The Magician - part 2

Spinelli reached the top of the stairs and looked around. The hallway was short and there was only four doors. He shifted his weight on the creaky floor, trying to will his foot forwards but it didn't seem to want to listen to him. Something about this hallway was deeply unnerving him.

"Come on," he said to himself, "it's just some incredibly old geezer, inviting me up to his room, for reasons unknown...what could be suspicious about that?"

Spinelli inched his way down the hallway. He looked at the doors, there were no numbers on them. Well, not exactly, the numbers had been scratched off. He reached out to the first door and rubbed the faded scratch marks...

"Are you coming in or not?"

Spinelli jumped, a door he had not noticed at the end of the hallway was open and the old man who had shouted down to him in the street was poking his head through the opening.

"Well, come on, you're letting the cold in." said the old man, disappearing back through the door.

"...Heat out. Thermodynamics 101." Whispered Spinelli.

"What's that?" the old man's voice came through the open door.

"Nothing, nothing." Spinelli said a little more loudly than he meant. He walked forward and went through the doorway.

"Take a seat" came the old man's voice from behind a door, "I'm just bringing in some tea."

Spinelli looked around the room. It was very brown, very messy. Stacks of old newspapers and magazines were piled in rather precarious looking piles. There was a distinct aroma of cat piss but he could see no other hint that a cat had ever been in the living room. Spinelli clicked the door shut behind him and went over to the plastic covered settee, wiped it down and sat. He could hear the clink of metal on china coming from behind the closed door. He looked around the room again and saw a picture on the mantelpiece. Glancing at the still closed door, he stood up and walked over the picture. It was one of a man in a pinstripe suit lounging against the doorframe of what looked like a jazz club. The man was smirking as though he'd just thought of a great joke but wasn't going to tell anyone else what it was. Slung over his shoulder was a saxophone and-

"Oh I see you've found that old picture of me." The old man stood in the doorframe holding a tray. "Lucky, actually, as that is what I wanted to talk to you about."

"What are you talking about?" asked Spinelli.

"Sit." The old man commanded, Spinelli put the photo back on the mantelpiece and sat.

"That photo you were looking at was one of me, back in the early 60s, late 50s, I forget exactly when, it's not really important. What is important is what I was doing."

"Which was?"

"I'm getting to that, if you'd quit interrupting. Drink your damned tea and I'll get on with it!" The old man croaked loudly. "Now then, as I was saying, that was me back in the day. I was a bit of a hotshot, well, at least I thought I was. Barely in my twenties I was and I was sure that my big break was just around the next corner. So I kept turning corners but I never did find success."

The old man took a sip of his tea. "That is until one night, the very same night that picture was taken as a matter of fact, I came across something quite spectacular. It was a melody. A simple four bar tune that unlocked everything for me. By the end of that night I had everything I ever wanted or thought I wanted. Some big-shot producer wanted me signed to his record label, the women were all over me, I was promised fame, fortune, the world..." He trailed off.

"So then what happened?" Spinelli asked, the cup was raised to his mouth but he had not yet drank a drop.

"I got cold feet." The old man chuckled. "There I was, ready to conquer the world and I blinked. I think the melody knew as well, somehow. I'd written it down, but I could never bring myself to play it again. Not even after I found out the producer's phone number was a fake, not even after the girls who'd been so very...friendly...the night before, suddenly looked at me as though I was shit beneath their heels. Every little, or big, tragedy that happened after that night, even though I knew I could prevent it with this melody, I never did."

"But why? I mean, if this is magic, and I'm not saying I believe your story, but if it could make your life great why not use that?"

The old man shrugged. "I was scared. No one had ever given me something for nothing and now here was this tune, that just magically appeared in my head one evening, giving me access to everything and more. I didn't want to know what the price was."

"So, then why did you invite me up here?"

"It's obvious, isn't it?" The old man took a folded piece of paper from his pocket "I want to know what the cost is."

Spinelli looked at the old man, incredulity etched on his face.

"You've just told me how scared this thing makes you and you want me to test it out for you? Just to see what happens?"

"That's the long and short of it. Remember, it can do anything you want, and there's a possibility it might not do anything." The old man put his cup of tea down and stood up. "I'm going to leave the room now, I'll just leave this here." He put the folded piece of paper down on the table. "You can either take it, or not, it's up to you." He shuffled towards the kitchen door. "All I ask is that if you do take it, please let me know how it turns out." He exited the room.

Spinelli looked down at the piece of paper. Was this a trick? Was the old man just bored and had he decided to invent a story about some absurd wish granting tune to prank a gullible fool? He looked up at the door, there was no spy-hole that he could see. Hesitantly, he reached across and picked up the folded piece of paper. On it was a simple series of notes, scrawled messily amidst stains and cigarette burns.

"This is stupid." He muttered under his breath and then, slowly and uncertainly, he began to whistle the notes on the paper. He reached the end of the paper and silence fell upon him.  Nothing happened. He whistled the tune again, this time more confidently and with increased volume then looked around as he finished. Nothing continued to happen. He stood up and walked to the kitchen door.

"Hey, old man, is this a joke or what? Do you just invite people up to your house and laugh at them when they-" he froze as he pushed open the door. Inside, the kitchen was a mess and had clearly been abandoned for years. Thick swathes of mould painted the corners of the ceiling, various large fungi grew around the dilapidated sink. Smashed crockery and pigeon droppings littered the floor. A wave of decomposition and rot washed over Spinelli. He spun around and fought back the urge to vomit as nauseous bile retched up inside him. Then his eyes saw the living room he had just been in and he vomited profusely.

The couch he had been sitting on was covered in black and green moulds, the cup he had been pretending to drink from had become chipped and cracked and its contents now lay in a pool around it. Orange street light filtered into the room through boarded up windows. The smell of the rot of decades passed assaulted him again and he fought back a second wave of nausea and ran to the front door which he noticed was hanging from its hinges. He ran down the entry hallway and as he was bounding down the stairs, one of the steps crumbled beneath him and a pain shot through his body.

"Argh!" He cried out as he pulled his leg free from the broken staircase. As he did so he unbalanced himself and tumbled down the stairs. He landed in a heap at the bottom and was still for a moment as he lay confused over what had just happened, but that reminded him what had just happened, and so he picked himself up and ran from the building.

He burst through the front door of the building and ran across the street, before finally collapsing from the pain in his leg. He looked down and saw that it was badly cut and bleeding quite freely. He glanced up at the building he had just ran from and saw that all of its windows were boarded up and so was the doorway he had just ran through. Struggling to make sense of what he was seeing, he promptly gave up and passed out on the sidewalk.