The Magician

A former schoolmate contacted me, saying he would be in Akron on business. We got together at the hotel bar. After a couple hours of conversation he asked if I remembered a boy named Gray Overly, from third grade.

“Gray Overly,” I repeated.

“Lived on the other side of the railroad tracks. Literally. Used to wander over to find him in the yard with the chickens and an old dog that followed him everywhere. Towhead boy, pale, didn’t say two words at school.”

“Doesn’t ring a bell,” I said.

“Maybe you remember the magician. The school bussed us to that little auditorium.”

“Yes, of course.”

“It’s clear in my mind because I knew him. When the magician asked for an assistant, his hand went up so slowly I thought it would never rise over the heads of the other kids.”

“That was this Gray Overly?”

“Half a dozen kids raised their hands, snapping their fingers for the magician’s attention, but he looked around them to find a hand so pale it might have been a wisp of smoke.”

I could see it in my mind but could not be certain of the memory.

“It took him forever to go down the aisle and climb the stairs in his tattered t-shirt and jeans.”

“I remember that boy,” I whispered.

“The magician had a magic word. He said if we remembered this word we could do any magic we wanted. Then he said the word.”

“What did the magician do with Gray?”

“He told Gray to get in a purple sack with white rope at the throat. Gray climbed in, the magician tightened the rope, hit the sack with his wand, and repeated the magic word.”

I saw this as in a dream.

“The bag went flat, and the magician went on with the show. I thought he’d bring him back by the end.”

“But he didn’t?”

He shook his head. “I searched every way I could with no luck. We didn’t have the internet back then, but now I’ve exhausted that as well.”

“He didn’t come back to school?”

“Never. That weekend I went to his yard and found a fresh mound of earth.”

“Yikes.”

“His dad came out reeking of alcohol. Wore a ballcap so filthy you couldn’t tell the color it had once been. I said, ‘What’s this?’ He worked up a hawker and spat on the grave. ‘That there is Mickey,’ he said. ‘Couldn’t stick on a coon to save his life.’”

Gray’s dad had threatened to shoot Mickey more than once. Gray hung on his neck and cried. We stood like that until I asked what Mickey died of. He said, ‘Gunshot.’”

“Gunshot,” I repeated.

“The look the old man gave me promised the same for me. I went on home. After my parents fell asleep that night, I sneaked out the back and across the tracks. I sat on the warm earth beside that mound in the moonlight and every so often I said the magic word.”

“You remember the word?”

“I had been saying it to myself since I heard it. Over and over.”

“What was it?”

“The word the magician used was cunnilingus. Of course, I had no idea what it meant. But I sat by the grave saying it until I heard the train go past.”

“You’re sure the word was cunnilingus?”

“If you recall, shortly after the magician said it, the principal came on stage and had the teachers usher us out of the auditorium.”

“Because they had heard the word before.”

“My mother told me the magician was a local boy. Killed himself shortly after that. Poison.”

He sat back then, as if he had traveled somewhere else in his mind.

“I still think of it at odd times. In a meeting with my boss and a client, I remember sitting in that yard in the moonlight, repeating the magic word at intervals, so loud a light came on in the house. I saw his dad’s silhouette in the upstairs window.”

“Dear God. What did you do?”

“Ran home, sneaked in the way I left, but I did not sleep because I was pretty sure it was not old Mickey in that hole. Or not only old Mickey. That night he came into my room. Gray. He walked in just like he went down the aisle and sat on the edge of my bed. All that was left of him.

The hair on my head prickled and shifted. “Did you tell anyone?”

“Didn’t want to draw attention to myself, especially with his father. I kept waiting on the adults to do something. The school, if not his family.”

“This never happened?”

“And he kept showing up at night, so silent I couldn’t speak myself.”

My friend looked weary. He had to get up early in the morning and get on the road, so we shook hands, promising to find other occasions. I went home and crawled in bed beside my wife, whose hand came out to touch my shoulder.

I rolled on my back, preparing to tell the strange story, but she was asleep. I kept seeing the nine-year-old boy sitting beside a fresh grave in the moonlight repeating his magic word as if it could wake the dead. “Cunnilingus,” I whispered.

That is when the strange, pale boy first appeared, sitting on the bed beside me, eyes closed in a silence so deep it enveloped me.

I have not slept well since that night, and since that night my friend has avoided calls or emails. He unfriended me on Facebook and has all but disappeared.

Not Gray Overly.

He keeps returning, as if there was something he wanted me to do. What that is I cannot guess. I only wish I could make him disappear, the way the magician did so many years ago.