Perception: Illusions: A Psychological Thriller, #1

By J. S. Chapman

Ghosts from the past have always haunted Kendra.

 

On the day she celebrates her thirtieth birthday, Kendra can't account for two missing hours. Is her mind playing a trick on her? Or is something else happening?

Having recently moved into a hundred-year-old house with her husband, she's a woman with troubles on her mind. A woman who keeps secrets and lies. The kind of secrets and lies gentle folk don't want to hear about. Such as madness running in her family. And hearing strange noises in the attic: rats, whisperings, and a ghost child crying in the night.

 

When Kendra and her husband decide to renovate the attic, the skeletal remains of a child are discovered.

Setting out to solve the mysterious death of the ghost child, Kendra tracks down the history of the house and stumbles onto a revealing pattern of its previous owners.

 

This first book of ILLUSIONS—a two-part psychological novel—will draw you into the sagas of several families inextricably linked with a house haunted by more than one ghost.

 

How can she fight back when she doubts her own sanity? Buy the book now!

~~~~~~~

What readers are saying …

5 Stars – "A poetic read."

5 Stars – "A TERRIFIC NOVEL FULL OF SURPRISES

5 Stars – "Loved the story line ..."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Weatherly Books
• Release date: Feb 10, 2019
• ISBN: 9798201376550

J. S. Chapman

J. S. Chapman is a paperback writer, recovering screenwriter, genre shifter, and research glutton. She writes thrillers, mysteries, historical fiction, romantic comedies, and nonfiction. You can take the girl out of the city, but you can’t take the city out of the girl. Born and raised in Chicago USA, she may be a suburban transplant but her heart still lives in the Windy City, where she learned her street smarts the hard way. After earning her degree from Northwestern University, she briefly taught in the Chicago Public School system before signing on with the corporate sector. It was in a dreary cubicle around the corner from executive row where she dared to dream and began writing nights and weekends. A little bit crazy and a little bit rock ‘n’ roll.

Book preview

Perception

I L L U S I O N S

Part I

J. S. Chapman

Perception

I L L U S I O N S

Part I

J. S. Chapman

Copyright © 2019 by J. S. Chapman

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Weatherly Books

Chicago, IL, USA

This book is licensed for your personal reading enjoyment and may not be resold or given away to others. Reproduction in whole or part of this book without the express written consent of the author and/or publisher is strictly prohibited and protected by copyright law. Short excerpts used for the purposes of critical reviews is permitted. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

From the Author

Chapter 1 

WHILE LYING ON a rigid cot in a whisper-quiet room and staring at a white-tiled ceiling that muffled sounds from without and within, Kendra tried to remember when the signs of madness first appeared.

The moment when she was born to a dysfunctional family thirty years ago? Possibly. But most everyone she knew had problems growing up, even if their confessions only surfaced over beers and forced laughter, usually in dimly lit bars.

On the day she met Joel? No, that was a good day. Or more precisely, a good night. A splendid night. Electric.

When she picked up a stranger and took him to a hotel? Not even then. That particular act of defiance, or ‘indecorum’ as her mother would have put it, had been a pivotal moment. A liberating moment. A moment when she turned the key of her self-imposed imprisonment, thrust open the windows of quiet desperation, and became the person she was meant to be. Depraved. Twisted. And wholly unrepentant.

When she sensed a presence in the house she and Joel recently purchased? Not really. Hearing rats in the attic and a ghost child crying in the night had been her validation. Perhaps, even, her salvation. It was the first time she had openly acknowledged the fact of her madness, a madness that had become ingrained in her psyche years before. Possibly in her teens. Earlier than that probably.

Tonight? When a man tumbled down a flight of stairs and crashed into a sparkling Christmas tree? Not even then. She had known it would eventually come to this. Or something like this.

She took a weighty sigh, her body shuddering. She wanted to cry but couldn’t squeeze out a single teardrop. Not for the man wheeled out of the house on a stretcher. And certainly not for herself.

Having lay supine for countless minutes, doing nothing but staring at the ceiling while seeking forgiveness from an unforgiving God, she tore herself away from the rough pillows and bent forward into a sitting position. Curling into the encapsulating chrysalis, she gathered darkness around her. Hiding from prying eyes. Banishing the overly bright fluorescent lighting. Squeezing into nothingness, just as she had done as a child of three or four when she couldn’t get her way.

The path of her madness, she decided, had sprung from truths not told. Secrets hidden in shoeboxes. Knowing sideways glances. And subtle winks of conspiracy. They were in it together. People close to her. So-called friends. Passing acquaintances. Others observing from afar. Call her paranoid. Call her egocentric. Call her narcissistic. They all knew, even while tiptoeing around the subject and treating her like a porcelain doll. It was a conspiracy of silence. An acknowledgment of what was plain to everyone but Kendra.

Her eyes shifted towards the hermetically sealed door inset with a wire-laced window. A window so constructed as to allow the eyes of tall men to randomly peer in at her. They hadn’t yet. But eventually would. Like clockwork. Every thirty minutes or so. Privacy and dignity be damned.

She had voluntarily agreed to be locked behind this door with its latticed security window on one side and its bank of night-darkened picture windows on the other. Two sides of an unequal equation. Locked doors on one side. An unthinkable alternative beckoning her from the other.

She had little choice but to stay put. To accept whatever fate had in store for her. Whether voluntarily or involuntarily, it really didn’t matter how she wound up here. She was destined to surrender her freedom and give it over to strangers. This, the humiliating pitfall of self-destructive behavior. A lifetime of it. Surely, she would meet herself on the other side. Whoever that woman was. Whatever that woman was supposed to be. This accursed woman, born thirty years ago of a sick mother and a distant father.

She lifted her head from the consuming darkness and noticed the video camera mounted high on the ceiling. The nursing staff didn’t need the latticed window to spy on her since they had the means to observe her every flinch and expression from a live monitor. Kendra had become a number and not a person. A face with no name. A woman with no rights.

It had finally come to this, as she knew it would, the moment when she had to leave the memories behind. By abandoning them, she emerged from the darkness into the light. Her every breath had led her to this reckoning. This indignity. Now that she had irrevocably, stupendously, and quite embarrassingly been deemed certifiably insane, she was forced to face her greatest fear. She was a mad woman. She always had been.

The silence of the room closed around her. Trapped. She was trapped. A prisoner of the system. A prisoner of her own mind. She bolted out of bed and paced, her bare feet slapping the checkerboard linoleum tiles, black and white squares stretching into the four corners of her claustrophobic prison. The view from the windows was inky dark. The night moonless. The cloud cover impenetrable. Before she was hot and sweaty. Now she was chilled to the bone. The shivering, though, wasn’t from cold. It was from fear. What would happen now? What did the future have in store for her? Would there be a future? Or would one day lead to another, nothing to differentiate them until her dying breath?

She rethought everything, those progression of events that stood like toy soldiers in stiff battle array on a table constructed of clay. The memories briefly backtracked to childhood before fast-forwarding to an autumn evening a few months ago. A rainy and windy evening when everything began to unravel. The evening when she first encountered a hardwired predator lying in wait. In his cruel and beguiling nature, he had brought her to this day and this night, when she would be forced to look in a warped mirror and see herself as the woman she truly was and had always been. Damaged goods.

If only it were a dream. If only she could erase the instant when she thrust out her hands and pushed a man to his fate. If only she could have saved herself from this ultimate downfall. If only her life hadn’t been reduced to a pile of shattered Christmas ornaments.

But it was meant to be. It had been preordained on that rainy and windy evening in October, a little more than two months ago ...  

Chapter 2 

GUSTS OF WIND whistled off Lake Michigan, barreled through the financial district, surged downriver on the draft, and whisked back to its source, cracking the air with a whip.

Kendra McSweeney Swain wore a pensive face as she braved the approaching storm. It was the face she presented to the world. Beneath her outward composure churned emotions as turbulent as the gales battering her face. She was a woman on the make, always gazing down the street and around the corner. A woman with troubles on her mind. A woman with secrets. The kind of secrets no one discusses in polite company.

The storm within her was more violent than the pelting rain. More destructive than the wind whipping through her hair. More numbing than the cold gripping her fingertips, frozen around the handle of her little red umbrella. She trudged on, determined to arrive at her destination by the appointed hour.

Despite the threatening storm, crowds choked Chicago’s Loop, so named for the elevated train tracks girdling the heart of the city. It was evening rush hour on a Friday evening when office workers poured out of tall buildings and the darkness of night waited just around the corner, ready to pounce.

The blustery winds blowing out of the northeast impelled everyone along gray streets lined with gray buildings that scraped gray skies. Most people were going home at the end of a long workday capping an endless workweek. Some hopped onto buses or trudged toward train stations. Others looked forward to meeting with friends for drinks and dinner. Still others had dates with husbands and lovers.

Eerie hushings and loud stirrings accompanied the tempest. Clouds billowed high. Lightning crackled. Thunder boomed. Drop by drop, the pavement dampened. People scurried to beat the downpour. Buses rumbled. Exhaust fumes filled the air. Taxicabs scuttled past. Passenger cars honked. Water sluiced from tires. Puddles expanded.

Kendra walked alone, nothing to protect her but steely resolve and hardened calluses. The rain lashed at her, threatening to take her and her little red umbrella on a fanciful flight. She fought nature every step of the way and thrust her head directly into the nor’easter.

A woman walking alone on the mean streets of Chicago is usually fair game for anyone, especially a man on the take. Having grown up in the big city, she had learned self-defense for the defenseless. When she thought about it, which was just about every day, she realized a woman walks alone most of the time, even when someone else walks beside her.

For now she skipped around the many puddles and hurried past the downtown throngs. Since she was already late for a dinner engagement, her mind swirled with accusations. At her boss for making last-minute changes on a big project. At her job, for taking up the bulk of her waking hours. At her husband Joel for not answering his cell phone.

With the many rings on her fingers dancing in the fading light of evening, Kendra tried to reach him again but heard only the flat tones of his recorded greeting. Fighting biting cold and persistent winds, she lowered her head and forged ahead, passing Dearborn Street and then Clark Street. Less than a block to go, she argued with herself. They would be together soon enough. It wasn’t as if he would start without her. They had a date. A very romantic date. At their favorite restaurant. For a special occasion.

Hearing her mental clock ticking ever louder, Kendra jostled past tourists, plowed through window shoppers, and cut around office workers. Women were annoyed by her fierceness. But men ... ah, those silly men ... they were intrigued by her, often glancing back with appreciation. Little did they know their attentions meant nothing to her.

Kendra possessed enough self-awareness to know she wasn’t beautiful in the classical sense. Neither her dark curly hair nor the sharp planes of her face measured up to the ideal. Yet she carried an indefinable presence most men craved. Her strong points, she eventually decided, lay in her long-legged athletic build, her air of snobbishness, and her full-throttle femininity.

The admiration Kendra attracted without even trying had presented her with a lifelong challenge. She became a cautious woman. Should anyone engage her with a sidelong glance or a forthright come-on, she affected a faraway gaze. The trick was to see everything and nothing at all. She learned this defensive maneuver at an impressionable age, having been taught by dirty old men who considered sweet young things perfect targets for their indecencies.

There was a time when she was still naïve. But innocence lay far behind her, now only a distant memory that could be turned over in her hands like a broken souvenir.

Two doors away from her rendezvous, Kendra spotted a panhandler lingering near the curb. Leaning against a lamppost, he assumed a feral stance. His eyes were on the lookout for unsuspecting prey. Unlike the usual beggars occupying nearly every street corner and doorway, he seemed vulnerable, new at the game, shy about his intentions, but determined to stick it out. When Kendra came abreast of him, he glanced at her as if she were the only woman of his desires. His eyes shifted slyly, focusing downward. She saw what he meant her to see.

The special item he hawked wasn’t a common sight during daylight hours but neither was it unheard of in a city crowded with indifferent people. He gripped a cell phone in one hand and his cock in the other, one pressed jealously to his ear and the other offered as a consolation prize. A lyrical smile played across his face, making him the happiest man in town.

With a rush of adrenalin but absent a beat of hesitation, Kendra veered away from his gift, so wantonly handed out, and turned into the restaurant. The simple act of pushing through the revolving door swept him away like an illusion. She would never give him a second thought, not until weeks later, when it was too late for her to do anything about it.

Chapter 3 

THE AIR WAS steamy inside the restaurant and the cooking odors appetizing. The vestibule was dark and clammy. After checking her coat and umbrella, Kendra climbed to the upper-level dining room.

At the landing, she made room for a mismatched couple. He was upper crust and debonair though in his dotage. She was blonde and bodacious, exposing bare flesh in all the right places. Though ill-suited for a long-lasting relationship, they were made for each other, two hustlers relying on the deficiencies of the other to get by. Of themselves they were incomplete. Together they made a couple.

The black-suited maître d’ greeted Kendra at the reservations desk. His slick hair and soap-bubble eyes matched his frayed tuxedo.

Reservations for Swain. She gazed toward the restaurant bar but didn’t see Joel.

Nodding with concentration, he bent his head over a leather-bound book of names, numbers, and tick marks. Bluish veins and pinkish arteries set off his chalky-white throat. He clucked before peering up, at first taking in Kendra but then directing his attention towards a stately brunette brushing past. A heady whiff of perfume trailing in her wake, the woman sidestepped the host station and swiftly descended the staircase. Kendra made out only the back of her trench coat.

She gazed back at the maître d’ and smiled. My husband called it in. He’s probably here already.

He cleared his throat and ran his finger down the ruled rows a second time.

For seven, she said.

He dog-eared the left-hand page and flipped it back. Ah yes. Here we are. Raucous laughter emanated from the bar but quickly faded. He gingerly fingered two menus before snapping his fingers toward one of the busboys. He swung his eyesight back around and stared at Kendra, seemingly confused. She sent him a disarming smile. He lapped it up like warm milk and escorted her into the dining room.

Arranged like honeycombs and decorated with twinkling Italian lights, the booths provided the illusion of privacy in a crowded room. As she had guessed, Joel was already seated. From his slack posture and the way he made himself at home, he’d been waiting for quite some time. Kendra greeted him with a peck, the kind wives pass out to husbands like Swiss chocolates on a linen napkin. Sorry I’m late.

Late? He stood to greet her. His admiring eyes washed over her face and eventually settled on her form-fitting cashmere dress, a shimmery silver that made the most of her figure, and then some. She picked it out just for him. The plunging neckline accentuated the gracefulness of her throat while revealing just enough cleavage to be brazen. His appraisal stroked her skin like the tongue of an alley cat. He gave her a proper kiss. This was the Joel of her heart, and also of her loins.

Sorry I’m late, she said again, whispering into his ear. His hot breath brushed across her cheeks. Joel could still make her temperature rise in any season. Those changes Rob wanted? As always, it was a bigger project than he thought. Rob Leven was the owner of Largesse, a boutique advertising agency catering to startups. Kendra had been working there for a little over three years.

Changes? Though Joel was mouthing one-word responses with an even-tempered voice, tension lingered beneath his calm exterior. Perhaps reproach. More likely worry. He was also tired, evident in the pale color of his face and his half-closed eyelids. Brushing off any initial concerns, he smiled and rubbed her arms, an affectionate gesture that said he was glad to see her. His eyes flitted around the dining room. He was seeking privacy in a public venue where none was to be had. Angling his head, he leaned close. From the mischievous look in his eyes, he wanted to give her another kiss, a proper one. Propriety won. He brushed her lips with his, no more, before backing away. His grin was shy, almost apologetic. Missed you.

Missed you, too. Meeting up with Joel Swain for a dinner date was like going out with him for the very first time. After five years of being together, the thrill never left.

They separated. She made herself comfortable on the broad bench opposite him. The booth isolated them in a romantic setting for two. From the warm setting to the dim lighting and flickering hurricane lamps, this was the perfect spot to unwind and get away from it all. It was their favorite restaurant. The service might have been fawning and the atmosphere stifling, but the food was superb.

What changes? Joel wasn’t really interested in her job at Largesse. Or her demanding boss. Or the client review they were putting together for one of the biggest food manufacturers in the country.

For him—and for Kendra, too—it was just small talk. You remember. The presentation next week. For Standard Foods. Everybody left early. Good, in a way. I finished everything without having to think about it over the weekend. She shrugged off the mad dash she had to make. We’ll probably lose the account anyway.

Why? How do you know? He was more than tired. Exhaustion deepened the stress lines across his brow. His eyes were bloodshot. His face looked haggard, pale, almost gray.