The Box Jumper by Lisa Mannetti

Author:Lisa Mannetti
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: horror, magic, novella, magician, historical horror, houdini, smart rhino publications, lisa mannetti
Publisher: Smart Rhino Publications

IN 278, I was still trapped in the whirlpool of memories surrounding my long, terrible illness. During those first weeks caged inside the iron lung, I told myself I could never be sure if I’d gotten polio from visiting the stinking chemical toilets or from scooping handfuls of pond water as Arthur Ford paddled the canoe. I remembered how suavely—and seemingly hospitably—he fixed a plate from the huge picnic hamper for me, and how when I expressed delight in the pickled herring (which I’d never tasted before and he said he’d ordered specially) he kept urging more on me and without realizing it, I ate all of the appetizer myself. When the three small flasks of lemonade were gone, he urged me to quell my thirst—magnified by the heat and the salty fish—with pond water. He even shipped the paddle and filled one of the empty bottles for me several times as we drifted.

Once, years later, someone told me Ford was either a carrier or that he’d had a brief bout and recovered—which could have meant if he handled infected materials, then touched me—as he’d done, lightly smoothing my face and mouth, bringing my fingers to his lips to kiss—he’d given it to me.

Houdini had many other investigators—not just in New York, but across the country. But, except for Bess, there was no one closer, no one more privy to his methods and secrets. For a long time, while I was in the upstate hospital inside the iron lung, I was wracked with guilt. Orphaned and immature at twenty, I was already lonely, and I’d punished myself by creating a sense of abandonment and isolation I’d only half-glimpsed that brisk fall day at St. Agnes. The only time I felt peace—the satisfaction that comes from confidence—the only time I really felt alive was on stage. I’d betrayed Houdini; I’d betrayed myself and my feelings for him. Hardest of all to bear was the memory of the last evening I spent in a private room just off the polio ward at St. Peter’s hospital in Albany, of the words Harry spoke to me, of the anguish we both felt.

“Company, Miss Derwatt,” a night nurse announced.

I turned my head to see Houdini standing by the door, his hands held at waist height, his fingers nervously clutching the brim of a soft gray fedora.

This time, there was no banter, no attempts to jolly the patient. “I have to leave in a few hours to resume the tour. I don’t want to go, but there are scheduled performances ... contracts,” he said.

I closed my eyes. “Of course you have to go.”

“Before I do, there’s something I want—need, actually—to tell you.” He took a deep breath. “I’ve been married to Bess a long time—I do love her. I could never leave her ... she depends on me.”

I nodded. The whole troupe knew: Bess drank, she experimented with drugs, was ill—prostrate—often. “I think the things she does...” I paused. “...are a way of avoiding emotional collapse .

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