08 Illusion

by Frank Peretti

  “That’s you,” said Joanie. “Do the arithmetic and you were … forty-one when he died. And I remember you inherited the Wooly Acres Ranch, but there hadn’t been any cattle or horses or llamas on the place for quite a while. Your dad got so he couldn’t keep up with all that.” Tap tap. Zip-zip-zip. “How’re you doing? You okay?”

  What could Mandy say? It was more than she could contain, and it all rang true. “What … what became of the ranch?”

  “Uh, all I know is, you eventually sold it to a developer and now it’s stores and parking lots.”

  Oh, that stung. How could I?

  “You okay?”

  Mandy couldn’t say yes—she couldn’t say anything—but she couldn’t stop, either. She wordlessly asked for Joanie to go on.

  “Okay then. Here’s where the story ends. Here’s the part I have to be honest about, just put it in front of you and hope you figure it out. I’ve been to this site plenty of times, printing out copies.” She entered Mandy Collins, got a list of results, and scrolled directly to the one she wanted. It was a news story from the Las Vegas Sun:

  FIERY WRECK KILLS MAGICIAN

  Mandy Eloise Collins, best known as the witty and offbeat wife and partner of Dane Collins in the magical duo Dane and Mandy, was killed yesterday and her husband, Dane, injured when the Collins’s car was sidestruck by another motorist, also killed in the crash. Dane Collins, riding in the passenger seat, escaped and was subsequently injured trying to rescue his wife from the burning vehicle …

  Joanie printed a hard copy so Mandy could take all the time she needed to read it. “It’s hard enough trying to explain how you weren’t at the fair when you were, and you didn’t see Marvellini when you did, and you didn’t meet Dane when you did and you even married him. Now we have to explain how you can be sitting here right now when you’re dead.”

  Mandy’s head was spinning. When she met Dane he was a widower still mourning his wife, and now she was his wife? Were there two Mandys? Had one of the other Mandys she’d seen or become or even been, met Dane in 1970 while she, the Mandy sitting here, was wandering around the fairgrounds in a hospital gown …

  Hospital gown.

  She read more of the article and let out a gasp, then an audible whimper when she saw where Mandy Eloise Collins had died: “… rushed to the Clark County Medical Center, where she died of extensive burn injuries …”

  Clark County Medical Center. She’d just recently visited those hallways, rooms, names, and faces she knew as if she’d been there a thousand times. Dr. Kessler knew her, too, that was plain to see.

  “Mandy?” Joanie asked. “What is it?”

  She scanned the copy looking for the date. “When did I die in the hospital? Is there a date anywhere?”

  She found it at the top.

  September 17, 2010.

  She put her head down between her knees. Joanie ran for a glass of water.

  She died in the Clark County Medical Center and awoke in a hospital gown at the Spokane County Fair on the same day.

  chapter

  * * *

  44

  Dane sometimes wondered if Parmenter would have been happier hiring a Pony Express rider to carry their messages back and forth. Four days—four days!—after their last phone conversation, Dane got another letter by U.S. Mail and made another call from a pay phone in Athol, Idaho, this time wearing a raincoat and a billed cap and feeling overtly melodramatic.

  The phone call lasted half an hour, most of which Parmenter spent in backstory about a painter named Ernie and a hotel manager named Doris and preparatory remarks leading up to something dire that he never quite said but Dane could guess.

  Dane finally cut him off. “All right, all right, you sold me twenty minutes ago, which is twenty minutes we just gave them. Give me specifics. I need locations, calendar dates, names of all the players, what kind of budget they’re talking about, who’s in charge …”

  Parmenter responded, “How soon can you get down here?”

  “I’ll be there tomorrow.”

  Dane returned home, went straight up to his loft, and pulled some rolled-up drawings from a large round basket next to his drafting table. He hadn’t even finished these—there had been some interruptions—but now they’d become important. He rolled the sheets out flat on the table, weighting the ends, and looked them over, mind open and fishing for ideas, any ideas.

  A tight cocoon, a pod, a capsule … hoisted on a crane … wood construction might be better … But how would she ever get out of it?

  “Eloise Kramer, may I introduce Emile DeRondeau. He’s the best in the business.”

  Mandy extended her hand to a red-haired, red-bearded gentleman in unpretentious work shirt and jeans. His hand was rough, indicating that he not only designed award-winning magical effects, he also was closely involved in building them. “You can call me Mandy.”

  “That’s her stage name,” said Seamus, clarifying the obvious.

  “Of course,” he said with a smile. “I’ve seen your work. I love it.”

  “Thank you.” She wanted to be more conversational, but the chatty neurons in her brain just weren’t firing.

  It was the first Wednesday in March. The sun was out, the temperature was getting comfy. Mandy, Seamus, and the Orpheus stage crew were having a concept meeting with Emile DeRondeau in the hotel’s back parking lot, now blocked off and void of cars. While they watched from a safe distance, Big Max hooked a cable to an appropriately sized shipping crate, and a huge crane began hoisting it aloft.

  “You might stick with the name by which I introduce you,” Seamus whispered sideways to her.

  “I prefer Mandy,” was all she cared to whisper back. She shifted her focus to the ascending crate, trying to concentrate on one solitary thing without her mind spinning off in a hundred directions, reviewing, reliving, sorting, fearing. These people were planning her life, and it was all she could do to park herself in this meeting and pay attention.

  Andy and Emile were watching the crate and noting where the sunlight was coming from.

  “An afternoon show, definitely,” said Emile.

  Andy looked toward the south side of the parking lot. “We could place the bleachers over there. They’d be in the shade of the parking garage by about two, and the sun would be behind the audience.”

  Seamus leaned down. “Try cashing a check under that name. There’s a reason you have the name Eloise Kramer and a reason I created it for you: survival. Mandy is not the answer, it’s the problem. It’s the name for everything you need to put behind you.”

  “Assuming it’s all a delusion.”

  He half laughed with a roll of his eyes. “I thought you confirmed that with your ‘old friend’ who never met you before.”

  She took the rebuff, letting him have the last word. She’d led him to believe that her visit with Joanie had come to nothing, that it was no more than a same-name coincidence. Compared to the truth, it hardly seemed a lie. Besides, there was no aspect of her story that he wouldn’t see as an excuse for an airheaded, career-threatening infatuation with a sixty-year-old man. If it took a lie to keep from going there … well, it did, didn’t it?

  She let it go and watched the crate, now looking very small as it neared the mast of the crane some 150 feet off the ground. The thought of being locked inside that thing gave her stomach a twist.

  “What do you think?” Seamus asked Emile.

  Emile squinted as he studied the crate, now stark against the sky. “Any higher and it’ll be too small for the audience to see. You’ve got enough thrill for the money.”

  “Great. We can’t afford a bigger crane.”

  Andy asked, “Ready to drop?”

  Emile and Seamus exchanged a glance and then Seamus said, “Okay, let her go.”

  Andy signaled the crane operator. The crate came loose and dropped for an awesome stretch of time before smacking into the pavement and exploding into splinters.

  “Doable?” Seamus asked Emile.<
br />
  Emile nodded. “We can work with that.”

  Mandy checked out the tops of the buildings around the parking lot. The Orpheus was the tallest, but now it would be to the audience’s right instead of behind the event. Not a problem, she supposed. “So then I rappel down that side?”

  “Oh, no,” said Seamus, “we’re working the big room now. Big room, big stunt.” He gave her a whimsical look, shot a side glance at Emile, then said, “You’re going to hang-glide.”

  Her mouth dropped open, but she immediately liked the idea, looking up at the hotel, envisioning it.

  “I have an instructor lined up. We can get you started on that right away.”

  “So …”

  Seamus traced the imagined spectacle with his hand. “You’re trapped in the crate, the clock is ticking, the time runs out, and the crate drops into the pit, BOOM! But then your doves appear, they circle to draw attention, then they fly up … up … to the top of the hotel, where you cast off from the roof on a hang glider with the doves flying in formation with you. You circle down, make a pass in front of the bleachers, you come in for a landing right in front of them, the doves land on your arms, ta-da! Big finish!”

  She shook her head, but there was that twist in her stomach again. “Guy, you have a lot of confidence.”

  He put his arm around her. “Yeah. Yeah, I do. But it’s all up to you. We’re going to need all your thoughts, all your senses, everything you are, and everything you have directed this way and nowhere else. This is your career. You’re on the rise now and you can be unstoppable if that’s what you choose. You understand what I’m saying?”

  She regarded the splinters of wood littering the parking lot and the dizzying height of the Orpheus Hotel. “Oh, I understand.”

  “Good, very good.” As he walked away he looked back and pointed at her. “Eloise.”

  The lady who arrived at Priscilla’s boardinghouse drove a Mercedes but her eyes were empty as if the soul were gone, and her clothing was plain, like any unknown person on the street. She introduced herself to Priscilla as Mandy Whitacre’s Aunt Betsy. When Priscilla didn’t quite buy it, she said, “Oh dear, yes, I forgot. She would probably use her real name here: Eloise Kramer?”

  Priscilla let Aunt Betsy into the house, but only as far as Eloise Kramer’s door. Aunt Betsy slipped a little pink envelope under the door, said thank you, and left.

  That evening Mandy ducked into her room at Priscilla’s like a rabbit evading a hawk. She locked the door behind her and leaned against it as if she could hold everything at bay and then stood there, eyes closed, breathing, just breathing, hoping for a break, just one tiny moment of respite from all that, that stuff out there.

  Time out, she prayed. Time out, please.

  Dane. I’m gonna call Dane and I’m just gonna tell him, I’m gonna tell him everything and I don’t care what he thinks.

  She reached into her shoulder bag …

  There was an envelope at her feet. It was small and pink like the envelopes for thank-you cards or baby shower invitations. She cringed. Judging from the last time she saw an envelope like this, it wasn’t good news. She picked it up and tore it open. Inside was a note, same handwriting as before.

  Dear Ms. Whitacre:

  Though our personal acquaintance comes no closer than that moment in the hallway at Clark County Medical, I am familiar with the circumstances that have befallen you since September 17 and was, I regret to say, one of the instigators who brought them about.

  As such, let me settle some questions I’m sure have haunted you:

  Nothing you’ve seen or experienced is illusory or delusional, but the result of procedures performed upon my recommendation, but without your knowledge or permission, in the basement of Clark County Medical Center. It is all explainable and you are not mentally ill.

  You had nothing to do with Doris Branson’s accident or Ernie Myers’s injuries, nor are you in any way responsible for their deaths; those were our doing. The obituary I sent was to warn you, but I’ve since come to realize that neither I nor anyone else can stop what has already happened.

  I have kept something safe that belongs to you. If you will show this letter to the man whose address and phone number I have included, he will guide you to it.

  I have destroyed everyone and everything I desired to save, including you and lastly, myself. All that is left for me is to destroy the lie I’ve become and hope the truth will help you put things together. I won’t ask you to forgive me. Maybe God will.

  Yours truly,

  Margo J. Kessler

  The lady drove her Mercedes to a nice house on the west side, brewed some tea, then spent an hour at her kitchen table finishing a letter on her laptop. Leaving the letter open on the computer screen, she printed a hard copy, then folded and concealed it in the old family Bible she had stored away in a box in the basement. The wrong people were certain to find the letter on the computer; hopefully, they would be content in destroying that. Someday the right people would find the printed copy, and then the world would know.

  Satisfied, she went to her bedroom, said a rosary, then injected herself as she lay upon her bed.

  It was cold enough to wear a jacket, dark enough to make street signs and address numbers hard to read. Mandy used a penlight to consult a map and Dr. Kessler’s directions on the passenger seat and, after one wrong and one missed turn, found her way to an ugly, bumpy street on the outskirts of town. At this hour, her Bug was only one of the occasional cars, so she shifted down a gear, eased off the pedal, and carefully eyed the boxy, weathered-walled, single-story businesses she passed: USED FURNITURE, APPLIANCE LIQUIDATORS, RECYCLING CENTER. She passed a vacant lot, a redneck bar, an old school with plywood over the windows, and then came upon a high chain-link fence with hundreds of hubcaps hanging on it. This had to be it. Yep. There was a sign in customary black on yellow wired to the fence next to the gate, J & J’S AUTO WRECKING. Mandy pulled up to the sagging chain-link gate and beeped her horn, as Mr. Jansen had instructed her.

  He turned out to be not as scary as he sounded on the phone. Sure, his voice was gruff, his coveralls were greasy, and the bill of his “J&J all the way” cap was finger-smudged to a nearly even black, but he had a friendly smile with all his front teeth still there; he didn’t chew and spit, at least in her presence; and his dog, a half lab and half everything else, was friendly, the licking sort.

  “So you must be the one,” he said, touching the bill of his cap. “Pardon my not shaking hands, I’ve been working.” He showed her his hands.

  No further questions. She gave a little bow and touched the brim of an imaginary hat. “Pleased to meet you, and I don’t really know what this is about.”

  “Do you have the note from the doctor?”

  She had it in her hand and gave it to him. He opened and read it with the aid of his flashlight, his face darkening with each line. “Holy cow.” Then he asked, “What do you do for a living?”

  “I’m a magician. I’m going to be opening a show at the Orpheus in three weeks.”

  He nodded, satisfied. “You’re the one, all right.” He handed the note back, now bearing his fingerprints. He pulled a rag from his hip pocket and wiped his hands. “And I don’t know what this is about either, but let’s get her done.”

  Using his flashlight, he led her through a meandering canyon of misshapen, dismembered automobiles piggybacked on either side. His dog, at home in this place, disappeared into the blackness ahead and occasionally looked back, retinas shining in the flashlight beam. Mandy, unsure of where she was stepping and kicking against rattly, tinny little things in the dark, pulled her own penlight from her pocket and put it to use. “The doctor had a hulk brought here,” said Jansen. “It’d been in a wreck and I guess she bought it from the insurance company. They trucked it in on a flatbed and she’s been paying me to keep it safe, keep anybody from touching it or crushing it until a lady magician comes looking for it. Guess that’s you.”

  They ro
unded a corner and came to an open space near the back fence. Parked up against that fence were what Mandy assumed to be Mr. Jansen’s keepsakes: a street rod with great paint but no engine; a mid-40s Dodge power wagon with no windshield or seat but with a winch on the front; a half-size yellow school bus … and the fire-ravaged, caved-in, cut-open remains of a BMW sedan, its paint seared away, its crooked body ashen gray.

  “That’s it,” said Mr. Jansen, sweeping his light over it.

  She knew he was waiting for her side of the story, her explanation, but all she could think of was the distance between herself and that twisted cage of metal and how afraid she was to cross it. No, she felt. I’m safe over here, away from you. I’m alive. You have nothing to do with me.

  But, it seemed to say, you want to be her, and I have everything to do with her.

  Your story … is her story? Mine?

  Fear pressed her back, but longing pulled harder, drew her closer. The driver’s door was gone forever, the driver’s seat a blackened, metal outline with chunks of foam clinging like mold.

  But I’m alive. This never happened to me.

  Walk through, it said. Find out. Know.

  Longing against fear, knowing against hiding. She went closer, her penlight playing over the soot-blackened windows. The rear passenger window on the driver’s side was shattered. Someone must have tried to get in.

  … Dane Collins … was subsequently injured trying to rescue his wife from the burning vehicle …

  The frame on the driver’s side was smashed in, the floor buckled, and the seats askew.

  … when the Collins’s car was sidestruck by another motorist …

  She was here? The girl in the mirror, the dancer in the blue gown?

  … Mandy Eloise Collins … wife … of Dane Collins … killed yesterday …

  Mr. Jansen stayed alongside, holding his light for her. The covering on the dashboard was split open, peeled back, exposing yellow foam beneath. The center console had folded in upon itself, sagging, wrinkled, the gearshift a blackened stalk. She could smell the stench of burned cloth, leather, plastic … flesh? She knew that smell. She shied back.