Houdini and Me Read online

  “Weird,” I told him.

  “That’s normal,” he explained. “I would be concerned if you didn’t feel a little weird after being in a coma.”

  The doctor shined a light in my eyes.

  “Harry, can you spell chrysanthemum?” he asked.

  “Uh…no,” I told him.

  “Good,” he replied, winking at me. “Nobody can. You’re perfectly normal. Are you hungry?”

  “Yes!”

  “Get this boy something to eat!”

  He told the nurse to remove my tubes and wrote something on the clipboard before he got up to leave.

  “I guess I still have to stay here for a night?” I asked, as the nurse pulled out my IV.

  “Just one,” Dr. Minutoli said, “For observation. Then do yourself a favor and take it easy for a few weeks. And stay away from the railroad tracks.”

  “I’m never going back there again, I promise,” I told him.

  “Good. I don’t ever want to see your face again. And if you start vomiting when you get home, go to another hospital. That stuff grosses me out.”

  The next morning, before I could check out of the hospital, they had to prepare a bunch of paperwork. The nurse said it could take a half hour. I propped myself up in the bed. My mom put a pillow behind me and used the remote control to make the top of the bed go up. Then she picked up some of the get-well cards people had sent me. We were looking at the cards together when there was a soft knock on the door. It was Zeke.

  “Remember me?” he asked cautiously. When I smiled, he came in and gave me a high five.

  “I don’t know where you would be right now if not for Zeke,” my mother told me.

  I wouldn’t be in a hospital, I knew that. It was Zeke’s idea to go to the railroad tracks both times. But I didn’t say that. I didn’t want to get Zeke in trouble, and I didn’t want my mother to know anything about the cell phone.

  Zeke and I looked at each other, sending a silent message to talk it over when my mom wasn’t around.

  “You are so lucky,” Zeke told me. “You got to miss a whole week of school. And everybody’s gonna be treating you like a big hero when you get back.”

  “Oh yeah,” I said sarcastically. “It’s great to be in a coma. Really clears your head. Everybody should have one.”

  My mom pulled out her cell phone and took a picture of me. Then she took a picture of Zeke and me together.

  “I’m going to go to the waiting room and tell everybody the good news,” she said as she picked up her purse. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  As soon as she walked out the door, I turned to Zeke.

  “Okay, what happened?” I asked him. “I need to know everything. Tell me the truth.”

  “Everything?”

  “Yeah, everything.”

  “It was a really stupid thing to do,” Zeke told me. “We were in the Freedom Tunnel down by the railroad tracks in Riverside Park. For some reason, the gate was open. So I said we should put some coins on the track to flatten them. Then, just as the train was coming, your shoelace got caught in the track. You couldn’t get it loose. At the last second, you dove out of the way and hit your head. And you’ve been in here ever since. I’m really sorry, man. I never should have suggested we do that. It was all my fault. I’m just glad you’re okay. I don’t know what I would have done if you didn’t wake up. And for what? For this…”

  Zeke reached into his pocket and pulled out a couple of flattened coins. He handed them to me.

  “That’s it?” I asked. “That’s all that happened?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “What about the second time we went to the railroad tracks?” I asked.

  “Second time?” Zeke said, puzzled.

  “What about the phone, Zeke?” I asked.

  “What phone?”

  “The cell phone!” I told him. “The flip phone!”

  “Flip phone?” Zeke asked. “Dude, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  I closed my eyes for a moment to clear my head. How could he not remember that we went back to the railroad tracks and crushed the cell phone I had been using to communicate with Houdini?

  “Hey, are you okay, Harry?” Zeke asked. “Are you gonna be able to come to my birthday party? It’s gonna be cool. We’re going to an escape room.”

  “What?!” I said, alarmed. “I already went to your birthday party at the escape room. Don’t you remember?”

  “Harry, it hasn’t happened yet,” Zeke told me. “My birthday is on Thursday.”

  He pointed to a calendar on the wall. The days I was in a coma had been crossed out with red marker.

  “This coming Thursday?” I asked. Zeke nodded his head.

  I had to sort it all out. Everything seemed a little foggy. The doctor had told me I might be confused a little bit at first.

  “You mean…none of it happened?” I asked Zeke.

  “None of what happened?”

  “Houdini!” I said. “The flip phone! The text messages! I was hanging upside down in Kansas City and I had to get out of a straitjacket. I told you all about it, Zeke! Don’t you remember Metamorphosis?”

  “Meta-what?” Zeke replied. “Harry, you’re scaring me. Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “So I never communicated with Houdini?” I asked.

  “Dude, you didn’t communicate with anybody,” Zeke insisted. “You’ve been out cold for a week.”

  “You mean the last time I was awake was when we flattened these coins on the train track?” I asked.

  “Yes! That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

  This whole thing was blowing my mind.

  “But it seemed so real,” I finally said.

  “I think you need to rest,” Zeke replied.

  When my mom came back to the room, she took more pictures and kept hugging me like she didn’t want to let me go.

  “Are you okay, Harry?” she asked. “You look a little pale. Should I call the doctor?”

  “I just need to sit here for a minute,” I told her.

  A lady knocked on the door and told my mom they would release me from the hospital as soon as she signed some paperwork. While she did that, Zeke collected up all the flowers so they could be given to other patients on the floor. I got dressed and then picked up the boxes of candy on the windowsill. As I was stuffing them into my backpack, one of the boxes fell on the floor.

  I bent down to pick it up. It was a small box, about six inches by four inches. There was a red ribbon around it, but it was loose so it slipped off. I figured that after all I had been through, I deserved a piece of candy.

  I opened the box.

  No candy.

  There was a cell phone inside.

  Everything in this book is true, except for the stuff I made up. It’s only fair to tell you which is which.

  First of all, Harry Houdini was a real person, of course, and arguably the most famous celebrity of the early twentieth century. He started out as a magician, but became more famous for his ability to escape from virtually anything. Metamorphosis was a signature escape that Harry and his wife Bess performed all over the world for many years.

  I researched this book mainly by reading lots of books about Houdini, such as Houdini!!!: The Career of Erich Weiss by Kenneth Silverman, The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America’s First Superhero by William Kalush and Larry Sloman, Houdini: The Man Who Walked Through Walls by William Lindsay Gresham, and The Magician and the Spirits: Harry Houdini and the Curious Pastime of Communicating with the Dead by Deborah Noyes, to name a few. I also visited the Houdini Museum in New York City (houdinimuseumny.com), and watched newsreel footage and several silent movies Houdini starred in (available as Houdini: The Movie Star, a box set). If you want to know more about the man, search for his name on the Internet and it will keep you busy for weeks. If you happen to be near Scranton, Pennsylvania, visit The Houdini Museum. There’s also lots of Houdini memorabilia at The History Museum at the
Castle in his childhood hometown—Appleton, Wisconsin. It’s a few blocks from Houdini Plaza.

  Finally, I spent a lot of time in Houdini’s old neighborhood. He really did live at 278 West 113th Street in New York City. I wasn’t born there, but I live just eight blocks away and I walk by Houdini’s old house frequently. In fact, that’s what gave me the idea for this story.

  I can easily imagine Houdini climbing the stairs in Morningside Park, visiting the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and hanging out in Riverside Park. All these locations in the story are real, as is the Freedom Tunnel (the gate is locked, I tried it), the original Hippodrome (where Houdini famously made an elephant disappear in 1918), and the current Madison Square Garden of course.

  Some biographies describe Houdini as a bit of a selfish egomaniac who demanded constant attention and adulation. I wouldn’t call him a bad man, but if Houdini had the chance to text from the grave and switch places with a modern-day kid in order to pull off the ultimate escape act, I suspect that he would take it.

  The stuff I made up? Harry Mancini, his mother, and his friend Zeke do not exist. And make no mistake, you cannot communicate with dead people by text message. Don’t bother trying.

  However, it’s absolutely true that many people believed Houdini’s escapes were so amazing that he must have had supernatural powers, and that if anybody could come back from the dead it would be him. Houdini was fascinated by death. In the 1922 silent film The Man from Beyond, a character played by Houdini was brought back to life after being frozen in Arctic ice for a hundred years. In fact, Houdini promised his wife and a number of friends that if there was a way for him to communicate with them after he died, he would do it. And to this day, every Halloween, séances are held all over the world with people gathered together trying to receive some kind of a message from his spirit.

  Unfortunately, Harry Houdini has not been heard from since 1926. It’s true that he was punched in the stomach and died of peritonitis (an inflammation of the abdomen) nine days later, on Halloween. He was just fifty-two years old.

  Houdini is buried in the Hungarian section of Machpelah Cemetery in Ridgewood, Queens. A steady stream of visitors come to pay their respects at his large stone horseshoe-shape grave site. Often they leave playing cards, coins, and handcuffs on the gravestone. In this way, his memory is kept alive. Harry Houdini may not be able to communicate from “the other side,” but he will never be forgotten.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Dan Gutman has written many books for young readers, such as the My Weird School series, the Genius Files, the Flashback Four series, The Kid Who Ran for President, The Million Dollar Shot, The Homework Machine, and his Baseball Card Adventure series. Dan and his wife, Nina Wallace live five minutes away from Harry Houdini’s house in New York City. You can find out more about Dan and his books by visiting his website (dangutman.com) or following him on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.