belonged to my predecessor. Both it and he are being held by the
police due to an unfortunate accident. The last lady who assisted him
lost her head and caused a messy scene.”
The audience laughed uneasily.
“What a cornball act,” Liz said. “Jesus.” But on the contrary, to Amy,
Marco appeared to have undergone an eerie metamorphosis. He was not
shabby and silly-looking now, as he had been when he first stumbled
onto the platform. His crude makeup no longer seemed like a joke,
second by second he looked increasingly demonic, and there was a new,
terrifying, evil gleam in his eyes. His nervous smile had become a
knowing, wicked leer. When his eyes met Amy’s, she felt as if she were
staring at twin windows that offered a glimpse of Hell, and she was
cold all the way through to the marrow.
Don’t be ridiculous, Amy told herself, shuddering. Marco the
Magnificent hasn’t changed. It’s only my perception of him that’s been
altered. I’m having a mild hallucination. Tripping. Flying. It’s
that damned joint.
The drugs.
What spice did Liz add to that grass?
Marco held up a two-foot-long, pointed wooden stake. “Ladies and
gentlemen, I promise you’ll enjoy this illusion more than you would
have enjoyed the guillotine. It’s really much, much better.” He
grinned, and there was something dark and unwholesome in that
Cheshire-cat expression. I need a volunteer from the audience. A
young woman.” His malevolent eyes slowly swept the faces below him. He
raised one hand and pointed ominously at each woman, one after the
other, and for a breathtaking moment he seemed to stop at Amy, then he
moved his hand again and stopped even longer at Liz, but finally he
chose an attractive redhead.
“Oh, no,” the redhead told him. “I couldn’t. Not me.” “Of course you
can,” Marco said. “Come on, folks, let’s give this charming, brave
young lady a hand.” The audience applauded on cue, and the woman
reluctantly walked up the steps to the stage.
Marco took hold of her arm as she reached the platform. “What’s your
name?”
“Jenny,” she said, smiling shyly at the audience.
“You’re not afraid, are you, Jenny?”
“Yes,” she said, blushing.
Marco grinned. “Smart girl!n He escorted her to the coffin. It was
standing on end, tilted back slightly on large metal braces. Marco
pulled open the lid, which was hinged at the left side. “Please step
into the box, denny. I promise that you will feel absolutely no pain
whatsoever.” With the magician’s help, the redhead stepped backwards
into the box, facing the audience. Her
1.: neck fit into a U-shaped cutout in the top of the box. Because the
coffin was short, her head stuck out of it when Marco closed the lid.
“Comfortable?” Marco asked.
“No,” the woman said nervously.
“Good,” Marco said. He grinned at the audience, then secured the front
of the box with a large padlock.
A premonition of disaster, a feeling that she was in the presence of
Death, seized Amy in its I invisible, icy hands. I Just the damned
drugs, she told herself.
Marco the Magnificent spoke to the audience.
aIn the fifteenth century, Vlad the Fifth of Wallachia, known as Vlad
the Impaler to his frightened subjects, tortured tens of thousands of
male and female prisoners, mostly foreign invaders. Once, the Turkish
army turned back from a planned invasion when it encountered a field
where thousands of men were propped on spikes that had been driven all
the way through their bodies by Vlad’s hand-picked death squads.
Tiring of his name, Vlad selected a new one, that of his father, an
equally nasty man known as Dracul, meaning the Devil.” Adding the
letter A,’ he became Dracula, the son of the Devil. And so, my
friends, are legends born.” !
“Cornball,” Liz said again. jr But Amy was mesmerized by the strange,
new, and dangerous creature that appeared (at least to her eyes) to
have taken possession of Marco’s .
body. The bottomless, all-knowing, evil eyes of –~ the magician met
Amy’s eyes again and seemed out in horror.
to see all the way through her before they looked away.
Marco displayed the two-foot-long, pointed wooden stake once more.