Abracadabra

My weak first attempt at trying to write something in a quasi-Lovecraftian style. Just remember: True magic is closer to reality than you'd think. Also featuring a special cameo.

I forget where we heard of him. Nor can I recall when exactly we placed our appointment. I don't remember even meeting him prior to now as he stands there at our doorstep, smiling and bowing as I open the door. But upon seeing him, I simply know him. I don't know how, I just do.

So I let him in. He is on time, that much I know.

"The children are out back," I tell him, "They've been enjoying themselves plenty so far, but don't be surprised if their attention begins to wander at times."

He smiles, and pats me on the shoulder with that ivory white, gloved hand of his. Albino powdery dust falls off onto my shirt from the brief touch. "Everybody loves a good magic show," he replies, though I could've sworn he never opens his mouth. Yet his lips are parted, showing those squared, pearly white teeth. "I assure you."

"Are you thirsty? We have drinks," I offer with the best intentions of hospitality.

The smile flattens and he politely shakes his head.

"Are you sure?" I eye him once over again. Neat, slick brown hair falling to his shoulders sprouts out from beneath a narrow top hat, its brim all but shadowing his eyebrows. An old fashioned suite coat, one with wide and drooping tails in the rear flops against his thighs, and curtly trimmed cuffs end the sleeves. A stitched vest peeks out from the unbuttoned front of the blazer. It is otherwise featureless, save for a narrow slit near the bottom. A glaring, whitish silver chain slithers out from the slit, disappearing back into his person. Tapered black pants, straight as columns, extend to the floor, ending in glossy ebon shoes pointed to a tip. The man is taller than me, though with his rigid stance it feels more as if a statue, not a being of real flesh and blood, is looking down at me.

It’s the top hat, I told myself. Those were meant to accentuate height, after all.

The face, though. His visage is totally passive, blank. But that embracing, capturing smile, the curl of his eyes, and the dissecting pupils themselves betray emotion. It just seems hard to pin what exactly that emotion is. A word comes to mind looking at that countenance, this face that looks at you yet did not see you.

Insects. It's like he is looking at nothing more than a mere bug.

"Aren't you hot in all that?" I finally say. The thought seems late and crude to ask, but before those condescending orbs I know of nothing else to say.

The performer gives that riddling smile yet again but shakes his head to the contrary. Then something strikes me, his hair didn't wave, or ripple, or otherwise move.

"Ah, part of your act then?" I attempt with more feeble conversation.

The edges of that mouth curl more somehow, and he tips his hat.

"Well go on ahead," is all I can say, admitting defeat at trying to continue the cordiality. There’s sternness in his pupils, communicating eagerness but at the same time shrewdness, telling me that frivolity is for wasteful fools. But he in body gladly complies, stepping into my home and already making his way towards the glass doors leading outside, as if ready to get down to business. But still, I can’t stop myself from thinking about letting him inside so simply, Why?

Before I start towards the kitchen with the other parents, I hear the scraping of cloth against cloth, and as I turn to look I see that he has paused to glance at me. "The best magic is the one that you don't see," he explains plainly. A chill runs down my back, nestling at the tip of my spine.

He turns back and continues outside, leaving me alone to decide what to do next. I can hear the kids outside cheer, followed by the voice of the magician, no doubt reciting his introduction to his latest audience. Soon after there are the high pitched yells of excitement again, succeeded by the sound of little hands clapping.

Curiosity prods at my imagination. Though he is just a party magician, it is scratching me to know what exactly he’s doing out there. Recalling my own birthdays of years past, all my parents had gotten me were clowns or men dressed up in costumes, but never a magician. And to be truthfully honest, what with all the spirit of playful youth around I just feel like I want to be a kid again. The naïve wonder, the thrill of the moment. Simple things though they may be, too late did I realize growing up that such minute pleasures always fleeted far too quickly. So I go to the kitchen, pour myself a drink, and head outside.

I step out into the sunlight, bringing an arm up to shield my eyes from the pounding sun. Gradually they adjust, and as I scan the yard I find Jonathan and all his friends sitting around in a semi-circle around the black-tressed man. He is crouched low, arms outstretched and palms held out to the children. They stare on in wonder, one eye looking up to the man and another focused on his hands. I lean against the back wall and take a sip of my lemonade, staring on myself. The magician flicks the fingers in his right hand, and suddenly there are flowers in it. The kids scream and whine in joy. The man stands up, still holding his arms out. Suddenly the kindergarteners are hollering again.

I blink, and look again. Nothing seems amiss, nothing happened. Did I blink and miss a poof somewhere? I squint again, trying to see what was so amazing. All he had done was stand up. I tilt my head slightly to the side, trying to make out what exactly he has done.

The magician's eyes slide towards me in the corner of their sockets. He smiles, and the children laugh as they all see me scratching my head in bafflement. The coat-tailed man holds out his right hand for me to see, wiggling his fingers. Then it strikes me, his hand is empty.

Jonathan squeals in delight as my jaw drops.

Huffing as I try to hide my shame I look away and take a sip from my plastic cup, only to end up spitting out flower petals. This prompts a chorus of laughter from the kids, and I retreat and salvage what pride I have by simply placing the cup on a patio chair and stepping away from it.

The magician turns back to his captive audience and holds out a hand palm-up to a young girl. She raises her innocent eyes up to his. But there is something different. I walk to another side behind the group of seated youngsters for a better vantage point. The performer is looking right at her, and a chill runs down my spine. A part of me wishes to take her hand away, but another part wants to see what trick will happen next.

Why am I just sitting here? the thought nags at me. I bury it again, focusing intently on the gloved hands.

The man flicks his fingers back then instantly forward, and out of thin air a small box rests in his palm. The girl sits back with eyes still wide as saucers, her breaths coming in shallow fits. The magician simply stands, holding his present out for her. He remains unmoving, the hairs against the side of his head perfectly still. He doesn’t even appear to breathe himself.

"Go on, take it already Amy!" one of the boys mutters.

The poor girl reaches forward gingerly, slowly placing her fingertips onto the side of the diminutive container and lifting it off the gloved surface. Without any noise, the hand retracts back slowly and the hatted man returns to his full height. Young Amy clutches the box between her small hands, cradling it in her lap.

"It's cold," she says. Everyone is deathly silent.

Wait, weren't these kids cheering just a minute ago?

"Open the box," come the inevitable words.

Amy opens the box, and the box is gone. My brain does a double-take, unsure of what the eyes are telling it. No smoke, no mirrors. Is it all sleight of hand? It can't be, but what else is it? Where are the lights, the flashy show? Were it not for the sheer impossibility of it all, this has got to be the most boring performance I've seen. Nevertheless, how did he pull it off so seamlessly?

"Ah, but the best is yet to come!"

Everyone's eyes fall to the magician, who ceremoniously c***s his head to the side, letting the top hat fall off and tumble along his arm into his hand. He holds it up, open to us, panning it slowly across the seated onlookers to display its emptiness. He then steps back, and bows proudly at the hip. We sit in dread silence, listening to the birds chirp.

It's one of the boys who speaks up first. By now, even he was irritated. "Is that it?"

I run my eyes all over the man, trying to see what's amiss like his other trick. Nothing save for the hat in his hand is different. The mutters and angry whispers I hear under the breaths of Jonathan's friends is reassuring at least, it means I'm not the only one not in on the trick this time.

"Excuse me," I can't help but ask, "But what exactly did you do?"

He smiles, and waves his left hand over the crowd. His palm is level and flat, and the arm is extending outwards oh so lengthily. He halts his arm, the fingertips pointing at the house. There's that persistent nagging at the back of my neck, only now feeling direly wrong. So I turn to look.

The house looks fine, nothing out of place. The decorations are still up; the streamers continuing to bounce in the wind; the lights are all on inside; the glass door leading inside is still closed.; and the front door remains shut, as I left it.

By now the kids are grumbling loudly, and I hear the older ones even swear. I'd be alarmed and enraged at them, but there's this unforgiving pricking to my senses. What is it, I practically scream at myself. What's wrong! Everyone looks fine; everything is where it should be. The sun is shining; the kids are, or were, enjoying their party. The birds are chirping---

That's all I can hear. The birds, the disappointed kids, and the wind; everything outside. But not inside. So I leap to my feet, barely even registering that I sat down in the first place and shove myself inside. Everything is dead quiet; the TV and radio are silenced. I peer into the kitchen, where everyone's parents were talking and enjoying themselves while their kids played in the yard. The whole room is utterly vacant.

"Hello?" my voice sounds so insignificant, "Where is everyone?" I walk into the bedrooms, the bathrooms, even the basement. They've all left. I crack open one of the blinds, but the driveway is still packed with cars. A tingle runs up from my legs, crackling into my chest and spreading down my arms. It's electrifying; I can feel my hairs snapping up to attention. Slowly I back away, the dull thud of my footsteps turning back to the back door. I set a hand on the handle, ready to slide it back, but I stop to give the house one last look around. It's then I notice the tall, lanky shadow coming from the kitchen. The backyard can wait; I need to find someone, anyone, so I dash inside, only to behold…

It is tall, towering over me yet somehow avoiding scratching its frame on the ceiling. It's shaped like a man, but instead all that greets me is this hideous, undead entity. Skin that resembles more plates of tough hide rest along a sea of writhing and pulsing veins and arteries, as if it's skin is nothing more than floating tectonic plates. They are a menacing gray, malevolent in the fact that they don't appear hostile at first glance. From the gangly legs end feet with three elongated claws. There are three of these toes, in an almost reptilian fashion. But they are rife with muscle, as if they alone could tear the floor asunder. Its hands are similar, only three fingers, but they are so disturbingly long and rippling with strength. The lank arms and legs converge into a broad chest and shoulders. It is strong; the sight of this being evokes unquestioned might. But there, in the exact middle between those bristling shoulders is the head. Narrow, rudimentary angled, with leering eye sockets and a sneering half grin. Half, for half of its face is missing. It's pasty, decayed skin makes it look as if it is some poor fool’s face ripped straight off his cold corpse, perhaps it is. But that visage, something about its indifferent yet hidden fathomless cruelty face tugs at my memory. The other half of its face possesses nothing; it is as if one were staring into an abyss. No feature other than its outline exists beside the eye and the splitting chasm above the chin that is the mouth. Yet more horrifying than this wickedly amused monstrous countenance; or the gaping hole where it's nose should have been, a hole resembling that within a skull; more dreadful than the shoulder length tendrils, segmented like an arthropod’s limbs and ending in piercing tips that formed some mockery of hair; even more chilling than the curling horns that extended out from between those fiendish hairs and originating from somewhere on its forehead; more chilling than the rows of needle-like teeth, so honed they could cut air, filling that horrible grin that stretches too far for human sights of normality to believe; are the eyes. One is embedded within that abominable corpse face, the other glaring out from that shadowed void. The light from those orbs shimmers with eerie magnificence, and they see me.

They can see me, see my face, my mind, my heart, my soul, every cell in my body and every atom in those cells. Those eyes know me absolutely, from my past to my future. It dissects and analyzes me in an instant and concludes I am of no consequence. Just like that. In a single moment, perhaps less, I have been judged and deemed worthless. Yet, there is something playful in those eyes as well; as if they know that all existence is moot anyways and that the only thing left to do is revel, for there is nothing else. The world will end and so it will hold for us a play.

It spreads its arms wide, waving them about the empty room as if showing off the spontaneous vacuum of people. I stand there speechless; it just bows at the hip.

I don't know what conclusions uncontrollably rocket through my head, but my legs tear me away from the monster and back towards the door. Somehow, in the back of my mind, I know it will not give chase. It does not need too. Still though, I fumble at the handle, nearly breaking it off in the process. I had not even slid the door all the way open before leaping outside, all regard for breaking through glass left far behind. My feet claw into the grass as I round the corner looking for the kids, desperately searching for Jonathan. I can see the flattened grass where they sat. I can see the tipped over plastic cups and the spilled juices. I can even see the crumbs from their snacks. But I can not see the children.

They are gone, wholly, just like everyone inside. There is nothing, not a scrap of clothing, not a footprint or sign of a struggle. Not even a trace of blood. It is as if they are not to be, as if they no longer existed. As if they never did.

"Where are they?" I cry like a shot and dying beast, "Where did you take them?"

I whirl, I spin; the world twirls around me. I glance towards the house, but my eyes slide away from that now-cursed cavern. I look back to the tables, set neatly with party favors and presents, clad in a dainty table-cover that flaps in the wind.

My knees buckle and give way, and I collapse to the soft earth. I not only fall into a heap, but become one. My limbs, my whole body, are broken and shattered. Everyone is gone, all gone, without a merciful trace. I feel only cold, piercing ice that creeps and stabs through the heart. I can’t breathe, I can’t even function. Everything in me stops, I can’t even mourn. It is as if they had never existed. Was I mad? I can’t be, they were right here in front of me. My eyes had seen them, my hands had touched them. I sat there beside them. They were real.

But how so too was the monster in the house? I had seen it just as fully, just as really. It was there. Was I mad? What had happened? How did I suddenly begin to lose it? Did it ever even exist?

My ears hear the grass part. That sounded real, or at least real enough. I open my eyes, only the realizing that they had closed. Was this a nightmare?

"No," the voice answers for me, "This is fact. This is true. Magic is beautiful; it is impossibility in the face of reality, yet it is still true. It is no trick, no falsity. Though it breaks reason, it still is. And there is no denying it that. You cannot. None can. How you wish to handle that is, well, up to you."

"Who are you?" a croaked, pathetic whimper comes from where I am barely holding myself up. After a minute, I realize it was my own voice saying that. My conscious mind is shot, but despite the growing distance that stretches between my fading psyche some deeper intelligence, my superego?, demands a final answer. For its sake and mine, for all that is rationale. Despite my pleas, resounding and fading as if in an abyssal cavern, my head pulls itself up. My eyes rise skyward, to whom I dread is there.

There he is, much taller than I remembered him. His skin is thick and tough now, covered by organic plates that shift along throbbing leylines of veins. His hands and feet are now trios of elongated and muscular, jointed digits. Beneath that demented top hat are segmented tendrils, and peeking out from their forest of madness and cradling the manic hat are a pair of curled horns. But his visage, that half face, with the all-seeing eyes...

"I, I am the Magician."

And without a puff of smoke, or flash of light, or other meaningless display; nay with but only the cold instantaneous moment, I am no longer to be.

Author's Note

I usually proofread my works, however as always I'm sure there are typos and syntax errors. I appreciate any and all notices of that, and will work to correct those. If I haven't do know that I did acknowledge your notice and try implementing it, but found that it detracted from the effect I wanted and so omitted it.

Reviews

[Type0]

This is a fantastic piece. It has everything a good story should have: an intriguing beginning, a climactic end, and a middle that sustains the tension and character exceedingly well. You have varied the pace, heightening and lowering tension so that it builds without melodrama and maintains an eerie feel.

However, I warned you that I was going to be harsh about this, and I am.

This is a good step towards a Lovecraftian style. You echo his antiquity of speech marvellously despite a slip with the word pants, and you have a good grasp on the inhumanity of your antagonist. The subtlety of the horror is nice, but I feel that it is at the level of all good horror.

For Lovecraft, you need to be even more subtle.

This is a very difficult thing to do, and I struggle to achieve this myself. Lovecraft's horror is almost entirely suggested, and rarely shown. There is always something held back, and this is often the thing which is most horrific of all. For example, in 'Dagon,' horror is drawn from the wrongness of the ruins, and the inhumanity which they suggest. The actual appearance of the creature is only granted three lines of almost inspecific explanation. The horror must be suggested from then on.

Obviously, here there comes a problem in that your monster is hidden in plain sight throughout. Again we can look to Lovecraft, this time 'The Whisperer in Darkness;' where issues of horror are dealt with, but the final realisation is covered in a mere seven words. If you have not read this piece, I urge you to.

You've brilliantly foreshadowed the inhumanity of the Magician, but I think that the full description is too expressive. There is more horror in the unknown. Give us hints, don't tell us the full details. The final description is spot on. This is the kind of thing you want to attempt to achieve more regularly. I understand that it can be very difficult not to explain the entire thing, but it will create a stronger, more chilling effect.

Consider this: the monster you describe may not scare me; if you leave out more details, I must fill them in. Which will always be the scariest thing for me.

I have an issue with your choice of tense, in that the narrator appears to die at the end. If so, how would this third person narrative reach the reader? In many of Lovecraft's stories, the horror feels more real because of the immediacy of the account. 'Dagon' is the perfect example of this. Allowing your narrator to report the horror also helps suggest the nihilistic madness characteristic of this kind of work.

I have a few issues with the Magician himself. Not problems, at all, but personal questions and suggestions. You comment on the decayed face of the Magician, which clearly places him after the original House of the Dead - upon his encounter in HotD 2, the Magician sports a few more tentacles. Also, I would have liked to have seen some fire in there somewhere - the seminal power of the Magician has always been his frustrating fireball attacks! A suggestion during the magic show would not have hurted.

Still, all in all this is a fantastic piece, and I have added it to my favourites because I will enjoy reading it again. The piece is technically perfect, although if you wanted to get closer to Lovecraft's style, it still has a long way to go. You've shown a lot of promise in the right direction though!

Well done - this is great, and I hope to see more like it!

[Kaitlyn M.]

OMG. I think I may be hyperventilating. Cthulu?! This story is made of hardcore win, and a LOT of it. I think you definitely have captured the Lovecraftian style here. Your narrator, while on the surface is an ordinary guy, also resembles the figure of the learned scholar to whom reason (and not magic, etc.) reigns supreme. You've made this creepy, scary, horrific, and also gory without taking it to egregious heights. For horror writers, taking the emphasis off of the gross and putting it into the more subtle is difficult, but I think you have definitely succeeded here. Hurrah! The only thing I noticed were a couple of ambiguous sentences toward the end (though I can't pinpoint them specificially right now), but nothing that is so much a detriment that this story cannot stand as a completed, polished, and MARVELLOUS piece. You should definitely try this style of story again. I'd read it in a heartbeat (or lack of one?).