Shadowland (23 page)

 
   'The shadow-bird disappeared into the blackness. I heard it beating away, and turned my head to follow it, and saw another sort of shadow play. A gang of men was kicking a boy, killing him by kicking him to death. They were in a ring around him — I heard them grunting, I heardtheir feet landing. One of them kicked the boy's head, and I saw blood flying, spattering out. This was taking place in the circle of light, but no fingers could have been making it. The men kicked the boy's body aside, fluttered apart just as if they were hands after all, and reformed as a word: SHADOW. Then another series of letters flew together. LAND. Shadowland. The laughter built up around me, nasty and knowing, and I didn't know if all those twisted faces watching me were laughing because they were warning me away from Shadowland, or because they knew I would identify the dead boy with Del and would know I had to go there.'

 
   'Had to?' I asked.

 
   'Had to,' Tom said.

 
17

 
On the morning of the day we were to have the club performances, I arrived at school an hour early: my father, who drove me in, had a seven-thirty appointment in the center of town. He dropped me off across the street from the Upper School and I crossed the street and went up the steps. The front door was locked. I peered in through the leaded glass and saw an empty, murky entry, stairs ascending to the library in darkness.

 
   For a short time I sat on the steps in the early sun, waiting for the janitor or one of the teachers to arrive and let me in. Then I got bored and went back down the steps to the sidewalk. When I looked back, the school had changed; seeing it empty, I saw it anew. Carson looked peaceful, well-ordered, and at one remove from the rest of the world, like a monastery. It looked beautiful. Under the slanting light, Carson was a place where nothing could ever go wrong.

 
   Down the street, I slipped through the bars of the gate across the headmaster's private entrance. I moved up the private drive and then stepped onto the grass. From this side I could see only the original old buildings of the Carson School. This view too seemed mysteriously touched by magic. For a second my heart moved, I forgotall the bad things that had happened, and I loved the place.

 
   Then, after I had moved farther around toward the rear of the building and gone through a gap in the thick hedges, I saw a form lying facedown in the grass beside a briefcase, and knew I was not alone. Cropped head, meaty back straining the fabric of a jacket: it was Dave Brick. My euphoria drained off on the spot. Brick was stretched out disconsolately on the grassy slope where Mr. Robbin had summoned us all to look for the satellite. The ludicrously tight jacket was Tom Flanagan's. Brick had borrowed it because he had absentmindedly left his own at home two days before, and Flanagan was the only boy who had a spare in his locker. Brick was tearing up handfuls of grass slowly and methodically. When he saw me he began to rip out grass at a faster pace.

 
   'You're early,' he said. 'Eager beaver.'

 
   'My father had an early appointment downtown.'

 
   'Oh. I always get here early. Get more time to study. Janitor's late this morning.' He sighed and finally stopped pulling up grass. Instead he rolled his face into it. 'It's going to start all over again.'

 
   'What is?'

 
   'The questions. The Gestapo stuff. With us.'

 
   'How do you know?'

 
   'I heard Broome talking with Mrs. Olinger last night when I left school. He wanted me to hear.'

 
   'Oh, God,' I said, as much with impatience as with apprehension.

 
   'Yeah. I almost stayed away this morning.' Then he lifted himself up onto his forearms. I feared for Tom's jacket. 'But I couldn't, because then he'd know why, and he'd come at me harder when I finally came back.'

 
   'Maybe he'll leave you out this time,' I said.

 
   'Maybe. But if he calls for me, I'm going to tell him this time. I can't take that anymore. And now it'll be worse.'

 
   'I already told Thorpe, and it didn't do any good.'

 
   'Because you didn't tell him I saw Skeleton too. That was nice. I'm, you know . . . grateful. But I don't care about Skeleton anymore. If Broome calls me out of Latin, I'm telling.'

 
   'I don't think he'll believe you.'

 
   'He will,' Brick said simply. 'I know he will. I'll make him believe me. I don't care if the whole school blows up.'

 
   When the janitor appeared, I followed Brick inside with the feeling of walking into a maze where a deranged beast with the head of a bull crouched and waited.

 
   Five minutes after the start of Latin class, Mrs. Olinger appeared with a folded note in her hands. Dave Brick looked at me with flat panic in his eyes. Mr. Thorpe groaned, restrained himself from bellowing, and tore the note from Mrs. Olinger's hands. He unfolded and read it and wiped a hand over his face. His reluctance was as loud as a shout. 'Brick,' he said. 'Headmaster's office. On the double.'

 
   Brick was trembling so uncontrollably that he dropped his books twice trying to ram them into his case. Finally he stood up and blundered through the center of the classroom. He looked at me with a white face and raisin eyes. Flanagan's jacket made him look like Oliver Hardy.

 
Then I again had that sense of a secret life running through the school, beating away out of sight, humming like an engine. After Latin class, Mrs. Olinger was waiting outside the room. She looked uneasy, like all messengers with bad news. Mrs. Olinger touched Mr. Thorpe's elbow and whispered a few words in his ear. 'Blast,' Mr. Thorpe said. 'All right, I'm on my way,' and sped down to the headmaster's staircase. We went to Mr. Fitz-Hallan's room and found a note chalked on the board telling us that class was canceled and that we should use the free time to read two chapters in
Great Expectations.

 
   'What's up?' Bobby Holhingsworth asked me as we settled down and opened our books. 'I can't explain it,' I said. 'I bet they're finally getting around to throwing out Brick the Prick,' Bobby said happily.

 
   I finished the chapters and went out to my locker for another book. On the way I passed the Senior Room and heard a voice I thought was Terry Peters' uttering a sentence with the word 'Skeleton' in it. I stopped and tried to hear what he was saying, but the door was too thick.

 
   After I got the book from my locker, I looked downacross the glassed — in court and saw Mr. Weatherbee rush out of his room and tear down the hall, moving in a kind of agitated scuttle. Mrs. Olinger moved after him.

 
   Mr. Fitz-Hallan, Mr. Weatherbee, Mr. Thorpe — it was the cast that had heard my original accusations.

 
   Out in the hall, a few older boys ran past, lockers slammed, bells went off at irregular intervals.

 
18

 
The air of a general but unacknowledged disruption was still present as we trooped into the auditorium. Below the stage on which a piano faced a drum kit and a recumbent bass, the students were standing up in the aisles, moving into little talkative groups, breaking up again, calling to each other. Many of the morning's classes had gone teacherless. Morris saw Hanna and Brown standing together on the far side of the auditorium, and went around to join them in waiting for an announcement. I saw Mr. Thorpe shake his head at Mr. Ridpath, then curtly turn away. His eyes snagged mine, and he pointed at a spot beside the door. Mr. Ridpath too glared at me, but Mr. Thorpe seemed far angrier.

 
   He reached the door before me and expressionlessly watched me come toward him. He looked like a gray-haired icicle — the Mount Rushmore of icicles. He waited a few seconds, making me sweat, before he spoke. 'Be in my office at three-fifteen sharp.' That was all he had intended to say, but he could not keep from releasing some of bis rage. 'You caused more trouble than you will ever know.' When I could not reply, he made a disgusted puffing sound with his lips and said, 'Get out of my sight until three-fifteen.'

 
   He was going to expel me, I knew. I went weakly to the first row of seats and sat down beside Bob Sherman. Most of the school was still standing and talking.

 
   'Boys,' shouted Mrs. Olinger. 'Be seated, please.' She had to repeat herself several times before anybody took any notice. Gradually the buzz of conversation died out, and was replaced by the sound of chairs scraping the floor. Then a few voices picked up again.

 
   
'Quiet,'
shouted Mr. Thorpe. And then there was silence. Morris, standing on the side of the room with the other members of his trio, looked crippled with stage fright.

 
   Only then did I think to look for Skeleton Ridpath: if he was in the audience, it would mean that he too would be in Thorpe's office at three-fifteen. I turned around and saw that he was not in the seniors' two rows. So perhaps Broome had already expelled him.

 
   From the podium before the stage, Mrs. Olinger was saying, 'We are privileged this morning to witness the first performances by our two clubs. To begin with, please give your full attention to the Morris Fielding Trio, with Phil Hanna playing drums and Derek Brown accompanying on the bull fiddle.'

 
   Morris smiled at her because of the old-fashioned term and I knew that he at least was going to be all right. The three of them filed up the stairs to the stage. Brown picked up his bass, Morris said, 'One . . . one . . . one . . . one,' and they began playing 'Somebody
Loves
Me.' It sounded like sunlight and gold and fast mountain springs, and I switched off everything else and just listened to the music.

 
   During Morris' last number I heard a startled buzzing and whispering. I turned around to see what had caused it. Laker Broome had just come into the audjtorium. He had one hand clamped on Dave Brick's shoulder. Brick was white-faced, and his eyes were swollen. Morris also turned his head to see what was happening, and then went determinedly back to his piano. I heard him insert a quote from 'Hail, Hail, the Gang's All Here' into his solo.

 
   He was having, under trying circumstances, the best time he could, which is one definition of heroism; but looking at Laker Broome's rigid posture and assassin's face, I thought that the bomb I had been expecting all morning had just been tossed into the auditorium.

 
19

 
The headmaster applauded with everyone else when Morris nodded and stood up from the bench. Dave Brickhad been parked on an empty chair far at the back of the room, apart from the rest of the students. Mr. Ridpath stared at him with loathing for a moment, then began to sidle toward Mr. Broome, hoping for one last word, but Mr. Broome looked straight into the center of his narrow vain face, and Mr. Ridpath froze solid to the floor. 'Attention, boys,' Mr. Broome called out.

 
   When we were all turned around in our seats to face him, he began speaking and walking up the side of the auditorium to the bottom of the stage, and we swiveled to watch him — it was a display of power. 'I hate to interrupt these interesting proceedings, but I want you to bear with me and share a fascinating story. I promise that this will only take a moment of your time, and then we can enjoy the second part of this excellent show. Gentlemen, we have finally been given the answer to the single greatest problem this school has faced since its founding, and I want all of you personally to witness the final act of that problem.' He smiled. By now he was at the podium, and with mock casualness, he leaned one elbow on the blond wood: he was tense as a whippet. 'Some of us will be meeting at three-fifteen in the assistant headmaster's office. That will be a private meeting. At four-fifteen I want the entire school reassembled here just as you are now. This school has been unwell, and it is time to cut back the diseased branches.' He gave that taut, creased smile again, and I saw in him the same devil who had burned in Skeleton Ridpath's face just before he had beaten Del. 'And now I believe we have some magic from two members of the first year.'

 
   It sounded like Broome wanted to stage a full-scale spectacular after school, with limbs lopped off in public and Christians thrown to lions. He wanted to answer the student performances with his own. That devil who had shone from his eyes was a devil of ambition and jealousy, who could not accept being upstaged. Tom and Del quietly left their seats and walked past Mr. Broome to go up the steps to the stage.

 
Broome drifted off to the side and leaned against the far wall beside one of the big doors, crossing his arms over his chest. He was smiling to himself. Tom and Del pulled thecurtains shut, and for several moments we could dimly hear footsteps and the shifting of equipment. The piano, on casters, rolled back with a rumbling like a truck's. For some time we heard the rustling of material. Then the curtain twitched and pulled smoothly back, revealing a painted sign on a stand.

 
FLANAG1NI AND NIGHT

 
ILLUSIONISTS

 
Most of the students seated below the stage began to laugh.

 
   White smoke poured across the stage, billowed and hung, then began to drift up toward the beams and lights, and we could see that the sign had gone. In its place stood Tom Flanagan, dressed in what looked like an Indian bedspread and a turban of the same material. Beside him was the high table draped in black velvet, and on the other side of the table stood Del. He wore black evening dress and a cape. Deep laughter erupted again, and the two boys bowed in unison. When they straightened up, the smoke now entirely gone, their faces revealed their nervousness.

 
   'We are Flanagini and Night,' Tom intoned, sticking to his script in spite of the laughter. 'We are magicians. We come to amaze and entertain, to terrify and delight.' He flicked the velvet cover off the table, and something that looked like a fiery ball or shooting star lifted off from beneath and burned up six feet above their heads and winked out. Laker Broome watched it as if it were as ordinary as a horsefly. 'And to amuse, perhaps.' Del twitched the cape from his shoulders, twirled it over the table, and a four-foot-high stuffed white rabbit bounded off, so lifelike and grotesque that a few boys gasped. We were all in shock for a second, and then Del grasped it by one tall ear, bounced it off his foot, and threw it over his shoulder into the blackness behind him. There was an instinctive professional grace in his movements, and that (and the realization that the rabbit was a stuffed toy) made us all laugh, with them now, not against them.

 
   They did several clever card tricks using boys from the audience; a series of tricks using scarves and ropes,including one in which Night proved that he could escape in three minutes from a rope knotted by two football players; they produced a dozen sprays of real flowers from the air.

 
   Then Flanagini put Night into a cabinet and pierced it with swords, and when Night emerged whole, he pushed forward another cabinet — this one black and covered with Chinese patterns — and put Flanagini inside it. 'The speaking head, or Falada,' Night announced, banging the cabinet on all sides to demonstrate that it was solid. He shut a lacquered panel and hid Flanagini's body. The turbaned head looked out impassively. 'Are you ready?' Night asked, and the head nodded. The top panel was shut. Night produced a long sword, took an orange from some pocket of the table, tossed the orange in the air, and swung the sword around to slice it in half. 'A well-honed samurai sword,' he said, and flexed it. 'A deadly fighting instrument.' He whistled it through the air again, and then slotted it sideways into the seam where the two panels met. He wrapped both his hands in black handkerchieves and pushed the flat sword deeply into the notch, where it seemed to meet an obstruction. Night paused to wrap the handkerchieves more tightly around his palms, put his hands again on the sword, and pushed. He grunted, and pushed again. The sword slid through to the other side of the cabinet, and Night yanked it out and wiped it with one of the handkerchieves. Then he pushed the bottom section of the cabinet away so that it no longer supported the top portion. He opened the panel of the bottom section to show Flanagini's body from the neck down. 'The dance of death,' he said, and rapped the side of the cabinet with the flat of the sword. For a moment the body in the Indian garment convulsed and trembled. 'The speaking head.' He moved to the left of the top section and opened the panel. Flanagini's head stared out from beneath the turban. 'What is the first law of magic?' Night asked, and the floating head answered,
'As above, so below.'
'And what is the second law of magic?' Night asked.
'The physical world is a bauble.'
'And what is the third law of magic?'
'Reality is extremity.'
'And how many books are in the library?' 'I don't remember,' came the indisputable voice of Tom Flanagan, and laughter jolted us as if we had been in aspell. Night closed both panels and moved the lower portion of the cabinet back beneath the upper section. When he swung open the panels, Tom stepped out, intact.

 
   Wild applause.

 
   'An illusion only,' Night said, 'a titillation, an amusement.'

 
   (A few sniggers, provoked by the syllable 'tit.')

 
   Night drew himself up and was black and serious as a crow's wing.

 
   'But what is illusory can be true, which is magic's fourth law, like lightning here and then gone, like the smile of a wizard.'

 
   (White smoke began to billow across the stage again.)

 
   'And man's dreams and deepest fantasies, these truthful illusions, are magic's truest country. Like the dream of — '

 
   (The big doors on the side of the auditorium suddenly clicked open and swung wide. One of the boys in the back, several rows behind me, shouted.)

 
   ' — opening the doors of the mind.'

 
   (He spread his arms wide.)

 
   'The mind opens, the shoulders open, the body opens. And we can . . . '

 
   Smoke, not white but yellow and greasy, puffed in through the doors.

 
   Del stopped intoning his magical gibberish and looked at the doors. His face went rubbery. The pose of professional mumbo-jumbo fell away, and he was a confused fourteen-year-old boy. In the second just before the auditorium went crazy, I had time to see that Tom, Flanagini, was also looking at something, and that he too was stricken. But he was not looking at the open doors: he was staring straight back up at the rear of the auditorium — so high up that he must have been nearly looking at the ceiling back there.

 
   Mr. Broome took a step across the opening of the doors, saw what there was to see, and then turned around and pointed at the small, now insignificant pair on stage. He screamed, 'You did this!'

 
'You're right,' Tom said to me at the Zanzibar. 'I never even saw what was outside until a couple of seconds later. I was standing there, waiting for Del to say that last word.

 
   'Fly.' He'd said the whole speech except for that, and then he was going to float up and amaze everybody. We'd worked out a way to get those doors open weeks before, and if Del could make it, he was going to try to get as far as the first door and then just walk out, and that would be the end of the show. I kept waiting to hear that last word, 'fly,' and I was scared stiff — but then I looked back at that end of the auditorium and I saw two things that scared me a hell of a lot worse. One of them was Skeleton Ridpath. He was terrible. He was grinning. He looked like a big bat, or a huge spider — something awful. And the other thing I saw jumped into being a fraction of a second later, as if Ridpath and I had jointly summoned it up. It was a boy engulfed in flames — swallowed up in fire, fire that couldn't be there, fire that just seemed to stream out of him. I looked at him with my mouth open, and the burning boy disappeared. I don't know how I stayed on my feet. When Laker Broome started shouting at us, I looked down and saw what Del saw, the whole Field House blazing away. All that smoke pouring out, and the fire jumping and jumping. I looked back toward Skeleton, but he was already gone — maybe he was never there in the first place. Then the whole place went nuts.

 
20

 
Laker Broome's scream paralyzed everybody, magicians and audience alike, for a second, even the boy who had shouted a moment earlier. And then this second of silence broke — during it we had heard that awful whooshing, snapping noise of a monstrous fire. Everybody stood and ran toward the two doors, throwing chairs aside. Laker Broome was shouting: 'Everybody out! Everybody out!' Maybe five boys got out the doors before Mr. Thorpe yelled, 'Stop in your tracks!' Already, the doors were a pandemonium: all of us crowding and shoving to get out, and the boys who had left screaming to get back in. 'Back away,' Mr. Thorpe yelled, and started to throw boys bodily back into the auditorium. Then we could feel the heat, and the crowd surged back, knocking down the smaller boys at the rear.

 
   When the doors were cleared, we saw that the flames were leaping within six or seven feet of the auditorium — the outside looked like a solid world of fire. The old wooden field house was completely blanketed in flames. One of the stocky little turrets was leaning sideways, poised over the huge body of the fire like a diver.

 
   The boys who had got outside and then forced their way back in stood beside the doors looking dazed and flushed and scared. I saw with amazement that one of them, a sophomore named Wheland, no longer had eyebrows — his face was a pink peeled egg.