The Third Twin: A Dark Psychological Thriller

by Darren Speegle

  “Have they said when they will let you leave the hospital?” I asked.

  “They won’t say, though Dr. Whittler tells me he’ll speak to Strafford, the doctor who’s been caring for me here, after your return.”

  After my return? My immediate reaction was to think that odd of him, involving a divorcée’s former to that extent in a medical question. On second thought Whittler had seen firsthand how we had come together for Kristin, and he had also seen, all too well, the impact on Felicia of Kristin’s descent into catatonia. He would be no more likely to let a circumstance stand in the way of what was best for his patients than we had with our daughter.

  “Any changes to Kristin’s condition?” I asked, failing to fully reject the opportunistic image of my daughter hurling accusations at me out of the abyss. It had been easier to refuse the implications. At least there I had the knowledge that she was likely useless to him after what she had done.

  She paused a long time before answering. “Actually . . . ”

  “Go on.”

  “God, I don’t want to put this on you, but you need to know. Nina went to see Kristin last night, with Dr. Whittler. He’s taking an active role, and I’m glad of it. Set aside the fact that they wouldn’t have let Nina in outside of normal visiting hours had he not been along. Dr. Whittler is straight with me. Nina never would have told me what happened. At first I was horrified by what Whittler told me, but he assured me it was good news. Kristin was reacting. And not just reacting, but demonstrating an awareness of her surroundings and a comprehension of what’s being spoken to her.” She drew in a breath, audible over the phone. “He said when Nina told Kristin she’d be filling in for me, Kristin actually responded with words. Brace yourself, Barry. It’s pretty shocking. ‘Great,’ Kristin said. ‘Another stupid cunt bitch around.’ Then she spat on Nina. Whittler wasn’t delicate. He said she looked like Linda Blair in the Exorcist and that she literally scared the hell out of Nina—and would have him, too, were he not a professional. Breakdowns happen, he said. They take ugly forms. But they also unhappen. And Kristin’s reaction last night was the first step.”

  Jesus, I didn’t say into the silence at the other end. I was sure that Kristin, like every other person in the Western world, had seen The Exorcist. She had doubtless seen a number of movies like it. It was entirely conceivable that she was mimicking behavior, repeating dialogue she’d seen in one of these movies. Yet . . . on my last visit it hadn’t seemed her at all.

  “There’s more,” Felicia said, the words bringing cold with them.

  “Go ahead.”

  “When Nina and Dr. Whittler were leaving, Kristin said something else. It was directed at Nina once more. ‘Before you think about stopping by again, why not do us all a favor and slit your cunt bitch wrists like my mother did.’ Barry, how could she know? Some twisted orderly there at the hospital? I know you didn’t tell her that.”

  It hit me then. Not dramatically, not like a thunderbolt. Dully, as though surfacing rather than visiting itself on me. “It’s her dreams. He’s coming through in her dreams.”

  “What? How do you know that?”

  “I know. Listen, Felicia, I’ve met two of the other members of the excursion. Flew in with them on the Munich leg. They . . . they were called just like me. We’ve shared information. We’re arming ourselves. This thing is not lost. Do you understand me? There’s hope. As far as Kristin is concerned, she is of no value to him anymore. He’s just getting to us through her. I still don’t know why, but I’m working on it.”

  Silence. Chasm-like. “Barry,” the whisper came at last, “that’s terrifying.”

  “It is and it isn’t. We are beginning to know him. What his abilities are. When we find out what they’re not, that’s when we have him.”

  The next was spoken so softly I could barely hear it. “What if he’s listening right now?”

  “What if he is? He’s an arrogant fuck and considers us powerless and no threat at all to him. We amuse him.”

  “Indeed you do,” came a crackly, weirdly modulated-sounding voice through the line.

  “Oh Christ, Barry . . . ”

  “Felicia, hang up the phone. Now. Don’t panic. Call the doctor if you need to.”

  “Panic. I like that word.”

  “Now, Felicia!” I ordered.

  I heard what might have been the onset of hyperventilation, then the emptiness of an ended communication.

  Out of that emptiness, the elephant man: “‘Panic’ is like ‘frantic’. Sharp. Incisive. The Spanish ‘pánico’ and its friends ‘frenético’ and ‘furioso’ are good, but they don’t have the same piercing quality. Better than the word, though, is the condition it refers to. It sends signals, transmissions that come through almost cleanly over here.”

  “Over where? The afterlife?”

  “What a terribly unimaginative and inaccurate word that one is. It renders what it refers to subservient. ‘Life’ occupies a pedestal while the prefix bows to it . . . Is that how you imagine the other side to be? A lesser realm whose only pastime is to mourn lost flesh? Some have entered willingly. I don’t mean martyrs and warriors and the dejected or tired. I mean those who have sought its secrets. I entered willingly. The only ones who mourn flesh are those still burdened with it. There is a dynamic here that the flesh could not appreciate. As there is a dynamic on your side the ghost never did. That will soon be remedied.”

  “How?”

  “You shall see, my Ocason thread. Yes, you shall.”

  “What’s the harm in telling me? If you are capable of crossing the veil at will, then surely you are unconcerned with the likes of—”

  “Mr. Ocason, are you actually trying to manipulate me when you know within you already that it is impossible? Has the design, as you’ve appropriately named it, taught you nothing? Even if I was vulnerable, the design would not allow you to tinker with its facilitator. But all that is academic, amigo, because you’ve made an assumption, a fundamental assumption that is grossly inaccurate.”

  “And what might that be, you who cannot be manipulated?”

  “Touché, my clever donor. If you continue to display such promise, I might write you into scripture when the time comes. Let’s do this, shall we: You continue to play on the arrogance you have detected in me, and I will continue to show you why it is my right to be arrogant. Then, if we are still at a stalemate, I shall reveal to you where you have made your error. Fair enough? Until then, then. Anon and adios.”

  “Wait!” I’d gathered the courage, collected the name on my tongue ready to lay it out there for his reaction, but he was gone. As the question surrounding the name retreated to the compartment where it was kept under a watchword that had never been provided to my conscious self, maybe it was just as well. Ever since the night of Kristin’s they want my babies nightmare, I’d dared not confront myself about the matter lest the compartment come unlocked, loosing on me all the soul-rending anguish stored inside. Outside of that lay the fear that bringing the question to the elephant man might somehow give it validity.

  The name?

  Kathy.

  The question?

  Was she, willfully or otherwise, in league with the monster?

  ***

  “Write you into scripture?” Maya said as the rolling countryside sped by. “He actually said that? Talk about your God complexes.”

  My communication with the elephant man—I was still having trouble digesting that I had spoken with him—had provided the starting point we needed amid all the questions. But a few minutes into our journey, we were already deeply absorbed in the puzzle again. A part of my mind was still with Felicia—she’d not answered when I’d called her back, but I’d gotten her doctor, who’s reassurances were introverted at best—but it was only a small part, knowing she was under care and watch.

  Dianna said, “What I’m amazed by is that he made contact. Sure, he’s been less than subtle with other moves, but this is another level of . . . I don’t know,
abandon. He’s so cavalier in his actions, and yes, arrogant to almost a psychotic degree. ‘My Ocason thread’. ‘My clever donor’. He wanted you to know, Barry, that your knowledge of his genetic search was worthless in the face of his might. Can we doubt that he genuinely believes in his right to his conceits? Hell, doesn’t he? He seems to be everywhere. Isn’t omnipresence one of philosophy’s three criteria for the Supreme Being our religions envision? Omniscience doesn’t seem too far-out either. It’s as though he can read minds. How, for example, does he know you call it a design? On the other hand, if our minds are open to him why not communicate to us the same way instead of using a telephone line? Of course reading minds and communicating telepathically might be two different animals. All I know is, by talking about it, I’m empowering him. He welcomes our focus. He was openly hinting in that direction, Barry, by inviting you to continue playing on his arrogance. I’m baffled. I’m awed and terror-struck, but mostly dumbfounded.”

  “‘He will be like God,’” I quoted.

  “What’s that?” Maya said, studying me intensely.

  “I had a dream last night. My daughter, the one who died in her mother’s womb, was in it. She told me that it was his evolution, not ours. That he would be like God.”

  That brought a pause. We forsook each other’s gazes to look out the broad window at the scenery, which grew more rugged by the kilometer. As I watched the hills gradually become mountains, I thought about Dianna’s godly criteria. She had left out omnipotence. What would the world become in such a being’s hands? His personal toy to play with as he pleased? Thankfully, that eventuality was only that at this point. A contingent event. For now, in his pre-evolved state, he was obviously forced to follow a blueprint. As capricious as his actions sometimes seemed, the sense that an internal logic drove it all was a significant one. Logic meant guidelines, and guidelines meant restrictions. He was confined, in other words, by his own evolução.

  I broke the silence by making this point to Dianna and Maya. Dianna’s features, icy blues like flecked gemstones as the train bored through the bright morning, displayed skepticism. “Are you talking about trying to lure him out? Outside those parameters . . . ”

  “Where would we even begin without more knowledge about his evolution, about him,” Maya inserted. Before the words had dissolved on the air, she suddenly seized her luxuriant head of hair in her fists and loosed, “If only we weren’t so fucking ignorant.”

  We looked at her, to a delayed, “Sorry. It’s so damned frustrating. I’m a person who likes to go through my facts in an organized fashion. With this business, we don’t even know what the facts are.”

  “Listen, guys,” I said. “I wasn’t suggesting anything, just making an observation. Clearly, with what limited knowledge we have, we’re not ready to call him out. Maybe we should approach this a different way and try to get to the facts, or as close as we can anyway, by focusing on one question at a time. It seems to me the most significant one remains: Who is the elephant man? We know he’s a murderer. We know he has medical and scientific knowledge. We know he has called us here to Bavaria, Germany. We believe the reason he has called us has to do with our bloodlines and some kind of evolution involving a theoretical Third Twin. We believe he is possibly the brother of a set of identical triplets dead by his own hand in Portavora, Brazil. What else? What else can we glean out of the information we have?”

  It was Maya’s turn, with her big Eastern eyes, to reflect the morning’s fullness spilling in through the train’s large windows. She had obviously been thinking about this one. “He used Spanish translations for ‘panic’ and ‘frantic’, not Portuguese ones. This is the second time Spanish has been the preferred language. It was used in Brazil when he uttered his dying word, evolución. I think it is possible he is related to our Honduran twins and their great-grandfather, that he may have changed his name from Heidloff when he moved to Brazil. I didn’t bring this up sooner because it felt so . . . out there. Yeah, I know. As if we weren’t already inundated with out-theres. What do you think, Dianna?”

  “I think it is possible, yes.” She looked at me.

  I shrugged. “Yesterday I would have told you the notion doesn’t feel right to me. That it has the flavor somehow of a bad novel. Like we’re trying to find our way out of a stalled plot. Ever since I looked into Mengele’s eyes on the computer at my hotel in Portavora, I’ve had the sense this isn’t about Nazis.”

  As the last word left my mouth, a glimmer happened, this one dipping out of its orbit for a moment into accessible space. After using that computer in Portavora, I’d been nagged by something I couldn’t quite catch up to. Later, after the man who had hovered over me in the computer room had reappeared at the Cunhedo costume shop, the feeling had gone away, as though its source had been located and addressed, all outside of conscious time. Now suddenly the feeling had returned, along with the certainty that it had something to do with that screen Mengele had looked out of. But as glimmers come, so they go, and I didn’t bother chasing this one, with the ladies’ full attention on me.

  “But?” Dianna prompted.

  “Last night’s dream . . . ”

  I recounted the dream to them in detail, including Kimberly’s secondhand description of a progression/regression cycle and how World War II, a suggestive choice, had closed the most recent one. Instead of staying on the Nazi point, the conversation shifted, with disturbing naturalness, to the identity aspect of the dream. The ‘who we think we are’ question. Kimberly’s. Mankind’s.

  And apparently, Dianna’s.

  “I know what your daughter’s talking about,” she said, looking slightly dazed. “I’ve woken on more than one occasion thinking I wasn’t who I’d thought I was, that I was actually my sister, Dalia, and it was Dianna who had died at birth.”

  As bizarre a turn as these assertions from both the sleeping and waking realms represented in the larger scheme, I found myself relating. It should have hit me when I woke from the dream, but apparently I’d needed flesh and blood to trigger the realization that Kristin had done the same with Kathy after Kathy’s death. I’d thought it a psychological mechanism, a form of denial. Now, I didn’t know what to think—about any of it.

  Not wanting to, thinking I was somehow animating the inanimate, I told her Kristin had had her same experience.

  “It’s as though,” Dianna said, bringing the matter into wider scope, “we’re preparing for a truth that has evaded us as a species. That we really aren’t who we think we are. That . . . ” A cloud seemed to come over her irises as she tilted her head slightly, regarding the mid-space. “I . . . I had it for a moment. It was right there. Now it’s gone.”

  When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse . . . out of the corner of my eye. I turned to look but it was gone . . .

  “I know,” I said. She looked at me, and I could tell she knew I understood.

  “This is scary business,” Maya said, maybe on our vibrating wire, maybe on her own. At certain moments, this being one of them, she seemed a stranger in this thing, an accessory to mine and Dianna’s journey. Strange, that I should have found a familiar in either of them in so short a time. Then again, not so.

  Maya’s next words brought another shift in the flow. “Shall I be the one to bring up the obvious question raised by Barry’s dream? Raquel. Is it possible she is our elephant man? That portion of the dream obviously could have been an association, considering we’d been talking about the elephant man’s gender before you went to your room, Barry, but associations tend to take on whole new meanings when it comes to this business. Uiara’s ‘brother’ could actually be her sister. What happened in that chapel could have been a murder-suicide, with Raquel holding the knife. On the telephone the elephant man said he had entered the other side willingly . . . ”

  Looking at Dianna, who still seemed haunted by the other matter, I said, “Yes, I’ve thought about this, Maya. In the dream there was definitely the sense that the women were alone, that wha
t was taking place involved only them. I’m tempted, very tempted to lean toward this possibility. And yet . . . ”

  “Yes?” Maya coaxed.

  “It just . . . seems so pat. Almost like a deception.”

  “You think he’s in your dreams? Like your daughter’s?” she said.

  “Possibly, yes. Do you never dream these dreams, Maya?”

  “I dream of falling and flying. No apocalyptic landscapes. No elephantine shadows. No faces in the trees.”

  “No,” Dianna drifted in. “Because your sisters are both alive.”

  I stared at her. “Yes. That resonates, Dianna. At Installation Wolf they wanted to bridge the gulf between life and afterlife. These dreams are bridges too. What if . . . what if my third daughter and your sister who died at birth are third twins and through them these bridges exist. In my case I’m the father, so it’s not the same sort of connection. Not like what you have, Dianna, with Dalia, but it exists through the bridge between my daughters. And what if . . . ” I was brainstorming, every synapse on fire. “What if we are here, you and me, Dianna, because we possess the genes that bred third twins and we are somehow supposed to produce a living one?”

  The electricity in the compartment was palpable. Maya, not a conduit, nonetheless failed at pretending it wasn’t there. “‘Somehow’ meaning by mating,” she said, not as a question.

  “Yes,” Dianna said.

  Maya still tried. “I’ve heard my share of pick-up lines, Barry, but that one towers over all the others for originality.”

  “Only it isn’t original, is it?” I said. “It’s his.”

  We sat in silence, the three of us in our compartment, the foothills of the Alps floating by. What to say in the face of revelations, epiphanies, enlightenments. Better to stay dumb than to risk losing it all again to the corona of fleeting glimpses.

  Finally, I stood and pulled my backpack from the overhead rack, removing my notebook from the front pocket. While the others leaned in to see what I was up to, I opened the pad to a blank page and wrote the words Elephant Man at the top. It was crude, but it was a way of staying concentrated on the specific point.