Magic with Thirteen-Year-Old Boys
                                 by Robert Reed

Magic takes many forms. In recent years, we’ve seen “White Magic,” “Black
Magic for Dummies,” and “Magic for Beginners.” Now Mr. Reed contributes his
own tale of supernatural arts with this inquiry into some of the shadowy recesses
of human sexuality. Despite the title of this tale, parents might want to vet this one
before sharing it with youngsters.

                                        ****

They do love to talk. There always has to be conversation before, and afterward,
unless they’re deeply drunk, words are pretty much mandatory. Nothing makes
women happier than hours of empty, soul-baring chatter. There’s even a few of them
that need to talk while they’re doing it. Of course their words get awfully simple, if
it’s during. They grunt out commands and sometimes encouragement, and a few
favorite phrases are repeated with predictable rhythm. But if a man can hold his
cadence, and if he knows what she likes, it isn’t boring. Simple and busy and very
crude noise wrapped around a fair amount of pleasure, or maybe a huge amount of
pleasure. Then it’s finished, preferably for him and for her both, and everyone gets a
few moments of silence marked with wet breathing and spiritual insights.

                                        ****
      “Ted?”
      “Yeah?”
      “Are you awake?”
      “No, I’m not.”
      “No?”
      “Hey—!”
      “Are you awake now, Ted?”
      “That fingernail—!”
       Without a trace of sorrow in her voice, she says, “Sorry.” Then after a deep
sigh, she asks, “What are you thinking?”
      “Nothing.”
      “Liar.”
      “Okay. You caught me.”
      “So what’s on your mind?”
      “You.”
      “Good answer.”
      Good enough to earn a few moments of uninterrupted quiet.
      “Ted?”
      “Who?”
     She ignores his response. “I have a question,” she announces. “I’ve been
meaning to ask this since, I don’t know when. A couple weeks, at least....”
      “What’s the question?”
      “Do you believe?”
      “In what?”
      “Anything at all,” she says.
      He says, “Gravity,” and laughs for a moment. “I wholeheartedly believe in the
abiding force of gravity.”
       “That’s not what I mean,” she warns. “I’m talking about faith. In God and
that sort of stuff.”
      “Stuff?”
      “You know what I mean.”
      “Stuff.”
       “Do you accept things you can’t see? Forces and powers that exist outside
the realm of pure reason?”
      “Gravity,” he repeats.
      “Don’t joke, Ted.”
       “I mean that.” He sounds sincere and perhaps a little angry. “Most of human
history has been lived happily without the concept of gravity. People never imagined
that bodies in space attract each other. Even with Newton’s equations ... they work
only in limited situations. And the deepest parts of Einstein’s work still don’t
address every condition in our universe, much less in those other realms that may or
may not exist.”
      A hand waves in the darkness. “Fine. Gravity.”
      “Here’s something else to consider,” he says. “We can’t tell for certain that
every mass in the universe attracts every other mass. It’s impossible to do the
necessary research. I mean, yes, the Earth pulls down on us. And two metal balls
suspended on delicate wires will attract one another in the proper way. But what
about two naked people sprawled out on sweaty sheets? That work has never been
done in the laboratory. Who knows if the law of nature holds in our circumstances?”
He laughs again, briefly. “So really, you can see, this business about gravity is one
enormous leap of faith.”
      She says, “Sorry.”
      “Apology accepted.”
      A pause. “Anything else?”
      “What do you mean?”
      “Is there anything else you have faith in?”
      “Oh, sure.”
      “Are you going to say, ‘Evolution’?”
      “Hardly,” he says. “Natural selection has been proven more thoroughly and
far more convincingly than gravity has ever been.”
      “Okay. What about magic in general?”
      “What about it?”
      “Do you believe in it?”
      “In magic?”
      “Do you understand the question?”
      He sighs.
      “You can’t accept magic,” she decides.
      “Think not?”
      “Judging by your tone—”
      “You can’t read my tone, and I’d bet anything you can’t read my mind. Little
Miss Believes-in-things-that-can’t-be-seen.”
      “Sorry.”
      He takes a long moment, then asks, “What do you mean by ‘magic’?”
       “Anything and everything that’s miraculous,” she begins, with feeling. “Magic
is everything that shouldn’t happen. Magic can conjure up the most amazing things,
and usually from nothing.”
      “‘From nothing,’“ he repeats.
       “Magic has rituals and rules. And when it has real power, magic can harm the
weak and the sloppy. But there always must be a few great wizards in our world, and
with their spells, they achieve wonders. That’s why magic exists. That’s why it is
something worth treasuring.”
      “Yes.”
      “What?”
      “I said, ‘Yes.’”
      “You buy the idea of magic and spells?”
      “Very much so.”
      “All right. What kinds of magic?”
      After a moment, he says, “No.”
      “What?”
      “I won’t tell you.”
      “You will too.”
      “Why? You want to hear about my little run-in with the mystical world?”
      “Of course.”
      “Okay then. I was thirteen.”
      She says nothing.
      “Thirteen,” he repeats.
      “You were a boy. I heard you.”
      He takes a breath and then another breath before saying, “You don’t know
anything about being a thirteen-year-old boy. Understand?”
      “Okay,” she squeaks.
      He takes one final deep breath. “I was with my best friends,” he says, “and
one day, seemingly by accident, we happened across a magical book.”
                                       ****
       They were playing in a woodlot behind their subdivision. Ted had seen a fox
the night before—a beautiful graceful dream of an animal—and with the help of his
two closest friends, he was searching for the fox’s den. What the boys would do
when they found it, he had no idea. But the hunt managed to hold everybody’s
interest for nearly an hour, leaving the three of them hot and thirsty, and ready for
some new adventure.
      That’s when Phillip found a backpack tucked under a juniper tree.
      Scott didn’t approve. “You should have left it there,” was his opinion. “It
doesn’t belong to you, so put it back now.”
      Phillip was the brave one in their group. Scott believed in rules and obedience,
while Ted was somewhere between. Exactly where he fit depended on the day and
his mood.
       “Don’t you want to see what’s inside?” Phillip asked. Then he shook the
pack, something with heft bouncing inside.
      “No,” Scott said. “That isn’t ours—”
      “But maybe there’s an ID,” Ted mentioned. “We’ll find the owner and give it
back, and maybe even split the reward.”
      The rationale meant something to Scott. Sensing something fun, Phillip didn’t
want any owner to be found, but it served his needs to nod confidently, saying,
“Yeah, let’s look for a driver’s license or something.”
        The pack was old, the gray-green nylon fabric thin as tissue in places, a
couple tears mended with rusted safety pins. The object was dirty enough to show
that it had been outside for a few days, but not as filthy as it would have been if it
were exposed to last week’s heavy rains. The back pocket had been left open,
Phillip discovered. It was empty. The zipper to the main pocket fought his tugging,
but he managed to pull it open far enough to look inside, turning the pack to where it
could fill with sunshine.
      Many years later, Ted would still remember his friend’s face changing. The
blue eyes just lit up, and a mouth that was usually held in a tight smirk fell open.
Then a small, deeply impressed voice said, “Not here.”
      “What is it?” Scott asked.
      Phillip clamped both hands over the open pack, sealing in the contents. “Back
this way,” he said. “In the gully.”
      Better than anyone else in the world, those three boys knew the local terrain. It
took several minutes, but once they stopped running, they were out of sight of every
human eye in Creation, squatting on a flat piece of the ravine floor, forming a triangle
around this most unexpected treasure.
      “Okay,” Phillip said, releasing his hands.
      “What is it?” Scott inquired, leaning back warily.
      “Take a look,” Phillip said to Ted.
        Whatever was inside, Ted guessed that it wasn’t dangerous. At least it
wouldn’t bite or explode. So he reached in blindly, feeling a stack of thick paper
bound together with fat rubber bands. Then just for fun, he faked pain, jumping back
as if a set of fangs had stabbed his fingers.
      “Oh, crap!” Scott blurted, tumbling onto his butt.
       Ted laughed at his cowardly friend, and then he pulled out a stack of
photographs. Suddenly every boy was staring at the top image. Even Phillip, who
knew what to expect, was staring. Everybody took a small step back, and Ted
dropped the discovery on the dusty ground. And all these years later, he could still
see the contorted face of the young woman and an astonishing amount of her naked
body and what the faceless man was obviously doing to her.
                                         ****
      “Porn,” she says.
      He doesn’t respond.
       “I thought you were talking about magic,” she complains. “Not just some
dirty pictures.”
      “I told you,” he says. “I was thirteen.”
      “Yeah, I remember.”
      “A new-born adolescent.”
      She decides not to speak.
      “You won’t understand,” he says. “You can’t. Even if I was to tell you the
whole story—”
      “I thought you just did.”
     “No. That’s just the beginning. I was setting the scene. The important stuff
comes later.”
      “Is that a pun?”
      “Do you want to hear this, or not? Because I don’t have to tell it.”
      “I’m listening,” she promises. “Go on.”
       But he doesn’t say one word. Not immediately. He seems to be debating the
relative merits of what he has begun, and when he finally does speak, he does so
slowly, cautiously, as if at any moment, given the tiniest excuse, he will stop talking
and never again say one word about this intimate subject.
                                        ****
       The boys quickly recovered from their shock. Phillip knelt and studied the top
image. Then he wiped both hands against his sweaty shirt, and with the others close
beside him, he touched the page. The photograph had been glued to a sheet of what
looked like thin cardboard, stiff and pale gray, larger than the picture and cut to size
with long scissors. Two fat red rubber bands held the book together. Phillip
removed the top band and then its partner, taking the trouble to place both inside the
empty pack. Then he paused and grinned, enjoying a quick deep breath before
turning the page.
       The next photograph was smaller, and it was black-and-white, and it was
nearly as memorable as the first. A different girl was holding herself in a completely
different position. What must have been a brilliant flash gave her body a silvery-white
glow that was at least as captivating as what she was doing. The man seemed to be
the same man, judging by the proportions of his body. But the bed was different,
and the room around the bed too, and if it was the same camera as before, it was
being used in a very different fashion.
      The third page had four color Polaroid pictures set in a specific order, each
equally faded by time. This time, there was no man. But again, the girl was fresh. She
looked young and exceptionally tall, but like the first two women, she seemed to be
wholly oblivious to a camera, busily doing things with herself that were as bizarre as
they were captivating.
      In all, there were thirty pages.
       The boys counted the photographs and arrived at several general conclusions:
Each page held a different girl, and when a man was visible, he was probably the
same man, or at least a fellow with a similar body. But the girls were never the same.
Not in age or build, and sometimes not even in their race. The only similarity was
that each of them was young, and in some fashion, lovely.
       About their lover, nothing seemed exceptional. Even boys of thirteen had
enough experience in the world to feel sure about that. The man’s legs were not lean
or particularly muscular, nor was any dimension about his body anything but
average. Whenever he was standing, his stomach looked pudgy. Perhaps he had
handsome features, but there was no way to tell since his face was out of view. But
the women’s faces were always visible; with each astonishing image, it was the face
that the boys’ eyes were drawn to first.
      Among the three of them, Phillip had the most experience with pornography.
His older brother had amassed a considerable library of Playboys and Penthouses
and even a few Hustlers. And most important, Phillip had a practical smartness
about things most thirteen-year-olds never even thought about.
      “This doesn’t make sense,” he complained.
      Scott was flipping back through the book now, slowly, page by delicious
page. “What do you...?” His voice faded, hands adjusting the fit of his jeans. “What
doesn’t make sense?”
      “Each one’s different,” Phillip said.
        Ted was staring at the faces and breasts and other stretches of honest,
captivating anatomy, committing details to a memory that would never again function
at this very high level.
    “He’s got to be some kind of stud,” Scott replied, aching with envy.
“Whoever he is, the guy knows how to get girls.”
      “I don’t mean the different girls,” Phillip said. “I mean the cameras.”
      Confused, the other boys glanced at their friend.
       “We can check again. But I don’t think it’s ever the same camera twice,”
Phillip continued. “Just like it’s not the same girl. And does that make sense?”
      Ted hadn’t considered the matter, not even for half an instant.
       “Thirty cameras. Who owns thirty cameras?” Phillip flipped back up the
Polaroid page. “You’re a stud, okay. And you like taking pictures. But who in the
hell uses a new camera each time?”
      “He’s rich,” Scott offered. “Which explains how he gets them, too.”
       Phillip shook his head. “Okay, he’s loaded. But why would a rich dude bother
with a freakin’ Polaroid?”
      Ted began to appreciate the problem, although he couldn’t imagine that it
meant much. What mattered were the photographs themselves. “Who do you think
they belong to?” he asked, trying to steer the topic.
      “And why put the book out here?” Phillip pressed. “This is an adult. He’s got
a house of his own, somewhere. Why stick this kind of thing in an old backpack and
dump it in the middle of the woods?”
      Ted had wondered about that problem, at least in passing.
       But in one critical issue, Scott was miles ahead of his friends. “I don’t care
how many cameras were used,” he announced, “or why this was lost out here. This
book belongs to us now. That’s what matters.” The cowardly, law-abiding boy had
finally found something worth taking. Turning back to the first picture, he said,
“What we need to do, right now ... we’ve got to figure out what we’re doing with
this wonderful gift.”
                                         ****
      He pauses again.
      After a long silence, she says, “I bet they were different men, each with his
own camera. That would explain things.”
      Watching her, he says nothing.
       Then she nods, admitting, “But that’s a smart thing to notice. Perceptive and
all. Your friend, Phillip, must have been a pretty sharp kid. I don’t know if I’d pick
up on it, if I was looking at dirty pictures.”
      “You never have?” he asks.
      “Not like guys look, no.”
      “Yeah, I guess not. Women don’t like porn the same as men do.”
      “Tell me.”
       “We’re wired differently,” he says. “Visual stimulation is everything.
Sometimes I think we’re the same species only because we’ve got to interbreed. If
not for that, men and women would just fly apart.”
      “That’s a pretty harsh assessment.”
      “And honest,” he says.
       She shrugs, returning to her explanation. “This was back when? The early
eighties, I’m guessing. Even before the Internet, there were plenty of twisted men
collecting twisted smut. There were networks where they could sell it and trade for it.
Some guy with an obsession probably just gathered up a stack of dirty pictures
where the men looked kind of the same.”
      “That’s one explanation.”
      “You have a better one?”
      “A simpler, sharper explanation. Yes.”
      “And what’s that?”
       “Those cameras are different because each girl supplied the equipment. A
variety of cameras and film, in a string of bedrooms and wherever.”
      “Then that was one incredibly smooth gentleman.”
      He says nothing.
     “‘Hey, honey. Pop a roll in your thirty-five-millimeter and set the timer. Let’s
make a memento of tonight.’”
      “Doesn’t sound reasonable to you?”
       “Hardly,” she says. “And I know a little something about taking pictures, too.
If these shots were half as good as you keep saying ... well, that means each woman
took dozens, maybe hundreds of them. Because in my experience, even the best
photographer needs luck when he’s using timers or a cord tied to the switch—”
        “Magic.”
        “What?”
     “Do you remember? That’s how we got on this subject, talking about spells
and magic.”
        “Yeah, I remember—”
        “‘Conjuring up amazing things from nothing.’ You said words like that, didn’t
you?”
        “Pornography is magic. Is that what you’re telling me?”
      “With rituals and rules, and a real power. Plus the capacity to do enormous
harm, if that power’s left in the wrong hands.”
        “This is just stupid.”
        He says nothing.
      “Stupid,” she repeats. Then with a grudging curiosity, she asks, “So. Is there
anything else to this dumb story?”
        “You tell me: What else does magic involve?”
        “Involve?”
        “What haven’t you seen so far?”
        She hesitates. Then, warily, she says, “The wizard?”
       And with that, he resumes his story.
                                        ****
       Together, the boys found a fresh hiding place for their treasure. In another
portion of the woods was a discarded slab of old pavement, invisible from most
vantage points but offering a clear view of the surrounding terrain. An earlier
generation of boys had dug a deep dry hole beneath the slab. Rain would never
touch the pack. Brush and last year’s leaves hid its presence. With the conviction of
grown men, they drew up rules concerning the book: You had to sit above the hole
for five minutes, making sure nobody had followed you. The book and bag had to
stay in that one place. Each picture was to be handled carefully. And when you were
done, you needed to make sure you were alone before hiding everything inside the
same hole.
        For a week, that system worked well enough.
       Ted visited the book four or five times. Phillip went with him on the first visit,
and they discovered Scott already there, sitting on the edge of the slab, long legs
dangling in the speckled light. The next day, Ted went alone—his longest, most
memorable visit—investing at least an hour examining one image after the next. Then
there was another day when he hoped to be alone, but Scott caught him on the trail.
His friend was a big kid, clumsy and pale, smart at school and foolish everywhere
else. “Have you already been there?” Scott asked, almost running to catch up.
      “You know I was,” Ted replied. “You saw me—”
      “I mean today,” the boy added.
      It wasn’t even noon. “No,” Ted admitted. Then a premonition tickled him,
and he asked, “How about you?”
      “Once,” he admitted.
      “You mean today?”
      “After breakfast,” Scott said, his face coloring and eyes growing distant.
       There was an addictive quality to those photographs. Even at thirteen, Ted
found the effects both sickening and irresistible—a set of innate urges released by
what was nothing more than chemical emulsions on sheets of fancy paper. He
couldn’t stop thinking about the girls and young women. Without trying, he would
close his eyes and see not only their bodies but their faces, too, and in particular,
their vivid eyes and pretty mouths that helped convey a set of expressions that were
both remote and self-absorbed, and to him, endlessly fascinating.
       All women, in all possible circumstances, suddenly held potentials that Ted
had never noticed. Actresses were more beautiful than ever, even the famous old
ones. And the neighborhood women—the average wives and mothers who before
this were no more than little portions of a humdrum landscape—had become
miraculous creatures. The boy found himself staring at them, asking himself what
kinds of wondrous, unlikely things these ordinary ladies did with their husbands.
And worst of all were the teenage girls. A week earlier, Ted could have made inane
conversation with most of them, feeling only a pleasant nervousness. But now the
stakes were infinitely greater. He had trouble making eye contact, much less offering
any coherent noise; and his worst enemy was his own infected brain, constantly
inventing ways to think about matters delicious and wrong.
       Phillip seemed less infected than Ted. Maybe his earlier exposure to dirty
magazines acted like a vaccination, or perhaps it was just his natural
man-of-the-world attitude. Whatever the reason, Phillip didn’t feel compelled to visit
the backpack every day, and when he pulled out the pictures, he noticed nonsexual
details missed by his best friends.
      “This is the oldest photograph,” he told them.
       The image was black-and-white, but that didn’t mean anything. Plenty of the
pictures were black-and-white. Ted took hold of the photo and lifted it up to the
light. The quality was obvious. Family portraits had the same perfect flash and
glossy finish. “But why’s this the oldest?”
      “Look here.” A crooked finger jabbed at the edge of the photograph. “See the
calendar?”
      In the background, something was hanging on the white wall.
      “You look at it.” His friend produced a magnifying glass, pressing it into
Ted’s hand. “Try and read the month and year.”
      May 1938.
       “Let me see,” Scott said. But instead of reading the date, he used the glass to
study the fine details of the woman’s body.
      “So there’s an old calendar on the wall,” Ted responded.
       “What about these hair styles?” Phillip flipped between examples. “This one
looks like it’s from the forties, and this has to be today, and this one back here ... it
sure looks like what’s-her-name’s hair. From the beach movies.”
      He meant Sandra Dee or Gidget. One of those girl-next-door girls.
      “There’s thirty years of pictures here,” Phillip said.
      The idea was unsettling, sure. But Ted pretended not to care. “The guy has
been busy,” he argued. “That’s all that means.”
         Flipping back to the oldest photograph, Phillip pointed out, “This belly here
... it doesn’t look like a twenty-year-old belly.”
      “That’s a different guy,” Ted offered. “An earlier pervert.”
      “Except it isn’t.” Phillip had invested a great deal of time to the study,
measuring the male’s legs and belly, and everything else that was visible. Pointing to
a kidney-shaped blotch riding on one pasty white leg, he then flipped to another
black-and-white shot. “This is probably the newest photograph,” he continued.
“See? The same exact mark. And the body looks exactly the same as before.”
      Ted didn’t like looking at the man’s bare leg.
      Scott claimed the new photograph, and again, he used the magnifying glass on
the woman.
       Without question, Scott was sicker than his buddies. Three or four times
every day, he devised some excuse to slip out of his house and down to the woods
for just one more look. He had admitted that he couldn’t sleep through the night
anymore, and that he was rubbing himself raw. There were moments when the kid
seemed to be willing himself to dive inside one of those inviting, addictive images.
      “Look at this,” said Scott. “Look at her close.”
      He set the new picture and magnifying glass into Ted’s hands.
       As it happened, this was Ted’s favorite image. The clear, colorless
photograph showed what the man was doing, and judging by the woman’s arching
back, she was enjoying herself. Enthralled, she had twisted her head around as far as
possible, looking up at the camera, her long straight hair plunging away from her
face, leaving her features more than half visible—a woman filled with a mixture of
determined concentration and utter bliss.
      Ted’s breathing quickened whenever he saw her.
      “Look close,” Scott repeated.
     With the glass, Ted started to count the neat knobby bumps that defined that
wondrous spine.
      “No, her face. That’s what you need to see.”
       But he already had. A hundred times, at least. It was a long elegant face
carrying a joyful, almost religious pleasure that he only hoped he could give to his
future wife, at least once in her life.
      “You’re not seeing it,” Scott complained.
      Phillip had to ask, “What are we supposed to see?”
      “This woman,” Scott blurted. “She lives on our street, Ted.”
      Oh, crap.
       “She’s that blond lady with twins. Remember? She and her husband moved in
last winter, while she was still pregnant....”
                                          ****
       “Was it?”
      “Was it what?”
      “Her. That mom with twins.”
      He says, “I hadn’t realized it until then. But it sure looked like her, yeah.”
      “Well, I guess that’s not too surprising,” she decides. “Since whoever took
those pictures probably lived somewhere close.”
      “Not surprising at all,” he agrees.
      “But you know what does surprise me, hearing this?”
      “I think I can make a good guess.”
      “The years.”
      He makes a neutral sound.
      “They don’t add up right.”
      He says nothing.
      A long, thoughtful pause ends with the declaration, “That’ll have to wait, I
guess.” Then she says, “Go on and tell me: What happened next?”
                                           ****
        The boys started keeping watch over the neighbor’s house. Ted particularly
kept tabs on it. The ordinary split-level stood across the street, two lots removed
from Ted’s bedroom window. With binoculars, he could see the front yard and part
of the back. In those first four mornings, the young husband emerged before
seven-thirty. He was a tall man, far too skinny to be the fellow in the pictures. He
would happily kiss his babies good-bye and hug his adulterous wife before driving
off to the city. Then around nine or nine-thirty, the young woman would put the
babies into her car and run a few errands, returning before noon with a trunk full of
shopping sacks. It was that second morning, not long after she had vanished, that
Ted went outside with a half-inflated football. He kicked it down the street and back
again, and then he kicked it hard enough to drop it into her front yard. Then he
pretended to shank the punt, placing the ball into the woman’s fenced backyard.
Nobody was home; what did it matter? He walked through the gate to recover what
was his, and then slowly circled the rest of the house, peering into every window
until he felt certain that the shag carpet in the finished basement was the same as the
carpet visible in the photograph.
        The babies took naps after lunch, it seemed. That’s when the woman would
step alone into the backyard, wearing a single-piece swimsuit and white paste on her
pretty little nose. In the binoculars, she looked to be in her twenties, with tall legs and
a little thickness around her waist. Her hair was long and straw-colored, and it
couldn’t have been any straighter. For an hour or two, she would sit on a chaise
lounge, not really sunbathing but enjoying her quiet time with magazines and little
naps. Then she would step back inside, not appearing again until around six o’clock
when her husband came home again.
      Except on the fourth day, things were different.
       Ted was sitting next to his window. It was after lunch when he saw Scott
emerge from his house and pause in front of the woman’s house, shamelessly staring
at the curtains. Then he strolled past Ted, glancing up with a possessed grin before
heading for the woods and the backpack. A few minutes later, Phillip rode past on
his bike, heading in the same direction. The woman still hadn’t appeared, and Ted
began to suspect that she wouldn’t. Maybe one of her babies couldn’t sleep.
Whatever the reason, he felt a strong urge to follow his friends; but then a pedestrian
appeared down the block—a man of no particular description who was wearing
nothing of note, walking up the slight slope and then pausing to glance both ways
before crossing the street, never breaking stride, calmly walking along the driveway
and up the concrete steps that led to the woman’s front door.
      The door opened and closed, seemingly of its own volition.
      The man had vanished.
       For as long as he could stand it, Ted waited. But his patience and strength
only carried him for a few minutes. He picked up the football and stepped outside,
flinging it down the street and running after it, then picking the ball up again, trying
hard to kick it exactly the same way as he did before.
      The football spiraled into the wrong backyard.
       Ted ignored his mistake. He lifted the latch of the woman’s gate, stepped
through and carefully set it down again. The finished basement was at the back of
the house, on the ground floor. Two days ago, the curtains had been pulled wide
open, letting him stare through the sliding glass doors. But now they were pulled
shut—heavy gray curtains bleached by sunshine—and for another minute or two, the
boy stood on the concrete patio, trying to will the curtains to part, flooding the room
with honest light.
      He thought about running away.
       Then came the sensation of being watched, and Ted turned slowly, looking at
the adjacent houses. Had any neighbors seen him? What kind of trouble was he
going to be in now?
      He didn’t care, he realized.
       Suddenly his hand reached out. As if watching someone else’s fingers, he saw
them grab hold of the warm steel handle of the door, and with a firm push, the
unlocked door moved slightly. The stiff curtain bent toward him in response, cold
air playing across his bare forearm. He took a moment to gather himself. Then his
hand reached around the curtain, and he crept close and took a deep breath and held
it, and tried to get so close that when he pulled the curtain aside, no sunlight would
shine indoors. He would have his own little window on whatever was happening, and
Ted was so sure of his plan that he didn’t notice the touch of two fingers on the
back of his hand. He was standing against the curtain and the fingers touched him
and then pulled away, and he noticed their absence instead. Then he leaped back and
watched in horror as a thick hairy hand—a hand almost as familiar as his
own—pushed between the curtain and jamb, pulling the door shut again, and this
time locking it with a clear, sharp thunk.
                                       ****
      “Oh, God.”
      He doesn’t reply.
       “Go on. Sorry to interrupt. Go on.”
                                         ****
       Ted found his friends sitting on the slab of old concrete, huddled around their
treasure. Scott had found the time to purchase his own magnifying glass—a bigger,
better model. Phillip was using his glass to study another picture. No, that wasn’t
what he was doing exactly. As Ted approached, he realized the boy had turned a
picture over, and he was staring intently at the stiff gray backing.
      “What are you doing?” Ted asked.
       Then before anybody could answer, he added, “I just saw our guy. I’m sure
it’s him. He’s with the blond right now, doing her.”
      Both boys looked up at him, visibly impressed.
      “Did you get to see them doing it?” Scott asked.
      “Nearly,” was Ted’s reply.
      Scott groaned as if in pain, and he immediately started hunting for her
photograph.
       Phillip had a clearer understanding of these matters. Waving his magnifying
glass, he asked, “So you didn’t see anything?”
      “Not really.”
      “But he’s there now?”
      “He was. Ten minutes ago.”
       Phillip tried to talk. “Maybe we should—” he managed to say. But then he
interrupted himself, asking Ted, “Did you see our guy’s face?”
      “Sort of.”
       Scott turned paler than ever, and he lifted his arm, pointing when he gasped,
“Is that him?”
       The man was standing fifty feet behind Ted. By all appearances, he was
unremarkable—a smallish fellow of no particular age, with a modest gut and shaggy
dark hair. His clothes weren’t rich or special. His features would never be called
handsome, and they were very nearly forgettable. But his eyes were hot and black
and very small, and he managed to project an intensity that earned a frightened
silence from his audience.
      “I want them back,” the stranger said slowly, firmly.
      Scott pulled the photographs into his lap.
     That made the man smile. He stepped closer, and even more quietly, he said,
“They belong to me.”
       “So what the hell are they?” Phillip asked. Then he answered his own
question, admitting, “They’re not like any porn I’ve seen. And this stuff they’re
glued to—”
      “Yes?”
       “I’ve been looking. Close.” Phillip stood up—a small boy brandishing his
magnifying glass as if it could serve as a weapon. “That backing of theirs. To me, it
looks like dried skin.”
      Ted felt weak and cold.
      The man gave an appreciative nod.
      “Human skin, is it?”
         “I’ll tell you,” the man said. “If you give all of those pictures back to me now.
I’ll tell.”
       Phillip made up his mind. In a moment, he snatched everything out of Scott’s
grasp, shoving them into the backpack and tossing the pack underhand.
       The man caught the pack without letting those fiery eyes leave Phillip’s face.
Then he explained, “Human skin does work and works very well, but there are
substitutes. Easier to find, and a lot easier to use.”
      “Use for what?” Ted muttered.
      “Well,” said the man, “to make a very strong soup.”
      “What do you want with soup?” Scott blurted out skeptically.
       “I rather like to eat it.” Then he pulled a photograph from the pack—the blond
woman on her hands and knees, as it happened—and he said a few odd words
before placing the corner of the photo’s backing into his own mouth, biting off a
piece of the skin and swallowing it whole.
      The boys glanced at one another.
      Grinning, the man began to turn away.
      “Leave the pictures,” Scott begged. “Just a little while longer, please....”
      The ageless wizard began to laugh. Quietly, he laughed at Scott and at all of
them. “But what would be the point?” he inquired. “The flesh is as seasoned as you
can make it, my boys. My soup can’t be any richer. My good boys. My dear little
men.”
                                        ****
      Silence.
      Then she asks, “Is that it?”
      “Pretty much,” he concedes.
      “The pervert ... the wizard ... what did he do next?”
      “Just walked off and vanished.”
      “And did you ever see him again?”
      “No.”
      She thinks for a long while. Then with a sigh, she says, “What year was that?”
      “1970. In the summer.”
      “Thirty-seven years ago.”
      “Sure.”
      “And you should be in your fifties now.”
      He says nothing.
      “If this is true,” she says, and then she pulls back. “I don’t know, Ted....”
      “What don’t you know?”
      “If I can believe any of this.”
     “Nobody is making you,” he says. But then he points out, “You’re the one
who openly and fervently believes in magic.”
      “You didn’t find the wizard again?”
      “I said I didn’t. No.”
     “But that kind of magic ... with the skins backing the pictures, and those
words that he said ... did you find out how to do the trick...?”
      In a certain way, he says nothing.
      “Ted?”
      Nothing.
“Ted?”
“What?”
“I have a camera.”