<div style="font-size:10pt;font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;color:black;">Just a reminder that our pieces are due today. Mine is below.<br><br><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Conversations with Houdini </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The old grandfather clock strikes 12 on Halloween. This is
odd, because it only strikes the doleful tones on 12 Halloween midnight. Twelve
notes, each discordant to the one before and of different qualities, all of
them unpleasant to the ear. My spine reacts with 12 chills, each one unique,
and increases with the sound of a new hell. The ancient clock is dead to all
other time. Somehow, it manages to set itself back to the last time it chimed
on Hallows Eve. I read the date listed in its window which reads month and year,
October 31, 1926.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I’m sitting in the dark, on the old four poster bed. The
room begins to shine with a gloomy light, revealing the figure of a man.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“Hello, my old friend. I hoped you would keep our
appointment,” I say.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“Of course, I have. Don’t I always?” he responds. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“Yes, you have. But one never knows what time will bring.”</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“We have our fun on this night together, and no other night.
I wouldn’t miss it for the best illusion ever,” Houdini says.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“It’s true, and may we continue to do so for the rest of
eternity, I pray.”</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“Ah, my friend I can’t guarantee that. But let us be satisfied
that it will be our tradition for as long as Halloween is celebrated. Shall we
go?” he says, his dark eyes laughing.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I take his hand and exit out the wall. For on Halloween, in
these magician’s hands, I have the power of flight and can go through walls.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Outside, the spirits are having a rousing time. Witches are
flying on their broomsticks. Vampires are feasting on young blood. Skeletons
are playing scary music with their bones.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Houdini looks at me with amusement. “That’s a new one on me.
I don’t remember skeletons doing that before. Do you?”</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“No, but I think they’ve got a hit. I like it almost as well
as a banshee cry.”</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“Is that really your favorite? I’ve always been partial to
women screaming,” he says, with a wicked smile. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We stop to listen to gallows humor, told by a man with a
rope around his neck while hanging from the scaffold.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">When we have had our fill, we continue on our walk.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“Do you know why the condemned man couldn’t plead his case?”
Houdini asked.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“Because he was tongue-tied. I’ve heard that one last year,”
I answer. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We find a kiosk and order some blood wine and entrails. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“Ah, my friend. We might as well get my story over with.
Every Halloween I’ve got to tell it. There is nobody I would rather tell it to
than you.”</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“Okay, let’s have it. But tell me again why you have to. Because
you’re not the sort of fellow that goes for the macabre.” </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“I agreed to tell my story every Halloween as a ticket for
being allowed to be here at all,” he answers.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“Get on with it,” I say.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“Well, here goes. I was sucker punched in the gut. I said I
could take any punch anybody could throw at me without suffering any harm. So,
one Halloween Day I open the door at the sound of the knock, and this guy gets
one in on me before I have time to get ready for it. He plowed it right through
my defenses. I actually died from appendicitis and peritonitis. It happened on Halloween.
Isn’t that hilarious?”</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Harry made a face depicting what he might have felt as he
was hit and his teeth fell out. Then he fell over, clutching his midriff. He
lay half on the kiosk table for a full 5 minutes, while his face turned ashen
and his body turned to goo.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“Okay, Harry. I’ve had enough. You can get up now.”</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">His body coalesced, regained its color, and his teeth went
back into his head.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“Funny, huh?” he said.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“It won’t win an Oscar, but you make your point. You’ve
ruined my appetite. Let’s move on,” I say.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We moved on through the night. We watched the headless
horseman do a gig using his head as a dummy. He was pretty good. You couldn’t
see his lips move at all, because without his head, he had no lips. But when it
was time for his body to talk, his head was good about remaining unmoving. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“How about you, Benny? Why are you stuck in that old hovel
haunting it?” Harry asked.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“Oh, you know why.”</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“I do indeed. But it will do you some good to get it off
your chest.”</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“Every year you ask that, and every year I give in and tell
you. It never seems to help,” I argue.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“Maybe this year will be the cure, and you’ll be able to
give up the old gig and move on with your afterlife.”</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“Oh, all right. So here goes.”</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“It started out to be a typical Halloween. We had candy which
we handed out at the door. The kids were particularly adorable in their
costumes. This was one of Margaret’s and my favorite holidays. Little Johnny
was dressed as a pirate, complete with carboard sword and a fake beard. He was
out there with some friends from the neighborhood, and I’m sure they were
grabbing a bag full of goodies as they went from house to house getting their
tricks. He was on his way home, just one block away when we heard a loud bang. Then
children began to scream. It was bedlam. Margaret and I rushed to the end of
the block, and there was little Johnny lying in a pool of his blood. “</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I stopped there, the tears had welled up and I was about to
cry. Houdini put his hand on my shoulder and said, “It’s all right. You can
cry.” </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I broke down and sobbed my guts out, like I did every Hallows
Eve. And every time, when I was finished, I still had the same hate and feeling
of loss I always had. I couldn’t let go. The anger and hate built up in my gut
until I started to rage. There was that wretched asswipe of a kid standing there
with a look of shock on his face.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“What have you done, you murderous little monster?” I
screamed at him.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“I didn’t know it was loaded. I didn’t know.”</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“Where did you get a real gun?” I yelled.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“M M My Dad had it in his night drawer. I took it, but I
didn’t know it was loaded. I was only playing. I’m sorry,” he cried.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“I grabbed the son-of-a-bitch kid by the throat and squeezed.
I kept squeezing<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>long after he passed
out . Then I heard a shot, and I was floating over two bodies, a little boy and
a grown man who looked just like me, and I realized what I had done. I saw the
stricken look on Margaret’s face. Her husband and little boy lost to her in the
twinkling of an eye. I tried to tell her I was sorry, but she couldn’t hear me.
I saw the expression on the boy’s father’s face, who held the gun his son had
wielded. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">All this seemed real as it had been enacted on that first Halloween.
The thought forms were all there acting out their parts.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Houdini consoled me and said, “You have to let go of the
guilt. You know that, don’t you? You will be a prisoner in that house, haunting
it, until you do.”</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“I know, I know, I know, but I can’t. Margaret left and
never came back. She can’t forgive me. Why should she? Why should I?”</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“It will continue to take time, but you will, my friend. You
will.”</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I hear his words, but I fear it will take forever.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“That boy and his father are here, though you can’t see
them. They are asking for your forgiveness. When you can see them, things will
change. Until then, I’ll be here on this magic night to help you through,” he
offered.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Despite the difficulty for me in changing my tortured mood, we
enjoy the rest of the night, with all the spooks like us. As morning light
begins to dawn, I find myself being drawn back to that dreary house I am forced
to haunt.</p>
<br><br><br><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Leonard I. Tuchyner, Author</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.dldbooks.com/tuchyner/">https://www.dldbooks.com/tuchyner/</a><br data-mce-bogus="1"></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u><span style="text-decoration:none;"> </span></u></p><br></div>