08 Illusion

by Frank Peretti

  With a wide, exaggerated wave and a pull on thin air, she beckoned a wireless microphone to come to her and it did, circling around her, then plopping into her hand. The crowd stirred at that one. They were with her.

  She noticed the folks were wearing jackets, hats, even some gloves. The sun was out, which helped, but a sign across the street said the temperature was fifty-seven degrees. Not bad, really, for the pit of winter.

  But she couldn’t wait to get into the stunt and into some coveralls.

  “Helloooo, everybody, and welcome to the Orpheus, where anything can happen and dreams can come true!” Vahidi must have written that opener. It was her job to say it. “I’m Mandy Whitacre, opening tonight in the Prospector’s Lounge, bringing you a Different Kind of Magic.” She flung her hand out, and Lily the dove appeared. One more fling and Carson followed Lily as they circled over the crowd. While the doves did a circle, and then, to everyone’s astonishment, a series of vertical loops, a police siren sounded and a Las Vegas Police Department squad car pulled out from behind some landscaping.

  “Oh-oh. Aerobatic birds without a license!” she quipped. She extended her arms and the doves came to rest, one on each arm.

  Oh, the folks loved that!

  Andy brought the doves’ cage and they tucked themselves back home as an officer stepped onto the stage, handcuffs in hand.

  “Officer Steve Dykstra of the LVPD!” she announced.

  They applauded, though a few booed. The Las Vegas cops were great sports. She put her hands behind her and he handcuffed her. Then he did the same to her ankles. “Don’t worry,” she said, “you’ll get ’em back—I hope.”

  She hopped into a large canvas bag that lay open on the stage, then Andy and crew member Carl pulled the bag up around her and cinched the top closed.

  The Orpheus liked doing things big. They’d hired a crane just to hook that bag and hoist it into the Dumpster. It was noisy, it was big and noticeable, it was great show business.

  And she was blind to the world, trying to keep her body moving, kicking a little so they’d know she was still in the bag as it dangled on the end of the cable. They’d worked this through. Come on, don’t let me swing too much …

  She felt Andy and Carl’s hands steadying her as the crane lowered her into the Dumpster. Eeesh. The Dumpster was empty but it still smelled like garbage inside. She touched down and settled to a sitting position against the Dumpster wall, Andy unhooked the cable, and then SLAM, the lid closed and she was in the dark.

  Now for the trick, and quickly, before the garbage truck arrived. She drew a breath, relaxed, and thought of the ranch, the white rail fence and the three aspens, the long driveway. She reached outside herself … and nothing happened.

  He never loved me. He was in love with his wife. He said so.

  She winced, concentrated. Reach out … if not the ranch, then—no, not the hospital. Don’t go there.

  My invitation is still open. Was she supposed to feel flattered? Seamus was such a child! At least Dane Collins showed a little honor, a little respect!

  But he told me to go away and never come back. He’s in love with her, and I just look like her.

  She could feel the wad of cloth in the bottom of the bag, a pair of coveralls she was supposed to slip into after she got free of the cuffs. Other magicians would have picked the locks by now; they would have been free of the bag, they would have been wearing the coveralls and using some trick to get out of there—a double, a secret panel, a mirror system, a false bottom.

  But she had no trick. She was still stuck in this world, this present where the handcuffs were cold, tight, and unyielding.

  She reached in her thoughts, her will, but the ranch would not clarify in her mind; she wasn’t welcome there.

  She wriggled against the cuffs, but that was pointless.

  I never told him my real name. At least that would have been honest.

  Oh, no. She could hear the garbage truck roaring around the corner of the hotel. Concentrate!

  On what?

  The crowd was stirring—and growing—as a garbage truck rumbled up to a ramp on one side of the stage and lurched to a halt, brakes hissing. Climbing out of the cab like it was just another day, another Dumpster, the driver and his partner walked up the ramp onto the stage and rolled the Dumpster down the ramp toward the truck, the huge casters grating and shrieking, the lid on top rattling.

  The floor of the Dumpster was jittering and banging under her backside, and the sound of the lid clapped her on the ears. This was a new experience. She was supposed to be out of the Dumpster by now.

  The driver went to the levers on the side of the truck and operated the boom. Down came the forks like an elephant’s tusks, ready to pluck the Dumpster into the air. The crowd was stirring, getting playfully nervous. She’s not in the Dumpster anymore, is she? It’s all a big act. Isn’t it?

  The handcuffs hurt, as real and secure as cold steel could be. The cloth of the bag was scratching her face; she was starting to sweat.

  Rumble … scrape … clank! The garbage guys rolled the Dumpster forward, pushing the slots on the Dumpster over the forks on the boom.

  Oh, dear God, now or never. What if there’s no soft garbage in that truck for me to land on?

  With a powerful roar from the truck and a surge of hydraulics, the Dumpster arced into the air over the cab of the truck, over the container in back, and tilted completely upside down.

  The crowd screamed, laughed, waited to see …

  The lid wouldn’t fall open. The driver jerked the levers, jerking the boom, shaking the Dumpster like a salt shaker, which made the crowd groan and gasp, feeling the pain for the poor soul inside.

  chapter

  * * *

  36

  Finally!

  Just before the shaking, Mandy reached for the last place on earth she wanted to go: the hospital. It sprang into her reality and she let herself fall into it, slipping out of the bag and handcuffs, out of the Dumpster, and into a wavering, tilting, tea-stained reality she’d come to loathe, the same hallways, doctors, nurses, signs and labels, medicinal smells, beds, gurneys, wheelchairs, that same, ominous door with the red letters on it. Why did she have to keep coming back here?

  Her feet touched down on the linoleum—it felt like a soft rubber mat under her feet—but she didn’t step into this world. She had to get back to the hotel, the garbage truck, the show. She reached, groped, thought for another fold of reality, another curtain she could pull back.

  She found an opening, slipped through it …

  She was … where? It looked like the inside of a house under construction. It was empty, with no fixtures, just bare walls and the smell of fresh paint. It was almost solid; she could see the ghost of another world through the walls.

  No, still wrong, still lost.

  “Whoa! Who are you?”

  The voice scared her. She almost lost hold of the in-between and fell into this place, but she recovered and held back. She couldn’t get stuck here.

  Keep reaching … get back to the hotel …

  It was a painter, a friendly sort of guy all in white coveralls with a painter’s cap on his head and a roller in his hand. He was circling her warily, keeping some distance, looking right at her, nearly solid.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  “The name’s Ernie. Ernie Myers,” he said. He stared intensely, studying her from different angles. “Are you really there? You look like some kind of Tinkerbell or something.”

  He reached with his finger to touch her but she shied back. “No, better not touch me!”

  “But how do you do that?”

  “I need to get back to the Orpheus Hotel!”

  “The Orpheus Hotel! Little girl, you are lost!”

  She tried to look beyond him, to see that world, the stage, and the garbage truck. She thought she could hear the truck rumbling … somewhere.

  “You sure you’re really there?” he said, and this time he did manag
e to poke her.

  As if he’d been electrocuted he jolted, screamed, twisted, his arms enfolding his pain.

  She didn’t see what became of him. The moment he touched her she spun away as if caught in a whirlwind and fell out of there, through space, through blurring lights and sounds. She heard the truck and locked on it.

  She was floating above the crowd, still watching the Dumpster hanging upside down above the truck as the driver jerked the levers and shook it.

  She’d lost no time!

  Somehow—she still didn’t know how; thinking it was the same as doing it—she zipped through the Dumpster, grabbed the coveralls into the in-between and got into them, then aligned herself with the ground so she could step out onto it. She yanked a billed cap from a pocket of the coveralls and put it on. Ready? There wasn’t a moment to spare.

  The driver of the garbage truck gave the levers a wiggle, the Dumpster made one final lurch, and the lid dropped open. The bag, limp and empty, and the two pairs of handcuffs dropped into the truck’s container.

  That was the moment of misdirection, when all eyes were on the Dumpster. Mandy stepped into the real, solid, present world just behind the driver and touched his shoulder; he ducked under the truck, out of sight. Mandy hopped up on the truck’s running board, let out a whoop to get the crowd’s attention, then took off her cap and waved it at everyone.

  The effect worked. She’d vanished from the Dumpster and appeared in the place of the driver.

  Great stunt. The crowd loved it.

  She ran onto the stage, reached with an unseen hand, and brought the microphone to her. “Thank you!” she said to the crowd, and then toward the heavens. “Thank you!”

  For that one fleeting moment onstage, the sorrow lay buried under the moment and the show business. She knew it would be back, but right here, right now, she relished her own little victory, the very pleasant fact that once she was captive, but now she was free. “I am Mandy Whitacre!”

  The first time Ernie Myers fell off a ladder and his crewmen brought him into the emergency room with a cracked rib and broken clavicle, Dr. Margo Kessler and her secretive associates were able to send him home the next day with no broken bones and no memory of the accident.

  The second time there would be no way to fix his injuries but the conventional way and he was sure to remember everything that happened to him. This inconvenient complication originated in the bowels of the off-limits basement, but it fell to Dr. Kessler, the benign face aboveground, to clear it up. She was steaming, feeling put upon and jeopardized, but she put on the best demeanor she could muster to wring information out of him.

  “Silly ladder,” he said, the pain keeping him still as he lay in his hospital bed. “The legs are crooked, so the thing rocks. I should have learned from the first time, right?”

  Me, too, she thought. “So no dizziness beforehand? No vision problems, anything like that?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “No hallucinations?”

  “Hallu——what are you talking about?”

  “The guys who brought you in—”

  “Jim and Don. My crewmen.”

  “Yes. They said that right before the accident they heard you talking to somebody who looked like a … Tinkerbell?”

  He winced and wagged his head. “That was my roller. I got names for everything. The roller was getting kinda flighty, leaving gaps, so I was talking to the roller.”

  “Talking to your roller.”

  “Yeah. I talk to things, talk to myself.”

  “So, who was lost and looking for the Orpheus Hotel?”

  Now Ernie got a little mad. “What? Those guys don’t have any work to do, they’re just sitting around listening to the boss talk to his roller. What’s up with that?”

  She smiled pleasantly, trying to keep him at ease. “I’m just covering all the bases here. I have to make sure there’s no head trauma. You hit your head the last time, remember?”

  “Not really.”

  She chuckled and nodded. “That’s right, you wouldn’t remember that.” She wrote something down on the chart—made a scribble, actually; she was buying time. “Ernie …” First-name basis. She pulled a chair close to the bed and sat down, closer to eye level, more personal. “You don’t have to be afraid to tell the truth. I’m the doctor, I’m here to make sure you’re okay.”

  He seemed to be listening.

  “Sometimes when people have had a head injury, they see things, they might see people who aren’t really there. It’s nothing to be ashamed of or embarrassed about but you see, if you fell and hurt yourself due to a prior head injury, I need to know about it.”

  She raised her eyebrows slightly, suggesting she was waiting for his response.

  He looked at her for a long moment and she looked back, hoping, expecting …

  “I fell off a ladder!” was all he had to say.

  Sunday morning, Dane went through the doors of Christian Faith Center, embraced old friends, worshipped, then remained in his pew afterward, joined by friends and Pastor Chuck. Dane told them he was still working through his loss, wondering what to do, trying to resolve lingering issues, and could they pray with him? They nodded and prayed accordingly, even though he meant more than they thought they understood. He just had to hope the Lord would appreciate the spirit of their loving generalities while he silently footnoted the specifics:

  That he would not be crazy, that somehow everything would come to rest on a rational explanation he could take home. Preston had a great-sounding theory, but it was so much like everything else he’d been through, simply outlandish, that it could not quell his doubts and fears even as he pursued it.

  That he would not do anything really stupid.

  That the Lord would help him get over Eloise—he thought it best not to call her Mandy. Whatever this fixation with a twenty-year-old was, it had to be affecting his thinking. It could be the single reason he was back in town, and that was dangerous. However it turned out, whatever he found out, it was to resolve his own issues and get peace of mind, not … well, he didn’t even want to think about it.

  But he did pray that God would take care of the girl, keeping her strong and pure, and not let anyone in this town—and that included the likes of that Seamus character—soil her or lead her astray.

  Dear Lord, just help her find out who she is and where she belongs.

  The prayer huddle took place in the second pew from the front, Dane and Mandy’s favorite spot for the whole fifteen years they attended the church, and where Dane sat for the worship service that day.

  She’d dressed up for church, sat near the back, remained just a few minutes to pray a prayer not too different from his. She slipped quietly out, lost in the mix, saying hello to the friendly people, feeling so much better until some heads turned and she heard a lady say, “Doesn’t she look like … ?”

  She walked quickly, turning her face away. She didn’t want to hear it.

  A few miles down the freeway she finally corralled her emotions and got things at least half sorted out; she was glad she went to church and glad she heard the lady say that. It was a God thing, the good and the sad. God was just being honest and making her face things … ooohh, pun!

  Yeah, yeah, she’d been a fool, a teenybopper with just the face and hormones to fall into a fine kettle of fish, right along with Dane. Well, thank God, she could see that now, and there was no need to blame Dane or beat herself up about it. God still loved and forgave her. It was time to grow up and move on.

  So, to be grown up about it, silly mistakes aside, she learned a ton from Dane Collins and she should just be thankful for the productive days they had together. Maybe she’d write him a letter—in a few years—and thank him for that part of it.

  To be grown up about it, that simple hour and a half spent with other believers in the embrace of God’s presence was real and familiar, like finding land after being adrift. The sweet God things she’d grown up with were still there, unchanged and
rock solid under her feet, so there was still a big part of her world she could depend on.

  As for the rest of her world, the part that was always smack-dab in front of her, brought her work, and helped her survive, but was so totally out to lunch she had to be nuts, that was another kettle of fish altogether. Any sane person would think it weird and scary, but she was getting used to it so it was becoming less weird, and that was scary. Stepping through a veil into another place she’d never been before, making things move by touching them even though she wasn’t, meeting and talking to people she could see through, and seeing herself ahead of herself, all of these were becoming as real as making a sandwich, crossing the street, leaning against a wall. She’d heard that crazy people couldn’t tell the difference between delusion and reality, and she was getting awfully close to that now.

  And she sure didn’t want to end up in the hospital again.

  So could she tell the difference?

  Her little blue Bug had to be real, and the pavement rushing under it at sixty-five miles per hour more than just her imagination. That her hands were on the steering wheel, keeping the machine from veering off and flipping over the guardrail, was a fact she’d better not have doubts about.

  Oh, great. Was that her exit? Nuts! See, there was another real thing: she wasn’t paying attention so the real exit in the real world went right by her and she missed it. She wouldn’t have made that up and caught herself off guard like that. She drove on to the next exit and took that one, hanging a left at the bottom to duck under the freeway, where she could hang another left back onto the freeway …

  There was no on-ramp here.

  Guy!

  She kept going straight, lost. She’d have to pull over, look at her map, get her bearings …

  She’d been here before.

  That mall over there … that Kinko’s. She was seeing them again … for the first time. Wasn’t she?