room, set into the rear of the sub-basement. The flickering light played off an array of strange contraptions made of brass, wood, and glass.
“What’s in there?” Diogenes said, creeping back up behind his brother.
“See for yourself.”
Diogenes peered in. “What are they?”
“Machines,” the older brother said positively, as if he knew.
“Are you going in?”
“Naturally.” Aloysius stepped through the doorway and turned. “Aren’t you coming?”
“I guess so.”
Pendergast, from the shadows, watched them go in.
The two boys stood in the room. The lead walls were streaked with whitish oxides. The space was packed floor-to-ceiling with contraptions: boxes painted with grimacing faces; old hats, ropes, and moth-eaten scarves; rusted chains and brass rings; cabinets, mirrors, capes, and wands. Cobwebs and thick layers of dust draped everything. At one end, propped up sideways, stood a sign, painted in garish colors and embellished with curlicues, a pair of pointing hands, and other nineteenth-century American carnival flourishes.
Late from the Great Halls of Europe
The Illustrious and Celebrated Mesmerist
Professor Comstock Pendergast
Presents
THE GRAND THEATRE AND ILLUMINATED PHANTASMAGORIA
Of
Magick, Illusion, and Prestidigitation
Pendergast stood in the shadows of his own memory, filled with the helpless foreboding of nightmare, watching the scene unfold. At first the two boys explored cautiously, their candlelight throwing elongated shadows among the boxes and piles of bizarre devices.
“Do you know what all this is?” whispered Aloysius.
“What?”
“We’ve found all the stuff from Great-Grand-Uncle Comstock’s magic show.”
“Who’s Great-Grand-Uncle Comstock?”
“Only the most famous magician in the history of the world. He trained Houdini himself.”
Aloysius touched a cabinet, ran his hand down to a knob, and cautiously pulled out a drawer: it contained a pair of manacles. He opened another drawer, which seemed to stick, and then it gave with a sudden pop! A pair of mice shot out of the drawer and scurried off.
Aloysius moved on to the next item, his younger brother following close behind. It was a coffin-like box standing upright, with a screaming man painted on the lid, numerous bloody holes piercing his body. He opened it with a groan of rusty hinges to reveal an interior studded with wrought-iron spikes.
“That looks more like torture than magic,” said Diogenes.
“There’s dried blood on those spikes.”
Diogenes peered closely, fear temporarily overcome by a strange eagerness. Then he stepped back again. “That’s just paint.”
“Are you sure?”
“I know dried blood when I see it.”
Aloysius moved on. “Look at that.” He pointed to an object in the far corner. It was a huge box, much larger than the others, rising from floor to ceiling, the size of a small room itself. It was garishly painted in red and gold with a grinning demon’s face on the front. Flanking the demon were odd things-a hand, a bloodshot eye, a finger- floating against the crimson background almost like severed body parts loosed in a tide of blood. Arched over a door cut into the side was a legend painted in gold and black:
The Doorway to Hell
“If it were my show,” said Aloysius, “I would have given it a much grander name, something more like ‘The Gates of the Inferno.’ ‘The Doorway to Hell’ sounds boring.” He turned to Diogenes. “Your turn to go first.”
“How do you figure that?”
“I went first last time.”
“Then you can go first again.”
“No,” said Aloysius. “I don’t care to.” He put his hand on the door and gave Diogenes a nudge with his elbow.
“Don’t open it. Something might happen.”
Aloysius opened it to reveal a dim, stifling interior, lined with what looked like black velvet. A brass ladder stood just inside, disappearing up through a hatch in a low false ceiling set into the box.
“I could dare you to go in there,” Aloysius went on, “but I’m not going to. I don’t believe in childish games. If you want to go in, go in.”
“Why don’t you go in?”
“I freely admit it to you: I’m nervous.”
With a creeping feeling of shame, Pendergast could see his knack for psychological persuasion, already developed as a boy, coming into play. He wanted to see what was in there-but he wanted Diogenes to go in first.
“You’re scared?” Diogenes asked.
“That’s right. So the only way we’re ever going to know what’s in there is if you go in first. I’ll be right behind you, I promise.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Scared?”
“No.” The quaver in his high-pitched voice said otherwise.
Pendergast reflected bitterly that Diogenes, who was only seven, hadn’t yet learned that truth is the safest lie.
“Then what’s stopping you?”
“I… I don’t feel like it.”
Aloysius snickered dryly. “I admitted I was scared. If you’re scared, say so, and we’ll go back upstairs and forget all about it.”
“I’m not scared. It’s just some stupid fun house.”
Pendergast watched, horrified, as his childish doppelganger reached over and grasped Diogenes by the shoulders. “Go ahead, then.”
“Don’t touch me!”
Firmly and gently, Aloysius urged him through the little doorway of the box and crowded in behind him, blocking his retreat. “As you said, it’s just some stupid fun house.”
“I don’t want to stay in here.”
They were both inside the first compartment in the box, jammed up against each other. Clearly, the fun house was meant to admit one adult at a time, not two half-grown children.
“Get going, brave Diogenes. I’ll be right behind.”
Wordlessly, Diogenes began to climb the little brass ladder, and Aloysius followed.
Pendergast watched them disappear as the hinged box door closed automatically behind them. His heart was beating so hard in his chest he thought it might explode at any moment. The walls of his memory construct flickered and shook. It was almost unbearable.
But he could not stop now. Something terrible was about to happen, but what exactly he still hadn’t the slightest idea. He had not yet excavated that deeply into old, repressed memories. He had to keep going.
In his mind, he opened the box door and climbed the brass ladder himself, passing into a crawl space above, which turned horizontally and gave onto a low chamber above the false ceiling but below the top of the box. The two boys were there ahead of him, Diogenes in the lead. He was crawling toward a circular porthole in the far wall of the crawl space. Diogenes hesitated at the entrance to the porthole.
“Go on!” Aloysius urged.
The little boy glanced back once at his brother, a strange expression in his eyes. Then he crawled through the
