08 Illusion

by Frank Peretti

  “Time check,” said Mandy, willing to consider it.

  Joanie had a watch. “Oh, yeah! It’s, uh, ten to one.”

  The Great Marvellini would be doing his amazing thing on the North Stage at two. Magic! Mandy did not want to miss that.

  “I’m going for that chicken basket,” she said.

  “Right on,” said Joanie.

  “Where’d they get the chicken?” Angie asked.

  Mandy broke into the County Fair Weave, a bent-kneed scurry she’d first developed as the After Church Weave and then the School Hallway Weave. It got her through crowds quicker—supposedly—and worked even better if she used her hot rod noise. “Brrrrrroooom!”

  “Whoa, wait up!” came Angie’s voice.

  Mandy checked over her shoulder. Joanie was in her slipstream, and Angie was catching up. The Spokane Junior League Chicken Basket booth was just across from the grandstand. Mandy made it into the line with Angie behind her and Joanie in third place, hopping, trying to get her sandal back on. Score two points for crew socks and sneakers.

  Joanie secured her sandal and scanned the menu chalked on a blackboard. “I think I’ll take a look around.”

  Angie was already scanning the booths for something grown without chemicals. “Where you wanna meet?”

  Mandy wiggled her index finger toward the North Lawn, a grassy common with picnic tables under the trees. “I’ll grab us a table.”

  Joanie and Angie turned and the crowd swallowed them up.

  Mandy got her basket soon enough, the chicken still steaming, along with a diet soda in a Styrofoam cup, plasticware, and two paper napkins. Just like last year.

  She made her way onto the North Lawn, looking for a table. The place was busy with late lunchers, so she opted for a grassy spot in the shade of a honey locust tree, a good place where she wouldn’t get stepped on. She sat, her back against the tree, her basket in her lap. A clock on the end of the Corn Dog booth said five after one. If she and her friends could cram their lunch down and get to the North Stage by quarter of two they could hopefully get a seat up close. She could take in the one-hour show and get back to the Sheep and Goat Barn to give Daddy a break with the llamas. Sounded like a plan.

  The Great Marvellini. She smiled as she chewed, amused. With a name like that and a gig at a fair like this, he probably wouldn’t blow her away. But then again, a chance to watch a real magician didn’t come often, and if she could just keep up with him, see how he did his loads, switches, and misdirections, that would be so cool. Would he tear up a newspaper? She could tear up a newspaper and restore it whole, and do it so smoothly it still had Joanie and Angie guessing. Rope tricks she didn’t care that much about. The cutting the rope in half trick was fun, but ehhh … who didn’t do that one? But … oh! Back-palming cards! Now, that still had her frustrated. She could do one card in front of a mirror or a few friends, but twenty cards at once, in front of a big crowd? If he could do that one and do it well, now, that would blow her mind. She’d been practicing—

  Oh! The tree moved, bumping her head, shoving her forward. She looked back; did something hit it, a car or a golf cart or something? Weird. She turned forward again—and saw white cloth with little blue flowers in her peripheral vision.

  She stayed motionless, as if a bee had landed on her. She blinked. She rubbed her eyes, then opened them again.

  Freaky. Very freaky.

  Somebody’d thrown a cloth over her, something white with a pattern of tiny blue flowers. It covered her down to her knees, and with one movement of her arms she realized it had sleeves and she was wearing it.

  Her chicken basket was gone. So was her drink, her paper napkins, her plasticware.

  Her mouth was empty. She’d been chewing on chicken …

  Bare feet. She looked about for her sneakers and her white socks, but nothing.

  Not just bare feet. Bare legs. She raised her right foot: the anklet was gone. Her fingers shot to her earlobes. Empty.

  But not just the anklet and earrings. She gasped with a little squeak as she distinctly felt the prickling of the grass against her bottom, the scratch of the tree’s bark against her back. Her hands shot down to secure the cloth, keep it down, keep it tight, don’t let it move …

  She checked herself, one side, then the other, top to bottom, front to back, frantically finding out just how much of that cloth she had to cover herself.

  “Augh!” she cried out, then stifled herself so no one would look. Unbelievable! She was wearing a hospital gown, those embarrassing things they make you wear for physicals and operations and stuff.

  She squirmed and wormed, planting her feet on the ground and her back against the tree to elevate herself and make sure everything was closed up back there. Any extra she wrapped tightly around her, holding the outside layer. Now she was scanning the commons, her hair, with no headband, whipping about her face. Somebody had to be watching this, having a really dirty laugh. Did anyone else see what happened?

  The people sitting at the tables were eating, talking, paying her no mind. The people …

  What happened to the fat guy sitting at the second table with half his butt showing? What about the two ladies in the pink Take Off Pounds Sensibly T-shirts eating salads? Where’d they go, and how did they move so fast?

  She must have been sleeping quite a while. Her eyes went in search of the clock on the end of the Corn Dog booth.

  No clock. Different booth, and this one sold … it took her a moment … Vietnamese food. Vi-et-na-mese?

  She looked a careful, second time at the faces around the commons, the people sitting at the tables. Nobody looked the same. Not even the tables. They were blue; they used to be green.

  She carefully pulled in her feet and got them under her.

  Was she in a different place? She twisted to make sure she was still under the tree. This one was bigger. It was a honey locust, but a lot bigger. Where was the smaller one?

  A couple walked close by, and the guy gave her a quizzical look. She was about to return his look stretched out of proportion when it occurred to her that her own stare might have started it.

  Smile, Mandy.

  She smiled. He gave her a halfway, “it’s cool” smile, then looked to see where he was going.

  She looked down at herself. No, crouching under a tree in nothing but a hospital gown and staring holes through everybody didn’t blend.

  She’d better find Joanie and Angie.

  Unless they were the ones who did this to her. But they never pulled weird pranks like this.

  Maybe this was a drug trip. Somebody slipped her some acid in that diet soda. She’d never done drugs; she wouldn’t know what to expect.

  She stood, keeping her back to the tree as she prepared the gown for walking in public. Blades of grass tickled between her toes. Any other time that would have been fun.

  Daddy taught her to stop and think when they used to go hunting. He’d say, “What’s the first thing you do when you’re lost?” and she knew the answer from the last time he asked her, “Stop and think.”

  She eased away from the tree. She could walk. She could breathe. Her eyes were working fine—well, lying to her, but at least they were in focus. She stepped across the grass, taking a few jabs in the feet from twigs and stones—those were real enough—and made it to the asphalt walkway that ran between the booths.

  All the booths were different. New frames, new signs, new locations, and … and the Junior League Chicken Basket had changed to the Shriners’ Barbecue. She could feel her stomach tightening and her hands starting to shake.

  Daddy used to tell her, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.”

  “I’m having fun,” she said out loud so she could hear it, rubbernecking in the middle of the walkway with people passing on every side. “Just going nuts here and having fun.”

  She caught a sideways glance from a lady but smiled back. “It was a girl! Seven pounds, five ounces! It went great!” The lady kept going.

>   The asphalt was hot under her feet and hurt with every step. Mandy bore the pain, stepping in any shadow she could find, searching the booths: Curly Fries. Mexican Grill. Huckleberry Ice Cream. Crab Cakes. Breaded Tenderloins.

  No Joanie. No Angie.

  She passed a little dispenser with a picture of a hand on it: Hand Washing Station. Wow. A place for people to wash their hands, right out in the open. But it took two hands, and one of hers was indispensably occupied.

  Then came the Tobacco Free Zone. Where? Everywhere, or just there?

  Huh. Since when did some of the boys start wearing really short hair, even butch cuts? Instead of an Afro, a black kid had no hair at all. Was that in?

  She walked back toward the carnival rides, past Oklahoma Funnel Cakes, Elephant Ears, A Taste of Italy, Gyros Gyros Gyros.

  The organ-grindy tune from the merry-go-round had changed. She made herself look: it was a different merry-go-round.

  She came to the end of the food booths and turned two complete circles, one hand holding her gown, the other holding her hair away from her face and shading her eyes as she scanned the crowd.

  Her friends were gone like they never existed.

  She tried to fend it off, hold it down, but this feeling kept turning her stomach, shortening her breath, making her hands quiver: the Disneyland Freak-Out. She was little, with Mom and Daddy at Disneyland, and all she had to do was look away to watch Pluto go by and the next moment she couldn’t see them anywhere, only strange people, strange feet and legs and strollers and other kids, and no one looked at her and no one knew her, and she didn’t know them, and she’d never known such loneliness before, like dangling over death, so much so that she screamed for Mom and Daddy …

  Her hand went over her mouth. This felt just like it.

  Strangers. All these people were strangers. Even the buildings, the booths, the trash cans, the signs … all strangers.

  At least the layout of the fairgrounds looked the same. She hurried through the carnival toward the livestock buildings. Her feet hurt, again and again. She couldn’t avoid the small pebbles, bits of trash and straw, and the heat, always the heat at midday with so few shadows. She was starting to limp, about to cry.

  She passed three guys with long, snaky hair, tattoos all over their arms and backs, and their pants falling down, showing a pair of underwear falling down, showing another pair of underwear.

  “Oh, Jesus, what have I done?”

  She was drawing more stares now. Hobbling, fighting panic, her hair constantly in her eyes, she was getting noticeable and couldn’t help it.

  A guy walked by with a funny plastic thing in his ear, talking out loud to someone who wasn’t there—“… well, how about four? You leave the kids off and then I’ll swing by … no, no problem.”

  She asked someone, raced to the building labeled Camelid Barn, and found llamas content and quietly munching in straw-lined aluminum pens.

  At the far end, a rancher on a raised platform, microphone in hand, was giving a llama lecture to a small crowd.

  She’d never seen him before. She scanned the faces of those minding the animals. She once knew most of them; now she didn’t know any. She hurried among the pens reading the names: Johnson Sisters. Bingham’s Llamas. Sunrise Ranch. Lotta Llamas. No one she knew or remembered. She looked up and down, peering, searching through the people, pens, and long furry necks. She climbed to the second rail of a pen and searched again.

  “Daddy?” she called.

  She didn’t see him. A kid about twelve turned and looked in her direction, but only because she looked so out of place in here.

  An answer was all she wanted. “Daddy?” Louder. “Arthur Whitacre, are you here?!”

  Now the llamas were checking her out with huge brown eyes, starting to get nervous. That didn’t sit well with the owners, who were checking her out as well.

  “Has anybody seen Arthur Whitacre?” Her eyes were blurring with tears and she couldn’t help shaking.

  “Oh, what have we here?” somebody said.

  A gentleman from the Sunrise Ranch, in plaid shirt and rancher’s hat, approached, extending a hand to her. “Miss, why don’t you get down from there?”

  She didn’t know him and she didn’t come down. “I’m trying to find my father!”

  “Shh, now just take it easy. We’ll find him. Just come on down before you get hurt.”

  She stepped, nearly fell, from the railing. He reached and steadied her but she didn’t appreciate his touch and brushed him off.

  “Arthur Whitacre! I’m looking for Arthur Whitacre!”

  A nice, curly-headed gal in an Alpaca Acres T-shirt hurried to help, but just repeated his name, “Arthur Whitacre?”

  Don’t play dumb with me! “Yes, Arthur Whitacre! The Wooly Acres Ranch! He had four llamas!”

  Miss Alpaca Acres looked around the room, bewildered. Another lady joined them, the really fat one from the yarn spinning display. “Who’s she looking for?”

  “Arthur Whitacre?” said the gentleman.

  “He had four llamas!” Mandy repeated.

  “There’s nobody here by that name,” said the gentleman.

  The rancher who’d been doing the lecture arrived. She had to tell him the same things all over again.

  “Are you sure you’re in the right building?” he asked.

  She stared back at them, aghast. Such unbelievable, total know-nothingness. They could have been mannequins, dream people.

  “Daddy …” slipped in a hoarse whisper from her lips. She turned away from the strangers and toward the huge room to look just one more time, hands trembling, barely gripping the paddock rail. If only she could see him. If only he were working close to the ground, spreading straw or checking hooves, and would finally stand up straight and appear chest and shoulders above the pens, billed cap on his gray head, feed pail in his hand. If only she could see him smile big and wave at her and she could run to him and let him put his guarding arm around her and pull her close for just a moment …

  Then everything else wouldn’t matter. She would have been home, even in this place.

  “Please don’t be gone,” she whispered. “Please, dear God, don’t take him away, not him, too!”

  She was crying, really crying, and she didn’t care who noticed even as gentle hands touched her shoulders and the strangers came close.

  “Where’d you come from, sweetie?” asked the gentleman.

  “Is there somebody we can call?” asked Alpaca Acres.

  Mandy came away from the railing and let them gather around her. They were less strangers now and she needed them.

  The fat lady asked, “What’s your name, sweetie?”

  “Mandy Whitacre—and my father’s Arthur Whitacre, and we had some llamas …”

  She could see them looking her over, reading something in what they saw.

  “Mmm,” said the rancher. He was looking at her bare feet and her hospital gown. “She might have gotten out of the …” He jerked his head toward the west.

  The gentleman seemed to understand. He nodded, then spoke kindly, “You don’t worry now. We’re gonna get you some help.”

  “We sure are,” said the fat lady.

  The llama lecture rancher took a little gadget from his belt, touched it, and it lit up like a tiny color television. He rubbed his finger across the screen, and the picture moved. Little numbers and letters appeared like a keyboard on the screen and he started touching them as they made soft, musical beeps.

  It was enough to scare her. “What’s that?”

  He looked up at her, strangely interested in her question.

  She asked him, “What’s that going to do to me?”

  The four exchanged looks and nodded little yeses to each other.

  chapter

  * * *

  3

  Mandy sat on a hospital gurney, bare feet on the linoleum floor, trying not to wrinkle the white sheets. She had a robe now—Thank You, Jesus and Spokane County Medical C
enter—and under the circumstances she was deeply grateful. It even had the hospital logo stitched on it.

  She was in one of those through-the-door-and-down-the-hall examining rooms every hospital and doctor’s office has, the one in which the smiling nurse takes your temperature and blood pressure, asks you some questions, tells you the doctor will see you shortly, and then leaves you to sit for a while. She could hear some occasional stirrings from the hall outside, a nurse or doctor walking by, some muffled conversations, sometimes the low rumble of a passing gurney or cart. It was a big, busy place out there with lots of people waiting their turn, just as she was.

  I should be safe. Unless this was like Planet of the Apes and she was Charlton Heston, the astronaut who landed there, and all the apes thought he was the weird guy.

  Like that lady sheriff’s deputy back at the fairgrounds. “Honey, we’re going to take you to the hospital just to make sure you’re okay, all right?”

  It made sense at the time. Something had to be wrong with her head and she was desperate.

  But it was a little heavy riding in the back of a police car with no handles on the doors and a cage between the front and back and a big shotgun mounted on the dash… . She didn’t have anything against cops, at least not yet, not personally, but plenty of her friends did, and maybe for good reasons: Mayor Daley’s cops during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and those kids at Kent State getting shot, to name a few.

  The lady deputy was named Rosemary and she talked a little bit, but Johnny, the big Hispanic guy who drove, hardly said a word except on the radio, something about “transporting subject for police hold.”

  Subject. She was a subject. And “police hold” didn’t sound like help.

  She fidgeted, dried her palms on her robe, stood up because she was tired of sitting. I’ve got to call Daddy. He’d be looking for her by now, getting worried. Joanie and Angie—wow, they’d be ready to skin her.

  She touched the soft surface of the gurney. It was really there. She was really here. There were no boogie men or aliens or armored apes standing around trying to jab her with big needles or suck out her brain. She could recite the opening of the Declaration of Independence and the opening lines from the Gettysburg Address. Two plus two was four. Eight plus eight was sixteen. Eight times eight was … um … sixty-four!