Read Online 08 Illusion by Frank Peretti - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Frank Peretti
Tags: Christian
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featureless except for the hangingproof light fixture. Could she be imagining that light fixture? Was it part of a delusion? It looked real enough. How could she tell the difference?
Well, she would start with what was real. Daddy was real. The ranch was real. Maybe she was wrong about the dates, but she knew where home was, and that would be the place to sort all this out—not here. In this place, she was crazy; at home, she was Mandy Whitacre and nobody there would look at her funny or jot down little notes or make her take pills. And she didn’t have to be afraid. If she could get home, she could have all the time she wanted to work out this mess.
With her eyes focused on the bare white ceiling above her—in other words, on nothing in particular—Mandy’s mind drifted over memories of homecomings throughout her life: getting off the school bus and walking along the white paddock fence that bordered North Lakeland Road and always noticing the height of the hay in the field: short, taller, ready, then mowed short again; short, taller, ready, then mowed short again. It was a long walk when she was in the first grade wearing a dress, tights, and Mary Janes. The walk was shorter when the hayfield became the llama pasture and she was wearing fishnets and a skirt to her midthigh. By the time the white fence was replaced and the llama pasture divided off for some horses, she was in an embroidered blouse, flared jeans, and sandals and didn’t think about the distance; she was driving a Volkswagen Beetle and too busy thinking about everything else.
The mailbox grew a little more rust each year and went through several sets of reflective, stick-on letters and numbers: WHITACRE, 12790. From there the gravel driveway with the potholes and rain ruts went up a hill between two pastures toward the big white house with the gabled roof and wraparound veranda. Every time she walked or drove up that driveway her line of sight would clear the crest of the hill and she would see the dove house Daddy made for her out of a secondhand tool shed they brought in on a trailer, then the horse barn, and across the alleyway from that, the smaller barn for the llamas. The last thing to peek over the brow of the hill would be Daddy’s machine shop, with the old tractor parked alongside …
Dane wore his sunglasses to drive, checking out the city of Spokane as he drove through on I-90. On the left was downtown, with its classic brick buildings and modern vestiges of the 1974 World’s Fair. To the right, on a hill overlooking the city, were the hospitals: Shriners Hospital for Children, Deaconess Medical Center, Spokane County Medical Center. He looked back to the freeway. He’d had quite enough of hospitals, they only brought back all the memories … although the Spokane County Medical Center caught his interest for no particular reason. He looked back once.
Above Mandy, the ceiling went blue, like a cloudless summer sky. She blinked. Still blue. Maybe she’d been staring at all that white too long. Her eyes fell toward the wall …
She saw—she didn’t think she was imagining it—a white paddock fence running along a two-lane country road, the uncut grass obscuring the bottoms of the posts and reaching past the first rail; a gravel-lined ditch between the fence and the road shoulder; a robin perching on a fence post.
She did a double take, then sat halfway up, resting on her elbows. Her lazy stream of memories had come to a close at the old tractor next to the machine shop. This white fence was here without her remembering it, and so was the robin until it flew away.
She tried to relax the very interested look from her face as she peered past the white fence and out the doorway to the nurses’ station, now sitting in the high grass of the pasture.
Freaky. Not scary, freaky. How was her acting? Convincing? She couldn’t let them find out about this!
Rolling onto her side and passively resting her chin on her hand, she took in the
Well, she would start with what was real. Daddy was real. The ranch was real. Maybe she was wrong about the dates, but she knew where home was, and that would be the place to sort all this out—not here. In this place, she was crazy; at home, she was Mandy Whitacre and nobody there would look at her funny or jot down little notes or make her take pills. And she didn’t have to be afraid. If she could get home, she could have all the time she wanted to work out this mess.
With her eyes focused on the bare white ceiling above her—in other words, on nothing in particular—Mandy’s mind drifted over memories of homecomings throughout her life: getting off the school bus and walking along the white paddock fence that bordered North Lakeland Road and always noticing the height of the hay in the field: short, taller, ready, then mowed short again; short, taller, ready, then mowed short again. It was a long walk when she was in the first grade wearing a dress, tights, and Mary Janes. The walk was shorter when the hayfield became the llama pasture and she was wearing fishnets and a skirt to her midthigh. By the time the white fence was replaced and the llama pasture divided off for some horses, she was in an embroidered blouse, flared jeans, and sandals and didn’t think about the distance; she was driving a Volkswagen Beetle and too busy thinking about everything else.
The mailbox grew a little more rust each year and went through several sets of reflective, stick-on letters and numbers: WHITACRE, 12790. From there the gravel driveway with the potholes and rain ruts went up a hill between two pastures toward the big white house with the gabled roof and wraparound veranda. Every time she walked or drove up that driveway her line of sight would clear the crest of the hill and she would see the dove house Daddy made for her out of a secondhand tool shed they brought in on a trailer, then the horse barn, and across the alleyway from that, the smaller barn for the llamas. The last thing to peek over the brow of the hill would be Daddy’s machine shop, with the old tractor parked alongside …
Dane wore his sunglasses to drive, checking out the city of Spokane as he drove through on I-90. On the left was downtown, with its classic brick buildings and modern vestiges of the 1974 World’s Fair. To the right, on a hill overlooking the city, were the hospitals: Shriners Hospital for Children, Deaconess Medical Center, Spokane County Medical Center. He looked back to the freeway. He’d had quite enough of hospitals, they only brought back all the memories … although the Spokane County Medical Center caught his interest for no particular reason. He looked back once.
Above Mandy, the ceiling went blue, like a cloudless summer sky. She blinked. Still blue. Maybe she’d been staring at all that white too long. Her eyes fell toward the wall …
She saw—she didn’t think she was imagining it—a white paddock fence running along a two-lane country road, the uncut grass obscuring the bottoms of the posts and reaching past the first rail; a gravel-lined ditch between the fence and the road shoulder; a robin perching on a fence post.
She did a double take, then sat halfway up, resting on her elbows. Her lazy stream of memories had come to a close at the old tractor next to the machine shop. This white fence was here without her remembering it, and so was the robin until it flew away.
She tried to relax the very interested look from her face as she peered past the white fence and out the doorway to the nurses’ station, now sitting in the high grass of the pasture.
Freaky. Not scary, freaky. How was her acting? Convincing? She couldn’t let them find out about this!
Rolling onto her side and passively resting her chin on her hand, she took in the
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