"Cameo role." Kahlua touches up her manicure. "Nothing to break a nail over. I do my usual appearing act in a fireplace, look gorgeous, exotic and lethal, then bug out as usual. I could do it in my sleep."
"You might not want to," I warn her. "I did a sudden entrance down that same chimney and it is rigged with enough fish line to bag a barracuda."
'Thanks for the tip, but Mr. Max would never let me go into a situation he had not checked out from top to bottom," Kahlua tells me with a yawn that reveals a maw the size of a pink-velvet cave lined with elephant tusks for teeth.
Well, Midnight Louie does not have a devoted frontman to do his dirty work for him, but I am not about to point this out to Kahlua when she is showing her dentures. Those fangs are probably all capped or bonded or bleached. Show biz!
Bidding this she-panther a distant farewell, I explore the rest of the area. That is when I discover an even bigger population explosion at the fringes of the seance chamber. Eightball, Wild Blue and Spuds of the Glory Hole Gang are posted as guards on all three levels, at Miss Temple's behest, I suspect. I am relieved to know that reinforcements are at hand should revelations during the seance prove too dramatic for a guilty party's nerves.
It is while I wander--small (relatively speaking), silent and the same color as the vast darkness that surrounds the seance chamber--that I become aware of disquieting influences.
For there are again Uninvited Guests. I am still seeing much more than I should be. Not a glimpse of Elvis and Amelia and Mae, sadly (to them I could sell tickets), but faint flickers of the phantoms seen before, like photo stills from old black-and-white films. The boy in the Little Lord Flauntleroy suit dangles from a rollercoaster scaffold. The fat old man in black sits in empty air, hunched under a bandit's hat and over a cane--or is that what's left of Edwina May-fair, animated by the spirit of Gandolph the Great? Even Old Doyly, the hearty-looking (for a ghost) chap with pipe who seemed to be urging on Houdini's apparition flickers in and out of view near the baronial fireplace in the seance chamber. As for the reputed Houdini himself, what a fizzle! I do not see even a mote of his previous image, crouched in his seine of chains, a bare pale gray blot on the darkness. Why do all these ghost guys turn up in shades of gray? I wonder. They are a sober-sided lot, unlike Elvis. It is nice to know the King is having a blast even in the Beyond. I hope that when my lives have run their course, I will have as much joie de vivre in the Afterlife too.
I finally find a concealed niche where I can get an overview of the action below without coming into the purview of the Mystifying Max or the Glory Hole Boys. With my natural advantages of coat and color, I am part of the scenery at this scene of the crime ... or crime to be confessed.
And I like the setup: the seance chamber has no roof, which makes sleight-of-hand easy to perform, and easy to oversee. I am not deceived for one moment by the stuffed figure that looks like it escaped from a taxidermist's shop; I have seen soft-sculpture people, and animals, before, and much prefer them to the real things. One by one the dramatis personae arrive. My little doll and Karma's Madame Electra are the last to assemble.
Above me, I can see the Mystifying Max moving like some giant spider to set strands of his hidden web in motion. So I am not distracted by the usual spooky effects below. Neither fog nor knives nor sniff of chlorine will deter Midnight Louie from his appointed duty: to seek out the wrong elements of the bigger picture. I do not know what I expect to spy from my cozy point of view. Another murder attempt, perhaps? A guilty party reacting to the evening's entertainment?
Alas, all of the Mystifying Max's wonders--and they are much more chilling than the previous tricks--do not smoke out the lurking menace we all search for. Kahlua, her throaty voice a symphony of danger and disdain, makes a much more prepossessing apparition in the hearth than yours truly, I fear. The Houdini image actually moves. The dancing cutlery whirls like ninja wheels. And the gathered attendees regard the effects with a certain nervous stoicism that does not bode well for an instant confession.
Then my sharp eyes notice something. Miss Temple Barr and Mr. Crawford Buchanan have gamely joined hands with the dummy in their midst. Call her Edwina Sophie Gandolph. I see her head nodding under its large veiled hat and cannot blame even a stuffed lump for losing interest at this point.
Then I see the figure jerk. Perhaps in the heat of the seance Miss Temple (or more likely Mr.
Crawford Buchanan, the cowardly weasel) is wringing the gloved hand. No one notices the dummy dance, however, and no one notices when the slumped figures straightens and the head turns slightly from right to left, as if by itself.
Oh, come on! We are talking a literal sit-in here. So much fiber-fill and fabric.
Still ... I hear a disembodied voice drift through the chamber and then up to my perch.
"Son," it breathes, whispers, sighs.
Son. Okay. Midnight Louie is bursting with theories to explain the inexplicable. Maybe Gandolph's late mother, the bilked patroness of spirit mediums, has finally been rewarded with a genuine manifestation from the Afterlife: herself. Or maybe Houdini's mater familias has found an empty body into which to pour her frustration with the many failed attempts to reach her darling boy. Or-- hey!--maybe this animated piece of stocking stuffing is really Mrs. Bates of Psycho fame. Maybe our gathered psychics are more psycho than anyone thought.
Only now do the Others start agitating.
What Others, you ask? I wish I did not have an answer, but I cannot deny the testimony of my own eyes.
For the seated figure draped in cloak and hat, who might be Orson Welles late in life, or Gandolph in his Edwina disguise or something entirely different, sweeps closer to the chamber, like a slide that is brought into nearer focus. And Doyly has crowded near one of the etched windows to watch the Houdini image shed his chains, each muscle straining to shrug off the bonds link by link.
"Yes," Doyly says, taking the pipe from his mustached mouth. "I knew you were doomed, poor fellow. Predicted it, but I always knew you possessed powers you never admitted to. I always said that you were the greatest publicity agent that ever lived. Now prove that you are the greatest publicity agent that ever died. Come back."
Poor Ghost. He is so sincere that I feel a twinge of regret. Too bad that the Houdini we both watch is an image manipulated by the Mystifying Max on the haunted house's holographic system, if it is, in fact, the Mystifying Max with Houdini's face superimposed. The real magic here is how a man of six-feet-three can so convincingly mimic a man of five-feet-four. The cramped and chained position aids the illusion to the point of fooling a ghost, no mean achievement, Mr. Mystifying Max! Someone said that there is a fool born every minute, but you can quote Midnight Louie: it also figures that there is a fool dying every minute, too, and the Afterlife must in time get a bit crowded with as much foolishness as can be found on earth.
Meanwhile the draped black figure hovers on the periphery like a mute member of a Greek chorus. At least some people at the seance seem to see him. What a relief! I do not like to think that I am alone in the Twilight Zone.
And now I think I know who Doyly might really be. His full name has something to do with a barbarian warrior and a desert king; at least I picture a camel lot. But even Doyly is fading now as the image of Houdini turns into smoke and mirrors.
"Son," the animated dummy calls again, in vain. "I try so hard to reach you, for so long.
Forgive--"
Poor Mrs. Houdini! Her boy is the only fellow who has not deigned to show up here.
And then the flying mice come pouring down out of the rafters like, well, bats out of hell.