"Suburban Magic"

It began with a book, so must end with the same book.

In the small hours, when the lamps were dark and the whole street fast asleep, I sneaked into the back garden. Hid behind the shed, hunkered down in the shelter of some bushes.

As a sheen of frost settled on the lawn, I warmed myself the best I could on the sunlight stored in the leaves of a privet. A meagre source of energy, which I was forced to relinquish when the foliage speckled brown with blight and I felt my bones begin to crack like dry twigs.

Dawn broke at last: grey concrete that poured sluggishly over the fence. An alarm clock bleeped. Fell silent. Five minutes passed, but seemed like fifty, while my knees protested the wait. The alarm clock bleeped again, more insistently. Cut off mid-shriek. A light came on upstairs, in the main bedroom, followed seconds later by a light in the bathroom. The hiss of running water.

I spied a russet flash in the opposite corner of the garden. A fox stared back at me, his eyes flaring yellow as match flames.

I borrowed his ears to track the occupants of the house as they performed their morning ablutions. A radio blared, obscuring their brief exchange of conversation. But my vulpine senses were not equipped to decode words or appreciate the artificial rhythm of electronica.

I quivered on the verge of flight. Only the smell of toast held me in place. I was hungry. More hungry than the fox, whose recent snack of field mouse I could taste on my own tongue.

Eventually, they exited the house. Firm closure of front door. Turn of five lever mortice. The scent of Hugo Boss, for him and her, was a sharp stink carried on the breeze. Soon masked by exhaust fumes as they drove away.

The house was now empty and almost silent. A tap dripping. A clock ticking. The oven grill cooling.

Anxious not to be spotted by the neighbours, I kept hold of the notion of myself in the guise of a fox and slinked swiftly across the lawn. Though I could feel the melting frost soaking through the worn soles of my shoes and chilling my feet, I left only a track of dainty pawprints in my wake.

On reaching the french windows, I shrugged off the illusion as if discarding a fur robe. Yet, a foul odour remained. My body reeked of strong animal musk. I felt a momentary urge to lick myself clean. My teeth were large and blunt in a too-flat mouth. The world was the wrong colour. My nose and ears stuffed with cotton wool.

I took a moment to gather myself. The fox fled the scene, confused by thoughts of shaving and sitting behind a steering wheel.

With the knuckles of my right hand pressed against the window, I closed my eyes and concentrated hard on punching through the glass. My breathing slowed as I visualised the act: the tensed muscles, the strike, the impact, the shattering. Though I did not complete the blow, the possibility was extremely high. In my mind’s eye, in that split second of quantum uncertainty, I focused on the potential for a jagged hole, until it attained a clarity so hyper-real, I was able to reach through the fist-sized gap and release the lock.

As I hastily pulled my fingers back, I felt a sharp pain in the back of my hand. A deep gash in my flesh where I scraped it along the knife edge of the broken/unbroken pane.

Cursing, I staunched the wound with a wad of paper tissue and watched my blood bloom like a scarlet anemone.

After taking such care to break and enter without leaving a trace, it would be stupid to trickle a trail of gore through the house. I pinched my torn skin together and considered the veins beneath. Willed myself to see them as being perfectly intact. Coaxed my blood to flow along its allotted arteries. No short cuts, no detours to the open air.

Healing wasn’t one of my better skills, as this makeshift repair demonstrated. But it was enough to enable me to continue with my housebreaking, even though it was an irritating distraction to have to hold the image constantly in the back of my mind.

The french windows opened with a gentle push and I entered the living room without further ado. I wasn’t keen on what the occupants had done with the decor. Plain walls, bland as oatmeal. Fake Victorian fireplace, with a flat-screen TV hanging like a blacked-out landscape above the mantleshelf. Chrome and leather furniture in cold Art Deco curves.

And the strange odours. Other people’s houses always smell... well, other.

I spent the first twenty-odd years of my life here, until it all fell into ruin. Playing with toy cars on a carpet now replaced by laminate. Playing vinyl records on an Amstrad hi-fi. Playing with my first girlfriend’s breasts when my parents were away.

No time for nostalgia. My feet clumped on the bare boards as I strode out into the hallway. Almost got lost, until I realised the staircase was now a scary looking spiral that twisted up into the loft space.

Shit. My heart pounded with panic, even before I ran up the steps, then stopped, breathing heavily, in a newly converted attic room. Bare, but for a tin of emulsion and a paint roller in a tray.

Shit, shit, shit. All my stuff from the loft was gone. The fucking loft itself was gone.

There was a light pattering sound, as if rain were beginning to fall. I had lost concentration and my hand was bleeding again. The drops overlapped and merged into a pattern: formed an arrow pointing towards the brand new double glazing.

O.K. I could take a hint. I looked out of the window, into the street. Nothing marvellous hove into view. A row of identical semi-detached houses. A small fleet of family hatchbacks parked at the kerb. A couple of elm trees, whose fallen leaves skittered along the pavement like brown rats.

And a builder’s skip. Yes!

I bent down and placed my hand on the floor. Persuaded my blood to resume its rightful place, flowing through my veins, then re-sealed the gash with another quick-fix thought.

Hurriedly, I swooped back down the stairs, almost swinging round the central pole. Halted at the front door and listened for movement on the street outside. Deciding it was best just to brazen it out, I pulled the door open and stepped down onto the garden path. Studiously avoiding looking round, I closed the door without attempting to be quiet and strolled to the kerb as if I still walked here every day.

The skip was piled high with a miscellany of rubbish, no doubt some of it belonging to the neighbours. I started to sort through it, looking for a cardboard box full of books.

There was no longer any need to trouble to conceal my actions. I was an old bloke with a bandaged hand, dressed in scruffy clothes, rummaging through rubbish. Doubtless, I looked like a wino searching for something I could sell for the price of a cheap tinned lager. An appearance that would effectively render me invisible in this nouveau middle class neck of the woods.

In the end, the book found me. As I pushed my head and shoulders deeper into the skip’s filthy depths, there was a landslide from above: a black bin bag split open and deposited its contents smack! on my balding bonce.

There was a moment of claustrophobic fear when the weight of falling books pinned me down. I struggled out of the skip like a drowning man pushing his head above the waves. Glimpsed the book I sought sinking to the bottom. Grabbed it out and clutched it, tight as a lifejacket, to my chest.

How I recognised it so readily, I am not sure. The cover was foxed and faded, coated with a film of dust. The lurid 1970s typeface almost illegible with its highly stylised curlicues. The cover design, which suggested the silhouette of a naked woman against a pentacle on a starry field of night, was nowhere near as erotic as I recalled.

The book itself held no power. It was cheap, sensational and poorly researched. Not to put too fine a point on it: a load of bollocks. But it was the original book that contained the germ of an idea, which had set me on the path of discovering what its title promised: “Suburban Magic”.

Its well-thumbed pages fell open to the key paragraph I had marked all those years ago. And – perhaps more importantly – as I hoped, the slip of paper I had used for a bookmark was still there: a bus ticket.

The breeze snatched it away. I chased after it like a child pursuing a Cabbage White. But with a rising sense of panic rather than glee. My heart pounded. My vision narrowed to a swirling tunnel. My breath came in a series of asthmatic gasps.

Just as I halted and tensed to scream in frustration, the ticket hit a metal post and stuck there, fluttering. I lunged and grabbed it tight.

The post was a bus stop. Not quite where I remembered it used to be, but it appeared the same services were still running. I compared the number on the ticket. Yes, the 175 still stopped here. I checked the route timetables affixed to the post. Yes, it still went to Romford Market.

I had intended to spend more time in preparation. But to what end? The opportunity was here and the gathered artefacts seemed almost eager to proceed.

First, I formed a rough circle with discarded cigarette butts, scuffing them into place with the toe of my shoe. Standing inside the circle, I imagined myself sealed off from the surrounding world. The fag ends represented the traditional four elements of alchemy; they had once burned with fire, drawn air through their filters, been wet with the smokers’ lips and were now ground into the earth. They were no more than symbolic, but helped to place me in the proper frame of mind.

I pressed the ticket against the timetable and concentrated hard to summon a bus. My hand began to bleed again, which only served to increase the efficacy of the spell I was weaving with the electrical pattern of my thoughts.

According to the book: here in the suburbs were the final bastion of magic, the last dregs of sorcerous energy. Cities had become cold receptacles of technomancy, which could only be accessed through machines. The countryside de-energised by prairie farming and the barriers formed by pylons, masts and motorways. But at the threshold where city and countryside met, the two realms clashed and scraped against each other, generating arcane heat. Struck like stone and flint to ignite a spark, a momentary flash of magic.

At the top of the road, a large grey object appeared, like a box-shaped bank of fog. It drifted steadily towards me, against the flow of traffic. As it drew closer, I started to discern details: windows, wheels. It was the ghost of a bus, driving backwards. Invisible and immaterial to everyone but me.

Having grown up watching black & white TV, I perceived its greyscale hue as being red. The rattle of its engine sounded hollow as dry bones. Its smell was that of a pre Clean Air Act pea-souper.

The wraith Routemaster halted beside me at the stop. To preserve the illusion, I boarded it walking backwards, balancing carefully in the gangway as it started to move again.

When I reached the seats, I heard a bell ring. Quickly looked for a button to press, to maintain continuity. Panicked a moment, then remembered and reached above my head to pull the cord. Sat down in a seat that felt cold and no more solid than a snowdrift.

The bus gathered speed and continued to carry me backwards. The view outside the window was stark and warped. Flickered like the pictures in a ‘What The Butler Saw’ machine.

I noticed that the wound on my hand was healed. The flesh became pale and smooth. The grey bumps and shadows of veins disappeared. The sparse hairs receded, turning from almost a black pelt to a mere fuzz of fair down.

A skeletal figured appeared at my side, looming out of the mist like Charon with his palm extended for payment. I dared not look at his face, which shone with features indistinct as those of the moon.

Probably the hardest and most important lesson I had learned was that magic is not something-for-nothing. It costs. And it is a finite resource: the more it is used, the less remains – and so it grows more expensive.

When I first cast a spell to attract money, it did not materialise out of thin air. It had to come from a place where it already existed. And so my parents and younger sister died in an accident. In a car I had also conjured out of selfishness. A car with a design flaw, which won me a generous payment in compensation.

I sought consolation by attracting the love of a young woman I had fancied since secondary school. She loved me alright, but did not know why. She did not find me physically appealing and did not enjoy my company. Yet she could not help herself. The conflict drove her to self-harm and bulimia and then to a complete nervous breakdown.

Out of guilt, I ended up spending all my money on her medical care and had to sell the family home.

No matter what I did to attempt to put things right, the fundamental principle of balance only acted to make matters worse. So I resolved to return the book that had awoken my interest in magic to its source and thus undo the decades of harm I had wrought.

I placed the bus ticket in the conductor’s hand. His thin digits, pale as splinters of bone protruding from fingerless gloves, clutched the scrap of paper and held it to the slot of a small machine that was strapped to his lower chest. With a ratcheting whirr, he turned a handle and the ticket was swallowed up into the machine’s workings.

He then reached inside a leather satchel at his waist and produced a small silver coin, which he placed in my hand to balance the transaction.

It looked like a five pence piece, but I realised it was an old sixpence. A tanner. Half a bob. The past had its own language.

The bus was slowing down and the view through the window began to coalesce into that of the Town Centre. As it halted, a bell rang twice and the conductor accordingly grasped and tugged the cord.

I stood up and stepped backwards, looking cautiously over my shoulder. The timing of what came next would be crucial.

My younger self was about to board the bus. His face unlined, but blemished by acne. His eyes not sagging under the weight of dark bags, but shaded by a long fringe.

Before our paths crossed, I summoned all my mental strength and pulled sideways. There was an intense ripping sensation, like forcing velcro apart. Like an all-over body waxing. Not only of my skin but of my internal organs, of my brain inside my skull.

I almost whited-out with the soul-deep pain. Steadied myself by holding on to the pole at the back of the bus. My younger self was now right beside me.

With a magician’s sleight-of-hand, I placed the sixpence in the outer patch pocket of his jacket. In exchange, I seized the paper bag he was holding and snatched it away.

As I continued to walk in reverse, it felt as if the paper bag was attached to my younger self by a bungee line, its elastic stretching ever tighter and threatening to snap back to the future.

Now that i was clear of the bus, the spell was starting to dissolve. I pulled all the harder and headed towards the sign for Caxton’s: a small bookshop at the top end of the market.

There was a bored looking man standing at the counter. When he took the bag from me, I expected it to go whoosh! back to the bus stop. Instead, he retrieved a receipt from inside and forced it into the printer attached to his till. From the change drawer, he took a sixpence and handed it to me. The drawer slammed shut with a rattle and a jolly ting!

He slid a book out of the paper bag. Of course, it was a brand new copy of “Suburban Magic” in all its sordid glory. The man passed it to me with a barely disguised sneer of disdain.

Although it was faltering, the spell could not break while the forces were so out of balance. I now had my money back, the original copy of the book, plus the version I had brought with me.

I became aware of a new pull of gravity from the Bargain Bookshelf behind me. There was an empty space, distorting the flow of magic like a black hole sucking everything into its maw.

The book plugged the hole perfectly. As it slid into place, I mustered my remaining magic and gave the spine an extra push, so that it carried on sliding and tipped over the event horizon, out of reality.

This still left one copy of the book, which was no good at all. If it remained in existence for me to buy, then nothing would be changed. The whole sorry story would just start again.

I essence, both copies were exactly the same, with only a temporal difference between them. As I placed the second book in the gap on the shelf, I could sense the resonance between them. There was a residual spark from the paradox of their co-existence. A spark I utilised to fuel a final shove as the hole collapsed, so that both books cancelled each other out.

There was a weird distortion, which made me go boss-eyed. Somehow, there was no longer a gap on the bookshelf, even though it wasn’t full.

I had succeeded. The past was changed. But why was I still here?

As time resumed its normal flow, I had expected to be cancelled out too, so that my past self could have a second chance Or maybe that i would be catapulted back to my altered future and reap the rewards of my efforts.

Though the book was gone, I remembered reading it. And all the other books that followed. My knowledge of magic and its consequences were unchanged.

What I had forgotten was the extraordinary level of untapped magic there was in the past, before I squandered it.

Was this the price I had to pay: to live my life again and seek to make amends, in the face of such awful temptation?