Growing up, the highlight of my summers was the annual Blackberry Festival, which celebrated all things blackberry. There were competitions to see who could consume the most berries in five minutes and prizes for the largest berry (the winning fruit one year was nearly the size of an apple). There were baking competitions, where my grandmother, with her triple-layered cake frosted with lemon-and-blackberry buttercream, brought home a blue ribbon nearly every year. Blackberry ice cream, made with thick Jersey milk, helped the kids stay cool, while the adults sipped blackberry wine.
There was more to the festival than just the blackberries; there were rides and carnival games, livestock competitions and miniature pig races, funhouses and live bluegrass music. But what interested me the most was the sideshow. Every year, barkers would call out, inviting us to see oddities like “Zinga, the 5-legged cow”, “Madame Barba, the bearded lady” and “Hoppo, the chain-smoking frog boy.” One year, something sinister made its appearance alongside the grotesqueries.
It was the summer before 5th grade. I was walking to the butcher with my grandpa, when I saw a poster nailed to an elm, advertising the appearance of “The Marvelous Jean-Marvot” at next week’s festival. The illustration depicted a smiling magician, with an absurdly long handlebar mustache, dressed in a long purple cloak and matching top hat, sawing a screaming woman in half.
My grandpa chuckled. “I remember seeing him about fifty years ago, when I was a boy about your age. Think they even reused the poster.”
“You think it’s the same person?” I asked.
He laughed again, but then a look of horror came over his face as the past came back to him. “I hope it’s not him. God, I hope it’s not. It can’t be. If it were, he’d be around 80. I don’t remember any details about his act, just that something inside his tent scared me more than any of the other acts, scared me more than anything in my life. I wouldn’t go in there if I were you.”
My grandpa’s advice only made me more excited to see Jean-Marvot. I began counting down the days till the festival opened. The morning of, I rode my bike down to the fairgrounds with my friends Nick and Petie. We quickly found the red-and-white-striped tent of Jean-Marvot. Outside, a disheveled man, smelling like grain alcohol, sat smoking a cigarette.
“What the fuck do you kids want?” he growled.
“Are you Jean-Marvot?” asked Nick.
“Are you stupid or something, kid? Do I look anything like the man in the poster? I’m just a barker. He does one show a day, at noon. Now get out of here!”
We went back to the tent at 11:30. I remember Petie smiling, proudly holding a small trophy he won at the blackberry eating contest, juice stains all over his shirt. That was the last time I ever saw him smile.
The barker we had met earlier that morning was standing outside, trying to attract an audience. “Come on in, only two quarters,” he hollered. “Come see the magical Jean-Marvot. First time in America. He has enchanted princes and monarchs in Europe, and now, you lucky folks have the chance to see him. You won’t be disappointed, I can guarantee it.”
We paid the entrance fee and entered the tent, not questioning why such a famed magician would be performing in a small Appalachian town. There were only a few other people inside and we grabbed seats in the first row. There was no proper stage, just a small roped off area with a dirt floor. A plain wooden chair sat in the center, empty.
The crowd slowly grew, and by the time the church bells rang out noon, there were probably a few hundred people in the tent. It wasn’t until 12:15 when Jean-Marvot finally emerged. He looked to be about thirty, clearly not the magician my grandpa saw decades earlier, and was dressed in the same purple cloak and top hat as in the poster.
He took off his hat and bowed deeply. “Welcome, welcome, bienvenue, Ladies and gentlemen, mesdames et messieurs, welcome one and all. You are about to witness the most spectacular display of magic in history! My name is Jean-Marvot, and I am 144 years old.”
Petie, and a few other members of the audience laughed. Jean-Marvot glared at him. “You laugh, little fat boy, but I am telling the truth. I have been studying the arcane for well over a century. Now, for the first trick, I am in need of a volunteer from this audience.”
He looked at me with his steel-grey eyes. “How about you, monsieur?” He produced a deck of playing cards from one of his pockets and held them out in front of me. “Pick a card, any card, and show it to the audience, but do not show it to me.”
I selected a card from the middle of the deck, the Jack of Diamonds, and held it up for the audience to see.
“Now put it back in the deck, and shuffle it,” Jean-Marvot said. I did. He reached into the deck and pulled out the Queen of Hearts. “Is this your card?”
I shook my head.
“Of course it is not, for the card is in your right pocket.” I reached into my jeans, pulled out the Jack of Diamonds, and held it up to the audience. There was a light round of applause.
“Now for my next trick,” the magician said. He took off his purple top hat and showed it to the audience. “Empty, not a thing in here, but wait.” He reached inside and pulled out a fluffy white bunny.
There was a smattering of applause, but the audience was clearly growing restless. They had expected more than a few basic tricks.
“Just a false bottom,” Petie said.
Jean-Marvot laughed. “If it were just a false bottom, little fat boy, how could I do this?” He reached back into the hat and pulled out another bunny. Then another. And another. He continued this until there were a dozen or so rabbits scurrying about the tent. He bowed, to much greater applause.
He reached back into his hat, and pulled out a clucking white chicken. “How did that get in there?” he asked. From his hat he produced a paintbrush, dripping with blood red paint.
He approached a little girl a few seats away from us in the front row. “Mademoiselle, can you draw a shape on the chicken? Any shape you want.” The little girl drew a heart on the chicken’s wing.
“Merci mille fois.” He reached back into the hat and pulled out a large cleaver. A grin came across his face. He knelt down, grasping the chicken’s neck with one hand, raised the cleaver, and chopped off the chicken’s head. The headless chicken ran around the tent for several seconds before collapsing. The little girl burst out into tears.
Jean-Marvot laughed. “Why do you cry, little girl? I thought this was a farming town. But I will make things all right, for I am the Marvelous Jean-Marvot.” Holding the head of the chicken, he walked over to its body and knelt down, covering it with his cloak. He whispered a few words in some strange language. When he stood up, the chicken was alive, his head reattached. Sure enough, the heart was on its wing.
“He had another chicken hidden in his cloak,” Petie said, over the audience’s applause.
Jean-Marvot laughed. “You are a disbeliever, little fat boy. But you will not be for long, for you will soon see the holes in my hands. Come up, and take a seat. Do not worry, I am not going to saw you in half. All you need to do, Peter, is to take a seat right here.”
“How do you know my name,” Petie asked, sounding nervous.
The magician laughed. “I know lots of things about you, You are 9 years old. Your birthday is July 28th. Your father’s name is Robert, your mother’s name is Catherine, you have an older brother, also named Robert. Now, little fat boy, come and take a seat.”
Without saying a word, Petie got up and walked to him, a stiff, robotic walk. He sat down, staring straight ahead, his face expressionless.
I started to worry. Something was wrong. “What did you do to him?” I asked, but Jean-Marvot ignored me. He took off his cloak and draped it over Petie, who didn’t even blink. The magician hissed some words in the strange tongue, not “abracadabra” or anything like that, but sinister-sounding syllables. My heart started pounding. I was sure that when he lifted the cloak, my friend would be dead.
“Now let us see what happened to this little fat boy,” Jean-Marvot said. Underneath the cloak, you could detect the outline of my friend, but when he lifted it, I, and most of the audience, gasped. Petie was gone. The chair was still there, but my friend was nowhere in sight.
He put back on his cloak and bowed deeply. “That is all for today, ladies and gentlemen. It took a lot of energy to disappear that little fat boy.” He started walking out of the tent.
“I thought you were going to saw someone in half,” yelled someone from the back.
Jean-Marvot kept walking.
“Where’s my friend?” I screamed.
The magician turned back. “You will probably find the little fat boy wandering around outside, confused,” he said, before disappearing out the back of the tent.
Nick and I ran outside and circled the tent. There was no sign of either Petie or Jean-Marvot. I ran to the barker, who was sitting outside the tent’s entrance.
“Oh god, it’s you fucking kids again,” he growled. “What do you want? No refunds.”
“What happened to my friend? Jean-Marvot made him disappear but he never came back.” I said.
He laughed. “He’ll turn up. They always do. Don’t know how he does it. But your friend will be safe.”
Nick and I searched the fairgrounds for almost 15 minutes, before we found Petie wondering around the livestock pens. We shouted his name, but he showed no sign of recognition. I ran up to him. He had a vacant look in his eyes. I yelled his name, but he just kept walking. Finally, I grabbed him and started shaking him.
“Where am I?” he finally asked.
“You’re at the Blackberry Festival,” I said. “We were just at the magic show. Do you remember anything?”
“I remember being at the show, and the magician asking me to come up on stage. Don’t remember anything else. He must have hypnotized me or something.”
“You sure you weren’t in on it,” I asked. “He knew your name and everything. Was there a trapdoor?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. It’s weird, very weird. I feel sick, lightheaded. I think I’m going to go home.”
For the first time in my life, I left the festival early. We rode our bikes to Petie’s house and went up to his room. Without saying a word, he laid down in bed.
As Nick and I read comic books, Petie slept. He slept for hours, not moving, not making a sound. A little after six, he woke up screaming.
“You OK?” I asked.
“Just a nightmare,” he said.
“You remember anything about what happened at the fair?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Not a thing. I want to go back there tonight, look over the tent, see if there’s a trapdoor or something.”
“You sure?” I said. “It might be dangerous?”
“I need to.”
At ten that night, we set off for the fairgrounds. The fair had been closed since eight, and there was no sign of life from the grounds. We hopped the fence and made our way to Jean-Marvot’s tent. I entered, holding a flashlight. Nick and Petie followed close behind.
We examined the dirt around the wooden chair. It was just dirt, no sign of a trapdoor.
“There’s nothing here,” I said.
“You are wrong, little child.”
I turned and saw the smiling Jean-Marvot, wearing the same purple cloak that he had worn earlier that day.
“I knew you children would come,” he said. “You want to learn the secret of my magic? I will tell you.”
We dashed towards the exit, but halfway there we were frozen in our tracks. I turned my head and saw Jean-Marvot raise his hand. We flew threw the air, landing at the sorcerer’s feet.
He chuckled. “It is not polite to trespass. The least you can do is stay to hear my story. It will be of interest to you, I hope, for I am no ordinary conjurer. I was born in a small village in Brittany, on the day that Louis Antoine, the last Dauphin of France, reigned as king for twenty minutes—”
“A dolphin?” asked Nick. “Like Flipper?”
“Do you think you are funny, little child, or are you just an imbecile? Please do not interrupt me again or I will sew your lips shut. Now Brittany is a strange land, an ancient Celtic nation, far different than the rest of France. I was raised by my grandmother, who only spoke Breton and not French. I listened to her folk tales of korrigans, dwarf-like spirits who danced in the woods, and those of Ankou, the reaper of death. I was convinced that magic existed, and I was determined to find it.
“There was an old man, a drunkard with a peg leg, who always hung around the local tavern. If you bought him a pint he would perform some card tricks, like the first one I performed. Naively, I believed he was a true sorcerer. I begged him over and over to teach me his secrets. Eventually, when I was about 15, he agreed. When I learned his secrets, I was disappointed at how simple the tricks were, but I still yearned to discover real magic, which I knew in my heart existed.
“I talked to other old women in the village, and learned some simple folk charms from them. I became convinced that there used to be magic in Brittany. But it had been diluted and weakened in the years since its conversion to Christianity in the 6th century. Undeterred, I continued my search. I scoured the woods, looking for traces of the fairies from my grandma’s tales. I trekked to ancient monasteries located on rocky cliffs, searching their libraries for any clues that might guide me. But I did not have much time, for the army came calling.
“In the army, I kept my ears open, listening for rumors of true magic. I saw hundreds of magicians, but their tricks, although sometimes impressive, did not fool me. That was until one night, when I was stationed in Algiers. Outside a crumbling mosque, an old man, his white beard nearly reaching the ground, was entertaining a group of children, a scimitar in his hand. I snuck over and watched in horror as he swung the sword at his neck, decapitating himself. His head, levitating a few feet off the ground, started singing in a language that I did not understand, neither Arabic nor one of the Berber languages, a strange, harsh, guttural tongue. As the boys ran off screaming, the old man grabbed his head and reattached it to his body. He looked at me, smiled, and vanished into thin air.
“I knew that I had, for the first time in my life, encountered real magic. I asked about the man in the bazaars and the brothels. What I heard was that he was a dark sorcerer, a devil worshipper, who called on jinns to perform his deceptions. The imams wanted him dead, but he was never able to be located. I asked the street children about his whereabouts, but they just said that he appeared out of nowhere before vanishing into thin air.
“One night, I was walking back to the barracks along a street that I had walked back many times before, when I passed a red-and-white-striped tent that I had never seen before. Inside was the old man, reading a large tome by candlelight.
“He looked up at me as I entered. ‘I have been expecting you,’ he said in perfect French, a language only a few of the Algerians spoke. I asked him to teach me his secrets, and he, to my great surprise agreed. He opened his tome, written in a language I did not recognize. Although I was a farm boy, I had done the best to educate myself, and could tell that it was not Greek or Arabic or one of the Oriental languages. He said a few lines, and asked me to recite them after him. It was the same guttural tongue that his severed head had sung in a few weeks earlier. After I had finished, he told me that I was ready. That I could begin my study. I looked at the pages, and to my surprise, I could read them. Then he started laughing. He told me that he had been a former Roman soldier from Gaul, who, like me, had been interested in the occult. He spent decades searching the corners of the empire, talking to oracles and mages, until one day, when he was close to death, he met an old Berber in North Africa. The old man offered to show him the secrets, but there was a catch. The holder of the secrets would live forever, unless he passed the knowledge on to someone else, someone who was deemed worthy. And that person was me.
“I watched as the old man swung his scimitar and decapitated himself. This time, his head did not levitate, did not sing. His bones turned to dust. After many centuries, the old man had finally been granted eternal rest.
“I did not care that I would live forever. That to me was a blessing, not a curse. I spent all my free time studying the book. However, as I got further into it, I became horrified at what I was reading. I tried to burn it, but its pages would not catch it alight. I left it behind, but it would always find its way back to my cot at night. I did not dare open it, but it still would not leave me.
“A few months later, I was sent to Crimea, where a Russian bullet pierced my heart. I remember waking up on a pile of decomposing bodies. I got up, unharmed, and walked back to my barracks. Once inside, I heard screaming, heard the soldiers uttering prayers. They thought I was a ghost. I knew then that my life would never be the same.
“I made my way on foot back to France, performing some tricks in exchange for food, for even though I was immortal, I was still susceptible to pangs of hunger. I no longer had any joy, all I wanted to do was die. In Alsace, I set upon a prelate when he refused to give me lodging, beating him to death. I was captured and sentenced to die. I could have escaped, but wanted to see if the steel of the guillotine was powerful enough to end my life.
“The priest who came to give me my last rites recoiled in horror when he touched me with his cross, saying that I was the devil. When the blade fell down, my head was severed, but I did not bleed. I, and I had no control over this, picked it up and reattached it, as simply as a man putting back on his cap that the wind blew off. As the villagers shrieked in terror, I ran off. There’s no scar on my neck, just as there’s no scar on my chest where the Russian bullet pierced my heart.
“I knew that the only way to die would be to find someone else. Someone else worthy. But that is the tricky part, very few are worthy to carry out the task. I made my way to England and joined a traveling circus, getting hired after demonstrating a few simple tricks. There I was christened Jean-Marvot, a silly name, not even a proper French name. My birth name, Corentin Cormon, was apparently not fit for show business. Don’t know why, I thought Corentin the Conjurer had a nice ring to it. But I digress.
“I thought that those who believed in magic would be apt to see me perform. But, alas, I have wandered for over a hundred years, but have yet to find someone who the ancient ones, the Sons of Cain, deem worthy. Hopefully tonight that will all change.”
He produced a deck of playing cards. “Now we will see, each of you take one.”
I drew first, not wanting to, but my hand moved as if I were a puppet on strings. I pulled out the Ace of Spades.
Jean-Marvot smiled at me. “You look familiar. I believe I met your grandfather in this very town nearly half a century ago. I thought there was hope in you, but alas, no.”
Nick was next, and drawing the Two of Diamonds.
Jean-Marvot laughed. “My hope rests in little fat boy, the skeptic, our Doubting Thomas. Let us see what card he will pull.”
He drew a card from the middle of the deck. There was no face or number on the card, no suit. Just plain black.
The magician smiled. “I would not have suspected this. But the cards do not lie. You, little fat boy, will be my successor.”
“He doesn’t want to,” I said.
Jean-Marvot laughed. “It does not matter what he wants.”
An ancient book, thicker than my family Bible, materialized, hovering in the air. I watched as Petie recited the ancient lines after Jean-Marvot, his voice emotionless, flat.
“One more thing,” Jean-Marvot said. “There is something I forgot to tell you. A sacrifice is required, a blood sacrifice.” He looked at Nick. “You drew the lowest card, you stupid boy.”
A cleaver materialized in the sorcerer’s hand. I tried to run, tried to help Nick, but my legs were stone. I watched as the wicked magician raised the cleaver. Nick, paralyzed below the neck, had a look of horror was etched on his face. The magician swung his cleaver at his neck, swung it over and over until his head was severed.
Tears welled up in my eyes, but the rest of my body was paralyzed. I looked at the smirking magician. “Please,” I begged. “Don’t do this. Reattach his head.”
He laughed. “My powers are gone. Even when I had them, I could not bring a man back to life, no matter how small his brain was. I couldn’t even turn base metals into gold. I was not a god, there were many more powerful than me. But now, I am just a mortal man. And tonight, I will finally obtain rest.”
I looked towards where Petie stood, but he was gone. Never heard any footsteps, but he had vanished. Nick’s body had also disappeared.
“They are with the Children of Cain” said Jean-Marvot.
“Please,” I cried.
“The show is over. Adieu.” He bowed, and walked out of the tent.
Jean-Marvot’s body was found hanging in his trailer the next morning. But no sign of Nick or Petie ever was. The state police and even the FBI got involved, but not a trace of them was located. Never did I dare tell anyone what happened on that fateful night.
I have tried to put the past away, tried to convince myself that I imagined the whole thing. But there are some things that will never leave you.
This morning, I saw a flyer at a roadside diner, advertising the appearance of Bobby the Boy Wonder at the local county fair. His name may have been altered and the smile he always wore vanished, but his face didn’t change. It was the same chubby boy with rosy cheeks whom I played with every day growing up. The boy who has haunted my dreams ever since that night in the tent of the Marvelous Jean-Marvot.