Saving Houdini Read online

  26. Long-stemmed glasses, pewter salt and pepper shakers

  27. Candles, candleholders, baskets

  28. Saucers and side plates

  29. Tablecloths and napkins

  It went on like that—a list of things someone had packed.

  The house showed other signs of having been recently emptied. There were bits of newsprint scattered on the floor, and a tall stack of magazines stood forgotten in a corner. And little galaxies of dust swirled in the dim streetlight that came through the side window in the dining room.

  A family had moved out. A new family had not yet arrived. It was eerie, like there were presences here, echoes. But he was the only one in the house.

  He climbed the stairs as quietly as he could. None of the steps creaked—it must have taken years for the house to age and get the creaks he knew. These stairs were pretty new. They even smelled woody.

  The second floor was as vacant as the downstairs. His parents’ room, his room, the office where his father sometimes worked at night, were all in their correct positions, but silent and empty. His parents would not arrive here until 1995, after they married. A long time from now.

  He retreated down the hall to his bedroom. He recognized the boards on his floor, their grain. The face in that one, the long letter N in another one. The black knotholes on two separate boards that, if he crossed his eyes just right, would merge into one. He stood beside the window and surveyed the space in bewilderment. His bed would be here. His bookshelf, here. His blue dresser across from the bed, and behind it, in the corner, the little painted bookshelf. Then the door to the closet, right where it had always been, would always be. He had a little hoop up on that door with a net in it. His mother was always begging him not to use the tennis ball. “Use the Nerf that came with it!” she’d call upstairs, and he’d call down, “The Nerf doesn’t bounce right!” In his mind he could hear it bounce.

  Breathe, he told himself again. Who knew it could be so hard to breathe?

  He had to pee. He went down the hall to the bathroom. That was a toilet? The seat was made of wood! And there was a wooden box high up on the wall with a furry-looking rope hanging from it.

  He peed for one whole minute. He peed so long he started laughing, but the sound in the empty house was strange and creepy. Dash rushed back to his bedroom and huddled under the window. He took off his suit jacket and covered himself with it for warmth. He tried to breathe normally.

  Something was poking him in the chin. He felt around in his breast pocket and found the envelope the boy had tucked into it. He took it out and opened it.

  There was a piece of newsprint inside, folded tightly. The paper had the feel of cloth and it was a deep dusty white, like the colour of old gravestones. Dash unfolded it carefully, worried it would tear, but it didn’t.

  It was the bottom half of a page from the Montreal Gazette dated Thursday, October 21, 1926. Three days later than the date on the newspaper he’d found in the streetcar. Why would that kid have given him an old piece of newsprint? It was numbered page 5 at the bottom on one side, 6 on the other. He could feel the letters imprinted onto the paper, like they’d been hammered into it.

  There was an advertisement for the movie Men of the Night, starring someone named Herbert Rawlinson. The ad showed a man in a mask trying to open a safe. There was also an article about a child who had been struck and killed by a car downtown. The article called the child “ill-starred.” There was an advertisement for Orange Crush, a drink Dash knew well, but he’d never seen it in a ribbed bottle like the one shown in the clipping. It looked like it came in a beehive. Below were the racing results from Blue Bonnets Raceway and the time of the day’s sunrise and sunset. There was a torn-off story about some fight in the government about alcohol.

  He turned the page over. On that side he found a headline: VISITING PROFESSOR HOUDINI CHALLENGES SPIRITUALISTS AT McGILL.

  There was a picture—just the bottom half—showing a bunch of people in an audience. The photo had been taken from the side of the room. Men and women sat in folding wooden chairs, and many stood along the walls, crowding in. There were kids scattered in the back, holding hats in their hands. They had strange, smooth-combed short hair in 1926. Houdini’s chest and legs were just below the tear, the bottom of a dark tie covered in white stars visible, his legs crossed neatly. Black socks and gleaming black shoes.

  If the picture had been taken on October 20, then this would be one of the last images of Harry Houdini ever published. He died on Halloween 1926, in a hospital in Detroit, supposedly from the complications of appendicitis. Dash knew all about it. Anyone who cared about magic knew about the mystery of Harry Houdini’s death.

  In Montreal, someone had asked him if he could take a punch, but before the great magician was ready, the man struck him hard in the stomach. Earlier, Houdini’s wife, Bess, had begged him to get a security guard. He’d become unpopular with swamis and mediums, who made good money by claiming they could communicate with the dead. Houdini had received threats after calling them vultures and charlatans. He said they preyed on people who were in mourning.

  Some people believed the punch had ruptured his appendix; others thought he’d already been sick when he arrived in Montreal.

  Whichever theory was right, one fact remained: he’d died. Ten days after the piece of newspaper Dash held in his hand had been printed.

  His head swam. Why had he been given this? Was this supposed to help him? And if so, how?

  He refolded the newspaper and tried to slip it back into its envelope, but it wouldn’t go in all the way. There was something else in there. Dash pulled the clipping out and saw that there was also a small, white card. There was a message on it, a typed message. Dash had never seen actual typewriting before. It said:

  IF YOU WOULD LIKE, PLEASE JOIN US TOMORROW AT 4 O’CLOCK. 64 ARUNDEL AVENUE. THERE WILL BE SNACKS AND LEMONADE.

  He turned the card over. Blank. Whoever had sent this envelope didn’t want him to know who they were. But why would someone invite him over without telling him who they were? Very creepy.

  Dash slumped against his bedroom wall. None of this made any sense. He didn’t know anyone in 1926, and no one knew him. Maybe it was a trap. If you were alone in the past and got into trouble, there wouldn’t be anyone to help you or even miss you. They could do whatever they wanted to you.

  If you would like. Strange thing to say. He got sent back almost a hundred years and the only thing anyone had to tell him wasn’t all that urgent?

  After a while, he moved to the middle of the room and stood there. He closed his eyes and again imagined the room as he knew it. Then he opened them and aimed his palm at the ceiling, feeling the weight of an invisible tennis ball in his hand. Hefting it once, twice, he launched it toward the basket. Alley-oop. Tonk. Off the door jamb and through the net. Then pok pok pok as the ball bounced back to him.

  One more minute, Dash, then I want you to stop! His mother’s voice.

  The phantom ball moved in a graceful arc through the air and back to his hand. He let his arms fall to his sides and stared at the door to the empty closet, the house enveloping him in its strange silence. He lowered his head. He wouldn’t have wanted you to know this, but he wept.

  5

  Dashiel Woolf had a pain in his belly that was like the blast radius of an exploding black hole. It was impossible to ignore. He needed food.

  He’d woken up on the floor of his (future) bedroom, still in 1926, his suit jacket folded to make a pillow for his head. He looked out the window: it seemed to be mid-morning already. Amazing to think that even in the midst of a calamity, he could still sleep in.

  He put his jacket on, stuffing his tie into the pocket. Every male person he’d seen on the streets of Toronto the previous evening had been wearing a suit jacket of some kind. Thank goodness his mother had forced him to put on a suit for Bloom’s show! He couldn’t imagine showing up here in a skateboarding T-shirt. But his own suit jacket was somewhat worse fo
r wear after being slept on, and if he was going to be here for any length of time, he was going to have to get clothes that looked a little more like the strangely stiff-looking suits made of rough fabric worn here. And a pair of those crummy shoes too. His shoes were too good.

  But clothing and food was going to take money, and he had none.

  Wait. He had some food!

  He dug into his pocket. The wine gum was still there. He pulled it out and picked the lint off it. It was an orange one. Orange was like orange juice. And it was, after all, breakfast time. He popped it into his mouth. It was still fresh! He heard his father in his head, comically chiding him: Fresh? You could bury a pack of those until after the apocalypse then dig ‘em up, and they’d be exactly the same.

  Ha. Good one, old man. That’s what Dash would’ve said. Good one.

  At this hour, his father would be mumbling as he tried to get out of bed. He wasn’t a morning person. “It’s genetic,” he’d once said to Dash. “Runs on the male side. Embrace it.” His father would be waking up just around the corner from where Dash was sitting right now.

  That would be a morning in his real life. He didn’t know what this was, but whatever it was, a single wine gum was not going to get him through it.

  He went down the stairs into the echoing front hall and left the house. Standing on the sidewalk, he stared up. The brightly coloured tree canopy seemed to be holding the blue sky between red and orange palms. Victor Avenue was still empty.

  He zigzagged along side streets to Danforth Avenue. There were plenty of people on the main thoroughfare of the neighbourhood: men in delivery trucks that had Model T hoods with pickup beds in the back; men and ladies on bicycles; a policeman on a bicycle (Dash looked away, quickly but casually). On the corner, there was a “Loblaws Groceteria”—not the Loblaws his father shopped at, but a little storefront with two windows, one full of cans and boxes, the other with pyramids of apples, stacked loaves of bread in paper wrapping, and a side of beef.

  A car pulled into a spot in front of him and the man behind the wheel parped his horn—to warn him to be careful or to say hello, Dash couldn’t tell—and then he got down from his car and lifted his hat.

  Dash was breathing rapidly. There were people walking here and there. A woman’s heels clicked along the sidewalk behind him. A dog barked somewhere. It was just a regular Tuesday morning … in 1926.

  There was a bakery across the road. The Rosshall Bakery. Its window was full of loaves of bread sitting naked on wooden shelves tilted toward the street. He looked both ways and crossed, almost in a trance. His belly went gurrrrnk and he covered it with his hand.

  “Shh,” he said to it, going inside.

  There were customers—mainly women—standing in front of the glass display cases with little paper tickets in their hands. He took one from the red metal dispenser on the wall and stood with them. He watched as each person in turn selected their breads and pies and buns and cookies and cakes. Some had their bread sliced to order, some bought little cardboard containers of breadcrumbs. Each order was carefully wrapped in white paper and slid into a bag or arranged in a box and tied with white string, and each one made his gut squirm more. Finally, his number was called. He stepped up to the counter.

  “Two hot cross buns,” he said, having noted that they were two for three cents. He had nickels in his pocket: maybe nickels were still nickels.

  The lady serving him used a pair of silver tongs to slide two buns out of the case and onto a tower of white paper sheets. She folded the paper around the buns and put them into a bag.

  “Three cents,” she said. He put his coin on the counter. She swept it up. “Your parents know where you are, sweetheart?”

  “I’m visiting,” he said. “That’s why I’m not in school.”

  She looked at the money. “What is this?”

  “Five cents.”

  “Is this American money, sweetheart?” She inspected the coin a little more closely, and he could see her face changing.

  “Oh, my mistake—it’s a souvenir from—”

  “Where are you visiting from, young man? This nickel says it’s Canadian …”

  “Um, Montreal? You don’t have the new nickels yet?”

  “Montreal.”

  “Yes,” he said, very quietly.

  She looked like she’d made a decision. She passed the coin back to him, then leaned down into the case and picked up a flakey-looking pastry sprinkled with big sugar crystals. “Do they have these in Montreal?”

  His stomach almost shot out of his nose and ran over the counter. “Oh, uh, not yet.”

  “No cherry purses in Montreal?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Why don’t you have one as a souvenir of Toronto,” she said, and she gave him the cherry purse along with the hot cross buns.

  She looked at him a little funny, but not like he scared her or anything. He thought maybe she was reacting to his clothes or his haircut. He wanted to stuff everything into his mouth at once. Something below his ear was painfully throbbing.

  “Thirty-two!” she called, looking away. “Thirty-two, please!”

  Dash walked out to the sidewalk, cleared the bakery window, and then shoved the entire pastry into his mouth. Big soft cherries burst hot and juicy in his mouth. He chewed it like a bear, moving his jaw around to accommodate it all. A kind of blissful relief spread through him, like warmth filling a room. He felt his head clear. He swallowed and licked a couple of sugary crumbs off his fingertips.

  “That’s the best thing I’ve ever eaten!” he said aloud.

  Some people looked at him. He didn’t care. The hot cross buns lasted exactly a minute longer.

  He continued east along the Danforth. A clock in a window said it was 11:55. He was supposed to go—if he liked—to that house in four hours. He’d already decided: no chance. But … he was curious. He knew most of the streets that let out onto Danforth Avenue, and Arundel was right in the middle of everything.

  He walked up to number 64 and stood across from it. It was scrunched up between two other houses. All the curtains were drawn. There was no way he was going to knock on that door. He didn’t linger, in case someone was watching him through a crack in the drapes. He went back down to Danforth Avenue.

  People continued to scurry along the street. It was lunchtime now and ladies stepped nimbly over the streetcar tracks; men passed by holding their fedoras down on their heads. Some of the women had fur collars on their jackets. All the hats! Many of the men had large, furry beards. It was hard to see their faces.

  And there was a gas station right on the sidewalk! British American Gasoline. He’d seen old gas-station commercials where boys with freckles and white-billed caps washed windshields with white cloth serviettes. A nickel thumb-flicked into the air afterwards. There was a kid of no more than fourteen using a pump that looked like a baby bottle with a glass top. It was all strangely close to the sweet old-timey images he’d seen now and again, but at the same time, there was something scary about it.

  A voice was calling to him. Not just in his head, but an actual man’s voice. He was saying, “Hey! Son?”

  The man was wearing an apron over a suit and holding a pair of scissors. Dash took a big step back.

  But the man was smiling. “Circus leave without you?”

  “Beg your pardon?”

  “Or are you just in from Prussia?”

  Dash didn’t know what to say. The man was looking up and down the sidewalk. “Where are your parents? They let you walk around in public with such majestic hair? And no hat?”

  Dash took his eyes off the man long enough to look at the shop window. MILLS BARBER was painted on the glass. HAIRCUTS 25¢.

  “You coming in, or are you going to risk capture by the Bald Men’s Auxiliary? Come on now, I can’t let you walk around in broad daylight like that.”

  He held the door to his shop open. Dash couldn’t say no. In any case, no one had hair like his here—he’d have to
get rid of it if he wanted to fit in.

  He stepped into the barber shop. It was cool inside. There were two men waiting in chairs and a boy already sitting in front of one of the mirrors, where another barber was working on him. The boy had black hair, too much of it, and on one side it had already been trimmed back to his ears and thinned out. He shot Dash a glance through the mirror and then ignored him.

  The barber pointed. “Take a seat, son.”

  One of the men waiting there said, “Looks like an emergency, Tom. He can go before me.”

  “Me too,” said the other man. “I’m curious what he looks like under all that.”

  The barber—Tom Mills—gestured to his empty chair. “I’ll take you next, then.”

  “I don’t have any money,” Dash said under his breath.

  “When you find your parents, you can come back with your quarter. Can I trust you?”

  “Yes, sir,” Dash said quietly, reluctant to lie.

  “Then up you go.”

  He draped Dash in a black, silken sheet, the sort of material magicians used. This kind of trick was called a transformation. Turn a boy from 2011 into one from 1926. The barber went to work, snipping back and forth, and big hanks of dark brown hair fell from his head.

  The other kid was almost done. His barber was swishing at the back of his neck with a huge brush that looked like an animal’s tail. “That’s it, young Gibson,” he said.

  “Thank you, Mr. Jeffers,” said the boy, who was about Dash’s age. He put a quarter on the countertop.

  “Walter … your father usually sends you with an extra nickel …”

  Walter Gibson reluctantly dug the man’s tip out of his pocket. The 1920s nickel was different than the one in Dash’s pocket. Same size, but it was shaped like a stop sign.

  The kid brushed at his pant legs. Then he stood and looked Dash square in the face. “Naw, I think he came from the rodeo, Mr. Mills,” he said. “Left his cowboy hat on his horse, is why he ain’t got a hat!” The boy laughed and the other men chuckled good-naturedly. “Looks like you cut him already,” he added, pointing at a dot of red on Dash’s cheek.