The Gift of Illusion: A Thriller

The Gift of
Illusion

a novel

Richard Brown

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2011 Richard Brown

http://www.richardbrownbooks.com/

Cover Design by Kelly Jay

www.kellyjayphotography.com

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This book is also available in print at most
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This book is a work of fiction. Incidents,
names, characters, and places are products of the author's
imagination and used fictitiously. Resemblances to actual locales
or events or persons living or dead is coincidental.

This book is dedicated to my mother and
father, with love. For without them, naturally, this book would not
have been possible.

The storm that circles far and high,

With an open eye, so clear and wide,

Evokes a memory we cannot hide

Of a time we should have died.

Prologue

What was the worst day of your life?

Well.

Having trouble?

You're not alone. The average life can span
over twenty-six thousand days, give or take, thus for most of us
narrowing down one particular day as the absolute worst could be an
exercise in the impossible.

Isaac Winters had an answer. No problem.

January 17th, 1995 was the day, the
worst.

Isaac had stayed up late to finish another
round of paperwork due the next morning. While his wife and
daughter slept upstairs, the thirty-year-old police officer sat
within a small office on the first floor, slouched over a stack of
forms, barely able to remain productive. As he struggled to keep
his attention on the documents, scribbling a note here, jotting a
name there, Isaac drifted away. His head hit the thick stack of
paper with a thump and then quickly sprung back up. He leaned back
in the black swivel chair and flexed open his eyelids until the
back of his head throbbed. The pain felt like his brains were being
sucked out of his skull through a straw. He massaged his temples in
a slow, clockwise motion. The comfort of his bed waiting above had
summoned him, and after a long, difficult fight, he finally
surrendered.

Isaac headed upstairs. First, he checked on
his nine-month-old daughter, Amy, and then tiptoed into his
bedroom, careful not to wake his wife. Linda Winters slept on her
right side with her hands snuggled between her cheek and pillow.
She was wearing a white silk nightgown Isaac had given her the
previous night.

“Do you like it?” he had asked, after she
had torn off the red bow and beheaded the gift box.

Linda had smiled and then said exactly what
he had hoped she would say.

Nothing.

Then they’d made love for the last time.

Before lying down, Isaac peered out a small
window above his nightstand. A large, naked oak tree on the side of
the house shook and parted with a few small branches. The wind had
picked up over the last hour and showed no sign of calming any time
soon. A distant thunder hummed as a sudden flash of lightning
brightened the room.

The storm was approaching fast, and soon
Isaac would be kneeling in the middle of it. But it wasn’t until he
leaned back and closed his eyes that he heard the shatter of glass,
followed by the baby crying.

Eyes open.

A sudden unease swept through him and rushed
outward to his appendages like a legion of tunneling worms. His
fingers and toes itched as the worms struck his skin like a
collection of jabbing needles. The temperature in the room seemed
to drop by innumerable degrees, spawning a crawl of small bumps
across his body.

He sat up. Still. Hesitant.

Why the hesitation?

It wasn’t a familiar feeling, not for him,
not in his line of work. It wasn’t accepted. The ability to think
fast and act sharp was crucial for anyone in law enforcement. Still
he hesitated, if for not more than a few seconds, while the cold
sweat gathering on his brow thickened.

He hurried out of bed and removed a loaded
nine millimeter from the bedside drawer. Then he woke his wife and
told her to lock the bedroom door, call 911, and stay quiet until
he returned. Linda didn’t bother to ask why; the gun in her
husband’s hand was all the answer she needed. She did as he ordered
and locked the door after he left the bedroom.

The baby’s cries increased.

Isaac inched through the dark upstairs hall,
holding the gun out in front of him with his right index finger
cradling the trigger. As he came to the staircase on the left, he
pressed his back against the inner wall and sidestepped the
remaining distance. Then he rolled from behind the corner and
pointed the black firearm down the length of stairs.

Clear.

With the stairs behind him, he opened the
door to Amy’s room and hurried over to the crib. She appeared to be
fine, like him, she had just woken suddenly. He twisted the knob on
the mobile suspended over the crib then listened as
Brahms
Lullaby
chimed and the small stuffed giraffe, elephant, and
tiger slowly revolved counterclockwise.

Amy quieted.

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

He turned the small screw lock from inside
the door before shutting it. Then he walked back to the center of
the hall and crept down the old wooden staircase. A subtle peeling
sound, like tape being removed very slowly, came with each lift of
his bare feet from the hardwood. When he reached the second stair
from the bottom, he saw a giant shadow dance across the opposing
wall of the living room. The shadow stopped for a brief moment and
then smoothed into the darkness.

His hands were now sweating and the gun felt
slick and heavy. He turned left from the bottom step and saw the
broken window in the dining room up ahead. Many large fragments of
glass lay on the dark brown carpet beneath the windowsill. The
white curtains over the window shuddered with the force of the
gusting wind. Outside, lightning struck, and a heavy rain began
battering against the roof.

As he stepped past the stairs, his eyes
still focused on the broken window, Isaac heard a slight
click
sound come from the left of him. He knew the sound. It
was the sound of a hammer being cocked back, a cylinder
rotating.

He twisted to his left and pointed the 9mm
into the dark crawl space behind the stairs. He didn’t move or
blink, nor did he breathe. His index finger quivered on the cold,
oily trigger of the gun.

What are you waiting for?

Before he could act, a brilliant flash of
light robbed his sight, and an enormous wave of pressure (like the
force of two storms colliding) pulsated through his body. Falling
backward, he heard nothing, not rain, nor thunder, just
silence—peaceful and undisturbed.

Upon hitting the floor, a sharp pain
clambered up the ladder of Isaac’s spine to his left shoulder.
Without thought, he sealed a hand over the broken skin. Seconds
later, two large boots walked into his sight, and when he looked
up, he saw the .38 caliber revolver pointed at his head. Lying on
his back, Isaac could see directly up the silver barrel; it seemed
a mile wide and many oceans deep.

Apparently satisfied, the intruder pulled
the revolver away and turned toward the staircase. On the stairs,
his soppy boots thumped and whined against the wood.

Isaac got to his feet, saw the black pistol
lying on the floor a few feet behind him, and staggered over to
pick it up. Then he walked to the staircase, leaned on the
handrail, and applied more pressure to his left shoulder. At the
top of the stairs, the dark intruder looked both directions down
the hall, and then turned right.

He’s heading for my bedroom, for Linda!

Isaac hobbled up the stairs, gripping the
wooden handrail. From above, he could hear banging on the bedroom
door and his wife desperately crying out.

Isaac! Isaac! Help!

Hearing her scream only made him try harder
to push his bleeding body up the stairs.

When he finally reached the upstairs hall,
the banging had stopped, along with Linda’s cries. All he could
hear now was the final verse of Brahms Lullaby concluding.

Guardian angels are near, so sleep on, with
no fear.

The bedroom door was wide open, the broken
handle hanging loosely from the wooden frame. Muffled sounds
escaped from the room.

He was almost upon the open doorway when he
heard the bedsprings quake, followed by the terrifying shriek of
his wife. The scream felt like it had been amplified two hundred
times before it reached Isaac’s ears. Then the gun went off.

But it wasn’t
his.

Isaac trembled as the gun fired one, two,
three, four times, and with each shot, he felt the wound within his
chest ache and wrench as though a hand was burrowing inside the
round, bloody hole one stiff finger at a time. Once inside, the
hand formed a fist around his heart, and squeezed.

Amy began crying again from down the hall.
The lullaby had finished on an off note, overpowered by the
passionate swell of gunfire.

When the intruder came through the broken
door, his face spotted with blood, Isaac was waiting for him. “Drop
the gun!” he yelled.

The intruder was noticeably startled by
Isaac’s presence in the hall. He had expected Isaac to be dead. He
had the .38 caliber revolver lowered at his side, one bullet left
in the cylinder.

"I said drop it!”

"I can't. I still have work to do."

Isaac clutched the 9mm tighter and took a
deep breath. Tears ran down his face, though he didn’t even realize
it. “What have you done?”

“I think you know,” said the intruder. His
voice was flat and emotionless. “Don’t you?”

Isaac drew in another deep breath.
“Why?”

“You ruined my life. Now I've ruined
yours."

In the background, nine-month-old Amy
continued to cry and cry. She wanted her mother.

The intruder sneered. "Only one thing left
to do."

Isaac agreed. He pulled the trigger and
fired a bullet into the chest of his wife’s murderer. Then he fired
two more. The blaring sound reverberated across the upstairs
hall.

The gunman staggered and then fell backward
to the hardwood floor, convulsing violently, blood draining from
the multiple holes in his chest.

Once he was sure the intruder was dead,
Isaac began limping toward the bedroom, smearing blood against the
wall as he extended his left hand outward for support. He dropped
the pistol in the doorway and looked over at his wife’s body
sprawled across the bed. Linda’s arms lay against the headboard,
elbows bent, palms up. Her right leg dangled halfway off the bed
and her head faced the small square window.

Isaac carefully stepped over the broken door
and closer to his wife. He grabbed her hand and touched her cheek,
trying not to look at the expanding red holes in her white
nightgown. Linda’s green eyes stared toward the window, vacuous and
inactive. Her mouth hung open, poised for a scream that would never
surface. Somewhere in his mind, deep within some nightmare of
contemptuous, eternal memory, Isaac could still hear her final
scream echo, and the deafening blast of emptying shells.