Strange Magic (23 page)

The Heatseeker began to laugh again, a deep, rumbling, terrible laugh that echoed through the vast
chamber. “You pathetic fool, Wilson. You bring a glass of water to the gates of hell? Have you lost your mind entirely?”

“This isn’t just water, Doug. It’s holy water, blessed by a priest earlier tonight. I’m not as stupid as you seem to think.”

“You sure about that, big boy?” the Heatseeker sneered, releasing Amanda and walking slowly toward where Wilson stood. “Might want to rethink things a little. Lucius followed you to the church tonight, and after you left he went in and killed your so-called holy man.”

“What? Father Harris? But why would—”

“Seems the good priest wasn’t quite as honest with you as he was with Lucius. Turns out he was a fucking pervert, a coward like you who roamed around in the dark peeking at titties and pussy through the windows to get his jollies.”

“That’s a lie. Patrick Harris was a good man and a—”

“He was a sicko, Wilson. Bug-shit crazy, in fact, and any semblance of faith in God he might have once had was gone long ago. Your little jar of holy water is useless. Well…not entirely, I guess.” The Heatseeker reached out and easily plucked the glass container from Wilson’s trembling hand. “It is rather hot in here…Cheers!”

The evil magician winked, a contented look on his oversize, deformed face, and smugly tipped the bottle up to the mouth slit in his mask to drink it dry. The pain hit him right away and now it was Wilson’s turn to smile.

Fuck you, old friend. I got ya!

The Heatseeker dropped the knife. He also dropped the bottle. His mask, mouth, tongue, and esophagus burned away almost instantly, the skin of his throat disintegrating
and splitting open like a peeled juicy fruit. The ghoul started to scream, frantically tearing off the top half of his gruesome mask but his vocal cords were being eaten away and all he managed to do was blow out a wet, gurgling slosh of bloody foam through the gaping wound. His eyes locked onto Wilson, frantic and wild, clearly bewildered as to what had just happened.

“Hydrochloric and nitric acid. Every magician’s best friend. Can burn the fuck out of you but might just save your life; remember? I’ve kept a bottle of it around my house for years. You’re not as smart as you think either. I went back to ask Father Harris another question tonight…and I heard the conversation between Lucius and him. At the time I thought it was you, but I didn’t dare go close enough to look. No matter. I knew my holy water was useless but thought it might be something I could use against you all the same. I went back home and switched it for my acid, hoping you might be stupid enough to try something like this. Worst case I could have at least thrown it at you, but I like this much, much better.”

The Heatseeker’s face and neck were a ruin of bubbling flesh, and he was staggering around in a daze. Before he could make a move for Amanda or the knife again, Wilson maneuvered around him and when the timing was right, launched a flying kick at his chest that knocked the grievously injured magician backward onto the sturdy wood table behind him. Before the Heatseeker could react, the possessed handcuffs slithered across the table and latched onto his wrists, pulling the chains tight and pinning him in place. He struggled against the restraints, still trying to scream, but Wilson had heard quite enough out of this freak to last a lifetime.

“Save it, Doug. It’s over. My life and my family are all I’ve got in the world, and like it or not, you aren’t taking them. I win. You lose!” Wilson reached down and put his hand on the green start button. “Ready for the limelight again? All set to wow the crowd, tough guy? It’s what you always craved, isn’t it? Well, you got it. Do your thing, motherfucker! It’s
SHOWTIME
!”

Wilson punched the button and the Devil’s Drill Bit roared to life once again. With the razor-sharp auger already partially descended from earlier, it meant the Heatseeker only had about thirty seconds to attempt an escape. Though Doug had been and still was a great magician, Wilson knew it wasn’t going to happen—he wasn’t an escape artist and never had been. So just like the first time, the Heatseeker thrashed around on the table and tried his best, but he wasn’t going to be able to slip out of the possessed cuffs.

The drill bit continued to descend.

Wilson retreated over to his daughter, worried he might have to fight the skinless freak chained beside her, but Peeler was still shivering against the wall and didn’t even look up when he approached. Wilson untied Amanda from the ropes, careful not to bang her damaged hand. They’d have to get her to a doctor as soon as possible, but for now, Wilson held her close and told her to close her eyes. She didn’t need to see what was about to happen and truth be told, Wilson wasn’t sure he did either. He wasn’t leaving though. Not yet. Not until he was sure the Heatseeker was dead.

Dead again
, he thought, and the maniacal laughter that threatened to burst from his lungs scared him a little and he cut that thought off quickly.
Hold it together, Wilson. Don’t lose it, man.

On the wooden table, the Heatseeker had stopped thrashing around, resigned to the fact he couldn’t get out of the cuffs that bound him in harm’s way. Instead of watching the rapidly descending drill bit, he turned his head to the side to stare over at Wilson. His face was an open wound, a ruin of foamy blood, melting skin, and exposed teeth and bone. The only parts of his face still remotely human were his eyes and Wilson had never seen anyone stare with such cold, calculated hatred. In those eyes, Wilson saw death, grueling despair, and the specter of such cruel, intense, eternal suffering he was forced to look away for fear of being sucked into their darkness. Where the Heatseeker was going, Wilson had no desire to follow.

And then the spinning blade bit into the Heatseeker’s red and black jacket and the tender meat of his reanimated chest beneath. The razor-sharp auger mercilessly drilled through diseased skin and bone, sending a shower of gore fifteen feet in the air and covering the near walls with a fine red mist and chunks of sticky, rotted flesh. The whirling blade chewed down through the Heatseeker’s black heart and effortlessly tore his spinal column into shrapnel, quickly coring all the way through to the blood-drenched wooden table below.

Having reached its preset mechanical limit, the Devil’s Drill Bit shut down, grinding to a halt, leaving the vast chamber Wilson and Amanda stood in deafeningly silent and smelling like death. Wilson had seen enough. He felt no victory at the moment, no joy. All he wanted was to get away from this awful place and take his daughter home to Susan. “Come on, honey. It’s over.”

Staying well out of reach of the docile, skinless man, Wilson quickly retrieved the still-flaming torch from the
floor, ignoring the warm red juices on the handle, and led Amanda out of the room. They began the long, arduous climb back up the winding staircase, Wilson holding his little girl in his arms for as long as he could, but he was too exhausted to carry her very far. Eventually he had to set her down and let her climb the stairs herself.

A few minutes later, the ground beneath them shifted unexpectedly, the entire staircase swaying as if becoming unmoored from its foundation.
What on earth
? Wilson thought.

“Daddy…look!” Amanda yelled, pointing back down the stairs, fear in her voice again.

Wilson turned and his breath caught in his throat. The staircase was starting to dissolve behind them. Not melting, no, it was slowly fading away to nothing, disappearing before their very eyes. With the Heatseeker dead and gone, this powerful grand illusion he’d created was now crumbling, the passageway between earth and hell he’d opened slowly closing its door. Wilson couldn’t understand any of it, but he knew enough to know they were in big trouble. Wilson grabbed Amanda and shoved her forward. “Run, Amanda. Run as fast as you can!”

Together they bolted up the stairs, taking them two at a time until they were no longer able. Even when they were nearly spent, they forced themselves onward and up, the magic staircase evaporating behind them and the pitch-black void closing in on their backs. Just when Wilson was sure they were doomed, envisioning the stairs vanishing beneath their feet and them falling endlessly down into the bottomless dark chasm below, they found the lid of the old travel trunk and dove out onto the threadbare carpet of the second-floor bedroom where they’d started from.

With Amanda safely in his arms, Wilson watched as the trunk of secrets started to tremble and shake, then suddenly it vanished from the room. One second it was there, the next it was just gone.
Good riddance
, Wilson thought and kissed Amanda on the forehead.

“You okay, sweetie?” he asked. “How’s your poor hand?”

“It hurts, Daddy, but not as much as before. Thanks for coming for me. I knew you would.”

“You’re welcome. I love you, Amanda. Always have…always will.”

“I love you too, Dad. Can we go home now?”

Wilson smiled and hugged her tight, thrilled and amazed they were all going to be okay. Actually, they were going to be something better—they would be together.

“Sure we can, angel. Let’s go.”

The winter had been brutally cold, with more snow burying the town than in the previous five years combined. Most of the citizens of Billington had grumbled and complained through the entire season, but not the Kemp family. They’d used the long, quiet months to rest and work on mending not only their family life but also their previously close-minded way of thinking. The events of last September had changed them. Changed all of them, Susan and Amanda perhaps even more so than Wilson.

Wilson had always believed in the power of magic—whether to heal, destroy, or simply to entertain—but Susan and Amanda had needed a crash course, whether they’d wanted one or not. The Heatseeker had altered their outlook on life, made believers out of them, and although life had been hell for a while it had brought their family together and prepared them to stay vigilant and on guard. Amanda had lost her baby finger, of course, but it had never really fazed her. She was a tough kid and had even given herself the nickname of Stumpy to her friends and classmates. Wilson and Susan were amazed by her resiliency and incredibly proud of her for helping their family return to at least a seminormal way of life.

Without Amanda, they’d be lost.

At least the police left them alone now, usually anyway. A few of the police officers still looked at Wilson funny and would whisper among themselves that he must have been involved in the murders, but for the most part they were left in peace. Wilson had been arrested the day after he’d rescued Amanda, had voluntarily turned himself in to Officer Jake Jackson, in fact. He’d been locked up with an extra guard posted outside his cell, just to keep a twenty-four-hour eye on him to make sure he didn’t pull any more of those fancy disappearing tricks. Wilson had given blood, urine, saliva, and hair follicle samples, and graciously submitted to a polygraph test twice in the following week.

Wilson had altered his story radically from the truth, of course, but stayed close enough that things went remarkably smooth. He’d told investigators how his old mentor, Lucius Barber, had escaped from a mental institute and came to Billington on a killing spree aimed at Wilson and his family. He explained about his ex-partner Douglas Williams’s death years ago, how Lucius must have blamed him for the terrible accident, setting up an elaborate scheme to torment and frighten Wilson, then eventually kidnap his daughter, Amanda. Wilson had gone to the house on Leamon Avenue to rescue her and had been forced to kill Lucius in a heroic act of self-defense. DNA evidence from the Leamon house, Edith and Earl Henderson’s place, St. Michael’s Catholic Church, the red Ford pickup truck (belonging to a missing farmer named Duke Winslow, who would later be identified by his dental records as the human skeleton left on the bandstand in the center of the park), and various other crime scenes around town, all traced back
to Lucius Barber, confirming Wilson’s farfetched tale and forcing the authorities to release him back to his family. In total, Wilson spent twenty days in jail, waiting on lab results to be confirmed and the murder investigation to be closed.

Thinking back on the events of last fall, Wilson was still confused about a lot of things. He’d staggered home that night, Amanda asleep in his arms, thinking he’d forever be wondering if the staircase to hell had been real or simply just an elaborate illusion. Unfortunately, he’d learned the answer less than an hour later. When he finally made it home to Susan’s house, it was the middle of the night and Susan was standing in the front yard with a frightened, dazed look on her face. He’d assured her their problems were over and that besides Amanda’s finger, they were both okay, but still she seemed afraid. “What the matter?” he’d asked her, but all she could do was point to the house.

Inside, Wilson had been astonished to find something big sitting in the middle of the living room that had never been there before. It was the trunk of secrets, the old wooden travel trunk they had so recently watched disappear from the second-floor bedroom over on Leamon Avenue. How it had gotten there was anyone’s guess. Susan said it had just appeared there right out of the blue.

Not really wanting to but knowing he had to look, Wilson cautiously opened the lid, half convinced that some nightmares never end and the stairway to hell would be open once again. Thankfully, it wasn’t. In the bottom of the wooden trunk were a ripped red and black tuxedo jacket, half a leather mask with its colorful smile disintegrated off the bottom of it, a stainless-steel
meat cleaver, and a pile of dust and bones.
He’s finally at rest
, Wilson had thought, but also knew in his heart that this had been real magic. Real power. Somehow his old friend had accomplished what no other before him, magician or madman alike, had ever succeeded in doing—he’d found a way back from the grave. It was a frightening endeavor, but amazing at the same time.

Susan hadn’t cared, of course, and ordered Wilson to get rid of the box before the police found it. He agreed. He already had his simpler version of the story ready for the authorities and there was no need to complicate things by dragging the withered remains of Douglas Williams into this. Some secrets were better off kept.

So Wilson had tried to get rid of it—three different times. The first time, Wilson had buried the Heatseeker’s remains in the backyard, and busted the trunk into burnable-size pieces with a sledgehammer. Before he could even light the fire, they found the trunk back inside the house, intact in the living room again, the dust and bones back inside. Thinking maybe it had some sort of spell keeping it together, he and Susan had tried again, digging a sizable hole in the backyard to bury the entire crate without damaging it. Covered in dirt and exhausted from all the digging, they’d returned to the house only to find the magic trunk once again inside waiting for them.

The sun had been rising by that time, and Wilson knew the police would be searching for him, so for the time being, Susan had helped him drag the trunk down into the basement, where they left it sitting under a paint-covered drop sheet. Susan had taken Amanda to the emergency room at the hospital while Wilson showered and then eventually turned himself in to the police,
the trunk staying hidden in the basement until his return nearly three weeks later. Once the heat had settled down and the eyes of the town were no longer constantly watching, Wilson had tried once more to get rid of the Heatseeker’s accursed wooden box.

Susan had borrowed a friend’s pickup truck and they had driven the trunk all the way back to Jamestown, New York, and under the cover of darkness had broken back into Doug Williams’s mausoleum and returned the Heatseeker’s remains to his empty casket. They then threw the wooden trunk into the nearby lake, watching it sink out of sight and hoping that by returning his body to his final resting place, whatever curse they were a part of, the spell would be broken.

Impossible as it seemed, the magical trunk was waiting for them back at the house in Billington again. Resigned to the fact they were never getting rid of the damn thing, Wilson had taken the box back down to the basement again. He used six long steel chains to wrap around the box and six brand-new heavy-duty steel locks to make sure no one would ever open up the trunk of secrets again. Then he covered it with the drop sheets and tried his best to forget about it.

Winter had set in and the Kemp family had bunkered down to start putting their life back together. Months passed and so too did their fear. Wilson stayed true to his word and never touched the vodka bottle ever again. He’d briefly considered restarting his career as a magician but for the welfare of his family he decided to just put the past behind him and start fresh. Once he’d sobered up, he’d found a decent job down at Pridmore’s Hardware Store on Main Street. The pay wasn’t great and Wilson had to cover for the owner every second
weekend, but it was honest work and he was thankful for it.

February turned to March, and March to April, spring melting away the ice and snow and the grass and flowers began to grow. Wilson and Susan were like happy teenagers, their family united again and seemingly without a care in the world. Amanda no longer had nightmares and on Saturday, April the seventeenth, for the first time in ages, she decided to sleep in her own room again, finally getting tired of Mom’s nagging and Dad’s snoring. Not that Wilson or Susan minded her sleeping with them. She’d been through a lot—they all had—and the past seven months of sticking together had forged a bond between them that would never be broken.

With Amanda tucked safely in bed, Wilson made love to Susan and drifted off to sleep with her wrapped in his strong arms. After years of guilt, shame, and alcohol abuse, his life was back on track and finally perfect. Well, perhaps not perfect, but as far as he was concerned, after everything they’d gone through, it was close enough.