Read Online The Houdini Effect by Bill Nagelkerke - Free Book Online Page B

course I can keep a secret.’ ‘So can I sis,’ he said,
‘so can I.’ And he walked off. Was that cruel, or what?)
    ‘ They can’t do it with
smoke or mirrors,’ I remember telling him. ‘If they did, then
you’ve just told me a secret, two secrets actually, which is
something you’re not allowed to do.’
    ‘ It’s only a saying. It
doesn’t mean anything,’ he replied evasively.
    But it does, actually.
I’ve sneaked a look at some of his magic books and some
tricks are done
with smoke and/or mirrors. Especially mirrors.
     
    I tried - unconvincingly - to convince
myself this
    was just another of Harry’s magical tricks.
A very elaborate magic trick, to give him credit, but a trick
nevertheless, an illusion, nothing more than a
    particularly impressive piece of
prestidigitation.
    I lugged the mirror off the wall (it was
heavy and an awkward shape) searching everywhere for whatever
apparatus Harry had hidden behind it to create the effect of seeing
faces but I found nothing. The wall on which the mirror hung faced
a windowless opposite wall so there
    was no chance that Harry had rigged
something up outside to project what I’d seen onto my mirror. If
Harry had been responsible for this, there was no way I could work
out how he’d done it.
    Quickly I came to the
realisation that he couldn’t have done it. And if that were true
then I didn’t think even Harry would be able to figure out how what
had happened, had happened. So, after the first shock of seeing
Laurie and Iris, I im-mediately began doubting that I’d seen
anything out of the ordinary at all. It simply couldn’t have been
real. It wasn’t possible. I was asleep; I'd been dreaming;
hallucinating; in a temporary, migraine-induced trance, even though
I had no wavy line in the corner of my eye or the sensation of an
impending, sick headache.
    Who was I kidding?
    The result - I missed my bus. And I didn’t
feel like trying to make it in time for the next one.
     
    Two more questions
     
    At first, I tried to put
the mystery of the how aside and, instead, focused on a couple of other key
questions.

    Think rationally about
what can be rationalized . This was a
phrase I’d found in one of Mum’s
    legal-aid advice books. (I quite enjoy
reading other people’s books. If they leave them lying around, why
not?) Firstly, who were the people in the mirror?
    I didn’t want to leap to conclusions but the
most obvious possibility (as already stated) was that the young
couple was Laurie and Iris. I’d had no idea beforehand what they
looked like of course but who else could they be? Okay, maybe it
wasn’t exactly a rational realisation but it seemed logical enough.
Probably the two of them had been in the back of my mind ever since
May had talked about them that first and, so far, only time she and
Barry had been over at our place. And then the business with the
séance had reinforced it.
    The second question was, why? It came in two
parts. Why had I seen them, and why had they shown themselves to
me? I didn’t have any answer at all to either of those. (Rational
thinking has its limitations.)
    I decided my next strategy
would be to forget all about what I’d seen, to continue trying to
pretend I hadn’t seen anything at all. That turned out to be just
as impossible as what I knew I had seen. You can suppress fear but it simply stays
that way, suppressed. It remains there, lurking like a beast in the
background.
    I found myself
looking at the
mirrors more often than I was looking into them as I waited for the next
time. Because there was going to be a next time, somehow I was
certain of that. The anticipation made me so nervous I found it
hard to
    think and act normally. And of course I
began then to wish that we had never hung on to any of the wretched
mirrors.
    Tied up, as it were
     
    The next day, after breakfast, it was
somehow my turn again to tie Harry up in his straitjacket. I really
wasn’t in the mood as I’m sure you’ll appreciate.