  “Getting ready to shave,” the old man said.

  “Shave?” the blank-faced man asked.

  “Myself,” the old man said, taking off his spectacles. “I’m getting ready to go. I’ll be leaving here today, just as you’ll be leaving. Today is when your friend is coming back. I think he may want me to go with you, too. He and the others will probably want to ask me a lot of questions. What they don’t know is that their superiors— your superiors— already know something about me.”

  “They do?” the blank-faced man asked.

  “I’m known,” the old man said. He began snipping off his beard with the scissors, placing the clipped hair in neat piles upon the newspaper. The blank-faced man could only see the old man’s back and his arms working rapidly.

  “There’s very little Majestic Seven doesn’t know about,” the old man said. “That is Majestic Seven at the very top, the top seven men. Especially the President. You’re just a field agent.”

  “How do you know that?” the blank-faced man said.

  “How do you know I’m a field a
gent?”

  The old man kept clipping his beard, building up a heap of gray hair on the newspaper.

  “Several ways,” the old man said. “Just a minute. Got to get all this cut off short.”

  The blank-faced man watched as the old man’s arms continued to move rapidly. He could hear the snipping sound of the scissors, the cutting sound of a professional barber. The old man kept working with the scissors, reaching around trimming off his hair on the sides and back of his head. He suddenly slung the scissors down upon the newspaper. He picked up a comb and neatly combed his hair on either side. Then he dropped the comb and picked up a shaving brush, dipped it into the water basin, and then touched the brush to a cake of soap, working with the bristles until they held a thick head of white foam. The old man began painting his face with the foam, and as he did this, he began speaking again:

  “I’ve had contact with Majestic Seven for years. I even met with Tesla a few times.”

  “Tesla wasn’t with Majestic Seven,” the blank-faced man said.

  “No,” the old man said, “not for a long time. But he advised them on many things. And for that they thanked him by keeping a close eye on him. I think maybe you were one of the people who were assigned to do that particular job.”

  “You still haven’t answered my question,” the blank-faced man said. “About how you know I’m an agent for Majestic Seven.”

  “I’m getting to it, I’m getting to it,” the old man said. “Just don’t want to cut myself shaving. Been awhile since I’ve done this. Got to concentrate here. I knew you were an agent of Majestic Seven because of the contents of the locked case you had with when you fell. And then, I knew your plane was going to crash and had a pretty good idea of why.”

  “How did you know?” the blank-faced asked.

  “It’s a long story,” the old man said. “I suppose I should tell it. But I’ve got to finish this shaving. Got to concentrate or I know I’m going to get cut.”

  “You had an idea who I was but you acted like you didn’t,” the blank faced man said. “Why?”

  “I saw no reason to part with that particular information at that time,” the old man said. “Now you’re breaking my concentration.”

  “You’ve had that beard a long time,” the blank-faced man said.

  “Many years,” the old man said. He stopped and turned around for a moment. The blank-faced man saw that the old man already had half of his beard already shaved away. The old man turned back around.

  “As I told you, I’ve been up here a number of years,” the old man said.

  “You built that pyramid out there,” the blank-faced man said.

  The old man shook his head and said, “Didn’t actually build it. I repaired it. It’s an ancient construction, a temple from the era of Atlantis. When I found it up here, it was in ruins. I went to work and put it back together, and then added a few things of my own, all that machinery you saw there on the inside. Then I came across that tunnel entrance back there. So I built this cabin over it to hide that access. Hid it with the recess room.”

  “What does the tunnel access?” the blank-faced man asked.

  “Another Time Modulator,” the old man said. “It’s not as big as the ones I read to you about in Houdini’s journal there, but it’s of a pretty good size.”

  “You knew it was here,” the blank-faced man said.

  “I had a pretty good idea that it was here,” the old man said.

  “How did you know?” the blank-faced man asked.

  The old man had finished shaving; he wiped his face with a towel.

  “How do you think I knew?” the old man asked.

  “I think you knew because of who you are,” the blank-faced man said.

  “Who do you think I am?” the old man asked.

  “Turn around and I’ll tell you,” the blank-faced man said.

  The old man turned around. The blank-faced man could now see the old man’s neatly combed and trimmed hair framing his clean-shaven face; it was a full, round face, with an aqualine nose, thin, sensitive lips, thin, arched eyebrows, a high, wide forehead, strong chin and cheeks, and penetrating eyes of hazel-blue which were fixed in an almost hypnotic gaze upon the blank-faced man.

  “Tell me who I am,” the old man said.

  “You,” the blank faced man said slowly with every syllable weighted, “are Harry Houdini.”

  The old man stood, staring at the blank-faced man for several seconds— and then burst out laughing.

  “That’s good!” the old man exclaimed. “That’s rich! I like it! I do! Wouldn’t that be fantastic? That I, up on this mountain, hidden away from the world, unknown to all, was the world-famous Harry Houdini? The world-renowned Harry Houdini who everyone believes has been dead for sixteen years? That would be too much!”

  “You look like Houdini,” the blank-faced man said. “You look exactly like him. Don’t deny it.”

  “I can’t deny it,” the old man laughed. “Can’t deny a fact as plain as the nose on my face! I know I look like Houdini. Fact is that’s one of the reasons I grew the beard. I got tired of people staring at me. I suppose most people wouldn’t stare so much anymore. As Houdini himself wrote, people forget very, very quickly, and most people today probably don’t even remember what Houdini looked like anymore.”

  “I remember,” the blank-faced man said.

  “Of course you would,” the old man said. “But just because I look like Harry Houdini doesn’t mean that I am him. I’m not. I am not Houdini. Houdini is dead, and he’s not coming back, I can tell you. At least, he’s not coming back as Houdini. Maybe he’ll reincarnate some day, or maybe he’s gone on to some kind of Heaven or other dimension. But he’s not anywhere around here. I’d know. And I’d tell you if I did know.”

  The blank-faced man studied the old man a long moment, and then asked, “If you aren’t Harry Houdini, then, who are you? Who are you, old man? What is your name?”

  “My name?” the old man asked. “You want my name? Why, I thought you’d have figured that out by now, you’re such a bright young man. My name, young fellow, is— Dr. Nathan Flowers.”

  “You— “ the blank-faced man said, his throat closing up in amazement.

  “That’s right,” Dr. Flowers said. “You wanted to know, and now you know. I am Dr. Nathan Flowers.”

  “You—“ the blank-faced man stammered, “you are Houdini’s parallel self!”

  “You might call me that,” Dr. Flowers said. “I don’t know if that’s exactly accurate, scientifically speaking. But it’ll do for now. Harry Houdini and I had a lot in common, now that’s a fact.”

  “You don’t belong in this universe,” the blank-faced man asked, “do you?”

  “No,” Dr. Flowers replied. “I think you’re beginning to get the picture. At least you’ve got it in the developing tray.”

  “You switched universes,” the blank-faced man said.

  “That’s right,” Dr. Flowers said.

  “In 1915,” the blank-faced man said.

  “That was when I was initially displaced,” Dr. Flowers said.

  “Initially displaced?” the blank-faced man asked.

  “I was doing exactly the same thing for Majestic Seven in my home universe that Houdini was doing in his,” Dr. Flowers said, “trying to switch off the Bell on the floor of the Pacific Ocean.”

  “You were a magician?” the blank-faced man asked.

  “Oh, no,” Dr. Flowers said. “I was a medical doctor, a surgeon, and an inventor of medical devices. That’s how I became acquainted with the Nikola Tesla of my home universe. No, I wasn’t a magician, at least not a professional. I was always interested in stage magic when I was a boy. I always wanted to be a magician, but I never could. I have always regretted it.”

  “And you were a deep-sea diver?” the blank-faced man asked.

  “Yes,” Dr. Flowers said. “I did a lot of research on how the human body adjusted to unusual environments. Water related illnesses were a s
pecialty of mine. I was also very much interested in the healing of bone using the application of electromagnetic fields. That’s when I began to work with Nikola Tesla. Through him, I learned many interesting things and began to travel around the world searching for the fragmentary knowledge of Atlantis. By 1915 I had discovered the ancient science of healing that was used by the Atlanteans.”

  “What you used on me,” the blank-faced man said.

  “That’s right,” Dr. Flowers said. “And it healed you.”

  “It did,” the blank-faced man said. “And then in 1915 you went down to the floor of the Pacific Ocean and switched universes with Houdini.”

  “No,” Dr. Flowers said. “Not Houdini. There were a whole bunch of us down there who switched universes that day. It was a mess. Houdini’s journal doesn’t begin to scratch the surface of the whole story of what happened down there that day. Houdini switched universes with a nearly exact duplicate of himself. At that exact same instant in my universe, I switched places with a nearly exact duplicate of myself. Unlike Houdini, I had a lot more difficulty getting back to my home universe. I went through a lot of things with Jack London and his wife— that is, parallel versions of them in another universe. Some of the things that happened to Houdini also happened to me. I didn’t have an affair with Charmian, although that would’ve been all right with me, but it didn’t happen.”

  “What about the Houdini where you were?” the blank-faced man asked. “What was the Houdini in your universe doing?”

  “Oh,” Dr. Flowers said, “there was no Houdini in my universe. There was a magician named ‘Quentin Locke’ who did an escape act like Houdini did. He wasn’t a parallel Houdini. He looked more like Thurston.”

  “That ‘portly man’ Houdini described in his journal,” the blank-faced man asked, “how did he figure in? Houdini said that the portly man was Dr. Nathan Flowers.”

  “He was Dr. Nathan Flowers in this universe,” Dr. Flowers said. “In the parallel universe to which Houdini switched, the Nathan Flowers looked the same to Houdini, but that Nathan Flowers wasn’t a doctor— remember?”