Stranger With My Face

by Lois Duncan

  The pieces were coming together. The picture wasn’t complete yet, but the horrible outline was there in its entirety. This was a mental institution, and the girl on the bed—my sister, Lia—was an inmate. A physical inmate only, because her spirit self could not be imprisoned. In the mornings she dutifully saw her doctor and participated in whatever scheduled activities were prescribed for her, but in the afternoons and evenings—

  It’s almost like she was in a coma. . . . Have you ever tried to wake her when she’s out like that?

  No, of course they couldn’t wake her. She wasn’t sleeping. She was gone!

  The body in the room I had visited was an empty envelope. Lia, the real Lia, was elsewhere. Perhaps even now, at this very moment, she was on Brighton Island, walking the dunes. Perhaps she stood on the rocks outside of Cliff House, gazing out across the wild beauty of the churning ocean. Or perhaps she had entered Cliff House. Entered? Invaded! What right did she have to come into my home uninvited? According to what I had just overheard, she had managed to mess up her own life in a horrible way. God alone knew what could have driven her to do what she had done, but that wasn’t my problem. I was not responsible for Lia. My life was my own. And it revolved around my real family—the parents who had raised me—my brother, Neal—my sister, Megan—

  Megan!

  At the thought of Meg a sudden chill shot through me. Until today I hadn’t realized quite how perceptive my small sister was. Not only had she accepted the concept of astral projection, she had identified Lia as the “ghosty” whose presence haunted our home.

  Was Meg a threat to Lia? Could she possibly be considered one? It was hard to imagine someone with Lia’s powers feeling threatened by an eight-year-old. What could Meg do to her? What could anyone do, for that matter? Surely Lia had nothing to fear from any of us.

  Yet the fact remained that the only two other people who had shared my knowledge about Lia had met with near-fatal accidents. And Kathy Abbott—what about her? Lia was dangerous, more dangerous than I had ever imagined! And if she was insane, how could I expect her attacks to be based on reason?

  She can’t hurt Megan!

  The words were a silent scream within me. The cord snapped tight, and back I flew to Cliff House!

  As soon as the familiar walls were around me, I realized that my panic had been unfounded. I hovered over the living room. The family was gathered safely, munching on peanut butter sandwiches and playing a word game. Mom had settled back to normal. She was even laughing a little at some silly pun that Dad had made. Neal was preparing to put another log on the fire, and Meg herself was authoritatively explaining that “just because you put an ‘s’ at the end of a word, it doesn’t make it a different word. It’s just more of the same word it was before, so it shouldn’t count.”

  My love for them rose within me with such force that it was painful. This was where I belonged, let Lia drift where she chose. I knew enough about her now to be able to protect myself and the people I cared about. Jeff and I would hash things over later and try to put my new discoveries into perspective. For now I simply wanted to join my family.

  In my room the body of a slender, dark-haired girl lay as I had left it. I moved toward it, anticipating the instant when the astral cord would whip me into possession. To my surprise, that moment did not come. Instead, I felt a resistance, as though someone had constructed an invisible barrier. I knew this was impossible. If there was one thing the books Helen had bought for me were adamant about, it was that the strength of the cord increased as the spirit self approached its physical counterpart. How could this magnetic field suddenly have reversed itself ?

  There was no way that the cord could be broken except by death, and my body was not dead. It was just in a state of suspended animation.

  As though to give proof to this the girl on the bed opened her eyes.

  I stared at her, incredulous. Those were my eyes! How could they open unless I willed them to? This was my face—my body! This was my self!

  The girl sat up and yawned and stretched her arms above her sleep-tousled head.

  “I guess I’m hungry after all,” she said.

  The hours that followed have melded in my mind into a blur. I’ve heard that the mind does that in times of total horror to protect itself from snapping. The girl from the bedroom—(What should I call her? Laurie? No—I was Laurie—I have always been Laurie!)—that girl went to the kitchen and made herself a sandwich. I watched, helpless, as Laurie’s hands—my hands—spread peanut butter onto a slice of bread and placed another slice over it. I watched as she carried her lunch back up to the living room and sat down with my parents and the children in front of the fireplace.

  Numb with shock, impotent to do anything to stop her, I heard Lia speaking with Laurie’s voice.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Hi, dear,” Mom answered. “Look, I’m sorry about the way I jumped all over you earlier. Dad thinks I overreacted, and he’s probably right.”

  “That’s all right,” the girl said. “It didn’t bother me.”

  “Of course it did, or you wouldn’t have run off like that.”

  “It’s like beating a dead horse,” Dad said. “The subject is one that isn’t going to get us anywhere. Your mother does overreact to it, but that’s not her fault. Talking about it or hearing you talk about it upsets her. There’s no sense in continuing to do it. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Lia said. “I’m sorry. Why should I be worrying over a past I can’t remember? Isn’t it enough that I live here with you now?”

  “I wish you’d make sense,” Neal complained. “First it’s that stuff about ‘roots,’ and now it’s this. What was it that Mom got so mad about? What ‘past’ can’t you remember?”

  “Her babyhood,” Dad said smoothly. “Can you recall yours?”

  “Not all the way,” Neal said. “I can remember when you and Mom brought Meg home from the hospital. She had a real scrunched-up face and no teeth.”

  “I think I was cute,” Meg observed placidly. “I’ve seen the pictures in the album. The earliest thing I can remember is my christening. I was wearing this beautiful white dress with lace all over it, and they put water on my forehead.”

  “You can’t remember that,” Neal objected. “You were much too little. People’s brains don’t start recording things until they’re at least a couple of years old, do they, Dad?”

  “I don’t know about that,” Dad said. “The memories are there, but the retrieval process is a different thing entirely—”

  And they were off again on one of those discussions that the members of my family delight in.

  Lia sat quiet, eating her sandwich and listening. The firelight flickered across her face, throwing shadows into the hollows of her cheeks and accentuating the tilt of her alien eyes. It was a strange sensation to watch this face—my face—in a light in which I had never seen it. I had never thought of my face as pretty. I still didn’t, but I could see a certain quality, a haunting strangeness, that might have accounted for Gordon’s attraction. The coloring, the features, held a touch of something that was not quite Mary Beth Ziegler, not quite Natalie Coleson.

  Lia shifted her position and settled back against Dad’s knee, and one of his hands dropped casually to rest on her hair. She looked so comfortable there, so much a natural part of this close-knit group. She was not an intruder. She was Laurie Stratton.

  And if she was Laurie Stratton—then who was I?

  “Be careful,” Meg had warned me.

  “I will,” I had assured her.

  It had been an easy promise to make. And to break. What, after all, was “careful”? I would be careful not to go out on the rocks again. I would take the greatest care not to dash off down icy trails as Helen had. But, aside from these precautions, how was one “careful” of a being without substance?

  “A shadow can’t do anything,” I had told Megan, so surely, so smugly. I had been right. A shadow could do nothing, unless it ceased to be a s
hadow. Unless it managed to claim a body left vacated and unguarded by someone stupid enough to believe herself invulnerable.

  The day moved on. At some point along the way, the sound of the wind began to lessen and the house grew oddly still.

  “It’s turning,” Mom said.

  I knew that by morning, if this followed the pattern of most winter storms, the sun would be peering through holes in the ragged clouds and the sky would be patched with segments of blue. The beaches would be crusted with ice, and the carcasses of frozen fish would line the shore. By midday, boats from the mainland would have made the crossing, and phone lines would be up, and we would have electricity. Mom would be painting, and Dad’s computer would be pounding away to make up for all these wasted hours.

  When dinnertime came, five people gathered in the kitchen to eat a cold supper by candlelight. Dad poured extra wine, and he and Mom became talkative, laughing a bit more than usual and reminiscing.

  “Remember the storm that grounded that baby whale on the beach? They had to send the Coast Guard to tow it away.”

  “Remember the one that brought in a million starfish?”

  “What I remember best,” Mom said, “is all those years when we used to dream about what it would be like to live on an island. We’d ride around New York Harbor on the ferry with people shoved up against us on all sides, and we’d pretend we were on our way to some private place where there would be nothing but surf and wind and sunshine.”

  “And one day you really got here,” Neal said.

  “Yes, one day we did. I wonder how many people have a dream as big as that one and actually see it come true?”

  “Not many,” Dad said. “We were lucky. We worked hard, sure, but our work got put in front of the right people at the right time.”

  “Sometimes I feel almost guilty,” Mom said, “about having so much when there are other people with so little. I don’t mean just having Cliff House, but careers we enjoy and each other and healthy, beautiful kids and so few problems. That day when Laurie and I went to the hospital after Helen’s accident, I kept thinking, dear Lord, what if this had happened to one of ours! It’s like there was some sort of lucky star shining over us. When Laurie took that awful fall between the rocks, she was hardly even hurt. It was poor Jeff who had a leg broken.”

  “‘Poor Jeff ’ is right,” Dad said. “That kid’s had his share. What’s the deal with that face of his, Laurie? Can’t they do anything about it? Plastic surgery can correct a lot of things. I read in Newsweek the other day about a girl who had her whole face destroyed in an auto accident, and they’re building it back for her.”

  “I don’t know,” Lia said without much interest. “Maybe his father can’t afford it.”

  “Can’t afford it!” Dad exclaimed. “Pete Rankin may not live high, but that waterfront property of his has tripled in value since he bought it.”

  “His lady friend won’t let him sell,” Meg said.

  Mom turned to her in astonishment.

  “Where in the world did you hear that?”

  “From Mrs. DeWitt. She cleans Tuesdays for Mrs. Briggs. She heard her talking on the phone to her sister on the mainland who goes to the same beauty parlor as Mr. Rankin’s lady friend.”

  “You pick up information like a vacuum cleaner,” Mom said. “Is there anything you don’t know about anybody?”

  “I don’t know why Laurie’s eating white meat,” Meg said.

  There was a moment’s silence. The girl at the end of the table paused with her fork halfway to her mouth. Then she lowered it and laid it on her plate. In the dim light of the dancing candle flames, I could not read the expression in her eyes, but when she spoke her voice was strained.

  “Is there a law that says I have to eat dark meat?”

  “No,” Meg said, “but you always do.”

  “People’s tastes can change.”

  “I’m glad if you don’t like drumsticks anymore,” Neal said. “Can I have the second one since Laurie doesn’t want it?”

  “Finish your salad first.” Mom turned back to Dad. “On the subject of laws, isn’t there one that says parents have to take care of their children, even if it means selling their investments?”

  “They have to support them,” Dad said, “but I don’t imagine cosmetic surgery comes under that heading. Besides, the boy’s too old to be classed as a dependent. How old is he, Laurie? Eighteen? Nineteen, maybe?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You do too know,” Megan said. “He’ll be nineteen in April. You told me that last week.”

  Lia’s face remained expressionless, but I felt something coil behind it, a whip of fury aimed at Megan, like a snake drawn back to strike. Now it was my turn to cry, Be careful! You don’t know what danger you’re in!

  Meg couldn’t have heard me, but she did fall silent.

  Our parents were still on the subject of the Rankins.

  “If Jeff ’s over eighteen, I don’t think Pete can be forced to do anything,” Dad was saying. “At the same time, why should any father have to be forced on a thing like that? What sort of priorities does that guy have? Your kid is your kid, no matter what age he is. That boy’s face should be more important than some woman. I don’t know what plastic surgery would cost, but I can’t imagine that there wouldn’t be some way—”

  Lia was no longer eating. She was simply sitting there, gazing at Megan. Meg was chewing on a chicken wing. She seemed to be trying to sort something out in her mind. After a moment she raised her own eyes to meet Lia’s. She said nothing. She just kept gnawing away at that bone, while our parents’ conversation continued on the far side of the table.

  Neal said, “I’m done with my salad.”

  “No, you’re not,” Mom told him without looking. “You’ve hidden it under your bread crusts.”

  She knew us so well! Mom’s life was her art and her family. How could she miss the fact that one of the children at this table was not her own?!

  “May I be excused?” Meg asked.

  “Sure,” Dad said. “If you’re finished.”

  “I think I’ll go to bed.”

  That captured Mom’s immediate attention.

  “So early, honey? Aren’t you feeling well?”

  “I’m not exactly sick,” Meg said.

  “Is something else the matter?”

  “I don’t know. It’s like—something’s funny. I don’t know what it is. I just feel like I don’t want to stay down here anymore.”

  “It’s been a funny sort of day,” Dad agreed. “Everything’s been off-kilter. I think we’ll all be better off turning in early. There’s not much you can do at night without electricity.”

  Meg got up from the table and went around to kiss our parents good night. Mom gave her a flashlight to carry, and she went upstairs. I accompanied her. She paused at the open door of her and Neal’s bedroom, and then, as though following a sudden impulse, she continued up the stairs to my room. She entered it and didn’t seem to know what to do next. Slowly she let the beam of the flashlight circle the room, playing it in an uncertain manner over the walls and furniture. Then she switched off the light and crossed to stand at the balcony doors.

  It had stopped snowing, and the sky had cleared enough now so that a few stars could be seen trembling against the dark like far, pale fireflies. Megan watched them for a while. Then she sighed.

  “Something’s funny,” she said again softly. Then she clicked the flashlight on and went back down to her room.

  I watched as she put on her pajamas, and stayed beside her until she fell asleep. I would have liked to be able to feel that I was guarding her, but I knew that my presence was meaningless. In my spirit state, I was helpless to protect her from anything. I wanted desperately to touch her, to feel the soft, light hair beneath my fingers, to encircle the warm, chunky body with my arms, but to Meg that would have been no more reassurance than a slight stir of air in a drafty room.

  She tossed restlessly in he
r bed for a long time and had just dozed off when Neal came in. I watched until he was in his pajamas and had settled himself beneath the covers. It was easier, somehow, to leave them together than to leave Megan alone.

  Be careful! Meg, be careful!

  I could scream my warning forever, but what good would it do? If Meg did hear me, she wouldn’t know what precautions to take. The enemy was no longer a stranger but dwelt behind a beloved face.

  I moved up the stairway to my own room. Lia was seated on the bed, brushing her hair. The room was dark, and the movement of the brush created tiny sparks of electricity like phosphorescence on a breaking wave in the night sea.

  I came to stand beside her. She sensed my presence, and all attempt at pretense fell away.

  “Hello,” said Lia. “I’ve been waiting. What took you so long?” I couldn’t have responded even if I’d been able to, for she immediately continued, “Don’t bother to answer. I wouldn’t be able to hear you. I can’t see you either. That visual image your brother saw on the rocks was energized by shock. You haven’t had enough practice to be able to achieve that at will. I know you’re here because I can feel the cord tugging, trying to draw you in. But there’s no space. You can’t enter a body that’s already occupied.”

  She lowered the brush, and the sparks ceased. But the darkness couldn’t conceal her face from me. She was smiling.

  “Remember the first time you saw me? You were sitting here, as I am now, brushing your hair. This same hair, with this same brush. You saw what you thought was a reflection. Then, slowly, you began to realize that it wasn’t. What you didn’t know—couldn’t know—was that I’d been here many times before.

  “Back when I was a child our mother told me the name of the people who had adopted you. I never thought much about it. I took it for granted that your life was not much different from my own. After Mom was gone, though, I started wondering about you. I wasn’t adopted the way you were. The foster families who took me in had children of their own. Those were the ones they cared about, the ones who would inherit. If those kids hadn’t existed, I might have stood a chance.