The Tale of the Street Magician

Milo: 'Was this your card? It was! Oh good! You see, I haven't lost my touch. Though my fingers fumble and I flinch at every sound. Though I cannot sleep at night because of the nightmares that come to me ...'

Pick a card, pick any card, don't show it to me, look at it hard.

Everything I'm about to tell to you is absolutely, completely true.

This one?

Ok.

Memorise this card. Keep it in mind for later.

Now while I divine which card it was, I'll tell you the story of how I ended up here, doing tricks on the street, being kicked and beat every night.

A long time ago, I was apprenticed to a magician named Alfred Holmwood. He taught me the tricks of the trade of magic. I was happy then. I was in love with a beautiful young woman named Penny. We laughed and danced and she helped me do my shows. Alfred was a rationalist. He believed in telling the audience that it wasn't true, that it was just trickery and diversion. We would do our show (explaining that it was show and nothing more) during the evening, and then afterwards go somewhere else to expose frauds and fakes, psychic cold readers, sleazy slimy mentalist geezers. Every kind of conman who preyed on superstition. We exposed them all as the fakes they were. Until one dreadful day, when Penny caught consumption and it carried her away. Into the arms of death she went, into the immortal blackness. I wept and wept full of pain and sadness. I was then full of grief and full of determination to destroy these dreadful men and women who preyed on those in circumstances such as I, by saying they could talk to the dead whose souls had flown into the sky.

Alfred and I managed to attend a seance run by a new supposed psychic, named Elizabeth Harker. When we arrived, we were greeted by her and the other guests. She said there was a door to the realm of death hidden in her closet, and that great misfortune would come if we opened the doors to it or disturbed the spirits.

We waited till the seance had begun and a luminous vision of a spectre had appeared, wafting out from the closet at the end of the room. We had seen such tricks done before with phosphorous and hidden assistants. So we pulled out our torches and shined them at the ghost, leaping up and pushing our chairs away. I ran over to the closet and pulled the doors open.

Inside was darkness. An infinite darkness stretching on for all eternity. I heard the ghost roar and tear apart all the others in the room. But I was entranced staring into blackness. I saw subtle shadowy shapes slithering through the void. I felt a coldness and a darkness enter into my soul sliding down my throat into my chest and heart and lungs and up into my brain. I saw my Penny, standing there alone in the abyssal darkness. I saw her withered rotten corpse a mockery of her original beauty. Her mouth open wider than should have been possible, her jaw distended. I heard her scream. Loud and long with all the agony of pain and fear and cold and loneliness. I heard her echoing shrieks come at me through the blackness. I shut the door, and turned away. I walked through the destruction. On the ground Alfred's body lay, head missing. I saw the devastation. And I sank to my knees and wept.

I ran away, so far away, all the way to here. But I still hear the screams of Penny. Still see her body torn and wracked with pain. I still see the blackness, which I know I will see again when the ghosts at last grow bored and let me die. I stared into the abyss that day, and it stared back into me.

Death is the first fear, the thing which creates all other fears. The one thing we all fear. The greatest unknown of all. Death is fear and fear is death. Or at least, that's how it seems to me.

Was this your card? It was! Oh good! You see, I haven't lost my touch. Though my fingers fumble and I flinch at every sound. Though I cannot sleep at night because of the nightmares that come to me. I think that I must go now, it's getting late and soon the dark will rise. When you're at home in the warm and safe and sound as can be, I only ask that you remember me. I only ask, that you pity me.