Sammy the Sorcerer
by Ronald Schulte
part 1
“You’re drunk.”
I don’t respond to Amy’s provocation. My wife, seltzer-sipping prude that she is, loves to nag me whenever I enjoy a libation. It’s an old argument, one of many in her go-to handbag of attention-grabbers. I won’t take the bait, and that isn’t in any way related to the fact that in this particular case, she’s right.
“How much longer do we need to suffer here? God, I hate reunions.” Good, she’s changed tactics. We’re on the same team again. Men, take note: You’ll win a surprising number of arguments simply by keeping your mouth shut.
“I’m not suffering, you’re suffering,” I point out eventually. “I’m having the time of my life.”
“Sure, you must be loving every minute. That’s why you’re drunk as a skunk.”
“I’m drunk, my dear, because I’m trying to look cooler than I did back in high school.”
“Wait, you weren’t cool in high school? I could have sworn you were in both Magic Club and Chess Club.”
“That sounds suspiciously like sarcasm, my dear.”
“Sounds like you are slurring your words, my love.”
“Touché. Twenty minutes?”
“Fine. I’m going to find the ladies’ room.” Amy strolls off, placated for the moment. I finish my whiskey sour and head to the open bar for another.
“Marc the Magnificent!” The voice comes from just over my shoulder, and I recognize it immediately. I wait until the bartender hands me my drink — priorities — then turn around. I’m immediately enveloped in a bear hug so strong I almost drop my drink.
“The Phenomenal Phil,” I say with a grin once he lets me go and I can breathe again. “You haven’t aged a day.”
“You have, Marc. Jesus, you look like an old man!”
“So do you, asshole. I was just being nice.”
“I can’t believe it’s been twenty-five years.”
“Has it? I thought this was only our twentieth reunion.”
“Ha, nice try. Still with Amy?”
“I am. She’s here, somewhere. How about you? Still with Gina?”
“Nah, we broke up right after high school. Met a nice girl in college, though. Lisa’s her name. We’ve been married seventeen years now, two beautiful kids.”
“That’s great to hear.” The crowd is pressing in behind us, so we pause the conversation to move away from the bar to a less crowded spot. I take the opportunity to sip my drink and try to come up with more questions for someone I barely know anymore. Reunions really are awkward. Maybe Amy is right; maybe that’s why I’m drunk. Why is she always right?
“Do you still do magic?” Phil asks. Of course; what an obvious question. Why didn’t I think of that?
“Nah. I haven’t touched a deck of cards since high school. Except to play Texas Hold ’Em once in a while.”
“Gee, that’s too bad. You were great with that sleight of hand stuff. I still don’t understand how you pulled off some of those tricks. You were doing stuff like that Shin Lim guy before America’s Got Talent even went on the air.”
“If you say so.” I laugh.
“Why’d you give it up?”
“Just sort of fizzled out, you know? Too much to do, too little time.”
“Yeah, I hear you.”
I take a healthy sip of whiskey sour to wash away the taste of my lie. I know exactly why I gave up magic. And when. It was right after that talent show, senior year.
Phil is looking at me expectantly. Oh right, we were talking.
“How about you? Still do magic?” Nailed it.
“I’ve been known to work a kid’s party or two,” he says with a wink. I smile, and he smiles back. Then, inexplicably, his smile fades. He drops his drink.
The room has gone strangely silent. Everyone is staring, but not at Phil and the shattered glass at his feet. I follow the gazes, and nothing really clicks until I hear the whispers.
“It’s that kid.”
“Sammy something-or-other, wasn’t it?”
“Holy crap. It’s Sammy the Sorcerer.”
That last one does the trick, no pun intended. I can see now what has everyone’s attention. A man stands silhouetted in the doorway to the convention hall. We can’t see his face, but we can see his cape and magician’s hat just fine. It’s a kid’s set, and it doesn’t fit him at all, but he wears it just the same.
He wanders into the room, head down, avoiding eye contact. The crowd parts in front of him, pushed aside as if by magnetic repulsion, leaving him a clear path directly to the bar. When’s the last time any of us have seen Sammy?
When’s the last time anyone has seen Sammy?
“Shirley Temple,” he requests in a clear but quiet voice. The bartender blinks, then scrambles to fulfill the request as the man settles down onto a stool.
The bartender hands Sammy his drink, and Sammy takes a big gulp, slurping loudly. No one else moves a muscle. Eventually he sets the drink down and wipes his mouth on his sleeve. His shoulders slump, and he mutters to himself for a moment. Finally he sighs, places his hands on the counter, and turns away from the bar. He forces his eyes up from the floor.
His eyes slowly scan the faces of the Class of ’94. Now it is our turn to stare at the floor and avoid eye contact. He searches methodically from right to left, processing and dismissing each face in turn.
Until his gaze settles on me.
I want to look away. Hell, I want to make for the door like half of my classmates are already doing. But I can’t break free. Sammy’s gaze is heavy, so heavy. It weighs a million pounds, laden with shyness and embarrassment and anger.
And power.
So much power. An endless well that threatens to burn a hole through my very soul if I maintain eye contact for much longer. A terrifying amount of power, but I can’t look away.
Sammy abruptly severs the connection, turning back to the bar and his non-alcoholic drink. I gasp suddenly, my lungs filling with much-needed air. Have I been holding my breath this whole time? My heart is racing; my palms are sweaty. I wipe my hands on my pants, then turn to whisper to Phil.
But Phil isn’t there.
He’s gone, long gone, slinking toward the exit with the rest of the cowards. Strangely, no one actually leaves, though the doors are propped wide open. A room full of rubberneckers, acutely aware of the danger but too engrossed in the drama to look away. Virtual prisoners of the legend of Sammy the Sorcerer, who once upon a time exploded a rabbit to try and win a talent show.
An image appears briefly in my mind, quite against my will: Mrs. Banks at the judges’ table, white blouse covered with blood, trying to clean spatter from her glasses with shaking hands. Mr. Jennings, seated to her right, jumping angrily to his feet. Sammy shouting back over screams of horror that the trick isn’t finished yet, there’s more, everybody sit down, sit down goddamnit! Then the lights go out, and...
A cough from one of my classmates pulls me back to the present moment, and I’m grateful. The memory is disturbing.
The bartender stands there like a deer in headlights, not understanding what’s happening but acutely aware that it isn’t good. I catch his eye and nod toward the herd near the door. He doesn’t run, exactly, but I’ll be damned if I’ve ever seen anyone walk faster.
I chug the rest of my drink, then saunter over to the bar and take a seat a few feet away from Sammy. He stinks, even from this distance. He reeks of body odor and chemicals and smoke. It is a familiar smell, a smell that didn’t win him any favors back in school. He stinks, and his hair is disheveled, and his shirt — not kid’s-sized like his magic cape but adult-sized, a Slayer t-shirt adorned with skulls and blood — is covered in stains and wrinkled terribly.
“You made that deuce of clubs disappear right out of Mr. Krumsky’s fingers,” he says eventually.
“I did,” I agree with a frown. I did do that. Sort of.
I wait for Sammy to say more, but he goes back to his Shirley Temple and silence reigns. Good talk. For some people, this might be seen as a deliberate ploy, a power play to make me feel uncomfortable. But Sammy doesn’t need ploys to make people uncomfortable. This is just his natural cadence, his strange rhythm of conversation, and I know better than to prod him.
“Surprised to see me?” he asks eventually.
“Very.”
Sammy nods. Then he goes off the rails. “At first I figured I was dreaming. Lost my mind or something, you know? First I’m on the stage, then I’m lost in darkness. But no matter how many times I blinked my eyes, pinched myself, it didn’t change. So then I thought maybe I’d fallen through the stage, into a basement or something. I felt around for a staircase, a door, a wall. Never found any of those things. Without walls, there was no way to do a systematic search. At first I tried to walk in straight lines, but eventually I resigned myself to random wandering.”
He gets up and begins to pace, almost as if he’s acting out said wandering. “Vast and dark. If there was a ceiling, I couldn’t see it. But not empty. No, not empty. The scuttling noises terrified me at first, but when I got hungry enough I started following the sounds rather than fleeing from them. They were damn hard to catch in the dark.”
Sammy stops pacing and turns toward me. “Rabbits, Marc. There were rabbits everywhere in that place. Ever eat raw rabbit, Marc?”
“Sammy... what in God’s name are you talking about?”
Copyright © 2023 by Ronald Schulte
