“Look closely. The world is not as it seems,” Alex said in the deepest, most dramatic voice a ten-year-old could muster. “What you see is not always what you get. Prepare yourselves as we step into a new reality… a reality unlike anything you’ve ever seen.”
I stifled a laugh. “Where do you get this stuff?”
He shrugged. “I saw it on TV.” He was using his regular voice again.
You see, while most boys his age put on capes to play Batman or Superman, Alex would put on a cape to play Harry Houdini. I have to admit, he looked the part. The jet-black hair slicked back beneath the oversized top hat, the plastic wand protruding from his breast pocket, the dollar store clip-on bowtie - it all contributed flawlessly to the act.
Alex cleared his throat before resuming the theatrics. He brandished a deck of playing cards from behind his back and shuffled them crudely on the coffee table. When he was done, he fanned the deck in front of our faces. All we could see was the design on the back of each card: the abstract red flourishes and the Cupid-esque figures facing one another. “Pick a card, any card!” he said with a massive grin.
“Hey genius,” Erica began. “The cards are supposed to be facing us.”
Alex’s cheeks turned red. “I meant to do that,” he muttered before shuffling the deck again and correcting his mistake. Now holding the cards in the correct orientation, he repeated his instructions.
I drew a card and turned to Erica. I shot her a look that said “stop being a dick to your little brother.” She knew that look all too well.
I studied the card and returned it to the middle of the deck while Alex turned his head and closed his eyes tight. “Do you remember which one you picked?”
“Yes, honey. I’m pretty sure I’ve got it.”
He shuffled the deck one last time, pulled a card off the top and displayed it with a showman’s flare. The Three of Diamonds. “Is this your card?” he said with a self-satisfied smirk. I pursed my lips and shook my head. A wave of disappointment washed over his face.
“All part of the show!” he said with feigned enthusiasm. He yanked a card from the bottom of the deck. The Ten of Spades. “How about this?”
“Sorry, bud.”
Without a word, he turned around and hid his hands from our view while he nervously fumbled with the cards for a moment. Turning back to face us, he removed his top hat and withdrew another card from within. A Joker.
“You’re supposed to remove those from the deck, dummy.” Erica was growing restless. I nudged her with my elbow.
“That was impressive, but… still not my card,” I told him. “It was the Queen of Hearts.”
“Mom!” he shouted, stomping his foot. “You’re not supposed to tell me! I was gonna get it!”
“Yeah,” Erica said, nodding her head facetiously. “Another sixty tries and you would have nailed it, no doubt!”
“Okay,” Alex said. “I’ll try that one again tomorrow. For my next trick…”
Erica interjected. “You know, Houdini’s big trick was to let someone punch him in the stomach as hard as they could. Maybe we could try that?”
He ignored her and continued. “For my next trick, I’ll need a rabbit. Can we go to the pet store?”
I stroked my chin as if to ponder the question. “It’s a nice idea, but magicians can conjure rabbits out of thin air. They don’t need to buy them.”
Before he could respond, Erica butted in once more. “Remind me again why I couldn’t be an only child?”
“Okay, Miss ‘Too-Cool-For-School,’ go to your room.”
“Finally!” She practically skipped upstairs without missing a beat, leaving me alone with Alex. I reassured him that he was doing a great job already.
“I need more practice,” he finally admitted. “I’m going to skip ahead to the grand finale. I’ve been working really hard on this one. You’re going to love it.” He took me by the hand and led me through the hall to our downstairs bathroom.
“I’ll need a volunteer for this one,” he said. I jokingly looked to my left, then to my right before raising my hand.
“Wonderful! What’s your name, ma’am?” he asked. I stared at him in silence for a few seconds before telling him that he would be calling me Mom.
“Okay, Mom” he said with finger quotes. “You wait right here. I’m going to go inside and close the door. Once I say the magic words, you open it. Do you know the magic words?”
“Please and thank you?”
He rolled his eyes and stepped inside, hastily closing the door behind him. I noticed that he hadn’t turned on the light.
“Abra… Cadabra… Alakazam!”
I decided to wait just long enough for him to get into position, but I didn’t hear any movement. When I finally opened the door, I was met with a dark bathroom.
“Very impressive,” I began as I slowly inched my way to the fully drawn shower curtain. “I wonder where Alex could be…”
I yanked back the curtain, prepared for my big gotcha moment, but the shower was empty, save for a shampoo bottle that must have fallen onto the porcelain bottom. I must admit, I was puzzled. Could he still fit in the cabinets under the sink?
My question was answered immediately as I opened the doors and saw nothing but cleaning supplies, spare toothbrushes, and water pipes that surely rendered the space too tight for a child of his size.
Okay, I thought. He climbed onto the counter, opened the window, crawled outside, and closed it again - all in the twenty seconds that I waited in the hall. Had it even been twenty seconds?
I opened the window and looked at the rosebush that covered the ground beneath. It was riddled with thorns and showed no signs of disturbance. There was no way he had gone outside.
He really has been practicing, I thought.
I flicked on the bathroom light and stood in silence for a while. I wasn’t sure what to do next. My heart started to race as I grew faint. I threw open the door to the medicine cabinet. I’m not sure why I did that, because it was about a foot wide with roughly two inches of depth.
“Shit,” I said aloud, noticing that his EpiPen was missing. Was this some elaborate scheme? Was he running away from home?
I ransacked the ground floor of our home, combing through every room for a sign of Alex as I shouted his name at the top of my lungs. I checked our video doorbell feed from my smartphone to look for signs of motion by the front door. Nothing in the last hour, besides a few cars driving down our quiet suburban street.
As I was haphazardly throwing the sofa cushions across our living room, I heard the sound of footsteps descending from upstairs.
“Mom?” Erica called out to me. I turned to face her as she leaned against the banister. She looked concerned. “What’s going on?”
“Where is Alex?” I asked. I was so exasperated I could barely get the words out.
“Alex?”
“Where is your brother?” I was screaming now.
“Mom, I-” Erica trailed off.
I knew it. She has to be involved in whatever prank he’s pulling.
“Did you hear him go upstairs? Go check his room. Please.” She stared at me blankly for a moment before darting back up the stairs. I fell to the floor in tears and pulled at my hair. When I finally felt strong enough, I brought myself back to my feet and called out to my daughter. “Erica? Any luck?” No response.
I quietly made my way up the staircase and saw that her bedroom door was ajar. I heard the unmistakable sounds of murmuring. She was talking to someone. He’s with her, I thought. They’re going to give me a heart attack for a few minutes of childhood fun. And they don’t even like each other.
I felt a knot in my stomach as I crept closer to her bedroom door and realized that she wasn’t talking to Alex at all.
“Dad, please. This is serious. We have to call someone.”
Shit. Alex is in danger and she knows it. She doesn’t want to tell me what’s really going on.
I burst into her room as she gasped and dropped her phone. “Where is he?” I screamed. I rifled through her closet and under her bed. “What did he do? What did you do?”
Erica was sitting in her reading chair by the window, sobbing into her hands. “Mom, you have to stop this!” she begged.
I said some things to her - things I would never say to one of my children under normal circumstances - before storming out of her room. I trudged down the hall to Alex’s room and threw the door open. I didn’t know how to process what I saw inside.
Alex’s bed, his posters, his toys, the dirty laundry that always littered the floor… it was all gone. All of it had been replaced. There was a mahogany desk covered in notepads and manila envelopes, a filing cabinet, even an exercise bike in the corner of the room. The carpet was an entirely different color.
How is this possible?
I tried to remember exactly when I had last set foot in this room. I was sure it had been earlier that day, but maybe not? Maybe someone had done this overnight. That desk looked like it weighed at least two-hundred pounds, so this was not a one-man job, let alone a one-child job. Perhaps this was all part of Alex’s grand finale.
My phone began to ring. I retrieved it from my pocket and checked the caller ID. Christopher. My husband. It was nearly five o’clock, so he should be coming home soon. I swiped my thumb across the screen to answer the call.
“Christopher, sweetie, what the hell is going on? Who did this?”
“Angie, where are you?” he asked. I told him I was in Alex’s room.
“Angie, this isn’t funny.”
I wasn’t amused, but I laughed anyway. “You know what’s not funny, Christopher? You’re not fucking funny. I know you’re in on this. What the fuck did you do? Where the hell is our son?”
“Okay, I’m leaving the office now. Please stay put,” he pleaded. “Go lie down for a minute and I’ll be right over. I just have to swing by my house and grab a few-”
“What are you talking about?” I interrupted him. “I already told you, we’re at the house now. If you don’t tell me what’s going on, I’m calling the cops.
“Please don’t call the cops again. Just stay where you are. I’ll be-”
I ended the call. I did not have time to put up with his bullshit - with any of their bullshit. I needed to search the backyard and check in with the neighbors. He couldn’t have gone far.
I walked out of Alex’s room and slammed the door so hard that I thought I heard something break. I couldn’t stand to look at what was in there anymore, so I didn’t bother to check. I made my way toward the staircase, past Erica’s room. She was still audibly sobbing inside.
As I descended into the foyer, something in my periphery stopped me dead in my tracks. I don’t know exactly what I saw, but I could tell that something was out of place in our living room, and it wasn’t just the dismantled sofa. My eyes darted across the television stand, the magazines and coasters atop the coffee table, and finally the fireplace. Sitting atop the mantle was a row of framed photographs, but they were different. Some of them were familiar - Erica’s baptism, her first soccer game, her first school dance - but there were no pictures from our wedding, and no pictures of Alex. At least, not the Alex that I knew.
Resting face down in the center of the mantle was the largest picture frame of them all. I turned it over and studied the photograph carefully.
Christopher and I were seated on a hospital bed. We looked at least a decade younger. I was in a gown, my hair greasy and disheveled. We were both forcing smiles, but there was an unmistakable grief behind them. Our eyes were bloodshot and puffy. In my arms, I was cradling an infant, swaddled in a baby-blue blanket. Though he was obviously a newborn, he had a full head of jet-black hair. His skin was solid gray. He looked eerily still, even in a photograph.
“Mom?” a voice called from behind me. I hadn’t heard Erica come back downstairs.
“Sweetie,” I said as I raised the photograph. My voice broke as tears streamed down my face. “What is this?”
Erica carefully stepped closer. “You know what it is, Mom.” She reached out and gently grasped my shoulder to comfort me. I jerked away and threw the picture against the wall. The glass shattered and scattered across the floor as the frame landed face down once again.
I stood atop the debris and pointed a shaking finger at the floor. “That isn’t us. That never happened.”
“You need to look at it, Mom. I think… I think it might help you.”
I brought myself to the floor, sitting on broken glass and crying while my daughter held me. I contemplated turning the picture over and taking another look, but my tears were coming too quickly for me to see anything anyway. After more than an hour, my tear ducts were empty and I had finally regained control of my breathing. Erica and I hadn’t spoken another word.
“I don’t want to look at it. I want to go. Can we go?” I begged.
“Yeah,” Erica said. “Yeah, Mom. We can go.”
As she stood up and offered to help me to my feet, I took one last glance at the picture frame that I couldn’t bring myself to turn over. The dust cover that held the photograph in place behind the glass had become dislodged from the frame, presumably in the impact with the wall. Something was peeking out from behind it - a small piece of paper, red and white. I grasped the corner of it, careful not to embed any glass shards in my hand. The paper was smooth and waxy. I slid it out from between the photograph and the dust cover. A white card with red flourishes. Two figures that looked like Cupid - that looked like Alex - faced one another. I laughed. I laughed and I laughed until I could hardly breathe, while Erica stood completely still. She seemed afraid and clearly didn’t know how to react.
“Mom?” she said sheepishly. “Are you okay?”
I fell onto my back and held the card up high above me, continuing to examine the cherubim printed on the back as my hearty laughter faded into stifled giggles. Erica peered down at me from above.
“Look closely,” I said. “It’s the Queen of Hearts, isn’t it?”