The Magician #3
"About this." Magi approached the chiffonier and patted it. "The vanishing closet. The one he used with Snowy Snow-White."
Together with Magi, we circled around the chiffonier, but we didn't see anything that made it special. Magi opened both doors, revealing two upright compartments, without shelves or hangers.
"So, how does it work?" Trifke asked.
"It's simple," said Magi. "You enter one of the compartments, we close it, and when we open the doors... you're gone!"
"Pfft! I saw through the trick right away. There are doors between these two parts that you go through. It looks like you disappeared from one part, but you're actually in the other."
"There's only one way to find out."
Magi's words caught Trifke off guard. His eyes widened for a moment, and his lips moved as if he was about to say something.
"Come on, Trifke, you're not scared, are you?" we said, although we still had no idea what Magi was planning.
Trifke was silently analyzing the chiffonier. We believed he was looking for an excuse to refuse without appearing cowardly. However, there was no such excuse, so Trifke finally raised his head and said, "Which door should I go through?"
"Either one. Choose for yourself."
Trifke deliberated for a moment before choosing the right door. He entered, turned around to say something to us...when Magi slammed the door shut and turned the key. A smile stretched across his face, reaching its breaking point.
"He's mine now!" he exclaimed to us. "See these wheels on the dresser? They move in all directions. Help me spin it around. I can't do it alone."
We looked at each other, weighing whether we wanted to participate in this. However, Trifke was behind locked doors and didn't pose the usual threat. Soon we were all standing around the chiffonier, leaning against it.
"Now what?" we asked.
"Push!"
As soon as he spoke, Magi leaned on the chiffonier and we followed him.
The contraption was heavy, but the wheels started turning quickly and soon we reached a considerable speed.
We could barely keep up with the chiffonier as it spun.
We were so caught up in what we were doing that we were laughing and panting simultaneously, forgetting that someone was inside.
Soon, the banging and muffled yelling reminded us of his presence.
We looked at Magi, but he continued pushing with his eyes closed, chanting his mantra.
One by one, we finally stepped away from the wardrobe and began to ponder what would happen when Trifke came out. Magi kept pushing it for another couple of laps, until the inertia started to decrease, and he also moved away from the wardrobe that was slowing down.
His expression told us everything. Obviously, he had only partly thought out his plan, not taking into account all the factors. Magi's hand reached for the chiffonier, then stopped and fell to his side. We noticed he was gulping with fear.
And we noticed something else.
"Nothing can be heard from the chiffonier anymore," we said.
At first, Magi continued looking at the floor.
Then he turned his head towards the wardrobe.
We stood together silently and listened.
Magi approached the chiffonier and timidly turned the key in the lock.
After he had opened the door, he stepped back and an empty compartment appeared in front of us.
It was undoubtedly as surprising to him as it was to us.
"So, Trifke was right," we said uncertainly. "Now he's in the other part."
Magi quickly unlocked the second door. He hesitated for a second too long before opening the door, which was enough to confirm our suspicions that something was wrong. The next moment, two empty compartments of the old chiffonier were gaping at us.
The events that followed became mixed up in our minds, so even after many years of psychoanalysis and various conversations, we cannot remember them clearly.
The police came, along with the social services, and our parents.
Trifke's father also came (his mother had long since passed away, which might be one of the reasons for his arrogance).
Magi's mother was the first to arrive in the room. We didn’t know if she heard us shouting or simply came to tell us something.
In any case, she found us hysterically demolishing the wardrobe.
She tried to calm us down and stop us, at first with words and then with a few slaps.
When she finally got our attention, we heard her say something that she had probably repeated many times, "What in God's name are you doing? "
We probably told her a summary of the previous events. In the end, we told her that we had to completely dismantle the chiffonier. If Magi's grandfather, the magician, had used it, there must have been a secret compartment where Trifke had hidden himself.
At the mention of Magi's magician grandfather, she turned to Magi.
He had been sitting on the bare floor for some time, leaning against the wall, tears streaming down his face and neck.
He held a broken piece of wood in his hand.
He admitted that his grandfather had not been a magician, that he had made it all up and that the "vanishing closet" was actually a chiffonier that his late grandmother had brought as part of her dowry.
In a fit of thoughtless anger, he had hastily come up with a plan to get back at Trifke.
He assumed, rightly, that Trifke's pride would force him to enter the chiffonier.
Magi simply wanted to scare and confuse him while he was locked up in the dark.
Of course, he had not thought everything through to the end.
Only when we stopped spinning the chiffonier around did he realize that his revenge was short-lived and that he would only additionally enrage Trifke.
In a blink of an eye, he wished, knowing it was impossible, for Trifke to simply disappear.
And, in a peculiar way, that's exactly what happened.
As Magi was recounting the events, his mother was looking at him with concern. Then she turned to us and asked us to tell her what really happened and where Dragoslav (Trifke) was. However, no matter how persistently she repeated the question, we couldn't offer her a better answer.
Of course, the police thoroughly questioned all of us, as well as Magi's parents.
Initially, they suspected that Magi's father kidnapped Trifke and that we succumbed to group hysteria and concocted the story about the closet.
However, Magi's father was with his wife at the time of Trifke's disappearance, so they quickly ruled him out.
Further investigation revealed our conflict with the Pigeon-man and that he threatened us.
They searched the hoarder's den. Trifke was not found, but they discovered two dead dogs and one dead cat, along with some children's items. This was enough for them to apprehend the Pigeon-man.
However, there was no solid evidence against him, nor did any arise later, so he was eventually released from custody.
Days passed, and with time, Trifke's disappearance was suppressed by other events.
As years went by and nothing new was discovered, it seemed increasingly logical to us that the Pigeon-man had actually taken Trifke right in front of our eyes (perhaps even jumping out of the chiffonier), and that trauma took care of the rest. However, just when we started to believe it, we would remember Magi's expression when the chiffonier stopped, and then the doubt would creep back into our hearts.
The End