“You are right.” The creature’s gray aura faded as it appeared to think.
Marlon knew a moment’s relief and a sudden surge of hope for a new life, a better life, a kinder, gentler life. It was not too late…
“I will not abandon you to the dark,” the croaking voice whispered, very near now, but no more visible. “I will not deprive you of your beloved limelight. I am a master of transformations, and I can manage that. Watch and believe.”
Marlon… Merlin the Magnificent… found himself blinking like a tourist under a bank of gel-covered spotlights. Red, blue, green they blazed, Technicolor stars in an artificial sky.
He was… himself. Standing on a stage as he did almost every night, and Majika was lifting one graceful arm to indicate his presence. His reappearance from the box. His deliverance. His rebirth. I will be good, I will, I will. Well, better.
He took the stage, spread his arms and cape, rejoiced in the magic of his vanishing and recovery.
Applause.
And then more applause, accompanied by fevered whispers and then shouts of wonder.
Majika had thrust her left arm out to introduce the second half of the illusion, the other Merlin the Magnificent standing on her other side.
Marlon turned his eyes uneasily, expecting to see the gray, shriveled, scrofulous thing from the dark.
Instead he saw a tall, white-haired man in fanciful evening dress… a man whose snowy mane had dwindled to a few threadbare strands… whose lumpy frame slumped like an overstuffed sack of extra-large baking potatoes… whose neck had become a jowly wattle, whose eyes were sunk in ridges of suet flesh.
For the first time he truly felt the horror in the story of Dorian Gray. Gray!
And before he could do or say anything, or even make a few more frantic mental promises to what or whom he couldn’t say… before he could even take in the enormity of it all and the loss that loomed before him, the foul thing moved toward him-the man he was before he had changed his own mirror image-and sank into him like fog, or like an exiled part of himself.
Marlon drowned in the engulfing presence of Merlin, a Merlin cursed to live and die looking exactly as Marlon had not allowed himself to look, and happy for that.
Where Marlon went he couldn’t say. It was dark. And narrow. And he heard and felt nothing and knew he’d go mad if he was kept here.
And then… slap! Snap! A sharp small sound and the world exploded again with light and applause. He gulped a deep, anxious breath of light-heated stage air, lifted his head and almost sniffed the sound of the applause. It was thunderous. Better than ever. He’d survived whatever nightmare the mirrored box had put him through.
Then, it became too much. The continuing racket crashed on his sensitive ears. He shrunk again, cowered, even as Majika lifted her arm the better to display him to the admiring audience.
His heart pounded against the palm of her hand.
His long white hair was full and thick again, luxurious, and she stroked it with her other hand.
Majika’s giant face stared down with piercing eyes. His sensitive ears flattened at the horrid screeching of her voice in the microphone as she displayed her triumph of illusion: him.
Her face came close, smiling.
“You’ve been such a good boy tonight, Marlon,” she whispered giddily as if to a confrere, “you’ll have extra veggies in your aftershow supper, and maybe even a big carrot from Mr. MacGregor’s garden.”
While his ears and tail drooped with self-recognition, he spied his former form, now bent and shuffling, hastening out of the theater before the crowd began its rush for the exits.
Occupational Hazard: A Harry the Book Story by Mike Resnick
I have just given 75-to-1 against Lowborn Prince, who has not finished in the money since G. Washington chopped down the cherry tree, and I am wondering what kind of idiot puts five bills on this refugee from the glue factory when Benny Fifth Street walks up to me and whispers as follows:
“I saw you take that bet. Lay it off.”
“What are you talking about?” I say. “Booking five hundred dollars on Lowborn Prince is as close as a bookie can come to stealing.”
“Lay it off,” he repeats.
“Why?” I ask.
He looks around to make sure no one is listening. “I just got word: the hex is in.”
“Not to worry,” I assure him. “I paid my hex protection to Big-Hearted Milton not two hours ago.”
“You don’t understand,” says Benny Fifth Street. “Don’t you know who made that bet?”
“Some little wimp I never saw before.”
“He’s a runner for Sam the Goniff!” he says. “And you know the Goniff. He’s never bet on a fair race in his life.”
The horses are approaching the starting gate. It’s too late to lay the bet off, so I just make the Sign of the Pentagon and cross my fingers and hope Benny is wrong.
The bell rings, the gate opens, and Lowborn Prince fires out of there like he’s Seattle Slew, or maybe Man o’ War. Before they’ve gone a quarter of a mile he’s twenty lengths in front, and I can see that Flyboy Billy Tuesday has still got him under wraps. He keeps that lead to the head of the stretch. Then Billy taps him twice with the whip and he takes off, coming home forty-five lengths in front. By the time Billy has slowed him down and brought him back to the Winner’s Circle the race is official and the prices have been posted, and Lowborn Prince pays $153.40 for a two-dollar bet. But I didn’t book a two-dollar bet. I pull out my pocket abacus and dope out what I owe the Goniff, and it comes to $38,870, and I know that I have to pay it or the Goniff will send some of his muscle, like Two Ton Boris or, worse still, Seldom Seen Seymour, to extract it one pint of blood at a time.
I hunt up Big-Hearted Milton, who is sitting at his usual seat in the clubhouse bar. As he sees me coming he pulls a dozen hundreddollar bills out of his pocket and thrusts them at me.
“Here’s your money back,” he says. “I didn’t deliver, so I won’t keep it.”
“That’s fine, Milton. Now give me another thirty-seven grand and we’ll call it square.”
“That was never part of the deal,” he says with dignity.
“Neither was letting a hex get by you.”
“I tried to find you and give it back when I heard what was coming down,” says Milton. “It’s not my fault you were ducking out of sight because the cops were making the rounds.”
“You knew Lowborn Prince was going to win?” I demand.
“I knew the hex was in. I didn’t know who was going to win, because I didn’t know who the Goniff was putting his money on. There were three other longshots in the race. It could have been any of them.”
“What went wrong?” I ask. “You’ve broken lots of hexes for me.”
“Yeah, but they were from normal, run-of-the-mill mages. Not this time.”
“Who the hell does the Goniff have hexing for him?” I ask.
“You ever hear of Dead End Dugan?” says Milton.
“Dugan?” I repeat, frowning. “When did he get out?”
“Not out,” Milton corrects me. “Up. They buried him in Yonkers, and that was supposed to be the end of it.”
“So?”
“So he’s a zombie now, and my magic isn’t strong enough to counteract his.”
“Look, Milton,” I say, “this is serious. If I take one more beating like this, I’m out of business, and probably out of fingers and other even more vital parts as well. What am I going to do?”
“You need a real expert to go up against him.”
“A voodoo priest, maybe?” I ask.
“Yeah, that might do it,” says Milton.
I gather Benny Fifth Street and Gently Gently Dawkins and tell them we’re leaving the track early, that we’ve got to find a voodoo priest before I can go back to work. Benny immediately suggests we buy plane tickets to Voodooland, but I explain that there isn’t any such place, and Gently Gently says that he’s got a friend up in Harlem who belongs to some weird cult and for all he knows it’s a voodoo cult, and I tell him to offer his friend anything but make sure he brings his voodoo priest to my place, and I’ll be waiting there until I hear from him.