The Gift of Illusion: A Thriller (26 page)

Black notebooks lined the bookshelves, each
one roughly one hundred pages long. Written on the spine of each
book was a date. Virginia randomly pulled one of the notebooks out
and flipped through the pages. The black books appeared to be part
journal, part case study, as some of the pages had subject numbers
for a heading, then a brief, scribbled paragraph underneath.

Such as—

Subject: 017

This morning, it fed for the eighth day. I
was again delighted to see him frugal, and not wasteful as so many
of the others. He couldn’t shovel it in fast enough. It is
remarkable how long an animal can live off its own feces; given it
has the proper encouragement. After his meal, he caressed his
genitals, mounting an erection. He spent the rest of the evening
licking the cell floor.

And—

Subject: 041

Today, I realized that after only three days
in Cell 8, it has accepted its fate. The weeping has passed, as has
the illusion of escape. Now it just lies balled in the corner of
the cell, its bony hands clinching its hair. From this spot it has
not moved, has not looked up. The death has been arranged, and will
take place at dusk tomorrow night. It is heartbreaking to see the
oldest female of the fourth group pass, I had much left to study,
but it's time.

Isaac wanted to tell Virginia and Simmons
about his encounter with the prisoner in cell number eight. How it
had spoken to him. How its icy pale hands had touched his. But most
of all, he wanted to tell them how sorry he was for bringing them
into this. It was his battle to fight, not theirs, and even if they
insisted, he should have come here without them. He should have
come here alone.

But he didn’t say any of it. Maybe he
couldn’t find the right words, or maybe somewhere deep inside he
knew they needed to be here, by his side. They were as much a part
of this as him.

He wasn’t paying attention to Simmons
fiddling with the crates or Virginia reading through the notebooks,
he had his mind on something else. He looked all around the room,
up, down, left, right, but couldn’t find it. He searched the walls,
behind the desks, and even the small cracks between the crates
Simmons contemplated lifting, yet, still—nothing.

It was hiding from him.

He knew it would be here in the center of
the chamber. Somewhere in the study, he would surely find it, but
where?

“Hey, you guys,” called Virginia. After
picking through the notebooks at random, reading through clusters
of fragmented mental remains, Virginia had decided to grab the last
book on the shelf. She flipped to the very last entry only a third
of the way through the small black notebook. “Listen to this.”

February 16
^th
, 1898

Tonight, I will unveil the greatest illusion
of all. I will show the world the face that has plagued mankind
forever. I will pull the mask off God.

“Jesus,” said Simmons, his pupils
bug-eyed.

Virginia closed the book and placed it back
at the end of the shelf. “It must have been written the night he
burned himself alive.”

Isaac said nothing. Her words reminded him
of the trail of ash; the bodies that burned till there was damn
near nothing left, just a black silhouette. The young girl, Lori,
especially came to mind. She was the perfect target, young and
innocent, and the illusionist had easily baited her.

But what was the offer?

What did she long for?

Attention?

Love?

Whatever it was, the illusionist gave it to
her. He gave her the gift. Then he burned the leftovers akin to how
he had burned, and moved on to the next of his assistants, those
who would help him further his studies even after death.

Eventually the illusionist found his way to
Amy, and back to his haunted palace. Had she invited him, or had he
tricked her, like he had so many others? Isaac didn’t know the
answer, and really didn’t care to find out. All he knew was that he
had to save his daughter. Somehow, some way, he had to save
her.

Save her like he couldn’t save Linda.

Isaac let his eyes circle the room again,
still searching for what he knew was here, hiding, when a loud
crashing sound came from the rear of the study. He turned his head
and saw Simmons standing over a broken crate. Simmons turned his
eyes from the crate to Isaac. He had a guilty look on his face.

“Sorry,” said Simmons, like a child who knew
he had been a bad boy.

Isaac walked to the rear of the study and
stood next to Simmons. The large crate was empty.

No heads.

The group took apart the pyramid crate by
crate, breaking them open as they went. In each crate, they found
more of the same, more of nothing. Yet, when they were finished,
they gazed ahead in silence, astonished at what lay beyond. The
twelve-tier pyramid had not been created on accident; these empty
crates had been deliberately stacked in such a manner to hide a
dark corridor twisting upward at the back of the study.

As Isaac peered down the corridor, his eyes
fell upon something else that hid from them. He had searched every
nook and cranny of the study for it (almost giving up many times in
the process), and it had been here all along, beyond the pyramid of
crates, hanging from a nail on the right wall at the entrance of
the corridor—hanging lonesome, rusted, and aged.

He hurried into the corridor and grabbed the
large metal key from the upturned nail, the key that had locked in
such misery for so many years, even now. But the time had come for
the key to redeem itself. In his hand, it would.

Isaac left the study alone and headed out
into the dark chamber. The white glow from the ghosts was the only
source of light. He turned the corner and walked back down to where
they had come in. As he stood at the edge of the first cell, he
could hear the dangling chains rocking back and forth nearby. The
ghost that had startled them earlier lay in the same position they
had left it, hunched over on the floor, clutching the bars. It
looked up at him but Isaac never looked down, there wasn’t time. He
inserted the key into the metal box in the center of the bars then
turned it to the left. An aching squeal of metal rubbing against
metal filled the chamber, followed by a bang as the lock ripped
into a position it had not been for over a century. Then Isaac
swung open the barred door and freed the ghost from the cell.

Isaac marched through the chamber with a
fanatical determination, cell by cell, freeing each prisoner. He
found another passageway on the other side of the chamber; it too
had swinging chains with neck braces at the end. If they had turned
right after descending the stairs that lowered into the ground,
instead of turning left, they would have come out on this side, by
the twelfth cell.

He freed them all (including the arm chewer,
vomiter, and the one who had spoken to him), and felt a great sense
of relief doing so, as though he were the one locked behind the
bars. After release, the ghosts disappeared into what could only be
known as
thin air;
the sight was both serene and magical to
witness.

When Isaac had finished freeing all of the
prisoners, he stepped through the study door, glanced back, and saw
the lovers again. They were free of the binds, no longer holding
hands, but now embracing; holding each other as he had once held
his beloved Linda, close and tight, never wanting to let go.

Then faded away in each other’s arms.

10

The corridor at the back of the study
tightly spiraled upward to the left like a winding staircase,
except there were no stairs, just a stone floor with two barren
walls on each side. Two full rotations later, the floor leveled off
and the corridor ended at a red curtain that draped down from the
ceiling.

The curtain stretched across the entire rear
wall of what would be the backstage area to the sanctuary. The
group turned right and walked against the wall behind the curtain
until they reached an opening at the corner. They pushed the heavy
velvet aside and stepped into the large orderly room behind the
stage.

A square wooden table was in the center of
the room with a white sheet draped over the top. The group parted
to different corners of the table and lifted the cover off,
revealing many stage props underneath of various shapes and sizes.
There were scalpels, ropes, syringes, hooks, rusted canisters of
lye, rotted teeth, even the infamous bronze pear that would
gradually blossom like a flower inside a throat, vagina, or rectum,
mutilating the flesh if the iron screw on the opposite end were
turned.

Virginia turned her head away. Being so
close to the stage where the illusionist had performed such heinous
acts of cruelty almost made her feel partially to blame, like
somehow she should have been there to stop it, even though she were
not yet born. The intense feeling made her wish she’d never written
The Immortal.
On paper, none of it was real, just words, but
now as it fell upon the end of her eyes, there was no rational way
to describe it.

Isaac wandered over to the left side of the
room and came upon a long, flat metal table with crisscrossing legs
like a stretcher but without the mattress. He brushed his hand
against the surface. The metal was dented, discolored, and sticky
on top. As his hand lay pressed against the cold metal, painful
images jolted through his body like a high current of electricity.
Images of loose flesh upon gray skinned bodies; images of partial
amputation and decapitation; images of horrifying looks upon
innocent faces; images of dissection; images of fire and ash;
images of prolonged death.

He quickly pulled his hand from the metal
table and almost fell backwards. The images exited his body with
the same high current as they entered. He took a deep breath,
turned from the metal table, and headed inside a small room
adjoined to the backstage.

Virginia and Simmons had moved on from the
table of tortures and continued across the large room, coming to
another red curtain. Virginia pushed the curtain to the side and
poked her head out at the main stage, the stage where the
illusionist had put on his monstrous performances. She still had
the lantern in her hand, but in the sanctuary, it would not be
needed. There were torches, many of them, lit with orange flames
high up on the walls leading to the locked double doors at the far
end of the room. She counted eight rows of pews, cutoff in the
middle by a long maroon carpet that led from the double doors to
the steps at the front of the stage.
People used to sit in
them,
she thought,
sit in them and watch the show.
They
wanted to be a part of it, and if they were patient, they would
be.

From behind the curtain, Virginia and
Simmons looked all across the empty stage, every corner of the
largest room in the stone mansion.

And still no sign of Amy.

11

The small room had no door. In fact, the
room was so small Isaac wondered if it wasn’t a room at all, but a
closet.

Just beyond the doorway he came to a full
body standing mirror facing the opposite direction, and when he
looked around, he saw more mirrors, seven in all, placed into a
circle facing inward. Burning on the floor in the center was a
single red candle, hardly melted.

Somewhere in his mind, far beyond where
simple thoughts become reality, a voice was telling him not to do
it—not to step inside the circle of mirrors, but he did it anyway.
He turned to the side, nudged his body between the first two sheets
of glass, and stood inside the circle. Then he looked at his
reflection many times over in the mirrors.

He had never seen himself so abused, so
pathetic. What happened to the man he used to know? What happened
to the man who wasn’t afraid of anything, the man that knew how to
keep his emotions hidden in that dark closet of feelings? Where had
he gone, and who had taken his place?

Who was this?

Isaac glanced down at the floor and took
another deep breath. He didn’t want to look at himself anymore,
didn’t want to see the broken man in the mirror. Finally, he picked
his head back up, but this time he could no longer see his
reflection. Now there was someone else in the mirror, and it only
took Isaac a second to realize who it was.

Jacob Walsh.

Isaac's hands began shaking, his lips
quivering.
It can’t be,
he thought,
Jacob is dead!
He
wanted to run out of the closet but his head had begun to spin and
he no longer knew the way out. He stood there, silent and spinning,
never removing his eyes from his wife’s murderer reflected in the
glass.

Jacob wore the same clothes he had worn the
night he took his revenge. He had the same psychotic look in his
eyes, the same resolve. And in his hand was a gun, lowered by his
side. It was the same .38 caliber revolver that had carried the
four bullets that had killed Linda, the four bullets that had
bloodied her white nightgown leaving her breathless on the bed.

The room spun faster, a whirlwind of
glass.

Everywhere, there was
Jacob.

Isaac could see the gun rising from Jacob’s
side, and the room spun faster.

Somewhere, a baby cried.

Lay thee down now and rest, may thy slumber
be blessed.

The gun was now pointed at him, Jacob,
behind it, grinning.

Shrieks now accompanied the cries, voices,
sounds fused within some dark closet of feelings, under the layered
dust of some hidden shelf of memory.

The shrieks belonged to Linda.

A familiar voice asked:
what are you
waiting for?

Linda called his name, begged with her last
breath for him to come and save her.