Hypnotizing Maria

windows, yet plenty of light.
    The room wasn’t square but round, and when he turned to see where he entered, the door had disappeared. Disguised, probably, to match the stone.
    Seems like stone, he reminded myself. Painted cloth to look like irregular squares of granite, some medieval fortress.
    “Look around you, Jamie,” said Blacksmyth from outside, “and tell us what you see.”
    He chose not to say what he knew, that it was cloth. “Looks like a stone room,” he said, “inside a castle tower. No windows. No doors.”
    “Are you sure it’s stone?” came the hypnotist’s voice.
    Don’t push me, he thought. Don’t count on me to lie for you. “Looks like stone. I’m not sure.”
    “Find out.”
    It’s your reputation, Mr. Blacksmyth, he thought. He walked to the wall, touched it. It felt rough and hard. He pushed, gently. “It feels like stone.”
    “I want you to be sure, Jamie. Put your hands on the stone and push as hard as you can. The harder you push, the more solid it will become.”
    What an odd thing to say. As hard as I can push is pretty hard, he thought, and there’s going to be wood blocks all over your stage. He pushed gently, at first, then harder, then harder still. It was solid, all right. This may be more a magic show, he thought, than mind stuff. How did Blacksmyth build a stone room under the stage, and how does he move it from theater to theater?
    He looked for the door behind its disguise, but everywhere was stone. He pressed against the wall, kicked it here and there, walked around a room no more than ten feet in diameter, straining against the granite, kicking it hard enough to dent, if it were balsa wood or plastic.
    It was frightening but not much, as he knew Blacksmyth would have to set him free some time soon.
    “Jamie, there’s a way out,” said the showman. “Can you tell us what it is?”
    I could climb it, he thought, if the spaces between the stones were wider. Looking upward, he saw a ceiling of the same stuff, solid blocks. On one part of the wall was a scorched blackened place, as though there had been a torch placed there for light. Now the torch and the fitting that held it were gone.
    “I can’t climb it,” he said.
    “You say you cannot climb the wall,” said Blacksmyth, loud and theatrical. “Jamie, have you tried?”
    He took that for a hint, that there may be hidden handholds.
    Not. He stepped on the edge of the first course of stone, his shoe slipped off at once.
    “There’s no climbing it,” he said.
    “Can you tunnel under the wall, Jamie?”
    That seemed like a silly idea, the floor being the same stuff as the wall and ceiling. He knelt down and scratched at the surface, but it was as unyielding as the rest of the room.
    “How about the door? Try the door.”
    “Door’s gone,” he replied, feeling foolish. How could the door be gone? He knew it was part of the trick, but the fact was that a door no longer existed.
    Crossing to where he entered, Jamie Forbes threw his shoulder against what looked like stone but may have been stuccoed plywood. He tried that, succeeded in bruising his shoulder. How did the whole place get to be rock?
    “There’s a way out,” said Blacksmyth again. “Can you tell us what it is?”
    Jamie Forbes was tired and frustrated. Whatever was going on, the trick was getting old. No doors, no windows, no keys, no ropes or wires or pulleys, no tools, no known combination of touching this slab then that one. If there were a way out, some secret password that needed shouting, he hadn’t a clue.
    “Give up?”
    Instead of answering, he backed against one side of the room, ran three steps and gave a flying kick to the other. He wound up on the ground, of course, the wall unmarked.
    “Yeah,” he said, getting up again. “I give.”
    “Here’s the answer,” came Blacksmyth’s voice, filled with drama. “Jamie, walk through the wall!”
    The man’s gone mad, he thought, he’s lost it in the middle of his show. “I can’t do that,” he said, a little sullen. “I don’t walk through walls.”
    “Jamie, I’m going to tell you the truth. I am not kidding. The walls are in your mind. You can walk through them if you believe you can.”
    He rested his hand, at arm’s length, on the stone. “Yeah,” he said, “right.”
    “OK, Jamie. I’ll give it all away for you, right now; I’ll give the whole trick away. You don’t recall this, but you’ve been hypnotized. There are no walls around you. You