Now You See It... Part 1

NOW YOU SEE IT...

Matheson, Richard.

To my dear friend Robert Bloch, who created magic in all our lives

Magician's Choice: A technique in which two or more choices are supposedly offered for free selection by tile spectator but a predetermined one actually is imposed upon him.

1011113 S.UKIUGNI.

chapter 1.

U aresay you've never/ in your life, read a story written by a vegetable. Well, here's your chance. Not that ifs a story. It happened; I was there- Your narrator and humble servant, Mr. Vegetable.

My name is Emil Delacorte. When all this occurred, I was seventy-three.

You've probably never heard of me, even though I was a headlining magician in the 30's, 40's and 50's; called The Great Delacorte-a t.i.tle I pa.s.sed along to my son. I'm sure you've heard of him.

I was doing very well until I had a "cerebrovascular acci- dent" in 1966. Thafs a "stroke" to you, though I'm more inclined toward "apoplexy"; sounds more colorful. The ex- perience itself/ of course, was not so colorful. Though it was, G.o.d knows, plenty dramatic.

To me, anyway.

I was on me verge of being sealed into a boiler tank (one

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of my better escapes) when a blood vessel in my brain popped, depriving said brain of oxygen supply. Hemiplegitt (paralysis) took place, commencing the process which con- verted me into the aforementioned vegetable.

Quite a vision to my audience, I gather- From charming, urbane Delacorte (The Great) I was suddenly reduced to a dizzy, vertigo-locked, nauseous reeler. No doubt startling to the a.s.sembled folks. Disgusting too, as a violent head- ache and vomiting set in.

Not exactly the highlight of my s...o...b..z career.

Soon atterward, permanent paralysis began, the loss of speech, and my one-way ticket to Vegetable City. Sudden death from stroke being rare, I was not permitted the grace of taking my final bow and exiting me stage of life.

Instead, the best fate could offer me was a doctor's in- struction to reduce physical and emotional tension while I waited for as much recovery as possible.

Fourteen years later, when these events transpired, I was still waiting.

By dint of my son's loving kindness, I was not dispatched to some asylum but permitted to reside in his home, a mo- tionless figure customarily located in the study-or, as I prefer to call it. The Magic Room.

There I sat ensconced in my wheelchair, a staring obelisk, an effigy of what I'd been, a statue ent.i.tled Impotence (in more ways than one) or, better still. Up On the Shelf for Good.

A voiceless, torpid lump, ostensibly brainless.

There, you see, is the rub. For the real torment was that in mat dumb sh.e.l.l I existed in, an active and observant brain was struggling for the means to express itself. That is the horror of a stroke, believe me.

Perhaps if mis had happened ten or twenty years later,

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there might have been some medical-surgical procedure by which I could have ended my night- (and day-) mare.

Then again, perhaps not. Even my son, devoted as he was to, me, might have found it inescapable to A&F (Accept and Forget). Who could have blamed the man? I had become more a piece of furniture than a family member. Not hard to take a piece of furniture for granted.

I go on at length about my plant-kingdom persona so you will understand how all these strange events could have taken place in my presence without a single person in- volved giving it a second thought that I was mere. But then, do we concern ourselves with me observational capacities of a turnip?

Anyway, Maximilian (my son) had enough problems of his own, as you will discover.

A few more explanatory comments before I launch into my account of that fateful day.

Because of Maximilian's loyalty to me, I had a nurse (one Nelly Washington) who stayed with me constantly (in the beginning, anyway), providing those attentions I could not request but obviously required-eating and elimination to the fore.

Nelly was no Venus but she had an inner beauty of com- pa.s.sion, a good deal of patience, and (luckily for her as well as for me) an abundant sense of humor. Most of all. G.o.d bless her giant heart, she never allowed me to remain de- feated or helpless. She was a rock of rea.s.surance on which I wobbled constantly until some semblance of hope oozed back into my brain-along with a few restorative drams of blood.

I'm glad she happened to be absent on the day it all took

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place/ although in retrospect, I realize that it probably was no accident

After all. she would have been an obviously sentient wit- ness to the mania which occurred.

One thing about residing in a useless body in the sole com- pany of one's brain: it gives one time to appraise said brain, appreciate its true capacities, and, eventually, train it to per- form. In this way I was able to educate my brain to remem- ber everything I saw around me, thus enabling me to write down this event in full detail.

This is fortunate because the events I will describe took place fourteen years ago. I will explain, in due course, why I had to wait so long to disclose them-

But first, let me sketch in me environment for the play, or-most appropriately-Ihe setting for the magic show.

For magic is me dark thread which binds together me tapes- try of mis crazed and homicidal episode, this lethal interval of time.

This period of total lunacy.

This happened in the home where my son had lived for thirty-seven of his fifty-two years. My wife Lenore gave birth to him in 1928, dying ten years later giving birth to our second (stillborn) son.

As indicated, Maximilian had been (since my "accident"

made it impossible for me to perform) The Great Delacorte.

He had been my a.s.sistant since he was seventeen, and knew my act as weU as I did, performing on his own as well as continuing to help me, reaching full theatrical bloom when he was thirty-seven and a.s.sumed my stage name.

Living in this house were two other people, not counting the houseman and cleaning woman, who were also not pre-

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sent on that day. Coincidence? My aged, wrinkled a.s.s it was.

The first of these two people was Max's wife Ca.s.sandra, forty-one, a woman of uncommon beauty, intelligence, and nastiness. She had been married to Max for nine years/ his a.s.sistant in the act for eight- Ca.s.sandra had two goals in life. One was to get my an- cient bones out of the house and into a distant vegetable farm.

The other was.., well, that must wait, or we have no tale.

The third resident of Delacorte Hall (exclusive of Nelly and the two servants, o course) was Ca.s.sandra's brother Brian, thirty-five, an employee of my son's.

The house was (still is) in Ma.s.sachusetts, standing in the center of a twenty-two-acre plot of woodland, set back ap- proximately a quarter of a mile from the road. (Forgive the exact.i.tude of detail, ifs a habit I'm unable to overcome.)

Described briefly (I'll try, anyway), Delacorte Hall was (is) French Provincial in design, a truly splendid two-story structure which I'd had built in 1943, a choice earning year for me.