The Hypnotist's Assistant

By Richard DeVall

When 13-year-old Gary Crockett hypnotizes Earl Lancaster and Earl rises from his wheelchair everything changes for both of them. Gary suspects Earl of lying about his paralysis and Gary's mom becomes romantically entangled with Earl. All three are run out of town. This is a breezy look at race relations, ladyboys, virginity, snake-biting churches, addiction, recovery, and meditation. All sprinkled with a bit of sarcastic humor. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Richard DeVall
• Release date: May 27, 2021
• ISBN: 9798224695881

Book preview

The Hypnotist’s Assistant

Richard A. DeVall

Earl Lancaster, a member of the Oroville Volunteer Fire Department, fell through the roof of Shaw’s downtown Carpet store in mid- October. It happened fast and Earl landed on a concrete floor. He was upright and stood for a second or two, and then he collapsed in a painful heap. It took time for him to realize he couldn’t move his legs. The fall was big news for the small town. The first reports from the radio were sketchy, but Channel 8 news got to the bottom of it and cleared things up.

Wendy Stulman, the in your face, freckled redhead from the local channel said, We have breaking news and we’re sending our reporters out as we speak. 

Anyone who was anybody knew Wendy meant Al Black, who happened to be black, and was the only reporter the noon news had. Nancy Scruggs, the camera woman, was fighting with Al and didn’t tell him he had mustard on the corner of his mouth when he let Wendy know it was the downtown location, not the mall store. Looks like Earl took a nasty fall and is being driven to the Johnson City Medical center by Andy Tate in his flatbed farming truck. It’s back to you Wendy.

All of this is a roundabout way of explaining how 12 - year - old Gary Crockett ended up spending so much time with his neighbor Earl Lancaster after school. Gary’s father had moved out and settled in with a socialite a few months back and Earl went out of his way to spend time with Gary. The kid looked lost. That may seem like a compassionate gesture on Earl’s part, but if truth be told, Earl was wheelchair bound and lonely. The kid was fascinated with his neighbor and that went a long way in Earl’s world - a world too often defined as four walls and a television set.

In Oroville, Earl was something of a celebrity. When he wasn’t at the firehouse, Earl had a little magic show he took to birthday parties, nursing homes and elementary schools. He couldn’t do his act from a wheelchair. And not being someone prone to depression he tried to remain upbeat. But the circumstances of waking every morning paralyzed were too much, even for a happy go lucky like Earl Lancaster. He felt sorry for himself and it made him take extra pills and more than the occasional drink. His doctors warned him under no circumstances should he drink alcohol because of the blood - thinning medicine he had to take. And he had a colorful pile of pills to pop on account of his damaged spinal cord.

One side effect of the pills was weird dreams that sent him into strange, jittery, black - and - white mixed up tales that generally ended up with Earl being chased in his wheelchair by a shadow figure. He’d wake up wet and frazzled and stare at Aurora, his day nurse, with eyes full of accusations. His gaze bore into her as if his chair - rolling nightmares were designed by the plump nurse.

Aurora was used to Earl’s crazy stares and dismissed him as if he was a spring gnat, or a fly jacked on sugar unable to comprehend the complexities of a piece of glass. You’re in your bed, Earl, and you just woke up. Your hair’s crazy and it smells as if you soiled yourself in the night. We need to change your diaper. You’re a cripple. Wake up and remember it.

Aurora loomed over Earl and she held his hard gaze until it knocked the grog out of his deteriorating mind. Don’t try and stand up and cause a big fuss because you can’t walk. You’re no longer able to hold yourself upright, Earl. As soon as your brain wakes up you’ll start in on me about breakfast. Before all that happens we got to get you cleaned up. OK, Mister Earl?

And so the day would begin with a slight hint of humiliation and urine in the air. Then it turned into a mirror image of the day before this one. Earl and Aurora would watch the shows in silence. After lunch Aurora would begin snoring in her TV chair. She had a little alarm and at planned intervals she made Earl breathe into a machine to keep his lungs working and fight off any signs of pneumonia. Aurora would make her notes and the sun moved and the shadows stretched. At four Gary would knock tentatively on the front door and Aurora would answer.

Earl would roll, and Gary followed in a distracted kid way, rubbing his young hands on the wall and touching every picture and switch as they made their way down the hall to the last door on the right. The room was once a master bedroom but was now filled with all of Earl’s equipment for the magic show.

Once the door closed, Earl pulled a bottle from behind a black trunk and took a long pull on the liquor and wiped his mouth on his crusty bathrobe. After that he’d ask Gary to show him how he was coming with the juggling. Gary had his three balls in his knapsack and pulled them out and showed Earl that he’d been practicing.

Earl said, That’s good, Gary. I can tell you’ve been working on it. Now I want to show you a little trick. With that Gary handed over the juggling balls, which were bead filled and soft. Earl tossed two of the orbs up and down with one hand. As he did that he took the third ball in between his index finger and his thumb. He made circles and loops between the two balls he was tossing up and down.  It had the effect of making him looking like he was doing a whole lot more than what he was actually doing. I do this as I talk to the people in order to get their full attention. Then I pick out someone from the crowd to hypnotize.

Earl showed Gary the trick box with the little motor that moved the fake feet under a sheet he’d drape over his assistant. If he didn’t have a pretty girl to help him he’d hypnotize someone from the crowd and have that person slide into the container. The contraption was built at a steep angle and folded the person into occupying one side. The illusion was to make it look like the person was being cut in half with a saw. Without the feet wiggling the trick was a dud. The two sides were separated and the audience stared in amazement. 

Gary was slowly getting the hang of the card tricks too. But what really fascinated him was hypnosis. It involved controlling other people’s thoughts. It sounded like the greatest feat anyone could do and he wanted in on it.

Late into the evening Gary would lie in his bed and stare at his ceiling, dreaming about hypnotizing kids in his school. He would be the most popular student in the 7th grade. They’d call him the boy that controlled minds. He dreamed of making his teacher bark like a dog when he said the word Skateboard. Or maybe make one of the tough boys cry when he said Vampire.

But Earl was slow to teach him anything about hypnosis. Earl was more interested in having him practice juggling and learn to talk to the audience as his hands were busy tossing the colorful little sacks up and down. Earl told Gary he needed to practice until his subconscious did the work of juggling while allowing his conscious mind to talk to the people.

Once you’re no longer thinking about catching and releasing then I’ll teach you about hypnosis. Because once you learn to give your own thinking over to your body, like when you ride a bike, and you’re not concentrating on peddling, then I can teach you how to separate someone else’s mind from their conscious into their unconscious. Because that’s what hypnosis is.

Gary practiced over his bed at night so he didn’t have to keep bending over and picking up the dropped balls. When one of those colorful spheres reached the zenith of being eye level he’d release another one. He worked at this for hours and he soon was impressing kids at school as he did tricks with pink erasers, yellow pencils and quarters. As they watched him he was scanning the crowd trying to pick out the best person to hypnotize. It needed to be someone that was concentrating on his hands with their full attention. 

At home in his bedroom he practiced talking to his mirror. He needed to use a certain confident, nonthreatening voice as he addressed the crowd. He also needed to hold their stare and once he picked a person out he would touch them on their shoulder as he spoke. This was necessary to send the message that the touch had given him something. As if he’d read their mind.

All these clues were reluctantly given to him by Earl, and that was because the kid bugged him to know end. And Earl was stingy with his knowledge. Gary suspected it was to keep him coming over to his house because Earl was a lonely invalid. Before he knocked on the door Gary made sure he breathed purposely and relaxed his mind before he entered Earl’s house. He knew that everything hinged on patience. And not being in a rush was hard work. It was harder than math, or gym, or Tania Straggle’s plastic retainer. But he had an obsession with learning hypnosis. 

On a chilly Wednesday, Earl was fidgeting with his hands and spinning his chair in circles and it seemed as if he’d had one pill too many. He looked in between the slats on his venetian blinds and saw Gary’s mom walking into her house with a bag of groceries. You’re mom’s becoming a looker, Gary. She’s lost a lot of weight.

Yeah, after my dad left she joined Weight Watchers and lost 36 pounds.

Good for her, he said this as he let go of the slat and returned to face Gary in the bedroom.

Tomorrow I’m going to start teaching you how to hypnotize people. You’re pretty good at juggling and talking. You need to learn how to move your thinking mind into your subconscious and be in a hypnotic state in order to talk to someone and move them into that same state. It takes time to use your eyes to look at the person the right way, and make your voice just right. You need to learn the correct words and have the subject relax.

Chapter two

Gary turned 13 in the summer of 2000. It was a year that radically changed his life and propelled him onto the national stage. It wasn’t something he was ready for or wanted. It was drunken Earl who pulled all the strings and devised a plan to milk their little bit of fame into some serious cash. And it didn’t help that his mother and Earl mooned over each other and flirted and were slowly becoming joined at the hip. So much so that Virginia, Gary’s mom, didn’t see that Earl was manipulating the whole mess into something bigger than it should have been.

Praise God, Earl shouted from the master bedroom. He stood and wobbled among the magician boxes and top hats and capes. Aurora bounded into the room to see what all the fuss was about. There before her nursing eyes stood Earl on his own legs. He was smiling like a mental patient on pizza Friday. He did it. Earl shouted, The boy hypnotized me into no longer being handicapped. I’m cured.

Word spread like a grease fire and soon the Channel 8 news truck was outside Earl’s house with Al Black holding a microphone up to Earl’s mouth asking him a boatload of questions. Have you had any doctors confirm your belief that you’re healed, Earl?

I’m standing up, Al. Are you blind? How much more proof do you need? I was lame and Gary healed me. I was crippled and confined to the chair and now I can stand up and walk, even run if I want to. You can see that too can’t you, Al?

Yes, Earl, I can see that.

I’m no longer pinned down and strapped to the involuntary state of chastity. 

OK, Earl, and you say this happened when your 13 year old neighbor boy Gary Crockett hypnotized you into thinking you weren’t a cripple.

That’s what I’ve been telling everybody. The boy’s a miracle - maker. He’s got the gift. His hands, Earl raised his hands toward the sky in a dramatic gesture as if hailing God, Are gifted. His mind bends the natural laws of man and he’s an all-around faith healer. We’re going to bring in folks from all over to get their poor bent and damaged bodies repaired.

Gary was standing in the doorway listening to Earl make these wild claims. He suspected Earl may have known for a while that his back was healing itself. Then again he did hypnotize Earl and when he was unconscious he did suggest he could stand up and walk. That was what Earl recommended he do once he had him under. Now Gary wasn’t so sure where the truth lay or what was really going on.

Spread the news, Al, tell the sick, the blind, the broke and the desperate there’s delivery coming in the shape of a 13 - year - old boy name of Gary Crockett. Tell them far and wide. A miraculous boy has been discovered and we’re working on a venue to address the needs of the lame and gimpy. If they’re cross - eyed, stooped or stupid, hacking up their lungs or out of energy, we want to do a mass hypnosis and get’ em fixed. Of course something like that don’t come free so we’ll most likely be charging a modest admission charge, but we won’t turn anybody away, either. We’re all about helping; we just don’t want to go broke doing it, ha ha.

And then Earl cast a wavering smile bordering on a lunatic’s grin. His long fingers clutched one more time at the sky, his eyes misty as he stared at the clouds as if receiving a message from the bright sun. Aurora watched it all and turned to Gary, shaking her head. That fool is out to line his pockets and you’ll most likely end up run out of town, Gary Crockett.

Gary’s 13 – year - old eyes nearly popped out of his head. He ran next door to his house and snuck in so nobody would see him. He left the lights off. He waited in the dim living room for his mom to come home and when she did she screamed when he surprised her. Gary Crockett, what in the world is wrong with you? Can’t you see you scared the bejesus out of me?

Gary apologized and then blurted out all he’d seen and heard, ending with Aurora’s comment about being run out of town. When he was done he was spent. He sank pretty deep into the recliner and waited for his mother’s calm, counseling words. He needed to hear her explain and reassure him that all would be OK. She put away the few groceries she had and came and sat next to him.

So Earl thinks I’m a looker, uh?

In bed Gary imagined the tent Earl said he was going to rent. In his mind it was full of farmers with rakes. Somehow he couldn’t clear his mind of rural people in coveralls and dingy dresses filling the big tent with their suspicious eyes. It was a scene from Frankenstein as the town gathered to hunt the cobbled freak. He had no reason to have this vision and he spent time hypnotically calming his mind. By the time he fell asleep he had some of the crowd wearing wrinkled suits from their day jobs with women in jeans chewing gum and staring at their chipped fingernails. He woke up feeling doomed.

At school he was teased. Heal me, Gary, I have a hang nail, he heard this as a bully raised his booted foot and wiggled his shoe. Even the gym teacher, Mr. Acres, got in on it. Hey, Crockett, my back’s killing me and my saving account is down. Do you think you can fix it?

Gary groaned and wanted to hide behind the bleachers. But all eyes were on him and so he shrugged and thought, why not. Sure, Mr. Acres, let me give it a try.

Acres spit out his gum and felt the whistle he had hanging from his neck. He rubbed his short stiff hair. The entire gymnasium became deathly quiet. Gary looked up to Mr. Acres, who was a foot taller, and held his gaze. He spoke softly and clearly and with confidence. "Mr. Acres, I would like you to