The Last Ritual Read online

  I was about to ask Preston if we were in the right place when one of the doors opened.

  A head stuck out.

  Houdini himself peered at me from around the corner. His intense eyes shone in the semidarkness. Minnie and Preston poured out from behind me, laughing.

  Minnie gasped. “Is that him? The real McCoy?”

  “Not the McCoy. But if you prefer, I am the real Houdini.”

  He stepped forward and bowed.

  Houdini was not a big man, but compact and solidly muscular. Even in his shirtsleeves, he utterly commanded whatever space he entered. We bowed back to him in reply. He wore a towel around his neck, but on him it appeared a mysterious accessory rather than a cloth to wipe away his sweat after a physically punishing exhibition of his skills.

  I remained speechless, paralyzed. But Preston was less awestruck.

  “May we visit with you? We have backstage passes,” he said.

  “Of course, please join me in my dressing room,” Houdini said.

  We were surprised to find him alone.

  He shut the door and squeezed past us.

  “My wife, Bess, has gone out to see about our dinner. Please sit, won’t you?”

  The small room was dingy. A threadbare carpet covered only part of the scuffed floorboards. There was a musty smell and poor ventilation. With the three of us gathered around the magician, I felt cramped, bordering on claustrophobic. Houdini didn’t seem to mind. He reclined on a chaise longue, drinking from a glass of ice water.

  Now that we had special access, we didn’t know exactly what to do.

  An awkward silence settled.

  Preston coughed.

  “I hope you’re enjoying your trip to Arkham,” Minnie said.

  “I love performing here. I have many fans. They are thirsty for magic,” Houdini said.

  Again, the silence. An unseen clock ticking. Footsteps in the hall.

  My tongue loosened. “You have a true zeal for exposing charlatans,” I said.

  “Vultures,” he said. “They prey upon the weak, the grieving. It is an insult to my intellect and yours. I’ll fight them. I have offered a $10,000 reward to anyone who professes to have so-called supernatural powers and can prove to my satisfaction they are not conmen. No one will ever claim it. Yet I keep an open mind. I like surprises. ‘Show me,’ I say.”

  There came a firm knocking at the dressing room door.

  “Excuse me,” Houdini said.

  He moved around us to greet his new visitor.

  Preston leaned into Minnie and me. “Perhaps he might do a few card tricks for us.”

  I shook my head. “He’s already given us a show we’ll never forget. We should go.”

  “At least he can sign our programs,” Minnie said.

  Preston agreed. “We should have something to remember this night.”

  “I, for one, will never forget it, whether or not he gives us anything more.”

  Houdini was talking in hushed tones with his visitor. Suddenly he cried out in pain and staggered backward, bumping into Preston who grabbed the magician around the shoulders to prevent him from collapsing to the floor.

  “What happened?” Preston said.

  “Why, he’s paler than a ghost,” Minnie said.

  I rushed to the doorway and looked out into the hallway, in time to see the quickly retreating figure of a tall man in a silk top hat and cape disappearing into the shadows.

  “You! Stop right there!”

  The tall man half-turned. I saw the forked beard. The same person I had been studying in the audience. The one I swore was Juan Hugo Balthazarr! I started after him.

  “Balthazarr? Is that you? What is going on here?”

  But the tall man kept walking, never breaking his stride.

  “Alden, help us!” Minnie shouted.

  “I don’t think Houdini is breathing,” Preston said. “Get a doctor!”

  Despite my desire to pursue the phantom, I returned to the stricken illusionist.

  “Where am I supposed to find a doctor, Preston?”

  He shrugged. Houdini’s head lay in his lap.

  The magician’s eyes were locked on some far-off distance. His mouth fell agape. It was as if he beheld an unnamable terror stalking him, one from whose clutches he could devise no escape.

  “Houdini! Houdini!” I shook him.

  Then he drew in a deep breath like a man who had been saved from drowning. “I am stabbed. Low, on my right side. The fiend has put his knife into me.”

  Preston and I searched but found no wound… no sign of any bleeding…

  “You are whole,” I said. “I cannot see any injury.”

  Houdini prodded himself, at first gingerly, and then with greater force. He checked his fingers for the red evidence of a wound. “Amazing! I felt the blade slicing through me. Like a jolt of electricity! That devil placed his hand on me and spoke in a language I’ve never heard before. I understood not a syllable. Yet I swear he was killing me. Wait. He did say one thing I understood. As he cut into me, he said, ‘Tell me, sir, if this feels real enough.’”

  “Did you recognize him?” I asked.

  Houdini shook his head. “He was a stranger.”

  I hesitated to use the name of Balthazarr. I had no proof at all. None.

  Sitting up, the magician slowly regained his strength.

  “Shouldn’t we call the police?” Minnie asked.

  “What crime has been committed?” Preston said.

  “This man’s been assaulted,” I said.

  “He looks fine now to me. Maybe it was simply a prank,” Preston said. “A trick.”

  With our help Houdini stood. He brushed himself off, checking his lower right abdomen again. “Your friend is right.” He squeezed my arm. “I received no damage. And my attacker is long gone by now. I only need to rest.”

  It was then that Houdini’s wife, Bess, arrived. We told her of the incident. While she was alarmed to hear of the baffling encounter, her husband assured her he was feeling normal again. We parted. I felt no small degree of embarrassment when Preston and Minnie presented their programs to the illusionist for signatures. Houdini was friendly and obliging. Holding up his pen, he asked me where my program was. I had it in my pocket but told him I left it in my seat.

  “You can sign it the next time you’re in Arkham,” I said.

  “Yes, I will. Thank you for your assistance,” he said.

  We were about to exit when he exclaimed, “Hold on!” We turned in unison to see the escapologist digging into a lumpy sack behind the chaise. He found what he was looking for.

  “Please let me offer you a token of my thanks.”

  Houdini held out a pair of handcuffs.

  As I reached out to take the shackles from him, he snapped them on my wrists.

  I struggled to pull them open, with no success. The thick iron bit into my flesh.

  “What’s the trick?” Minnie asked.

  Houdini showed us his empty hands. “No trick. Put out your palm, my dear.” Minnie obeyed his instruction. He covered her hand with his closed fist. Then he opened his fingers.

  “The best way to open a lock is to have the key.”

  He deposited it into Minnie’s hand, and she squealed with delight. After some teasing, she put the key in the locks and liberated me.

  I rubbed my wrists.

  Houdini clapped me on my shoulder.

  “I will treasure them always,” I said, pocketing the cuffs.

  My friends and I left the Ward Theatre. The rain had stopped, but the night air was thick. A fog blanketed the city. Downtown, the gaslights flickered like torches afloat in space.

  I imagined the tall, bearded man out there in that fog.

  Watching us.

  Tell me, sir, if this fee
ls real enough.

  I shivered. The evening had unnerved me. That man couldn’t have been Balthazarr.

  Could he?

  It was a year later, on Halloween in fact, that the Great Harry Houdini died after a show in Detroit. Doctors determined the cause of death to be peritonitis secondary to a ruptured appendix. Subsequent rumors blamed a Canadian college student who allegedly punched Houdini in the gut days earlier. Houdini’s last reported words were, “I’m tired of fighting.”

  I’ll bet he was. He’d had that curse growing inside him for months. I’ll leave you to form your own opinion on the matter. I know that I have mine.

  Chapter Six

  By mid-October the Oakes family mansion was proving to be too confining for my parents and me, despite our habit of keeping to divergent schedules and occupying separate rooms. One morning, Roland brought me an envelope on a silver tray – inside, a note from Mother.

  Most Beloved Alden,

  You know that your father and I adore you and are deeply pleased to have you back at Oakwood with us! Yet we can’t help but wonder if you mightn’t be still happier with companions your own age who are cheered when they hear you knocking about the house regardless of the hour. Of course, you may remain if you so choose, and we would be nothing but delighted if you did. But mightn’t it be better for all concerned parties if you were to seek other viable options?

  With much Support and Encouragement,

  M and F

  “Well, isn’t that just great? She’s giving me notice, Ro. I am to vacate the premises.” I always was conscious of being in the way of my parents. Such was the warmth of Oakwood.

  I suppose I should’ve expected this.

  Snowy-haired Roland, ever my silent comforter, stood beside my desk staring out into the red maples of the courtyard. The scent of smoldering leaves lifted like sacrificial incense into the sky as the gardeners winterized the grounds. Out back stood a cast iron and glass building shaped like a small Gothic chapel – my mother’s greenhouse – where she rotated pots of African violets, regulating their sunlight, checking for aphids, thrips, spider mites, and mealybugs, dipping her pinkie into the soil, monitoring whether it was too dry or too wet.

  I scribbled a note on the back of Mother’s stationery.

  Dearest Mother,

  I will begin my search immediately. If nothing surfaces, I’ve heard there’s a “deluxe” vacancy at Ma’s Boarding House. Close enough for you and Father to walk over and join us boarders for a plate of Ma’s famous homemade stew!

  – A

  “There,” I said. “That’ll just about stop her heart.” I folded the note in half and tossed it on the tray. Mother loathed teasing, all humor, really. “I will be going out, Ro.”

  Roland pivoted away from me. He paused before leaving.

  “Shall I call you a cab?”

  “No, thank you. I’ll walk. Do you have today’s paper? I need to get a new place.”

  “I will fetch it from the study. Would you like the Boston papers as well?”

  “Start with the Advertiser. Tell me, Ro, how does one find lodgings in this town?”

  “Carefully I should think, sir,” he said. “I’ve lived at Oakwood for eons. I hardly recall what it’s like to stay anywhere else. But I’m glad for it. A person hears stories…”

  “What kind of stories?”

  “Oh, horrible ones… peculiar happenings, disappearances, strange murders that even the most seasoned police detectives can’t explain. Mutilated bodies floating in the Miskatonic River and down along the train tracks. There was a pair of lovely young dancers who went missing. Later their bodies were found burned… It’s quite appalling if you think about it.” He smiled, toeing the threshold with his pointy black boot. Roland did relish a good gruesome tale.

  “I’ll keep only happy thoughts in my head as I go about my apartment hunting.”

  “An excellent idea,” he replied. “It pays to stay positive.”

  He grinned and was gone.

  After a few minutes, I was running my razor over my soapy jaw as Roland slid the paper under my door. I toweled off and picked up the news. I heard a curious scratching outside in the hallway and opened for a look. Thorn wandered in.

  “What’s the latest in Arkham, Thorn?” I threw myself across the bed and began leafing through the Advertiser. Thorn slumped at my feet with a deep sigh.

  My father had read the Arkham Advertiser back when it was still called the Arkham Gazette. At first, his goal was to see his name in the paper as his fame grew as a businessman. Once he was rich, he spent more time keeping his name, and his companies, out of the paper. He was no fan of the current paper’s editor-in-chief, or the “nosy fiction writers,” as he called their team of muckraking investigative reporters. But he paid for a subscription so he could read about his rivals, chuckling at their misfortunes and damning their triumphs with a spoonful of his daily morning grapefruit. Between bites of buttered rye toast, he’d punctuate his perusal of the news with exclamations of “Lies! Nitwits! Horsefeathers!” and an occasional rhetorical question, “Who gives these fools jobs?” and “Why waste the ink?” Also, I think he just liked to complain.

  I’d skimmed through most of this morning’s edition and was about to chuck everything but the classifieds on the floor when a story on the back page caught my eye.

  Sculptor Killed by Crumbling Gargoyle

  Arkham, MA, October 13th – Artist Courtland Elias Dunphy was killed yesterday morning at the All Saints Roman Catholic Church of South Arkham while taking measurements for the replacement of a gargoyle statue on the northwest corner of South Church’s roof. Witnesses say part of the statue broke loose from the building, causing the artist to lose his balance and plunge to the sidewalk below. Dunphy moved to Arkham from Wisconsin last month after winning a nationwide competition sponsored by an anonymous donor to furnish South Church with new statues. “Court was a sensitive soul and a fine sculptor. I only wish he had more climbing experience before undertaking this job,” said Father Michael Cryans, South Church’s pastor. Dunphy leaves behind no known relatives.

  “How perfectly dreadful.” Maybe this was the kind of strange and horrible story Roland mentioned. For no good reason, I flashed to the bizarre festival I had attended in Spain. The figure with the full-headed mask like a black sunburst. And the fire. The painting of a city in flames. As quickly as the vision came, it disappeared. I couldn’t figure out why I’d thought it just then. I leaned down to scratch Thorn’s head. “You were an unlucky fellow, Mr Dunphy.” Thorn shivered and with a whimper curled himself up around my ankles.

  “You’re right, Thorn. I promised Roland only happy thoughts.”

  I paged through the classifieds and found nothing.

  I decided on a whim to take a stroll around the city and see if anyone had a sign in the window declaring a room for let. I dismissed the idea of buying a house. I’d been roaming Europe for months, and I wasn’t ready to sink my roots down. Staying in European hotels while traveling gave me a sense of freedom I’d come to like. I could pick up and go whenever the mood struck. Thinking about doing that in Arkham was different. Everyone I knew here either still lived at home with their families, or were married and starting a new family of their own. I was aware of a few dedicated bachelors left from my college days who now roomed together, but they were as close as married couples, and I didn’t want to intrude upon their domestic arrangements. No, it wasn’t the idea of moving out that bothered me as much as the fear of not moving on, of getting stuck again in the stagnancy that haunted my time in Cannes. I had taken out the paintings I did in Spain after I resettled in my studio at Oakwood. They were good. Better than the half-starts and failed projects that came before. But they still lacked something. It was like they were waiting for another piece to arrive.

  So I put them away.

  I hadn’t painted anyth
ing since getting back to Arkham.

  Such was the rambling direction of my thoughts when I looked up to see that I was standing in front of South Church, the scene of the terrible accident where Courtland Dunphy died only a day ago. My feet had carried me to the spot, almost automatically. The brain is an odd organ indeed. It operates at depths science has yet to plumb. Some portion of my consciousness had driven me here. Could it be a coincidence? I dismissed that outright. I’d read about this case. Now here I was. Did I burn with curiosity on an instinctual level of which I wasn’t fully aware? Or had something else guided me? A mysterious impulse?

  I gazed up at the steeple and realized I was on the wrong side of the church. Here were the front doors securing the narthex, but Dunphy had tumbled off the back end, behind the sanctuary. No gargoyles perched on this section of the roof. The angle of the sun made the stained glass redder, as if it were seeping blood. My morbid imagination! I tramped onward, crunching dead leaves along the side lot of the church. As I turned past the sharp corner of gray, vertical stone, I was surprised to see another person, a young woman, loitering over the scene of Dunphy’s demise. She was casting her eyes downward.

  I had time to watch her before she noticed me. She cut a smart figure in an olive wool dress and black cloche hat snugged over her bobbed soft curls. She’d been crouching at the edge of the walkway with her fingers stirring a leaf pile. As she rose, she noticed me and cried out, startled, her slender ankle bending awkwardly and tipping sideways at the lip of the cobbled walk.

  “Oh, shh–!” she said.

  I rushed forward and grabbed her wrist to steady her.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  She pulled herself free from my grip.