Second Chance by Chet Williamson Read Free Book Online Page A

trombone case and Woody's first oboe, resurrected for the night, and Keith's Martin guitar, represented by an empty, black simulated leather case.
    "I could go for a brew," Frank said, stepping off the couch after putting up the map of Middle-Earth with masking tape. " Wanta get a six-pack?"
    "You go," Woody said. "I'll keep working."
    "You're so dedicated to illusion," Frank said as he walked to the door. "Iron City?"
    "Sure. The good old days."
    The feeling overtook Woody as soon as Frank was gone. As he looked about him at the icons of a lost and loved age, he felt that he was in that time, that if he looked in a mirror he would see himself, lines of age vanished, hair untouched by gray.
    Then he smiled and shook his head at the conceit, remembering Frank's words—"dedicated to illusion." He was indeed, so much so that in another moment he thought he might be seeing his friends all around him, the living and the dead.
    Keep it in perspective, he thought. A party. It's just going to be a party.
    And then he saw someone out of the corner of his eye.
    He was glancing down at the base of the hall tree in the corner near the door, trying to remember what always sat there, when there was a trace of movement, a blur of white, in the darkness of the hall.
    Woody gasped, whirled, looked, his arms held protectively in front of him, a chill burning his spine, the hair at the back of his neck slithering.
    But there was nothing there.
    There had been, though. He had seen it, and now tried frantically to see it again, to shape the air into the form he had glimpsed. But only unmoving, unyielding darkness remained.
    Imagination. Just imagination. It could, after all, do wonders. There was no limit, he thought with grim self-reprimand, to what the imagination could create, if someone wanted to see it badly enough.
    Or see her .
    The sound of the door opening made Woody jump, and Frank paused in the doorway. "I scare you?"
    "I'm all right," Woody said, hoping that Frank didn't notice the way his voice trembled. "But let's call it a night. Drink our beer back at the motel, huh?"
    Frank eyed him. "Had enough of this place for a while?"
    "I just don't want to overdose on it," Woody said, trying to smile. "Not until it's time. Not until tomorrow."
    They turned out the lights, locked the door, and walked down the stairs, Woody in the rear. At the bottom, he listened for a moment after Frank stepped out onto the sidewalk, but heard nothing from above. The building was as silent as an empty building should be.
    "Tomorrow," he whispered, and stepped into the night.

Chapter 6

    Tomorrow came, and Alan and Diane Franklin promptly left their home in Alexandria, promptly checked in at the Delta ticket window at Washington-Dulles Airport, and promptly boarded the plane to Pittsburgh. At all junctures of the trip, conversation was minimal.
    Alan and Diane had been married for over twenty-three years, and had not cared for each other for most of that time. They had no children to hold them together and no lovers to pull them apart. Their marriage survived through adhesion. Two people whom God had joined together simply stayed together, neither happy nor discontent. Both had their own jobs and their own friends.
    A crisis had occurred two years earlier when Diane's father, a two-pack-a-day man for fifty years, had died agonizingly of lung cancer. Alan had, for the last fourteen years, been a Capitol Hill lobbyist for the tobacco industry. These two facts did not sit well with Diane, who, unfairly or not, blamed her husband for her father's death.
    Though Alan insisted the blame was ill-founded, the marriage almost dissolved until Alan showed Diane that a split would be financially ruinous for her. Since Diane was unlikely to get a favorable ruling, she would have to depend on her teaching salary, which would not enable her to continue living in the style to which she had grown accustomed. Whether Alan helped to poison the whole damn country or not, as she