The Blurred Lands Read online

  The Blurred Lands

  Ian W. Sainsbury

  for my sister, Ruth

  Copyright © 2018 by Ian W. Sainsbury

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Author's note

  Also by Ian W. Sainsbury

  One

  John Aviemore could make a coin disappear or reveal the word in someone's mind because he cheated. John knew the coin was in his other hand, or the word someone had glanced at in a book was the only one he had allowed them to read.

  Those who watched John perform magic believed they were witnessing the impossible. Like a filmmaker or a writer, he chose what his audience would and wouldn't see. If someone had told him reality worked in a similar way, he would have laughed.

  The first of May was when everything unravelled. May Day. A celebration of spring. Green shoots, new life, fresh starts.

  John was unmoved by all of it. For the past three years, he had barely acknowledged spring. Last year, it was only when he'd noticed the leaves on the crabapple tree had turned yellow and red that John realised summer had come and gone.

  Winter had been easier to accept. Black nights, bleak mornings, overcoats and scarves.

  John poured his tea. In the garden, blue tits and finches squabbled over the hanging seeds. He turned his chair to face the interior of the house where some shadows could still be found.

  It was three years to the day since Sarah's death.

  Three years. He was fifty-one years old, a father and a widower. His son, Harry, was in Los Angeles, trying to run a business, negotiate a divorce, and maintain a relationship with his twelve-year-old daughter. John was glad his son lived so far away although the thought made him feel guilty.

  John had the day to himself. He'd lived the past one thousand and ninety-five days, as the bereavement counsellor had advised, one at a time. As if there were another option. He had neither repressed his grief, nor allowed it to prevent him functioning. He had got up in the morning and gone to bed at night. He had continued to invent, and perform, magic tricks. He had eaten healthily.

  Over the course of the past thirty-six months, he had cried twice. John had never been one for crying. Even when he'd put his hand flat onto the hot iron at the age of three, he had only sucked his cheeks in and stared at the blistering flesh rather than wailing. John wasn't proud of his lack of emotional display. He wasn't trying to be strong, or 'refusing to engage with his loss', as Sarah's sister had suggested. He just wasn't much of a crier.

  Today would be difficult. Twenty-three years of marriage had left their mark. His life was shaped by the years he had spent with Sarah.

  John planned to spend the day in town, visiting places that meant something to him and Sarah. Waterloo Road, the theatre near Harrow, Tate Modern.

  The day was warm enough not to bother with a jacket. John waited until after nine, when the trains would be less busy, and walked to Wimbledon station.

  His phone buzzed in his pocket. He considered not answering, but it was work.

  "John, good morning, I know this is last minute but..."

  He let Marco talk. A show, tonight, at the Charleston. They'd asked if John was available. Five times his usual fee. John was ready to say no, then he thought of the empty house.

  "Yes, Marco, I'll be there."

  If there was a moment when the whole episode began, it was then, when John Aviemore decided he'd rather be working than sitting in a slowly darkening sitting room on the anniversary of his wife's death.

  Two

  The Charleston was John's regular gig. On Thursday evenings, he performed close-up magic to hotel and restaurant guests in the bar before and after their meals. Other magicians table-hopped, but John liked to have more control over his performing area. Once he had shown guests one minor miracle, they were invited to his private table and treated to ten minutes of magic. Such was John's reputation that Thursdays were now the hotel restaurant's busiest nights.

  Marco called John over when he saw him in the doorway.

  "John, thank you for doing this. We need to speak about these people, mm? Come, come."

  In the manager's office, Marco perched on the edge of the desk. A small man with a waxed moustache, dressed, as always, in an immaculately tailored three-piece suit, his customary smile was absent. John looked up at the framed photograph of room 112. When Marco had taken over, room 112 hadn't been slept in for years. A small but persistent leak had caused a big brown stain on one wall. The previous owners had tried to repair it three times before giving up. Marco had taken a different approach. He had renamed it the Hemingway Suite and claimed the famous author had stayed there, leaving behind an unpaid bill and a bourbon stain on the wall. 112 now had a waiting list and commanded a higher price than any other room.

  "I don't have anything to show you," said John. He was accustomed to starting the evening in Marco's office because the hotelier loved to see John's new tricks first.

  Marco waved his hand in the air and shook his head. "These people, this party, mm, the ones who asked for you. They are a little unusual."

  Marco tried a smile, but it was a half-hearted effort. "I am embarrassed, John. I am not sure what I want to say to you."

  John waited. Marco shrugged and continued. "They, er, they are, well..."

  His voice faded, and he looked embarrassed.

  "What is it?" said John.

  "Oh, nothing, nothing. I am ashamed I feel this way. I thought I had left such nonsense behind."

  John waited for Marco to go on.

  "I grew up in a small Sicilian village. My grandmother was a very superstitious woman."

  Marco's expression darkened, then—as if remembering where he was—he laughed and waved his hand dismissively. "What am I saying? I'm sorry, John, I don't know why I am behaving this way. They are odd, yes, but so what? I iron my socks, who am I to talk, mm? I am sure you will amaze them as you do all our guests. Come."

  Marco led John along the corridor to the Bloomsbury Suite. "Look in on me when you're finished, John. Have a good show."

  The hotelier knocked on the door. After a short pause, a voice answered, too quietly for John t
o hear the words.

  Marco stepped back from the door. John turned the handle and walked in.

  Three

  The room was much darker than John had expected. None of the lights were on, and the only illumination came from six black candles in holders near the centre of the long table.

  Lack of light made some tricks impossible. John began to review which elements of his routine he should disregard and which he should add. As he did this, he stepped further into the room and adopted what Sarah called his sorcerer's smile. She had claimed it was this smile that made her fall for him. John had admitted to many hours in front of a mirror getting it right.

  "Too confident, and it's seen as a challenge. Too shy, and it's an invitation to be ignored. Get it right, and it says, this is going to be amazing. Relax, you're in safe hands."

  "That's a lot from one smile. How did you get the idea?"

  "Doctor Who," admitted John.

  He walked to the end of the long table and placed his briefcase in front of him. John was six feet tall, his dark hair flecked with white. His suit was an anonymous black, and he wore a white shirt without a tie. John had the strong hands of a craftsman, and he linked his long fingers together while he spoke.

  "Hello. My name is John Aviemore, and I'm here to show you some magic. Three promises before I begin."

  The pause after this remark was intentional. It established his control of the room and made anyone filling the short silence look rude.

  "One: I will not embarrass or offend anybody. Two: I will lie and cheat. Three: I will show you something impossible, and four—"

  He left another pause and waited. When someone pointed out that he had said three promises, he could deliver the line, "Didn't I say I would lie and cheat?" The ice-breaking laugh that followed would allow him to finish with, "Promise number four is that you will be entertained."

  On this occasion, his pause was met with silence.

  Four people sat at a table large enough to accommodate ten. In the furthest corners of the room, where the flickering light of the candles couldn't reach, others watched, but in the gloom, he couldn't make out their features.

  Ignoring the half-hidden figures at the back of the suite, John concentrated on the two couples at the table. On his left was a woman in a red dress. Her auburn hair was long and loose, covering her bare shoulders. The neckline of the dress plunged nearly to her midriff, and John was careful to keep his eyes on her face. She was beautiful, her skin as white as if she had never seen the sun, her lips pale but full. Her eyes were dark, their colour impossible to determine.

  The man to her left was slender, and dressed in a white silk shirt unbuttoned to show as much skin as his companion. His head was shaved smooth, his eyes deep-set and fixed on John.

  Their companions were more conservatively dressed. The man wore an olive greatcoat, but it must have been tailor-made for him. He was head and shoulders taller than anyone John had ever seen. His straggly hair was unbrushed and hung halfway down his broad back. His beard was similarly generous. His partner was so much his opposite, it almost seemed a joke. The size of a ten-year-old child, her fine, night-black hair was crowned with a gold circlet. Her nose was snub, her lips thin, and the skin on her neck translucent. John fancied he could see the blood moving through the veins beneath. Her dress was a sleeveless green slip.

  John began his first effect, allowing the familiar rhythm of speech, misdirection, and manipulation to calm his nerves. He had played to every kind of audience, from coldly dismissive to wildly enthusiastic. He'd never had a reception like this, though. The silence, the attention on his face rather than his hands. The shadowy figures at the back of the room.

  "In times gone by," he began, "magicians, or conjurors, were considered to be con-artists, thieves, or, worse still, devil-worshippers. To be fair—"

  John took a cigarette paper from a packet and crumpled it between his finger and thumb—"that description was, mostly, accurate. Conjurors were little better than beggars, using their art to extract a few coins from their audience. If the tips weren't good enough, there was always an accomplice working the crowd, picking their pockets, cutting the drawstrings of purses and stealing their contents."

  John took a small, ornate Japanese fan from his back pocket and, tossing the crumpled paper into the air began to wave it expertly, keeping the paper floating a few inches above.

  "However," he continued, "occasionally, a magician would prove to be neither a petty criminal or a practitioner of the dark arts. Such a conjuror might be noticed by the court of a king or queen and rise to a position of prominence."

  John had timed his patter perfectly. The cigarette paper had filled with air and now resembled an egg. As it should, since John had substituted the skin of a boiled egg for the paper, which he had concealed in the fold of skin between his thumb and forefinger. The next few actions took place in under five seconds, and John's every move was decisive and forceful, in direct contrast to his soft-spoken delivery.

  "The magician just had to impress—"

  His right hand snapped the fan closed, and at the exact moment of the snap, his left hand came up with a real egg, seeming to grab the inflated egg skin out of the air.

  "—the right people."

  Tossing the fan into his briefcase along with the egg skin, John leaned across the table and swept up the tiny woman's empty water glass. With a well-practised motion he cracked the egg into the glass. The traditional conclusion of the effect was the appearance of a raw egg, but John had added his own touch. A miniature bird, as colourful as a parrot, whirred upwards out of the glass and took to the air in a blur of red, blue, and green. It hovered in front of him like a hummingbird. He slid a net from his right-hand jacket pocket. The clockwork mechanism gave him between five and seven seconds, and John looked for the moment when the bird's beak dipped. He brought the net forward when he saw it, and the bird dropped into it. He pulled the lever on the handle with his forefinger, and swapped the bird for a handful of colourful glitter, which showered the table when he punched his fist into the net, his hand concealing the bird.

  The cloud of glitter dropped to the table, looking more magical than ever in the candlelight.

  The Egg Of Paradise had been John's opening effect for five years. It was so elegant, and the finale so beautiful, that it had brought guests back to the Charleston, dragging friends along after them, begging to "see that thing with the bird."

  It was a guaranteed crowd pleaser. Or it had been. Not tonight, not for the party in the Bloomsbury Suite. After a few seconds of silence, they applauded awkwardly, as if it were a custom they were unused to.

  John had an urge to bolt for the door, leaving his briefcase and his professional reputation behind. Then he remembered Sarah. After one of his first gigs as a professional magician, he had sat on the end of the bed, waiting to tell her how scared he'd been, and that he wasn't good enough. She had rolled over, murmuring, "I'm so proud of you." He had decided to give it another month. That had been over a quarter of a century ago.

  Tonight, he stood his ground. He continued his act with steady hands, his voice firm and his smile in place, despite the instinct to run.

  The show was shorter than usual, but John put that down to the lack of response from his audience.

  There was something wrong in this room, and John's instincts told him he was in danger. Not violent, bone-breaking danger; something less tangible but just as serious. He kept his mind on what he was doing, ignoring his rising heart rate. He was going to stay in control. He always stayed in control.

  John skipped his sponge ball routine and hurried through his version of Cards Across. His small audience's reaction continued to be off-puttingly unpredictable..

  When he borrowed a bread roll to use as an impromptu floating ball, he noticed all their food was untouched, their cutlery still clean. Wine had been poured, but left untasted. Instead, each couple passed a flask between them and sipped from that.

  John finished
with a floating ten-pound note, changing it into a fifty as he plucked it from the air. By this time, he was ready for their lack of response. He bowed anyway.

  "I hope you enjoy the rest of your evening." John's voice sounded distant to his own ears. The sense of danger was stronger. He swallowed, scooping props into his briefcase. They were just odd people, that was all. No law against it. He clicked the case shut with shaking fingers. Would he be able to make himself walk the ten feet between the table and the door? Or would he run?

  He looked up as the observers at the back moved, strange creatures emerging from the gloom like a nightmare. A face with too many teeth smiled at John, revealing a second set behind the first. Another figure unfolded as it approached, each step adding to its height until it had to stoop under the ceiling. A monstrous worm insinuated itself under the far end of the table, sliding towards him.

  Decision made, John ran for the door.

  The woman to his right scooped something from her lap and threw it into his face. John shut his eyes as a black cloud of fine dark powder hit his skin.

  Everything stopped.

  Four

  John woke up in his own bed, scrabbled for the light and looked at the clock. It was six forty-five. Somehow, he had finished the show and returned home with no recollection of how he'd managed it.