08 Illusion

by Frank Peretti

  She just wanted to be her.

  She put the tissue to her eyes again, trying to hold back the flood, but she couldn’t keep herself from thinking it, from officially posting it on the bulletin board in her brain, I just want to be her, that’s all.

  She was still trying to steady up, still sniffing a little when she peered through the curtain. It was five minutes to seven. Myron and Megan were getting ready to do the crisscross magical appearance with her. She could see the crowd all visiting, smiling, expecting—her friends.

  Breathe. Settle down. Think of your first moves.

  Something was burning.

  Was there smoke in the room? Everything looked kind of brownish, like she was looking into the room through a glass of tea.

  She blinked, looked at the ceiling, the floor, scanned from wall to wall trying to break the spell that had come over her eyes.

  From somewhere under the floor came a low rumble. The voices in the shop began to echo, as if falling back into a long hallway.

  She forced her eyes shut as hard as she could. She clamped her hands over her ears.

  When she opened her eyes, somewhere else was swirling through the coffee shop, a building within the building: strange halls and doors, other voices and sounds.

  “Ready, Eloise?” It was Megan’s voice coming from somewhere, broken up into pieces. Eloise looked right at her and looked right through her.

  Go with it. Live with it. Act normal. Don’t let anyone know.

  She heard her own voice somewhere else in the room saying, “Sure, let’s go.”

  The recorded music started, her jazzy opener, off-speed, fast, slow, the tone heaving up and down, the lines repeating and overlapping. Myron was already across the room, ready to cross back, just waiting for Megan and Eloise … and waiting for Megan and Eloise.

  “You ready?” came Megan’s voice.

  “You ready?” came Megan’s voice.

  Eloise stared through the curtain and through other walls and other rooms to see her audience. Ghostly shapes like people passed through the coffee shop and through the tables. The posters of Rhett and Scarlett, Bogey and Bacall drifted over small rooms with beds, obscured then revealed an old lady in a wheelchair, a couple coming through the wall carrying flowers. Corners, walls, streaks of light spun past as if on a carousel.

  And mixed into it all, far away though right in front of her, was herself—not an image of herself, but herself—floating in midair, arms extended, legs gathered up, as her audience sat in astonishment.

  “You okay?” came Megan’s voice.

  The music was playing, Myron was waiting, she still smelled smoke, she could feel herself floating above the floor, arms extended, legs gathered up—and somewhere far away she felt terrified.

  She blinked, gawked, looked about, tried not to lose sight of the coffee shop, but it had vanished around one of many corners and all she could see was a long hallway submerged in tea and she was floating between floor and ceiling, helpless, carried along on a slow current like a leaf in a river. The ghostly shapes like people became doctors, nurses, aides in scrubs and uniforms, and then the place became places, and places within places, a swirling soup of hospital rooms, doctors, a gurney, wall posters, offices, doctors, IV unit, exam room, nurse, wheelchair, smell of smoke, operating room—huge lights, blurred, streaked—curtains, doors, beds, more doctors, visitors, a lab with microscopes, an old man in bed, nurses, orderlies, hallway tilting and reeling, an elevator—it sucked her in, spit her out, there was a huge door locked up tight with red letters on it, a blinking keypad. She drifted toward it with no will of her own, no choice, no chance, no time …

  She was inside, in the dark, surrounded by electric hums, fluid gushing through pipes, air rushing through ventilators, and far away, muttering voices. Red and green numbers flashed from consoles. Little green, red, yellow, and blue lights glowed out of the dark like stars on a clear night. She could smell something burning, like singed hair.

  An orange glow drew her and she saw two faces in flickering light.

  Lemuel and Clarence?

  Floating like a ghost, she circled them, afraid they would see her, wanting to see them, wanting to be sure. It was them, all right, small figures in an expansive, windowless chamber, faces illumined by the light of a fire. Lemuel was holding a plastic garbage bag open and Clarence was pulling out … they were hairy, with pink faces, big ears, dead, half-closed eyes. Monkeys. Little monkeys, at least a dozen, easily more. Clarence was wearing rubber gloves and throwing the monkeys into a furnace like they were cordwood. Each one landed on the one before it, smoked, sizzled, blistered, then flashed into flames, the belly swelling, then bursting with steaming entrails.

  She’d never been so afraid. She screamed …

  Someone else screamed, there was a group shout and gasp as something like concrete smacked her in the side of the face, on her shoulder, her hands, her side. It hurt.

  She was shaking, sick inside, whimpering. She wanted to run.

  People were talking, murmuring, rustling. Chairs were squawking on a floor. She was waking from a dream, tuning in to …

  Hands touching her, gently turning her. She saw Mr. Collins’s face, then Seamus’s face, both blurry, full of concern, a ceiling fan and its afterimages fluttering above them. Now Roger and Abby leaned and looked at her, reaching like a distressed mom and dad. “Easy now,” said Mr. Collins. “Give yourself time.”

  She realized she was looking up and they were looking down. The concrete that had hit her was the tiled floor, and she’d hit it.

  “Is she all right?” someone said.

  She jolted, looked about. Was she safe? Was it a dream?

  “Oh, her nose is bleeding,” said someone else.

  The floor still felt like it was moving.

  “That had to hurt.”

  “Incredible!”

  “Look, you can see there aren’t any wires or anything.”

  “Maybe they all broke.”

  “How did she do it?”

  “Is this part of the act?”

  Megan and Myron were busy with a broom and towels, cleaning up spilled drinks and some broken dishes on the floor. A lady was saying “… don’t know, it just went sailing off the table.”

  Cheryl from Pinehurst gave Mr. Collins a paper napkin, and he put it to Eloise’s nose. Eloise could feel the texture of the paper and the warm blood soaking into it, both real enough. She held the napkin in place, and with some helping hands managed to raise her head, then her body, and sit up.

  The good folks broke into whoops and applause, as if she were a fallen quarterback.

  It was over? She knew it was. She remembered these faces, remembered being here, remembered where she planted Burt and who got the spinning quarters and who kept winning the coin toss and the name of the lady—Tracy—who did the card box trick with her and Chuck the miner who got the magic coffee cup. Burt hid in Cindy from Kellogg’s handbag. She’d been here. She’d done her whole act.

  The levitation was the only thing that was still a little foggy, as if she hadn’t really been here when she performed it.

  She met the gaze of all those eyes full of wonder, astonishment, and concern. The show. She hadn’t closed it. Forcing a smile—it hurt—and still holding the red-blotched napkin to her nose, she asked, “Did I do it?”

  “Oh, yeah,” they all said, clapping, looking at each other, looking back at her.

  She got her feet under her, and Mr. Collins, Seamus, and Roger helped her stand. Abby was already behind the counter, getting some ice.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, Eloise Kramer!” Seamus announced, and the folks gave her a fresh wave of applause.

  “Some kind of act,” said Bruce, a senior at NIC, and his girlfriend, Julie, shook her head.

  “Well, that’s live entertainment,” said Mr. Collins. “Thanks a lot, everybody!”

  Eloise waved with her free hand and called a muffled “Thank you!” while Mr. Collins and Seamus helped her
hobble behind the counter and into the pantry. There were a few little claps here and there, but mostly the folks had to chatter. Word of this would be everywhere.

  Roger brought in a chair and they all helped her into it, fussing, dabbing, acting medical.

  Roger passed his hand over her eyes. “Pupils are good.”

  Seamus lifted her right hand. “Any pain here?”

  “Sure,” she answered.

  “Can you move it?” asked Mr. Collins.

  She waved at them.

  “She’s just shaking!” said Abby as she brought in a Ziploc bag filled with ice and helped Eloise press it to her face.

  “That was quite a spill you took,” said Roger.

  “Did you lose control?” asked Seamus. “Is that what happened?”

  She drew a breath to answer, but first realized there was no answer she could be sure of, and then realized there was no answer she could tell them. She let the breath quiver out of her without a word and repositioned the ice pack. Don’t let them know. Go with it, live with it, act normal somehow. Be Eloise. But she hurt so much, inside and out, and she was so scared.

  “She never tells us anything,” said Roger. “Magicians!”

  “Well, whatever you did, don’t do it again,” said Abby.

  Abby was right. She was shaking and she couldn’t stop. “I killed the show …” she said, looking for Mr. Collins. “Did I kill the show?”

  But Mr. Collins had bolted through the curtain as if chasing somebody.

  Dane had no idea who that guy was. Maybe Eloise knew and never told him because it was one more little secret of hers, but Dane didn’t want him getting away without their meeting each other and discussing what he’d been doing on that computer all through Eloise’s performance.

  Dane had paid the fellow little mind at first, wanting to watch Eloise and see how she might do being herself, or nearly herself, for the first time. She was off balance at first, caught between two styles, but interacting with the folks gradually brought out the class and sass, that endearing feminine side he’d always known was there and she just had to discover. The more she found her stride the more naturally she could charm, enchant, tease, and play the twinkle-eyed foil of her ornery coins, cards, and tennis balls. The folks loved it.

  Which let Dane relax and relive a special joy as he watched her and the reactions of the crowd—and also renewed his interest in Mr. Computer. The man’s eyes seldom lifted from the glowing screen before him. As a matter of fact, it was during the most dramatic moments of Eloise’s act, when the illusions were at their height, that he leaned toward the screen, swiped his fingers over the touch pad, tapped the keys.

  This was no disinterested computer user just getting some work done over a cup of coffee.

  He was in his forties, to guess it. He was small in stature with thin, graying hair, wire-rimmed, professorial glasses, very focused demeanor. He was interested in only two things: what Eloise was doing and what his computer was apparently telling him about it.

  It was while Eloise was in a prime moment, engaging everyone’s attention—which was just about constantly; he’d have to commend her on that—that Dane slipped toward the back of the room and from there, ever so casual, ever so passive, he drifted sideways to where he could see the reflection of the computer screen in the window.

  The image was angled and reversed, but he could recognize numbers in columns, bar graphs that twitched up and down, undulating lines, and wispy blue waves that seemed to move whenever Eloise moved and rest whenever she stood still.

  Now Dane was craning to find the visitor but could go nowhere as well-meaning fans stood in his path to ask him how Eloise was.

  Eloise withdrew the napkin to check the bleeding of her nose. It hadn’t stopped yet and the napkin was scary to look at. Abby brought a fresh tissue and a few extras. “Rest your head back,” she said. Eloise complied. The pain was starting to register. Her head was throbbing and her whole right side ached.

  “Maybe we should get her to an emergency room,” said Roger.

  How many times would she have to say it? “No. Don’t even think about that, please.”

  “What if you’ve broken something?”

  “I haven’t broken anything.”

  Seamus asked Roger and Abby, “Could you give us a moment?”

  Roger and Abby weren’t so comfortable with his request, but they stepped through the curtain.

  Seamus leaned close and spoke quietly, “Was all this Collins’s idea?”

  What kind of a question was that? “What?”

  “The levitation with all the risk involved.”

  Was he being … ? He sounded so childish. “Absolutely not!”

  “He didn’t pressure you into it?”

  This was just the kind of conversation she needed while staring at the ceiling with a bloody napkin at her nose and an ice pack against her face. She could feel some swelling. “No. I wasn’t even going to do it.”

  “Then why did you?”

  “That guy back in the corner.”

  “Who was he?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do the levitation! Do the levitation!” the man had called out, which got everybody else calling for it, and all along Dane could tell Eloise didn’t want to, that she was actually afraid to go there, that her dark and mysterious approach to the illusion was no act at all.

  But many had heard about it, some had brought friends they’d told about it, they would have been disappointed, so Mr. Computer got the illusion and plenty of numbers and undulating patterns to watch and now Dane was kicking himself. He should have warned Eloise, given her more complete coaching: yes, of course the show is for the audience, it’s about them, but not to the point of endangering yourself. Whatever it is you’re doing up there, the risk has to be strictly illusory. You never take chances!

  Dane’s first priority had been to corner that guy immediately after the show, but Eloise’s nasty fall preempted that. Now she was safe and stable—and the man’s table was empty. Dane weaved and jostled through the crowd to the front door and pushed through to the sidewalk, looking up and down the street.

  Of course, the man was gone.

  “Aren’t you acting a little … young?” Eloise wanted to know.

  Seamus was trying to keep his voice down, but a temper was showing. “You just about killed yourself out there.”

  She brought her head forward and checked the bloodied napkin. “I’m abundantly aware of that.”

  “And this”—he indicated her appearance—“was this another idea of his, this … what is this, your new look?”

  “Seamus, you helped pay for it. And I like it. I like being myself.” It dawned on her and she stared at him. “Don’t tell me you’re jealous.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Have you noticed any pictures of his wife around the house?”

  “No.”

  “Does he ever talk about her?”

  “Seamus, aren’t you the one who laid down all the rules about he and I not getting into personal matters?”

  He came in close, finger pointed. “This could get personal if—”

  “If what?”

  “If—pardon me—if he happens to be a lonely old widower who enjoys the company of a pretty young girl.”

  “Woman.”

  That stopped him short. “Now, I find that interesting.”

  “Seamus. I’m going to tell you this one last time, and I’d like it to be a matter of record between us: if anything, Dane Collins is like a father figure to me. That’s my own view of it, I haven’t given him any indication that I feel that way, but I’m not ashamed of it.” She kept looking him in the eye. She surprised herself.

  “So noted.” He looked away as if reading labels on the coffee bags, then deflated a little as he let out a sigh. “By way of explanation, I guess I’ve gotten a little attached to you.”

  She applied a fresh napkin to her nose. “Well, I’m flattered.”

  Which was all she
wanted to say about that.

  chapter

  * * *

  27

  It snowed on Monday morning, so Eloise left for the ranch early. The little Bug made it to the gate and up the long driveway with time to spare—time to tap on the door—“Come in!”—go into the kitchen without taking off her coat and ask just to know for sure, “Is everything okay?”

  Mr. Collins was just finishing his oat flakes and toast, and looked at her over his last sip of coffee. “I would say so, especially now,” he said. “How are you?”

  “I just …” Groping for words again. One of these days, she deeply hoped, she’d be able to tell him everything.

  “Your face looks like you lost a fight,” he said. “How’s the rest of you?”

  “Sore.” She’d spent Saturday and Sunday trying to find a comfortable way to lie down while waiting for the ibuprofen to kick in. “I had to cancel the rest of the weekend.”

  “I figured as much. Have a seat. Want some coffee?”

  “Oh, no, thanks. Shirley wants to check me out on the tractor so I can plow the driveway. I just wanted to make sure … you know …”

  “This’ll be on company time.” He gestured at the chair across the table from him, and she plopped into it with her coat still on. “You’re still troubled over Friday night.”

  “Way troubled. It was a disaster.”

  He put up his hand. “No, no, now don’t say that. The ending could have used a little work”—he winked at her—“but overall you pushed on through and made the best of it. I couldn’t have asked for more under the circumstances.”

  A sack of bricks lifted from her shoulders and she let herself smile. “I’m so glad to hear that.”

  He smiled back. “I’d just like to know, what were the circumstances?”

  “What do you mean?”

  He set down his coffee cup with a firm motion that sent the same message she could read in his eyes. Daddy used to do the same thing. “You know better than that.”

  Her eyes dropped. It would be quite a list if she told him all about the tea-stained soup of hallucinations that messed up her show and got her hurt, the miserable night she spent in her apartment going over and over what happened and wondering if she’d gotten mixed up in the occult or a permanent drug trip or was being tormented by aliens or was just plain nuts and bound for worse and never better. That would be just the thing to tell him when all she could conclude during the last two miserable days was that she wanted to be here in this safe, real place more than anywhere else in the world.