Magic Lantern

Abruptly, the assistant hurried forward and draped a bloodred curtain over the water tank. Maybe it was supposed to protect the audience from the horrid sight unfolding before them. Then the woman lifted an ax and prepared to strike.

The audience held its collective breath.

The only thing holding Annja in her seat was Gaetano’s firm, unshaking hand on her arm. And that wasn’t going to hold her back for much longer.

The assistant started her swing with the ax just as the curtain rose above the water tank. She dropped the ax and yanked the thick material away to reveal Edmund standing triumphantly on top of the locked water tank.

Annja released a tense breath as enthusiastic applause filled the dining room.

Dripping wet and looking magnificent, Edmund bowed theatrically. Then the stage curtains closed.

Gaetano smiled at Annja. “Now are you glad that I asked you to wait?”

“Yes, but that was nerve-racking.”

“It was meant to be. Magic is meant to confound or astonish. But really good magic, the kind like Houdini practiced, was more in line with a circus performance.”

“How?”

“An aerialist working without a net. A lion tamer sticking his head into a lion’s mouth. A motorcycle daredevil whirling madly inside one of those steel balls. And even someone who allows himself to be shot from a cannon. They all flirt with death. At least, they do to an untrained eye. But the reality is that even the best performers sometimes catch an unlucky break. The audience never truly wishes to see something like that, but the expectation is there that it could happen.”

“I suppose that doesn’t speak highly of us, does it?”

“We’re all human. What is life without spectacle? And risk?”

* * *

“I LOVE DOING MAGIC.” Edmund, dressed again in his tux, sat at the table and walked a euro across his knuckles. The coin flashed in the light. “Ever since I was a boy, I wanted to know how magicians did the things they did. So I worked at it.” He shrugged and smiled sadly. “Unfortunately, magic doesn’t pay much unless you get very good and very lucky.”

“Being good doesn’t always help.” Gaetano poured more wine all around. “Edmund, you are good. What you need is a dedication to your craft and luck.”

“So why didn’t you become a magician? The money?” Annja basked in the glow of the dinner, wine and company.

“I thought I needed a legitimate job. Something to fall back on. In addition to magic, I also loved stories. So I became a professor of literature.”

Gaetano threw his arm around the younger man. “Edmund is being modest, which is no way for any self-respecting magician to be. He attracted the attention of Oxford University and is now one of their shining lights.”

Annja grinned. “So I’ve been told.”

Gaetano shook his head. “Modesty ill becomes a magician. A performer of magic must be unique and daunting and commanding, while being extremely skilled at his craft. Edmund lacks the callous disregard for others that a magician must develop.”

“Appearing on Chasing History’s Monsters should help correct that.”

Gaetano licked his finger and mopped up graham cracker crumbs from the small dessert plate that had once contained an excellent blackberry cheesecake. “And that is precisely why I pressed him to agree to see you. Of course, that might not have happened, anyway, except for that little predilection of his.”

Annja was intrigued. “What predilection?”

“Oh? Usually he’s very prompt about mentioning it and the curse.”

Annja studied Edmund, who looked even more pained. “Now I’m curious.”

“Annja, you must be tired.”

She shook her head. “Not too tired to hear about cursed predilections. And I hate mysteries. If you don’t tell me, I’m going to be wondering all night.”

Edmund grinned. “Well, we can’t have that, can we?”

* * *

“WHAT DO YOU KNOW OF phantasmagoria?”

Annja walked beside Edmund as they strolled from Carlini’s Magic Bullet Club. Still feeling a warm glow from the after-dinner wine, she linked her arm through the young professor’s. “It was theater, kind of early film. Phantasmagorists projected images on walls—usually of supernatural creatures—and told stories about them. But that’s the extent of what I know.”

Cars whizzed by on the dark streets. Windows of closed shops caught their reflections as they passed. The wind held a chill and the fog had increased, but the weather was still pleasant enough.

“The images weren’t just shown on walls. They were also projected onto smoke and semitransparent surfaces, which created even more eerie effects. Phantasmagoria began in France in the late 1700s and spread all over Europe during the next hundred years. People do love being frightened.”

“The human culture seems to thrive on ghost stories. They address common fears and offer a backhanded belief in God.”

“If demons and monsters exist, then so must God?”

“Something like that.”

“You learned that in archaeology?”

“Anthropology, actually. All part of the same field.”

“Interesting.”

Annja patted him on the arm. She relished the conversation, and her curiosity about the young professor’s pastime remained unanswered. “This has something to do with your predilection?”

“Everything.”

“Good.”

“Phantasmagorists owed their success to the magic lantern.”

“That was made by the Chinese.”

Edmund grinned. “Not according to the phantasmagorists. They claim that Christian Huygens invented it in the mid-seventeenth century, and that Aimé Argand’s self-named Argand lamp made the device even better. However, I do know that the Chinese were the first to use lamps to project images painted on glass as storytelling devices. Actually, that comes into this story, as well.”

Annja continued walking and listening.

“Once the magic lantern was successfully designed, others were quick to use it. To backtrack a little, Giovanni Fontana, a physician and engineer and self-proclaimed magus, used a candle-powered lantern to project the image of a demon. The idea of the supernatural became a fixture when it came to the magic lantern.”

They paused at the street corner.

“Athanasius Kircher, a German priest, reportedly summoned the devil with his device. Thomas Walgensten called his projector a lantern of fear and used it to ‘summon ghosts.’ A man named Johann Georg Schopfer performed in his Leipzig coffee shop and summoned dead people, images projected on smoke. Later, he went insane—believed he was being stalked by devils and shot himself. He also promised he would raise himself from the dead.”