The Wonder Brothers, page 2
She’s always quoting that book. I was just concentrating on this light. I couldn’t look away. Neither could anyone else. As it got nearer, you could see it was the shape of a man. A bit nearer, and you could see that the man had sticky-up hair. He was looking down at us.
It couldn’t be, could it?
It couldn’t be that Perplexion was floating down from the top of the five-hundred-foot Tower?
It looked like him, but you could see right through him to the girders and the staircases of the Tower. As if Perplexion was some kind of golden ghost.
Down on the stage, Zenith was standing with her back to us, staring up at floaty-ghost Perplexion just like everyone else.
The golden ghost seemed to put its arms around Zenith, then turn her round to face us and then – this bit was proper magic – there was a flash of light. And where Zenith had been standing there was Perplexion. Just like that! Wearing a pair of shiny silver trousers. It was definitely him. I mean it couldn’t be anyone else. Who else is nearly seven-foot-tall, skinny as a stick of rock, with a plume of moon-blonde hair sticking straight up on top of his head, making him look even taller?
Everyone was like, how in all glory did that happen?
Where did Zenith go? And then he pointed towards the back of the crowd, to where the sea was washing up against the promenade – standing on the roof of one of those funny-looking storm shelters, her red dress flapping in the breeze, was Zenith.
One minute she was in front of us.
Then she was behind us.
We never saw her move an inch.
At this point hardly anyone was even breathing, they’re so amazed.
If that’s not Wonder Time, what is?!!!
And he hadn’t even turned the Illuminations on yet!
Middy whispered again, ‘It’s called misdirection. While we were all looking up at the ghost thing, he could have marched a herd of elephants across that stage and none of us would’ve noticed.’
I shushed her. ‘This is your dad’s big moment,’ I said.
Her dad – the Illuminator – asked Perplexion to come forward and pull the lever that switches the lights on. Perplexion shook his head. He’s not going to pull the lever. He points a finger at the lever. And the lever pulls itself!!!
We all watch it moving slowly, slowly into position. Then . . .
Bang!
The lights are on.
And Blackpool Illuminations have started.
A river of coloured lights flooded the promenade. A massive red octopus dangled its tentacles over our heads. A giant silver squid shot up and down the promenade, squirting clouds of starfish out of its bum. Flashing crabs snapped their claws on top of every lamp-post. And just in front of the pier, a huge King Neptune was waving a neon trident. After a while everything went blue and everyone went ‘Oooh!!’ because now we were standing under a mile-long whale. It lifted its tail, blew a fountain of flickers, then sank into the dark.
Rising high above all the other lights, like a firework on top of a cake, was Blackpool Tower itself. As soon as the whale disappeared, the lights on the Tower arranged themselves into the shape of a big, red beating neon heart, as if the Tower was saying I Love You to us all.
Everyone smiled up at that beating heart.
You know the way that there was one current of electricity flowing through all those million light bulbs, lighting them up, joining them together? Well, just then there was one current of Wonder flowing through all the people on the prom. And in the light of that beating heart, all their faces shone like different-coloured light bulbs. That’s when a crowd turns into an audience.
Middy said, ‘My dad did that.’
Then all the lights went out.
I don’t just mean the Lights.
I mean every light along the front – the lights on the Tower, the lights of the little kiosks that sell sticks of rock, sweets and silly hats, the lights on the tram stop, the streetlights.
All of them.
The Tower’s big red heart carried on beating for a few seconds. Then stopped as though someone had unplugged the whole town. It felt like someone had dropped a big black duvet over everything.
At first there were voices all around – mostly mums and dads saying things like, ‘Where are you?’ And, ‘Don’t let go of my hand.’ I could hear Brodie saying, ‘Don’t be scared, don’t be scared,’ to Queenie. I was going to explain to him that rabbits are not afraid of the dark because rabbits live underground, but I didn’t get the chance. Everything and everyone suddenly went quiet because . . . well, because amazement.
There are some things you can see in the dark that you could never see in the light.
A huge, heavy yellow moon. A glitterball of stars dangling from the sky. Waves that sparkled in the moonlight as they rushed and crashed onto the beach. It made you want to dash down and dive in.
‘This,’ said Middy, ‘is the best trick ever.’
I knew what she meant. Standing there, under the stars, with the sound of the waves – it was like all of ordinary life was misdirection. That the real magic was there all around us all the time. We were just too busy to see it.
Middy said, ‘He did this on purpose.’
‘Who did?’
‘Perplexion.’ But as soon as she said that, she started to look worried. She looked behind her – at the stage. I knew what she was thinking. Of course I did. When you’re in a magic act with someone, you have to watch them so closely that after a while you can always tell exactly what they’re thinking. Middy was worrying that if something had gone wrong with the lights, maybe it was her dad’s fault.
Then – Bang! – the lights all came back on again and everyone cheered.
‘Yeah,’ said Middy. ‘They definitely did that on purpose.’ She looked at the stage again and there, standing in the spotlight, was . . . nothing.
Perplexion had vanished.
I looked back – and Zenith had disappeared too.
It’s like Middy said: misdirection. You make the audience look one way – up at the stars or at a golden ghost – but meanwhile all the magic is happening somewhere else.
Except it wasn’t just Zenith and Perplexion who had vanished.
Middy was the first to notice.
‘The Tower!’ she gasped. ‘The Tower is gone!’
Until then, everyone was thinking their own thoughts. Thoughts like, Aren’t stars amazing? Then, in a flash, everyone was thinking the same thought. As though the whole of Blackpool was one giant brain and every person was one cell in that brain and that whole brain was staring at . . . nothing.
Because where there should have been a world-famous five-hundred-foot, one-hundred-and-fifty-year-old tower with a heart of red neon, there was . . . nothing.
Blackpool Tower had vanished.
‘Tower’s gone then,’ said Brodie.
‘The Tower has gone!’ I said.
‘I just said that,’ said Brodie.
‘At least I said it with an exclamation mark! If you’d said it with an exclamation mark, we’d have been prepared.’
‘Not sure,’ said Brodie, ‘how a whole tower can just disappear though.’
‘It’s probably just a fuse,’ said Middy. She thinks she’s an electricity expert just because her dad’s the Illuminator.
But I knew the real answer.
The answer was magic.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE BIGGEST VANISHING TRICK OF ALL TIME
CAPTAIN JIMENEZ:
It seemed somewhat surprising that a five-hundred-foot feat of Victorian engineering could disappear in the flash of a light bulb. I did suggest they might be messing with my meatloaf. The girl, Middy, responded with a lecture on the hows and whys and history of large objects disappearing. I will admit she seems knowledgeable about this subject.
MIDDY:
Magicians have vanished big things before. For instance during a posh dinner in London once, David Berglas made a grand piano disappear while someone was playing it. David Copperfield made a jumbo jet vanish. Which sounds amazing until you find out that he also made the Statue of Liberty vanish.
Let’s get one thing straight before we go any further.
When I say ‘magicians’, I’m not talking about some kind of wand-wavy people who say a few spells and turn their enemies into cheesecake. I’m talking about proper magic – rabbits out of hats, card tricks, people levitating and things vanishing. Magic that you have to work at.
To do a real magic trick, you have to spend ages making it look like something impossible happened. If impossible things really happened, they wouldn’t be impossible. If something that seems to be impossible happens – like Blackpool Tower disappearing – that’s because you don’t know what made it possible.
Real magicians – including me and Nathan – won’t tell you how they did it because it’s against the rules to tell how you did a trick. But we will tell you that it wasn’t magic magic. It was hard work, cleverness and crazy amounts of preparation.
I knew right away when the Tower disappeared that it wasn’t magic magic; it was magic. Like Wonder Brothers magic. Only bigger. I couldn’t tell how you how it was done, but all the signs were there. It happened at night, for one thing, when you can’t see that well anyway. Then there was the business with all the lights going out. That felt like a piece of what we magicians call ‘misdirection’. That’s when you make the audience pay attention to the wrong thing so that you can do the magic bit without them noticing. Turning off all the lights in town and making everyone look up at the wonders of the universe – that’s classic misdirection.
Everyone rushed over to look at the place where the Tower used to be. When we got there, security guards were putting barriers around the whole site and telling everyone to keep back. Someone said they had to do that because it was a crime scene now. Someone had stolen the Tower. Someone else said it was in case of radioactivity because it looked like the Tower had been vaporised. I explained to Nathan that the vanishing was a magic trick. But Nathan was more interested in Brodie’s explanation. Brodie’s explanation was, ‘The Tower has shrunk.’
‘Brodie, metal doesn’t shrink.’ ‘It doesn’t vanish either. And if it really didn’t shrink, what’s that?’
In the space on the prom where the Tower normally stood, was a four-foot model, correct in every detail.
Nathan got excited about that. ‘What if . . .’ he said, ‘whoever did it is going to shrink something else? Like the pier? Or the Big One!’ The Big One is the tallest rollercoaster in the UK. ‘Imagine if it ended up as the smallest. Oh. Wait. What about the people who were on the tower? Have they shrunk?’
‘That,’ I said, ‘is not a shrunken Tower. That is the original architect’s model. It’s been on display in the reception area since the centenary celebrations in 1994. It has not changed size.’
Everyone in the crowd had a different answer to how the Tower had vanished. And every answer was as crazy as Brodie’s. Stuff like, ‘Really ambitious thieves . . . You can get good money for scrap metal.’ And, ‘Aliens or the town council. They’re as bad as each other.’
I said, ‘This is a disappearing trick. Like when David Copperfield disappeared the Statue of Liberty. Or David Berglas disappeared that piano.’
Brodie pointed out that Blackpool Tower is bigger than a piano. A lot bigger.
‘Is it bigger than the Statue of Liberty though?’
I said, ‘Yes it is. The Tower is bigger. So this is the biggest vanishing trick of all time. And it’s happening here. In our town. This is cracking stuff. This is a magic trick. By Perplexion!’
We’d always, always wanted to see Perplexion doing magic. When I saw he’d vanished from the stage, I had a wave of sadness, thinking – that’s it. No more Perplexion. He’s going to do one more show, on the other side of the world. We’ll never see him now except on YouTube or whatever. We’ll never find out how he did his magic.
And now, he’d done the biggest trick of his life right here in our town, right in front of our eyes. Well, right behind our backs. It was a thrill.
‘Not sure,’ said Brodie. Brodie is never sure. If you asked Brodie if his pants were on fire, he’d say he wasn’t sure. ‘The bit I like best about a vanishing trick,’ he said, ‘is when the vanished thing comes back. Is the Tower going to come back?’
‘He’s right,’ said Nathan. ‘Vanishing something isn’t magic. Things vanish all the time. They get lost. They fade away. The magic part of a vanishing trick is when the thing un-vanishes. Look it up in your book.’
I’ve got a little book that I take with me everywhere. I’ve got it here now. It’s by Karabas the Modest (Second-Best Magician of All Time) and it’s called My Secrets Revealed. It tells you the Karabas Rules, including the rule about not revealing the secrets of your tricks. Which is a pretty confusing thing to find in a book that is actually CALLED My Secrets Revealed.
To be fair, magicians only tell you the basics of how they do their tricks. You have to work most of it out for yourself. Or invent a trick that is so good that other magicians will want to swap magic with you.
Anyway, I looked in My Secrets Revealed and on page fifty six she says this about vanishing things:
In a vanishing trick you make something that the volunteer really loves – their wedding ring, or their best friend – disappear. And when they reappear the volunteer is filled with the happiness that comes from remembering that you really love something. The really magic thing that appears at the end of a vanishing trick is not the wedding ring or the car keys or even the Statue of Liberty. It’s hope. Or love.
I’ve actually underlined that bit.
Great magicians un-vanish things in surprising ways. Harry Kellar, for instance, used to take a wedding ring from someone in the audience, put it in a gun, fire the gun into a box, open the box and – Tadah! There was your wedding ring on a ribbon TIED ROUND THE NECK OF A HAMSTER.
When I explained this to Nathan he said, ‘So you think that any minute now, Blackpool Tower is going to reappear, tied to the neck of a hamster.’
‘That does sound good actually,’ said Brodie.
‘I’m not saying anything about hamsters. I’m saying that the Tower is going to come back, and when it does, it’s going to be . . . I can’t even think of a word to say how cracking it’s going to be. We’re never going to forget this moment.’
So we stood there holding our breath waiting for this unforgettable moment to come.
People began to drift away, to the hot-dog stands, and the candyfloss sellers, and the trams that trundled up and down the Illuminations.
Brodie said ‘Queenie’s getting cold. I’m going to take her home.’
Brodie is supposed to be in charge of us, so if he goes, we all have to go. I pleaded with him. I said, ‘Brodie, we can’t go now. History could be coming here any minute now.’
But he went and we had to go with him.
I walked backwards nearly the whole length of the prom, keeping my eye on the spot where history might happen.
But it didn’t.
CHAPTER SIX
ATTENTION!
NATHAN:
First thing next morning, I got up before anyone else, pulled down the loft ladder and crept up it. Middy’s house has got a window in the roof. You can always see the Tower from up there. Well, you can see the Tower from nearly everywhere. But I really like sticking my head out of the loft window. Also, that loft is where Middy showed me my first magic trick.
It turned out I wasn’t the first up. Middy was already up there, her head sticking out of the window. ‘It’s still vanished,’ she said.
I squeezed in next to her. There was the Tower, still gone. At the end of the road, between the trees, there was a great big Nothing reaching from behind the roof of St Cuthbert’s right up into the sky.
We went back downstairs. In the kitchen, Middy’s dad was scrolling through his phone.
Middy said, ‘It’s still missing.’
He said, ‘What is?’ without looking up from his phone.
‘The Tower.’
‘Oh that.’
I said, ‘Is anyone going to do anything about it?’
‘Middy,’ he said, ignoring me, ‘I have literally got one million light bulbs to look after. Not to mention plugs and fuses. So if anyone is going to do something about it, it won’t be me, OK?’
Fair enough. That’s why we call him the Illuminator.
I mentioned the disappearance to Auntie Anya. ‘Are you sure?’ she said. She was on her phone too. ‘Maybe it’s the weather. You know sometimes you can see the mountains across the bay, and sometimes you can’t. This is the seaside. The view is always changing. Remember the time we climbed Pendle Hill and we were halfway up it before we saw it.’
‘Yeah, but—’
‘Middy, I’m really busy. If you’re so bothered, go and check.’
How could she be busy, by the way? How busy can you be if your job is head plumber of a building that isn’t there any more?
‘OK,’ said Middy, ‘Can we go down and check?’
‘Only if Brodie is happy to go with you and keep an eye on things,’ added her mum.
So Brodie took us down to the prom to make sure that Blackpool Tower was still missing.
And, it was.
There were a lot of other people there already. Standing around with their hands in their pockets as if waiting for a five-hundred-foot tower to reappear was just like waiting for a bus. One was holding up a postcard of the Tower as if we might have forgotten what it looked like. A woman with a very loud voice was telling her mate that she’d never been up the Tower. ‘Lived here all my life and never thought to go up. When you think something’s always going to be there, you just don’t get round to it,’ she said.
A man in a bright blue coat was weaving in and out of the crowd, selling silver souvenir models of the Tower from a box. Right at the top of the sky, a plane was drawing a line of smoke across the blue. I noticed Middy looking up at it. I notice everything she does, and she notices everything I do. It’s a magic-act thing.
