“Ladies and gentlemen, I present . . . The Impaler.”
” “About fuckin’ time,” Liz said.
Marco picked up a small but heavy mallet. “If you will look at the
front of the box, you will see that a small hole has been drilled
through the lid.”
Amy saw the hole. A bright red heart had been painted around it.
“The hole lies directly over the volunteer’s heart,” Marco said.
He licked his lips, turned, and carefully inserted the stake into the
hole. aDo you feel the point of the stake, Jenny?” She giggled
nervously. es.” “Good,” the magician said. “Remember . . . there
will be no pain at all.”
Holding the stake in his left hand, he raised the mallet in his
right.
“Absolute silence! Those of you who are squeamish, avert your eyes.
She will feel no pain . . . but that does not mean there will be no
blood!”
“Huh?” Jenny said. “Hey. wait. I–” “Silence!” Marco shouted, and
he swung the mallet hard against the stake.
No! Amy thought.
With a sickening, wet, tearing sound, the stake sank deep into the
woman’s chest.
Jenny screamed, and blood gushed from her twisted mouth.
The audience “sped. A couDle of people cried
Jenny’s heaa slumped to one side. Her tongue lolled. Her eyes stared
sightlessly over the heads of the people in the tent.
Death miraculously transformed the face of the volunteer. The red hair
turned to blond. The eyes changed from green to blue. The face was no
longer that of Jenny, the woman who had walked onto the stage from the
audience.
It was now Liz Duncan’s face. Every plane, every hollow, every
feature, every detail belonged to Liz. It wasn’t just a trick of the
light and shadows.
It was Liz in that coffin. It was Liz who had been impaled. It was
Liz who was dead, blood still oozing from between her ripe lips.
Having trouble drawing her breath, Amy looked at the girl beside her
and was amazed to see that her friend was still there. Liz was in the
audience–yet somehow she was also on the stage, in the box, dead.
Confused, disoriented, Amy said, aBut it’s you. It’s you . . . up
there.” Liz-in-the-audience said, “What?” Liz-in-the-coffin stared into
eternity and drooled blood.
Liz-in-the-audience said, “Amy? Are you all right?” ‘Liz is going to
die, Amy thought. Soon. This is some sort of premonition . . .
clairvoyance . . . whatever you call it. Could that be true?
Could it? Will Liz be killed? Soon? Tonight?
Marco’s look of shock and horror, which he had assumed the instant that
blood began to spurt from his volunteer’s mouth, now melted into a
grin. The magician snapped his fingers, and the woman in the box
suddenly came to life, the pain vanished from her face, she smiled
dazzlingly– and she no longer resembled Liz Duncan.
She never did look like Liz, Amy thought. It was just me. The
drugs.
Hallucinations. It wasn’t a premonition, Liz isn’t going to die
soon.
God, am I out of it!
The audience sighed with relief as Marco pulled the stake out of the
hole in the lid of the box. The magician had ceased to look
sinister.
He was the same shabby, pudgy, inept man who had stumbled through the
canvas flap ten or fifteen minutes ago. The omniscient, evil
personality no longer looked out through Marco’s eyes, his resemblance
to the Devil was gone.
Imagination, Amy told herself. Delusions. It meant nothing.
Nothing at all.
Liz isn’t about to die. None of us is going to die. I’ve got to get
hold of myself.
Marco helped Jenny out of the box and introduced her to the audience.
She was his daughter.
“Another cheap trick,” Liz said, disgusted.
As she left Marco’s tent, Amy sensed the disappointment in her three
companions. It was almost as if they had hoped that a woman really
would be pierced through the heart or have her head chopped off by a
guillotine. The spice that Liz had added to the last joint of grass
was something extremely powerful, for already it was making them
fidgety, restless, they required more and bigger thrills to dissipate