Part 3

Magic was the best thing in the world.

David was wholly convinced that it was, and nothing either of his parents said was likely to change that.

...at least not before he found something ELSE to be the best thing in the world. Before magic it had been the traveling puppet show that had come to town only once and had never come again (for a reason that David would never know). And before the puppets it had been the birds nesting in the tree by the old barn. David couldn't remember what was before the birds, but that was fine. The birds were gone and he had something NEW to occupy his easily fascinated mind.

The old barn was a good distance from the house... far enough to take him out of earshot of the fighting and screaming that occasionally took place there. It sat near a flat, empty, burnt spot where an old house used to be. That whole section of the farm used to belong to another family who had given their land to the Vern's when they left. David thought was a very nice thing for them to do, and so he thought of these benevolent neighbors as 'nice people', even though he had never met any of them. Still, he wondered what it would have been like to be one of THEIR children. He bet they got plenty to eat. Their father probably didn't beat or yell at them very much. Maybe only sometimes... like once a week. Not every day. And maybe their mother wouldn't cry so much. That would be nice. David wondered these things occasionally and every once in a while he entertained the fantasy that this mystery family would come back and take him away with them. Maybe it would turn out that he'd been one of THEIR children all along... that the Verns had somehow stolen him and his real family would come back to save him.

That would be great.

But in the meantime, David was content just to play in their old barn whenever he got the chance. It was his playhouse. His castle. His fortress. And now, ever since the flamboyant young wizard had come through town selling enchantments... it was his Chamber of Magical Delights.

The interior of the barn would have been pitch black were it not for the numerous missing planks in the roof. The irregular holes allowed shafts of sunlight to pierce the darkness at random intervals. The effect... blackness dotted with pools of brilliance... almost seemed magical, although David hadn't thought so until recently. David avoided the black places. They were scary. When his journeys through and around his magic chamber necessitated crossing one of these areas, he always did so at top speed. And he never... well, hardly ever... went in the very rear of the barn where there were no holes to provide light. That was another place... another room... another plane of existence that was separated from his play-space by an impenetrable wall of darkness. He even avoided looking in that direction, always choosing to face the yawning barn door when he did whatever it was that he did inside. Today, that was attempting to 'extract magic from natural surroundings'... a phrase he'd heard the mage (who's name he couldn't remember) say in town before he left.

Of course, even a child knows that you can't extract something that isn't there, so David had been collecting 'magical' items for weeks and hiding them under the rotting hay. The items mostly consisted of interesting rocks he'd found on the farm and bits of colored glass he'd picked up along the road to town. Most of the 'interesting rocks' were tiny bits of quartz. One was a hunk of flint that produced sparks when struck against other rocks... a quality that David had incorporated heavily into his magical attempts.. Two of the pieces of 'colored glass' were actually rough emeralds, but that has no bearing on this particular tale. David knelt in the sunlight and dug through the hay, assembling his collection of magical stones before him. The glass and quartz and emeralds gleamed in morning sunlight. He ran his fingers over their smooth and rough surfaces and let his imagination create sparkling auras of power pulsing from each one.

"Ooooo..." he said, impressed by the strength of his own imaginings. "This time it'll work! I know it will!" David selected the five most colorful items in his collection and placed them in a line. He picked the most colorful because color was synonymous with magic in his grossly misinformed mind. He used his finger to draw a circle around them in the dirt, and then started waving his hands in the air, attempting to imitate the hand-motions of the mage he'd seen only once.

Nothing happened. Not even in David's imagination.

Undaunted, David launched into a string of gibberish that was his version of 'magic words of power'.

"Shhhhh...."

David wiggled his fingers over the 'magic stones' and spoke even more nonsensical words

"....over here..."

"huh-?" David stopped, mouth open in mid-syllable.... hands in mid-air... fingers in mid-wiggle. He frowned.

He could have sworn he heard something. Not just something, but a voice-

"...over....here..."

If David hadn't already been frozen....

"Ummmm...." the boy managed to almost speak. It was definitely a voice. And it was definitely NOT coming from his magic rocks.

It was coming from behind him.

It was coming from... back there.

In The Dark.

David looked up at the open barn door. He was a lot closer to the door than he was to the wall of blackness behind him. Running would be so easy. If there was someone in the back of the barn, getting away from whoever it was would be almost trivial...

...but he didn't move.

"...don't be afraid..." said the voice. "I..."

If there was more to be said, the voice didn't say it. David tried to place the voice... but there was nothing familiar about it. It was faint and weak. It was a child. A boy. But not a boy who's voice David had heard before. It was a stranger.

"Who's there?" said David. He couldn't quite bring himself to turn around and look.

"...Don't you know?" said the mysterious child's voice.

"No," David replied. "Who are you?"

There was no reply.

David looked at his 'magic' rocks. The imaginary aura was gone now, but David couldn't help but wonder if the magic he imagined in them had been real.

Had he accidentally summoned something?

If so... was it human?

"Are you real?" David asked.

"Yes... help me...."

Finally, David turned. The wall of darkness was behind him as it always was...

...but somewhere in the darkness, something moved. Something small, smaller than a man or even a boy. It might have been an animal except for the fact that it wasn't quite solid... and its shape seemed to waver and change like smoke in a light breeze.

And the colors.

All around the blacker-than-blackness, like a light shining from somewhere behind it... somewhere far away...

Ooohhh the colors!

"...magic..." David whispered.

"Yes," said the voice.

"Can you teach me?"

"I only know what I see. Not enough to teach... but enough to show..."

"You can show me magic?! REAL magic!?"

"If you want."

"YES!"

"But you have to do something for me, first."

"ANYTHING!" David trotted further back into the barn, toward the wall of darkness and the child's voice that spoke from it. But he stopped just short of leaving the light. He stopped, and thought better of what he had just said. "...ummm... what do you want?"

"My name," said the voice.

"Huh?"

"My name. I don't have one... and I need it. I need it to do better magic."

"You don't know what your name is?"

"No." The voice sounded sad... so very sad... David took another step toward it. He squinted into the darkness, young eyes trying to make sense of the shifting shadows and twinkling colors.

"I'll give you a name," he said. "How about 'George'? That was my mom's dad's name-"

"No... that's not my name."

"Ummm..." David frowned and scratched his hairless chin, thinking deep (for a child). "Ummm, if you don't know your name, how do you know its not 'George'?"

"Because I'll know it when I hear it."

"How about 'Jason'? I got a friend named 'Jason'... but he's not really a friend because he calls me names and-"

"That's not it either."

"Derris! That's my uncle! He's funny! He knows good jokes and-"

"You're guessing. You're not supposed to guess."

"Huh? Why not?"

"Because that's not how it works. And it might take you forever to guess. I need to know soon."

"Why?"

"Don't you want to see my magic? You don't want to wait forever to see it, do you?"

"Nooo..." David thought for another moment, and came away from his efforts with nothing but deeper confusion. "So what am I supposed to do if I can't guess?"

"You'll have to find it. It's like a game. You like games, don't you?"

"Sometimes," David remembered some of the 'games' his father played. Those weren't fun games. Not fun at all. Suddenly wary, the boy backed away.

"Where are you going?" the voice sounded worried.

"What if I don't like this game?"

"You'll like what I show you," said the voice. " Don't you want to see? Don't you want to play along and see what I have to show you?"

"Maybe. How do I play?"

"Simple. You find my name."

"But Howwwwww..." David stomped his foot in frustration. "I don't know your name and I don't know how to find iiiit!"

"I can tell you how. But you have to do what I say. And you can't tell anyone what you're trying to find... or bad things will happen. Very bad things."

David swallowed. He didn't like the sound of 'very bad things,' and suddenly this game seemed like something that maybe seven year old boys shouldn't be playing. What if the voice wasn't a little boy? What if it was something he had accidentally summoned with the magic stones, and it was trying hurt him? What if-

"...wh-wh-what kind of bad things?"

"They might catch you and take your name away, too..."

That didn't sound so bad to David... but then, he HAD grown accustomed to 'David' over the years. What if they took it away and he had to get used to another one?

"...it hurts when they take it," said the voice. "It hurts a lot, and for a very long time."

"I don't wanna play..." David said, taking another step back toward the open barn door.

"Yes, you do," said the voice. "You want to know. You want to see."

"But you said people will HURT me!"

"Only if you tell them what you're doing. Only if you don't play exactly as I say. But if you do, I'll tell you how to find my name," said the voice. "Then you'll tell me what it is and I'll show you alllll the magic I've seen."

"Is... is it good magic?"

"Better than good."

"Ohhhh...." David pretended to understand what the voice was saying.

"But I need my name back."

"How do I find it?"

"Tonight."

"Yeah?"

"Go past the Hill. You know the one-"

David gasped and clapped his hands over his mouth.

"The Hill!" He whispered. "I can't go to the hill at night! It's Haunted! With GHOSTS and everything!"

"Yes, but not the kind that can hurt you."

"No, no, no, no, no, no..." David was in full retreat now, heading for the barn door and open daylight.

"They can tell you things, David!"

David stopped. He didn't consciously realize that this was the first time that the voice had spoken his name, but the unconscious realization was enough to stop him in his tracks... at least for a moment. Long enough for the voice in the dark to get its final hooks into him.

"The ghosts know magic, too, and they can use it to find my name... if you're nice to them and not afraid like all the other boys. You don't want to be like all the other boys, do you, David? No... you want to learn magic and do things they'll never do. But you have to learn magic first. And you have to SEE magic before you can learn it. Go to the Hill tonight. Go to the top, and down the other side where everyone else is afraid to go!"

"No!" David had had enough. He turned to run-

"You'll see magic there! You'll see someone that can tell you where to find my name! But you'll have to go tonight! Alone!"

...and then David was out of the barn. He sprinted down the trail leading back home as the voice, shouted out of the barn after him:

"And don't tell anyone about me, David! Don't Tell Anyone! If you do..."

Bad Things.

Very Bad Things.

As David ran back home, the idea of actually doing what the voice said... of actually GOING to the haunted hill at night and talking to ghosts about magic... was perhaps only slightly less likely than him being struck by lightning and turning into a giant green chicken.

But in a few hours, things would change.. and the idea of going out for a secret midnight trip to search for a lost name wouldn't sound so far-fetched at all. David didn't know it. But the voice in the barn did.

Oh yes, it most certainly did.