The Last Magician

Unexplained Discoveries

Jack looked around the second bedroom, one that he felt should have been familiar.

It was furnished with nothing more than two dilapidated wardrobes and a small foldable bed. He tried to conjure a memory of the room, the image of how it should have been, but failed. Something seemed wrong, something more than the obvious discomfort which slowly coiled into regularity. He could not understand why the room appeared so bare.

A brief inspection of the bed revealed as little as he had anticipated, but sifting through the ruined timbre of the closest wardrobe’s base proved more worthwhile.

Within the rotted carcass of the wardrobe he found a small, vaguely-familiar silver pendant. Having discovered it in one of the bedrooms in his house, he saw nothing peculiar about his vague recollection; not until he made a closer inspection.

It lay on his hand, filling just under half of his palm, and Jack realised how easily he could have missed something so small among the rotting debris. The light in the room was too poor for him to discern any great detail in the craftwork of the piece, but the shape needed no light. It was a red snake.


He turned the pendant over, pondering on it. He found nothing attractive in the item, and the thought that either he or Charlie would have worn such jewellery just did not seem right. Yet as he had observed, it was in his house.

Still, it was a find. This was no time to discard something based upon his personal tastes and dislikes. This was not his world anymore. Something had changed, and so many other things could have changed with it. Anything could have a value.

Though he could see no advantage in the pendant, it did give him a small hope that there were discoveries to be made within the dishevelled walls of the place he had once called home. He dropped it into his pocket.

A muffled cry whistled through the open doorway.

Jack lunged towards the opening, grabbing hold of the crumbling frame for support. For the briefest instant he had the vision of his fingers crushing the rotted wood and his momentum spilling him into the hallway. Instead the frame held and he was able to look out into the dim light.

He strained his ears, attempting to pick up any sound of movement from the next room. The ominous silence that greeted his unspoken enquiry was disturbing to say the least. He was about to move towards the other door, when something held him back. Amanda had managed without him before his arrival, how long he did not know, and it was possible she would not appreciate him acting the macho alpha male. He chose a compromise.

‘Are you alright?’ he called into the dim master bedroom, only a small empty section of which he could see.

There was a deathly pause, during which he would have sworn his heart stopped beating, then came the response of, ‘Fine.’

Jack hesitated by the door for an uncertain moment, unsure of the reason for his hesitation other than to wait for some further explanation from Amanda. Nothing came from the master bedroom, and Jack returned to his own task. The bedroom appeared darker now, the small amount of light in the hallway enough to make the interior before him almost black. He waited a short moment until his vision readjusted to the gloom.

He found his thoughts shifting back to Amanda, wondering about the woman he had given himself to without a second thought to his Charlie.

That was a harsh truth, but not entirely correct. He had thought of her, the loss and the hurt of discovering there was no one else in the house. He had lost himself to his carnal instinct to feel warm skin against his, a sensation he had almost given up hope of having again in those last moments before his blackout.

After their sex he had drifted away from the room, turned his thoughts to contemplation of their situation. Thinking about it now, he should have asked Amanda some of the questions bouncing around his head. He knew virtually nothing about Amanda; where she came from, what she had seen, how she had come to be in the house. He knew there would be plenty of time for such discussions later; for now he had to complete his sweep of the room.

Jack turned his focus to the second wardrobe, standing on the far wall and seemingly much stronger than the one beside him. He crossed the room in a few short strides and pulled open the doors, revealing something that piqued his curiosity.

A hole had been cut in the base of the wardrobe, and through the floorboards beneath. Although that did not appear to be truly accurate; on closer inspection it looked like the wood had been pulled apart piece by piece to create some kind of secret compartment or maybe perhaps…

Suddenly Jack felt that something was shifting in the space under his feet. Every house had a small space between the floorboards of the upper floor and the ceiling of the lower one, but he guessed it would have to be someone both very thin and very scared to hide in such an extreme fashion.

Then he thought of the world outside, the hostile wasteland that had welcomed him back from unconsciousness. He saw no reason why it had to be someone; it could be something. Either way Jack realised that a hideaway between the floors was not the ludicrous possibility it had first seemed.

The question he could not answer loomed over him as he crouched over the hole. Was someone in there?


It was inconceivable to think that anyone capable of crawling into the cramped space could be a danger to him, but a thought of the tree-fungus stalked into his mind. They could not be certain of anything anymore; too much had changed, too many questions remained unanswered. If something had taken to lurking in the darkness, Jack knew that cornering it could be a mistake.

He put his knee down beside the hole, and bent to listen for any sound from within. He held a pressure on his standing leg, ready to push back if something emerged before him.

He held his breath and listened. Silence.

He moved closer, pushing air through his teeth slow and soft.

No sound came from the hole, yet Jack could feel something like cool breath on his face. He felt his heartbeat pulsing through every inch of his body, and it dawned that he shouldn’t be loitering so close to the mouth of danger.

He vaguely recalled telling Amanda that they needed to get used to facing the unknown. The two came hand in hand; the unknown and the dangerous. There could not be one without the other in such uncertain surroundings. The world had

(moved on)

moved on and they had to be prepared to move on too. If that meant taking risks, they needed to take risks. Right now, he needed to find out if something lurked beneath his feet.
He moved forward carefully, shifting his hand towards the edge of the ragged circle.

Suddenly something landed on his shoulder, something light but solid. The shock forced a shout from his mouth, and his balance deserted him.

Jack felt his hand strike the wardrobe base and break through to the cool air on the other side. He fell forward, tearing away another section of the rotting wood as he crashed into the underfloor compartment.

A frantic scrabbling echoed around him in the space, hands, feet or claws trying to escape. Something was in the floor-space with him, something that sounded almost as panicked as he did.

In the commotion, Jack was able to roll in the direction of the diminishing sound. He blinked away the dust that caked his eyes, trying to catch a glimpse of the thing dwelling in the claustrophobic space but even as his sight became clearer, the darkness did not pale. The echo drifting along what seemed to be an endless low corridor running through the house faded rapidly, and soon it was no louder than the breath of a weak breeze.

Jack closed his eyes and sighed. If only he had been quicker to react he could have caught it, or have at least seen it. If only he had been given warning. If only something hadn’t...


A shape towered over him, a dark silhouette against the dim light of the room. His mind whirled in the moment, panic wrapped its arms around him and almost claimed him. Then the shadow spoke, and a mixture of relief and anger washed over him.

“Sorry,” Amanda said, a guilty look hidden in the poor light.

“For fuck’s sake!” Jack spluttered. ”Stick a knife in my back next time! I could have had my face torn off by something down here.”

Amanda’s face crumbled. “I’m sorry. I thought you knew I was there. I…I…Sorry, I just didn’t…”

She held her hands over her mouth and her emotion overcame her words. Her fight to contain her tears ended and they coursed down her cheeks in two trickling streams.

Jack wanted to take back his words, or at the very least beat himself up for snapping at her. They were in this together, two strangers caught in something neither of them understood. He couldn’t blame her for what she had done. If anything he should have blamed himself for not holding back from investigating the dweller beneath the floor. If not for Amanda’s intervention he could have been nursing a far more serious injury than the bruises he would sustain from the fall.

“Hey, hey,” Jack said, struggling to pull himself out of the rut. “I’m sorry. It wasn’t your fault.”

Jack crawled out onto the bedroom floor and was immediately beside her, pulling her to his body and holding her tight. Amanda wept into his shoulder. He felt her shuddering against him as he rubbed a hand across her back to try and soothe her.

He wanted to weep himself. What was he thinking shouting at her the way he had? It brought home how out of control the situation was. In other circumstances he would never have exploded in such a way and she would not have been brought to tears.

“Come on,” Jack said, easing her head back from him. “I’m sorry. It’s just things getting on top of me.”

He looked into her wet eyes, and kissed her. She returned the pressure and they remained locked in each other’s warmth for a timeless moment.

A dim crash came from somewhere below them. Amanda started, releasing a small yelp as she broke from their kiss. Jack reacted only by turning to face the door.

”What was that?” Amanda asked, her eyes darting from the door, to the hole to Jack.

”Whatever I just dropped in on,” Jack said without humour. “I didn’t see it. It ran before I had the chance to focus through the dust and dirt.”

“You said “it”,” Amanda said.

“I didn’t see whether it’s human or not.”

Amanda nodded and rested her head on his chest. “This isn’t our world anymore, is it?”

Jack lightly brushed the top of her head with his lips. They were the truest words either of them had spoken.

“No,” Jack said finally. “No it isn’t.”

Amanda remained quiet. The image of the mutated slug reared in her thoughts.

Jack broke the short silence. “I think we need to finish here and find out what else is out there. We can’t find all the answers just in this house. In fact I have more questions than answers.”

“What if there are more things?” Amanda asked. “Like whatever was in the floor. What if they’re infected or something?”

Jack contemplated the terrifying possibility that there were other survivors, but survivors who had not been as lucky as they had. The term survivor said it all; they survived by whatever means necessary. What if some had become as rotten and twisted as the village they had awakened in?

Another question crawled to the surface, a much darker question. Jack’s mind began pushing out in directions he did not want it to go. Jack had seen no plant or animal life of considerable note. The food chain needed something to live on and if no regular resources could be found then what would such survivors live on?

He let the thought fade into the back of his mind as another one emerged to take its place.

What if the two of them were infected?

Jack forced himself away from the idea. They knew too little about the village to make assumptions. Amanda had probably thought it already although she had not said it out loud.

Jack refused to do so himself.

‘I think,” he said, “we need to get out on the street. Did you find anything in the other bedroom?”

The moment seemed to wait. The slug reared once more in Amanda’s thoughts.

“I think you should see what’s left of it for yourself,” she said.