William Rabkin - Psych - Mind Over Magic

“I didn’t,” Shawn said. “You just did.”

Lyle leapt across the room and grabbed Shawn by the throat. “Shut up! Shut up!”

Shawn gasped for breath, but Lyle was squeezing too tight. Gus tried to pry his fingers off, but they were like steel bands. Shawn could feel himself beginning to lose consciousness, when a scream echoed from the front room.

“What was that?” Lyle said, releasing his grip on Shawn’s throat and letting him drop to the floor.

Every head in the bar swiveled toward the door, and for a moment, the entire crowd stood frozen. And then the scream came again.

“This way,” someone shouted, and the entire crowd drained out of the room.

“Can’t see why my father doesn’t like this place more,” Shawn said, rubbing his neck.

The Fortress shook as if someone had slammed a wrecking ball into it.

“Earthquake!” Gus shouted as he followed Shawn into the main parlor.

“I don’t think earthquakes usually hit at two-second intervals,” Shawn said.

Shawn and Gus pressed into the room, but all they could see were the backs of the people who’d gotten there before them. The Fortress shook again.

“Then what’s going on?”

Shawn scanned the room. Then he pointed above the crowd toward the entrance. “I think it may have something to do with that.”

Gus craned his head around a tall man in a cheap tuxedo, looking to see what Shawn was talking about. And when he did, he wished he’d never opened his eyes. It wasn’t the fact that there was a head bobbing above the crowd that bothered Gus, even though its bald crown must have been more than seven feet off the ground.

It was the fact that the head was green.

The Fortress shook again. The head moved through the crowd like a shark’s fin cutting through the waves, and Gus realized what was rattling the building: It was the green creature’s footsteps.

“What is it?” Gus whispered to Shawn.

“A product of global warming, I’m thinking,” Shawn said.

“What?”

“Don’t you remember Frankenstein: The True Story?” Shawn said. “At the end, Victor Frankenstein is chasing the monster over the North Pole, and they both get buried by an avalanche. Clearly, global warming has melted the ice enough to set the monster free.”

“That was a movie, Shawn,” Gus said. “It didn’t really happen.”

“It’s the true story,” Shawn said. “It said so in the title.”

“That doesn’t make it real,” Gus said.

“Really?” Shawn said. “I thought there was a law.”

The room shook again as the creature took another step. Somewhere in the crowd, a woman screamed.

“What’s it doing?” Gus said, jumping up to see over the crowd.

“The last thing you want it to do,” Shawn said. “Coming this way.”

Shawn was right. The head had turned and was now moving directly toward them. Up ahead, Gus could see the crowd falling away to make room for the creature.

“Do you think it eats people?” Shawn said, edging back a little. “Because if so, I think Lyle would make a tasty treat.”

The crowds parted as the stomping footsteps got closer. The two men blocking Shawn’s view fell aside, and the creature stood directly in front of him.

Its enormous feet were encased in heavy black boots. On its bald head it wore a thick gold band as a crown. Its midsection was wrapped in a black loincloth. The rest was rippling muscles covered only by bare flesh.

Bare green flesh.

Gus stared up into the creature’s face. If he ignored the coloring and the razor-sharp teeth, he could imagine he was looking at a normal human. Of course, if he could ignore the coloring and the razor-sharp teeth, he could imagine a great white shark was a goldfish, but that wouldn’t keep him from being digested as a snack.

The creature stared down at Shawn and Gus, arms crossed over his mammoth chest. “Puny humans, tremble before P’tol P’kah,” his voice boomed down at them.

The creature pushed between Shawn and Gus as it stomped toward the back of the building. Before Gus could decide between following the green monster or collapsing into a dead faint, a thin, reedy voice came from behind him.

“Fellow magicians,” the voice said, “P’tol P’kah has come here to meet your challenge.”

Gus turned to see a tiny man following in the open aisle the creature had created. His salt-and-pepper hair was razor cut; his designer suit hugged his body. Aside from the fact that the top of his head didn’t quite skim the five-foot mark, he could have been Mitt Romney.

“Now, who here has dared call P’tol P’kah a fake?” the small man said.

There was a concerned murmur in the crowd before a heavyset man in a worn tuxedo pushed his way up to the speaker, his face twisted in scorn.

“I dared,” the man spat. Gus was certain he’d seen the angry man before, but couldn’t quite place him. “If I could build my own Vegas showroom and never let anyone backstage, I could perform miracles from beyond the wonders of space, too.”

“Of course you could, Balustrade,” the small man said patiently. “And all of America would flock to Vegas to see you practice your card tricks.”

Now Gus realized who the heavyset man was-the same magician who had slipped the five of hearts into his sock. But the cherubic look was completely gone, replaced by a visage of pure fury. He looked like a different person. He was, Gus realized, a much better performer than he had given him credit for.

The man in the red suit pushed his way to the front of the crowd. As he got closer, Gus could see that the suit wasn’t just shiny; it was made of vinyl.

“At least we perform our illusions honestly.” The red-suited man shouted his words over the other man’s head, which wasn’t hard to do.

Gus caught a glimpse of gold out of the corner of his eye and turned to see the man in the jumpsuit standing at the edge of the crowd. “That’s right! I don’t use computers and video screens and high-tech gadgets to fool a gullible public into thinking I have talent.”

“There’s no computer in the world that’s that good, Sludge!” a drunken voice called out from the back of the room.

A wave of laughter passed through the room, which only infuriated the lamed man further. “It’s Rudge,” he shouted. “You all know it’s Rudge. Barnaby Rudge.”

Rudge jolted forward as if to take on the green giant in a fistfight, and the crowd whooped in anticipation of a bloody, if extremely short, fight. But he quickly dived back into the crowd, and Gus could see that the only reason he’d stepped forward was because he’d been pushed. It took Gus a moment to realize where he’d seen the woman who’d shoved Rudge, because he didn’t immediately recognize her without knife handles protruding from her eye sockets. Now that he was closer to the woman, he could see that she wasn’t wearing a brightly patterned blouse after all. She had on a simple black vest; the colors that ran up and down her arms and covered her upper chest were all tattooed there. And they weren’t just colors-they were snakes and lizards and, Gus was pretty sure, slugs.

“Isn’t anyone going to stand up for our art?” the woman called to the crowd. “Or are you all going to take little Benny Fleck’s side because he’s rich and you think he’ll stake you to a show when his pretty boy flames out?”

“Pretty boy?” Gus whispered to Shawn.

“It’s all relative,” Shawn said. “Consider who’s talking.”

“P’tol P’kah does not flame out,” said the small man, who Gus realized must be Benny Fleck, whoever that was. “Unless you are referring to his newest illusion, in which he will be consumed by a pillar of fire, transforming himself into a cloud of smoke. The cloud will then rain down on the stage and the puddle of rainwater will then rise up in the unmistakable form of P’tol P’kah, the Martian Magician!”