Free The End Of Mr. Y by Scarlett Thomas Page B

one fair-ground entertainer. Still, however, I recalled my assignment. I was here, in the mind of William Hardy, to understand the ghost illusion that he peddled from country fair to country fair.
    In an instant all was clear to me. I saw the intricate placing of the large, expensive sheet of glass, polished five times a day by Little Will himself. I saw it balanced on the stage, resting against a wall or structure behind. I saw, and understood, the forty-five-degree tilt. I had the most profound knowledge of the way the illusion worked, from the tilted glass to the actors underneath who danced in a projectionist’s light, thus creating images, like inverted shadows, to be reflected through the glass and onto the stage. I understood Little Will’s amazement when he himself first discovered the construction of these beings of light, and I recalled, as clearly as if thinking of a scene from my own past, the evening that Little Will opened the book that revealed the secrets of this illusion. I must say, however, that the sensation of reading a book in a man’s memory was a queer one, and although many passages were forgotten, and therefore appeared to be missing, I was able to read the most significant sections as if the book was in front of my own face.
    There is a part of my adventure that I have not yet described for fear of entirely compounding the impression that I lost my wits that day in the fair-ground tent. However, I must now relate this curiosity, and I beg further indulgence from the reader. What I wish to describe is the way in which my field of vision altered when inside this ‘spirit world’ of other minds. At the beginning, I confess I had no idea of how far this world-of-minds expanded, nor how far within it I would be permitted to travel. However, on that first visit I became aware of some important factors, which I will now attempt to describe. When one sees the world in ordinary social intercourse, or in the comings and goings of a typical day, one sees the world as if that world were contained within a frame. The outside world therefore is a picture on a wall; or, perhaps, many pictures. If I were to look to my left I would see one picture. If I glanced to my
    right, another. A philosopher may ask if indeed there is another picture behind me, one which I cannot see, but I shall not take this avenue of inquiry for the time being.
    If one accepts this way of looking at the world as a frame with perceptible edges, albeit blurred ones, then one will more easily comprehend the altered frame through which I gazed on the world of Little Will. For Little Will’s frame also contained my own, superimposed on top of it. The result of this superimposition was the existence of a milky hue over all that I saw, as if I were looking through thick glass or a thin veil. Yet the peculiarities of this new frame did not end there. Around the edge of my perception of Little Will’s vision was a blur similar to that which creeps around the edge of ordinary vision. But the blur around the edges of Little Will’s frame was made more pronounced by the existence of layers of little pictures, like playing cards laid out in a game of Patience; one to the right and one to the left. There was another feature of this new kind of vision which perplexed me even further. When Little Will came close to another person and regarded him, a dwelling would appear faintly behind the already milky image that I had. I understood without fully comprehending that at these moments I could, if I so wished, simply walk into that house instead of the one in which I was currently standing; in other words, I could enter another mind. At least, this was the theory I constructed from the evidence before my eyes, but when I tried this on the boy Peter I seemed to bounce from an invisible wall and instead landed back on the small path connecting the cottages.
    Again, I was overcome with a sense of peace and fullness. The hunger I had felt when joined with