Human.4

butt of our stupid jokes.

He stood in the middle of the stage as helpers lined up four chairs behind him. He was looking out across the audience with a confident expression that seemed spooky on a kid his age, almost as if we were seeing a glimpse of Danny as he was going to be, twenty or so years in the future.

'Good afternoon,' he said calmly and commandingly. 'Welcome to my demonstration of the powers of the human mind.'

He unbuttoned his jacket and reached for the inside breast pocket, pulling out a brand new deck of cards. He took them from their box, cracked the seal and removed the cellophane, then mixed them up with a series of overhand shuffles.

Danny was a master with a pack of cards—he practiced card magic in front of his bedroom mirror—and I was suddenly afraid that he had bottled out of his hypnotism act in favor of some more of what he’d been doing at the talent show for the last couple of years.

'A deck of cards, new and shuffled,' he said, squaring the deck in his hands. 'But I only require nineteen of them.'

He counted off the top nineteen cards and threw the rest over his shoulder.

'Although, actually, it’s not really nineteen cards that I require,' he said, fanning the cards out in front of him so that we could only see their backs. 'I need something else. Only the cards can tell me what.'

He continued to fan them out, and then turned them around to the audience with a flourish.

Instead of the usual hearts, clubs, diamonds and spades there was a single letter on each card. Danny had fanned them out in such a way that there were gaps between certain cards that made the word breaks in the sentence the cards spelled out.

The cards read: I NEED FOUR VOLUNTEERS.

'Ah,' Danny said, as if the cards had just solved a difficult problem for him. 'I guess I need four volunteers. Any takers?'

Chapter 5

It was a good trick.

Actually it was an impressive trick, and I know some of the sleight of hand and false shuffles that Danny used to do it.

The rest of the audience thought it was pretty cool, too. There was a round of applause.

At the end of it no one had their hand up.

Danny was looking out across the sea of faces, but there were no takers.

Moments passed and still no one volunteered. It felt like the longer it went on, the less likely he was to get someone to put their hand up. I realized that I was gritting my teeth and holding my breath.

And still Danny looked around the audience, and there was a moment where the stage persona seemed on the brink of slipping.

No Danny, I thought, don’t bottle it.

It was only then that I realized my hand had raised itself above my head. I had been thinking about how maybe I should put it up, but I hadn’t got much past the initial thought, and certainly hadn’t reached a proper decision yet.

To this day I can’t remember lifting my hand.

Danny saw it and the calm returned to his features.

'Ladies and gentlemen, we have TWO volunteers,' he said, and that threw me. He was looking over at me and gesturing for me to join him on stage.

Then I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye and realized that Lilly had her hand up too.

She caught my eye, smiled an odd kind of smile, and then shrugged.

If I’d known Lilly was going to stick her hand up, I’d never have volunteered. I only put it up because I thought it might, you know, spare a friend some embarrassment.

Still, it was too late now. I couldn’t put my hand down and pretend it had never gone up.

I saw Simon looking at me with a look like I’d grown an extra head or something.

'That’s two people my own age,' Danny said as Lilly and I made our way to the front. 'How about a couple of brave adults to make up the numbers?'

So there I was. There was Lilly. There was Mr Peterson—without Mr Peebles. And there was Mrs O’Donnell, an ex-teacher who served behind the counter at the Happy Shopper.

Four volunteers.

We stood there, in front of the whole village just about, and I reckon we were all wishing we had kept our hands firmly down at our sides.

I could see my parents in the crowd. My dad was smiling and pointing. He had his phone out and was taking a photo. That’s all mobile phones are good for in Millgrove. I immediately felt self-conscious.

Danny went down the line of four and welcomed us on stage and then got us to sit on four chairs, Lilly, then me, then Mrs O’Donnell, with Mr Peterson at the end.

I felt awkward, and not just because this was the same stage I’d died on as a comedian, but simply because I was next to Lilly. There’s . . . oh, it’s complicated . . . an odd dynamic . . . er . . . look, I’ll leave this for now because I’m talking about Danny.

'I want you to answer me truthfully,' he said to us, but it was clear that the performance was for the sake of the gathered crowd. 'It’s very important that the answers you give are absolutely honest. Can you do that?'

We sort of nodded and mumbled, unsure as to what Danny wanted.

'Good,' he said. 'Have I prepared any of you for this moment? Have I coached you or in any way influenced you?'

Shakes of heads and muttered 'no's.

'OK. Thank you.'

He turned to the audience.

'Now, what I’m going to attempt today is no less than the hypnosis of our subjects here.' The statement caused a small buzz of excitement among the crowd. 'While I haven’t had the time to put our courageous volunteers into a deep hypnotic trance, I am going to try to relax them to the point where they can carry out a few . . . er . . . tasks for me, just to show that they are indeed in a suggestible state.'

He smiled, suddenly seeming miles away from the gawky, socially useless kid I’d lived next door to all my life.

'Give me a couple of minutes, can you?' he asked the audience, then spun on his heel, came back to where we were sitting, and squatted in front of us.

'I want you to relax.' His voice was quiet, mellow, soothing. 'I want you to close your eyes and study the darkness you find there.'

OK, I thought, I’ll play along.

I closed my eyes.

'Concentrate on my voice,' Danny said. 'Let it be your guide. You must not open your eyes until I tell you. If you understand me, nod your heads now.'

I nodded. Already my head felt heavy. It stayed nodded down.

'Good.' Danny’s voice was even more soothing. 'There is so much weight inside your heads, too many thoughts. We need to let go of them. I want you to imagine that the darkness you are seeing now is the screen of a television set. All dark. Dark. Dark and empty.

'Now, imagine a ball of light in the center of the screen. It’s bright. Too bright. It’s a circle of light that is really, really bright at its center, but gets hazy towards the edges. See the ball of light. See the hazy edges. See the darkness that surrounds it. Imagine it precisely, and hold it in your mind. You must see it. You must see it clearly. You can see it. I know you