Play dead

ONE HUNDRED THREE

5:55 AM

In the darkness, in the deep violet folds of night, he hears whispers: low, plaintive sounds that speak to him of his many crimes, his many sins. As the voices overlap, as the pitch and timbre rise, so does the temperature in the glass coffin in which he is trapped. He soon realizes that these are not the voices of his past.

It is the voice of fire.

His head throbs with the effects of the chloroform. Where did Odette get it? Why had she done this to him? He tries to calm himself. Panic is the enemy. He slips his fingers into the secret latch in the corner of the box that is the Fire Grotto. The catch is vertical. It does not move. Again he tries. This time the metal is too hot to touch. Smoke filters in. He cannot breathe. He is once again the Singing Boy. And once again he is locked inside a cabinet of his father's design.

He maneuvers his hand into his pocket, removes the small remote control. He slides off the back panel, snaps it in two. He slips the hard plastic shard into the slot at the bottom of the main catch and begins to turn the screw. The heat is becoming unbearable. Sweat pools on the floor of the cage; steel hinges brand his back. Turn by turn, the screw slowly loosens. Finally, the catch drops to the floor of the cage. He pushes against the door. Nothing. He tries again. This time it begins to move. He takes a deep breath, holds it, as the box is now filled with smoke. His eyes and lungs burn as he rocks back and forth, forcing his shoulder into the door. The glass panels of the Fire Grotto start to crack in the intense heat. He expands his chest, flexes his upper arms. The door flings open. He emerges from the cage to find the stage now covered in thick black smoke. He makes it to his feet. The backs of his arms and hands are scorched and blistered.

As the flames devour the curtains on either side of the stage, he looks into the wings. Through the miasma he sees the Great Cygne. It is not the broken man he knows, the man who has lived in his filth for almost twenty years. It is the young illusionist, the man who strode onto the stage, his magnificent cape billowing behind him, his eyes mesmerizing. "Where dwells the effect, Joseph?" "The effect," he says, each word burning his throat, "is in the mind." The Great Cygne lifts his cape over his face. In an instant it drops to the floor.

The Great Cygne is gone.

Joseph Swann removes his false beard and eyebrows, his cutaway coat, and makes his way to the stairs, through the flaming inferno of the basement.