The Last Rule: "Magic is magic."

A week later, I found out why he had given me the silver knife. A woman walked into the bar and I felt a tingle in my arms that I remembered from that night. Jack wasn't here, so I knew it was real. I could do magic, I knew it.

All it required was blood.

Every time I saw the woman, I felt the urge, the urge to take the silver knife and slit her throat, to write arcane symbols with her blood, to feel the magic pulse within me.

I threw the knife away immediately. It reappeared the next day. Each day I would throw it away and each day it would reappear.

I can't tell of this is because it is a magic knife or if I'm simply insane. I've decided it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if Jack did something to my head or if I simply imagined the whole thing because I'm coo-coo for Cocoa Puffs.

I'm checking into a psychiatric hospital tomorrow. And I wrote all this down today, so that if I ever get the urge to leave the hospital, the urge to do magic of any kind, I can read everything I wrote here and just stop.

Magic is magic. That's what Jack told me. Magic is whatever it is. It can be whatever it wants to be. It doesn't have to be logical or make sense. It's completely mad. It doesn't care. It wants to be free and will take the shortest and quickest route - through blood, if necessary.

Jack visited me once more.

"Well?" he said. "You've lasted remarkably well. Last time I did this little trick, the poor man was carving up prostitutes in Whitechapel a week later."

"I'm not going to kill anybody," I said.

"Hmm," he said. "Oh well. Still, I'll leave the knife with you and see how much longer you can last. I've got loads of time." He smiled and disappeared.

That's when I decided to enter the psychiatric hospital.

The only thing I'm afraid of is that it won't be enough. That I might change my mind and try to do magic again. That I might hurt someone. That I might kill someone.

I'll try. I'll try to stop it. To stop thinking about it. To stop thinking about that night, swirling like a tornado in my head, with laughter echoing along with the first words Jack said to me:

Magic is alive.

Addendum to the First Rule: "Magic is dead."

"I suppose," I said, "you're also going to tell me those things you told me about, the Fears, they aren't real either."

"Oh no," Jack said, "they are as real as can be. Realer, even."

My head hurt. I felt like Jack was just toying with me, telling me anything he wanted in order to gauge my reaction. "I'm going home," I said.

"Home?" Jack said. "You can't go home yet. I haven't told you the first rule of magic."

"Yes, you did," I said. "In the bar. 'Magic is alive,' you said."

"Oh, yes," he said, "I suppose I did say that. And it was, you know. But there were some rule changes a way back, corrections and addendums and all that. The new first rule is this: magic is dead."

I looked at him with bleary eyes. "How is that possible?" I said. "We used magic today. I've seen-"

"Do we have to go on about sight again?" Jack said. "Do you know how easy it is to manipulate sight and sound? Did you remember looking for yourself or was I always there to lend you a hand?" I remembered: each time I saw, he had put his hands over my eyes. Like he was adjusting them. "And when your fingers glowed, do you remember the tingling? Was that before or after I grabbed your arm?" He grinned and knew he had got me.

"But you flew," I said. "You raised yourself in the air and you stabbed your hand."

"Of course, I can do that," Jack said. "I'm Jack. But you? You're just a failed magician, Tom. And magic is dead and buried. I killed it myself, strangled it as best I could. Oh, you can still do a trick or two with it, even dead things have their uses."

"I've stopped believing a word you say," I said. "Magic is real, magic is a sham, magic is madness, magic is dead. Everything you say contradicts itself."

"Of course it does," Jack said. "That's magic."

"Shut up," I said. "I don't care anymore. I just don't care."

I started to walk away, when I heard Jack. "Tom," he said. "The way to work magic is to be mad. The way to be mad is to realize that nothing makes sense. And when nothing makes sense, the world becomes a more exciting place. Where magic is alive and dead and real and fake." He walked towards me and took out his silver knife and, even though I thought he was going to stab me, I couldn't move an inch. "Magic is many things." He pulled my hand forward and placed the silver knife in it. "But foremost it is this: magic is magic."

"Goodbye," he said and snapped his fingers and I woke up with my head on the bar, a silver knife in my hand.

The Tenth Rule: "Magic is madness."

"Jack?" I said.

"Oh yes," he said. "I've been nimble and I've been quick. I've killed giants and I've climbed beanstalks. I've built a house and eaten a pie and even worn springs on my heels. I've haunted lonely roads and robbed from the rich and paraded down the street wearing plants. I've been so many things to so many people, but I'm still just Jack." He grinned and it was like a shark standing before a minnow.

"And what do you want?" I asked.

"Oh, young Tom Keller asking me what I want?" he said. "How ironic. Young Tom Keller, who wanted to be a magician since he was six. Who wanted to be a magician so badly, but was never really any good at it. Who would put on magic shows that nobody would attend, who would try so hard to perform just one trick right and then get it all wrong. Who finally gave up one day and decided to be a bartender instead."

"How did you-" I almost asked before stopping myself. Stupid question.

He smiled and answered anyway: "Because I chose you, Tom. Because you are the perfect person to learn magic. Magic, as I've said before, requires a mind on the edge, a mind teetering, just waiting for a strong gust of wind to push it off the cliffs of insanity. Because magic is madness!"

"You're crazy," I said.

"Didn't I just say that?" Jack said. "What if I told you that everything you experience tonight wasn't real? That magic was just a sham?"

"I wouldn't believe you," I said. "Everything I've seen-"

"Everything you've seen?" Jack said. "Everything you've seen is nothing. Everything you've seen is a product of your fevered imagination. Just think: we've been talking for hours and hours, right?"

"Yes," I said.

"So why hasn't the sun come up?"

I looked up. The moon still shown brightly, no sign of the sun. But when I closed the bar, it was perhaps one am and now... I looked at my watch and found that it had stopped, stopped before the bar had closed. Perhaps it had stopped when I met Jack.

"Maybe it did," Jack said, reading my mind. "Or maybe you're in a rubber room somewhere, with your eyes tightly closed, imagining this whole scene."

"No," I said. "It's real. It happened. You can't trick me."

"Trick? Me?" Jack laughed. "Trick or treat. My trick was your treat. Didn't you enjoy it all? Didn't you love believing that magic was real?"

"It is real," I said.

"I never said it wasn't," Jack said. "But magic is fickle. Magic doesn't like being exposed. So, like any good magician, you can't tell anyone about it. They would lock you up in the looney bin! Because, of course, you are crazy. Talking about magic and everything."

"Why are you doing this?" I asked.

"To prove a point," he said. "Magic is madness. Only those who are mad can do magic. Because only they can see the magic, because the magic only exists to them. They see the world through a different eye. Don't you, Tom?"

"I'm not mad," I said.

"Oh," Jack said, "we're all mad here."

The Ninth Rule: "Magic is misdirection."

As we walked, Knave spoke about nearly everything. Every word out of his mouth was something new, something revelatory. He told me of all of the Fears; from the cunning and brutish Rake to the sadistic Wooden Girl; from the secret-seeking Black Dog to the pestiferous Plague Doctor; from the ever-changing Empty City to the imprisoned Brute and his Burning Bride.

I then asked him how these things could exist, how they could take our freedom away from us, how was there nothing to stop them?

"Stop them?" Knave said. "With what?"

"With magic," I said. "Surely someone knows enough magic to combat them."

"You can't do that," Knave said. "You can't fight with magic. Magic is slippery, even at the best of times. To control it, to channel it...you couldn't. You would have to move along with the magic, to use it in misdirection. That's what magic is good at: misdirection."

He waved one hand and then raised the other to show it held a group of flowers.

"I still don't understand," I said. "You've shown me the real world, you've shown me how to really look at things and use real magic. But you just keep talking about show magic, misdirection, like card tricks."

"Magic is misdirection," Knave said. He moved around behind me. "For example: everything I've said to you tonight has been true and false. I've completely misdirected you."

"I don't believe you," I said.

"Of course not," Knave said. "That's the beauty of a true misdirection - the victim never knows until it's shown to him. Come on, then, turn on your true sight, have another look at things." He covered me eyes again and then uncovered them and I saw the world the way it was, the way it should always look, again. "It's funny, isn't it?" he said.

"What is?" I asked, even as I marveled at the colors around me.

"You seeing the world for what it is," he said, "and yet you never turn and look at me."

I stopped. That was true. I had never seen Knave through this lens before. It hadn't even occurred to me.

"Go on then," I heard Knave said. "Take a good look."

I turned and looked at him.

He looked the same. Same mussed hair, same stubble, same stupid grin. The lines and colors that made up the world disappeared when they met him. He looked the same as before. He grinned.

"Why-" I started to say and then stopped, because he began to glow. A light surrounded him and infused him and then left, like a light bulb lighting up and then going dark. And when the glow surrounded him, something strange happened: his right arm twisted itself, it became blurry and changed shape and color, becoming a deep red. And when the light left him, it changed itself back to a normal hand and a normal arm, but I could still see the red it had exuded.

"What are you?" I asked.

"Oh, you finally figured it out," he said. "Took you long enough." He snapped his fingers and the world around him was drab again. "Enough of that. And as for your question: people have called me many things, but the name I prefer, actually, is Jack."

The Eighth Rule: "Magic is patterns."

"Patterns make up the world," Knave said. "The world and the solar system and the galaxy and the universe. Patterns within patterns within patterns. Fractals and tessellations and Euclidean and non-Euclidean patterns. It's the same with magic."

"How so?" I asked. We had moved on from the telephone poles to a different area, one lined with houses, all of them with darkened windows. Nobody awake at this hour.

"There was a story," he said, "that Aleister Crowley used to tell. He said he once started following a man, patterning his footsteps after the man until they were perfectly in sync. And then Crowley stepped out of sync and the man in front of him tripped."

"But that's not magic," I said. "That's just a trick."

Knave looked at me and laughed and his laughter echoed down the cul-de-sac. "Magic is trickery. Magic is legerdemain, sleight of the hand. Only instead of hiding the card up our sleeves, we're hiding the card in different dimensions. Magic isn't just blood and sight - it's knowing how to use them, having the ability to display your talent. Giving your audience a treat via a trick, you might say."

"But real magic-" I started to say.

Knave's smile vanished. "You don't know anything about real magic," he said. "Everything I've told you is like an adult explaining how the world works to a child. So simplistic, it might as well be lies."

I didn't say a word. This sudden outburst had surprised me - I hadn't seen Knave angry before. His anger simmered underneath, like it could erupt at any moment. Then he closed his eyes and the rage vanished and when he opened them, he smiled again.

"Come on," he said, "more to show and more to see."

The Seventh Rule: "Magic seeks freedom."

I followed Knave as he continued to walk in his usual zig-zag pattern and then he stopped. "There," he said and pointed up at some telephone lines. "Tell me what you see."

I looked. "Telephone lines," I said.

"And what's on them?" he asked.

I looked closer. "Birds," I said. "Is that all?"

"No," he said. "When I tell you to look closer, I want you to look closer." He covered my eyes again and then pulled his hands back and I saw the world again like it was before, with lines of light and waves of color.

And there, sitting on the telephone lines, were birds made up of complete and utter blackness. They sucked light in like black holes. They looked at me with beady eyes and I recoiled.

"What are they?" I asked.

"Right now, most call them the Convocation," Knave said. "Birds that aren't really birds at all, like the man who wasn't a man. Hidden in plain sight, for all the world to see."

"Why are they like...that?" I asked. Looking at them hurt my eyes, but I couldn't look away.

"Magic seeks freedom," Knave said, "but those things take freedom away from us. They hunt us down, they grab us and never let us go. They are what we fear, plain and simple, fear made flesh and set loose upon us."

"Why?" I asked.

"There are no whys," Knave said and covered my eyes again, taking away the beautiful world and the cruel darkness of the birds with it. "There are never any whys."

The Sixth Rule: "Magic reveals."

"So, really," I said, "what was that man in the park?"

"Do you really want to know?" Knave asked. We were sitting on a bus bench and I was trying to feel the tingle again in my arms, though it wasn't quite working out.

"Yes," I said. "Was he magic?"

Knave laughed. "No," he said. "A person can't be magic, they can do magic. But that man isn't a person and has no need for magic in the first place. And he has many names, most of them names that nobody remembers. The name most call him by now is simply 'the Slender Man.'"

"If he's not a person," I said, "what is he?"

"You've seen beneath the thin skin of reality," Knave said, "but this goes deeper. This goes much deeper."

"I want to know," I said.

"Alright," Knave said and jumped up. "Let's go."

"Go where?" I asked.

"Magic will reveal all," he said. "That's what magic does: it reveals. So come along now." He started walking, then turned and walked in the opposite direction.

I followed.