Dead Ringers

by Christopher Golden

  When the archaeology team had excavated the sinkhole in the middle of that claustrophobic cellar, they found it to be thirteen feet deep. At the bottom of the hole they found another corpse—older than the six in the cellar—that Audrey persuaded them all must be the body of Cornell Berrige. His bones had been charred black, but they could find no sign of the presence of fire anywhere in the hole or the cellar. Audrey had an explanation for that which involved things none of them believed in. She had managed not to be insulted by their skepticism.

  Or, at least, not to show that she had taken offense.

  Aaron cleared his throat as the server returned with coffee for Tess and a refill for Lili, along with her cinnamon twist. Normally Tess loved the smell of cinnamon, but today it made her stomach clench and she had to edge away from Lili.

  “You know we’re going to need to talk to Audrey Pang,” Tess said, shifting in her seat to alleviate the deep ache in her spine. “I’m not saying what’s going on here is black magic or something. I don’t know what I believe. But there’s obviously a connection to the Harrison House project and we need to get a better handle on what exactly happened in that cellar.”

  Lili sipped her coffee. “I spoke to Audrey an hour ago. She agreed to meet with me tomorrow, so I can fill you all in after that. I’m not gonna lie, though. She seemed a little off.”

  Aaron sniffed. “She’s an occultist. Isn’t that off to begin with?”

  “Occult expert. Not that same thing,” Tess said curtly. “The woman was incredibly knowledgeable and her research was top-notch. Don’t dismiss her just because she believes in things you don’t.”

  A chilly silence went around the table. Tess felt as if she could hear the ticking of an invisible clock.

  “You haven’t seen what we’ve seen,” Lili said quietly.

  “What Tess has seen, you mean?” Aaron replied.

  “I saw a woman who looked so much like me that it felt like I’d woken up in the Twilight Zone,” Lili told him. “So maybe keep an open mind, Aaron. Don’t be so sure Tess is having a breakdown or whatever.”

  Tess froze, staring at Aaron. “Is that what you think?”

  “Take a step back to Thursday morning, before this all started for you, and ask yourself what you would have thought if I’d come to you with the same story,” Aaron said. “Come on, Tess. We’re friends.”

  Tess took a long sip of her coffee, glancing toward the plate glass windows at the front of the café. “I thought we were.”

  Nick rapped his knuckles gently on the table. “This doesn’t help anyone. Aaron, it’s obvious Tess and Lili aren’t just messing with us. Let’s ask the obvious questions and worry about the answers when we get them.”

  Blinking, Aaron nodded. “Sorry, Tess. It’s just…”

  “We know,” Lili said, ripping off a piece of her cinnamon twist and popping it into her mouth. “Crazy.”

  “Whatever’s at the bottom of this,” Tess said, “we’ve all agreed it’s connected to the Otis Harrison House. We need to contact everyone who worked on that project and see if anything similar has happened to them.”

  “If they’ve run into their doppelgängers on the streets of Boston?” Aaron asked.

  The rest of them ignored him.

  “Nick,” Tess said, “you still have the files, right? When you moved out—”

  “I have them,” he agreed. “The number’s fairly small, really. The four of us, Audrey Pang, Bob Costello and his partner, the three students—”

  “Jalen, Marissa, and the girl from Sicily,” Lili said. “What was her name?”

  “Hilaria,” Nick replied.

  Tess drank her coffee. “You’ll call them?” she asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Don’t forget the writer,” Lili said. “What the hell was his name?”

  Nick froze, then glanced stiffly at Tess. “Lindbergh,” he said, signaling the server that she should bring the check. “Frank Lindbergh. I’ve got his number somewhere, too.”

  Tess tore off a piece of Lili’s cinnamon twist without asking and put it in her mouth. Her shoulder throbbed and she wished she had taken a Vicodin this morning. But it wasn’t really her chronic pain that had tensed her up. It was the mention of Frank Lindbergh’s name.

  “Glad you’re feeling better,” Lili said, amused that Tess had helped herself.

  Tess smiled. Lili was her best friend, but there were things she didn’t know. Tess had told her about kissing another man at a party and the way that moment had lit the fuse that detonated her marriage … but she had never told Lili that the man had been Frank Lindbergh. They’d all met Frank at the same time, during the Harrison House project. Handsome and smart, the journalist had been of immediate interest to Lili, but Tess had lobbied against her getting involved with him because he talked too fast and drank too much and seemed not quite certain where his career was headed. Tess had talked Lili out of pursuing Frank, and then gotten drunk and made out with him at a party. At the time, the news would not have gone over well with Lili. Now enough time had passed that it wouldn’t be the act that would piss her best friend off, but the fact that Tess had kept it from her.

  So she shot Nick a dark look and said nothing.

  The server gave him the check and he handed her his American Express card.

  “You don’t have to—” Lili began.

  “It’s just coffee,” Nick said, turning to look at Tess.

  She saw worry in his eyes. Worry for her, but maybe something else as well.

  “Something else on your mind?” she asked.

  He frowned. “Nothing that won’t wait till Tuesday.”

  Tess hesitated.

  “Really,” he said.

  She nodded, sliding her chair back as she finished her coffee. “Okay. Thanks, then. For the coffee, and for keeping an open mind.”

  They all rose except for Aaron. He sat alone, clearly troubled.

  “You coming?” Lili asked.

  Aaron tried on a smile that didn’t fit his face, picking up his fork again and cutting into the peach coffee cake. “I think I’m going to finish this and get another cup of tea. I’m not in any hurry.”

  One of them could have stayed with him, kept him company, but Tess didn’t like him enough to spend time with him, and anyway she had the feeling that Aaron didn’t want their company. He took a forkful of his coffee cake and put it in his mouth, then waved good-bye with the fork. The server noticed that he had remained and started over toward him.

  Tess, Nick, and Lili left him there. Outside, they all set off in their own directions. It was a Saturday, and they all had other obligations.

  They all had their own lives to lead.

  THREE

  Tim felt his heart thrumming in his chest and the flush of blood rushing through him as he cycled up Pinckney Street. The tires hummed against the pavement as his legs pumped, breath steady and deep. The smell of the city could be toxic at times, but not here at the top of Beacon Hill. Every time he rode his racing bike through the rows of wealthy antique homes, he felt like some kind of time traveler, slicing through dimensions.

  Or maybe you’ve just watched too much Doctor Who, he thought, grinning as he cycled. Legs pumping. Wheels spinning.

  It had started fifteen months earlier on a summer vacation with friends. Tim and his wife Kathleen had rented a cottage on the Bass River down on Cape Cod and invited the O’Briens to join them for a week. Kathleen had been wary at first. They’d never vacationed with anyone but her sisters before, and she didn’t know Ben and Sydney O’Brien well, never mind that they had two kids who were a little younger than Tim and Kathleen’s girls. But the trip had turned out beautifully, the families very simpatico. There had been turns taken at the stove and loads of wine. The cottage had a little dock that stuck out into the river, and late at night the adults had brought plastic cups down to the water and polished off two bottles of Sicilian red while gazing up at the stars. The wives had sworn they had seen a falling st
ar and Tim had backed them up, though he had missed it.

  A perfect week … until Tim saw the pictures. Saw his belly, and how out of shape he’d gotten.

  Monday night after they’d returned home, he’d started on his research. By that Friday he had bought his first racing bike and registered for his first triathlon. Now, forty pounds and a dozen races later, he felt more alive than he ever had in his life. Kathleen and the girls had become healthier themselves, just by dint of their living with him. They ate better, they exercised more, and he and Kathleen had a hell of a lot more sex than they had when he had been out of shape. He liked to think it was because his good health gave him a higher sex drive and not that she had been put off by his earlier weight gain, but either way it was the end result that counted.

  He slowed a bit and cleaved nearer the curb as a sparkling new Lexus slid by him on Pinckney. Glancing over his shoulder, he turned into Louisburg Square. A crew was repainting the short black wrought iron fence that ringed the park in the middle of the square, and he had to slow down a bit to glide between a white box truck and the sidewalk, but then he picked up speed again. Tim had a habit of infuriating the neighbors in Louisburg Square, cycling too fast past people walking their angry little dogs and making uptight neighbors dressed for the symphony jam on their brakes as he whipped past their gleaming cars, but he loved it there. Red brick and white trim on the beautiful row houses made him wish he could see inside, but he knew he never would. He and Kathleen did very well for themselves, him in advertising and she as a cellist for the BSO, but they would never be wealthy.

  He flew through Louisburg Square like a ghost, knowing he did not belong.

  Which was okay, actually. Tim liked his life. On a cloudy Saturday afternoon, his girls had gone to Copley Place to go shopping and see a movie with some of their friends. Kathleen, who had met her mother for lunch, would surely be home within an hour or so. They would go to the market and decide what to make for dinner—on the weekends they always cooked together—and they would make love before the girls came home.

  He turned left on Mount Vernon Street, taking the corner wide so he could keep his speed. Far ahead he could see a yellow taxi moving his way, but otherwise the street was devoid of moving vehicles. He sped past parked cars, irritated by the enormous brown UPS truck that took up much of the street. Even a typical compact would have trouble getting past the truck. The driver had left it double-parked in front of a house on the left-hand side of the street, hazard lights blinking.

  Something moved in his peripheral vision, just off to his right, and Tim glanced up to see a pigeon diving toward his head. He ducked and it glanced off his helmet, striking hard enough to make him twist to one side. Too late, he realized his mistake. In the last sliver of a second, he tried to compensate, but the front wheel whipped horizontal and he sailed over the handlebars, one foot still in the pedal strap. It came loose, but not before it tugged the bike along behind him, so when he smashed down onto the street the bike came down on top of him.

  Tim bounced, cracked his helmet and his left forearm, and skidded along the road with the bike in his wake. Pain exploded in his arm and his back and then he rolled several times and lost consciousness, darkness swallowing him.

  He came awake with a groan. The sound alone hurt him. Something in his chest had cracked and just drawing breath spread such pain through his body that tears came to his eyes. He blinked against the gloomy daylight and listened to the familiar sound of a bicycle tire spinning.

  Shit. My bike, he thought, feeling a different sort of pain. The crash would have wrecked it. Tim’s head rang with what must have been a concussion, but he only vaguely recognized that the ruin of his bicycle was not the worst of his troubles.

  He thought of Kathleen, and immediately felt the reassuring presence of his cell phone zipped into the little pack at the small of his back. If he could only reach it, he could call her. He tried to turn on his side and pain screamed inside him, so vivid that he went rigid and began to fall unconscious again. Breathing carefully, wincing, he tried to clear his head.

  Fucking pigeon, he thought, remembering.

  Wondering what had happened to the taxi and when some other car might come by and stop to help—not the same thing, he thought, knowing that many people would just keep driving—he let his head loll gently to one side. A crunching in his neck filled him with a dread he had never felt before.

  He had rolled up beside the UPS truck, legs tucked beneath it, up against the right rear tire. It had been double-parked, blocking in a silver Audi, but the car’s owner had not appeared. Beyond the Audi, he could see a short wall and some trees, and then a Federal mansion that he knew was some kind of landmark. Famous architect, he thought. Maybe famous owner. He couldn’t remember.

  Tim frowned. He couldn’t remember much.

  The pigeon lay dead on the sidewalk.

  Someone coughed nearby. Tim blinked, heart racing. How hurt was he? He smelled blood but could not be sure if it was his or the pigeon’s. But someone was coming. Someone was here.

  “Hello?” he wheezed, lips trembling from the pain in his chest, the grinding in his rib cage. “Are you … are you there? Can you help me?”

  A shuffling step came from around the side of the UPS truck, between its bulk and the silver Audi. A thump made him jerk and the pain caused him to cry out, then hiss through his teeth.

  “Please?” he ventured.

  Another thump, and then another. Someone banging on the metal wall of the truck. For a few seconds he considered the possibility that it had come from inside, that somehow the driver had gotten locked back there and couldn’t get out.

  Then the shuffle step came again and he could see under the truck, could see the bottom cuffs of the brown uniform pants and the driver’s boots. The sound of an engine approaching gave him a flicker of hope, but now that the driver had come back to the truck, he could call an ambulance. And Kathleen, Tim thought, feeling so sorry for his wife, knowing how she would worry for him now. The girls, too.

  Thump, thump.

  The driver came around the back of the truck. A big man with thick brown hair. The driver kept his head down, hanging, as if he’d done something of which he was terribly ashamed.

  “Please…” Tim gasped.

  Without lifting his head, the driver smashed his fist against the side of the truck. Thump. Only then did Tim see the blood on the man’s knuckles.

  The driver took another step forward, head still hung, and then froze on the street, staring down at the dead pigeon. The big man began to tremble and for a second, Tim thought he might cry. A mute protest raged inside him. Come on, asshole! I’m right here, and I’m hurt. Seriously hurt. It’s just a damn pigeon!

  The driver reached down, picked up the dead pigeon, and began to eat it.

  Tim stared, unable to breathe. His tears dried and his pain ceased, frozen with the rest of him.

  At last the driver looked over at him. Tim wished he hadn’t. Bloody feathers stuck to his lips. His eyes were dull, his gaze empty. Then he blinked several times as if waking from a trance and seemed to really see Tim for the first time.

  The driver looked at the dead pigeon in his hand and winced in disgust. He dropped it, wiping its blood onto his brown uniform. Tim allowed himself to breathe.

  “Help?” he wheezed.

  The driver wiped his hand again, stared at it in revulsion, and then looked at Tim with the same disgust on his face, as if somehow the dead pigeon and the broken bicyclist were one and the same.

  A light seemed to go on inside the driver’s eyes.

  A glint of malice.

  Trembling, the driver wiped his hand again. Then he cocked his leg back and kicked Tim in the side with one steel-toed boot. A scream of agony ripped from Tim’s throat. A car engine grew louder, someone stopping to investigate, but something inside the delivery driver had been unleashed. He grunted with effort as he kicked Tim in the ribs again and again. Bones cracked and agony arced throu
gh his body.

  The driver lifted his foot and drove that boot down on Tim’s head.

  The man from the newly arrived car screamed for the delivery driver to stop.

  The driver brought his boot down again. Tim saw gum on the worn sole of the boot.

  He heard a crack as his skull caved in.

  FOUR

  Nick glanced at the clock over the stove. The minutes were ticking toward seven P.M. and Kyrie had yet to arrive. She had texted to say she was running a little late, but that had been nearly an hour ago and he had begun to worry. While he waited, he sliced the chicken breasts into thin cutlets. Pounding them down seemed to be the more popular method, but his mother had always believed it damaged the flavor of the meat, and Nick agreed. While he dredged the cutlets in milk and coated them with shaved Parmesan, he kept an eye on the pot of water boiling on the stove.

  The doorbell rang and he frowned. Kyrie had her own key.

  Uneasy, he washed his hands and hurried from the kitchen. The image of police officers on his front steps, there with dreadful news, swam up into his head and he pushed it away. Tess and Lili had filled his head with ghost stories at coffee earlier and he scowled at his own foolishness. Inside, though, he knew the scowl was a mask to cover his disquiet.

  His door was solid, but through the frosted glass of the sidelight he saw a single figure, and exhaled a breath of relief to which he would never have admitted. Had Kyrie forgotten her key?

  He unlocked the door and drew it open, and then he understood. Beaming at him with her adorable grin, Kyrie had a bottle of Italian white in one hand and her other arm clutched a brown paper bag to her chest.

  “Well, hello,” he said. “What’ve we got here?”

  Her eyes sparkled. “Mad Maggie’s closes for the season in three weeks. With us headed to England, who knows how long it’ll be before I can have their double brownie fudge again?”