Dead Ringers

by Christopher Golden

  “Jesus,” she whispered, thinking about how deeply the fear had been planted in her mind last night. That’s all it was, she thought. But it felt like a lie.

  Tess dressed quickly, pulling on dark green pants and her favorite old sweater, a cable-knit burgundy turtleneck that had seen better days. The clothes made her feel better, and she dried and brushed her hair out into a mass of curls while she forced her thoughts away from the death mask she’d seen on her double, and thought she’d seen in the mirror. Instead, she turned her ruminations back to her ex-husband. Her marriage had died a long time ago. So why was she mourning it now?

  Barefoot, feet chilly on the hardwood, she moved carefully across her bedroom, wary of mirror shards that her broom and vacuum job might have missed. Shoes would be nice, she chided herself, but by then she had reached her bed and she lay down and stared at the ceiling. Her ribs throbbed, but the EMT who had prodded her side during the night had not thought anything was broken, so she endured it.

  Tess breathed, listening to the autumn wind outside and the rattle of the windows in their frames. She and the rest of the crew from the Otis Harrison House weren’t gathering until six o’clock, which meant she had all day to do nothing but fume or be afraid or both. If she’d gone into the office, her bruised and swollen face would have elicited more questions than she felt like answering, but the others were working.

  Read a book, she thought. She did her stretching routine, relieving some of the pain in her joints but doing nothing for the bruises she’d incurred last night. It occurred to her that she should get out of the house, maybe go to the gym, but on the heels of the realization came a second one—she’d already put on very comfortable clothes. Her subconscious had no intention of going to the gym.

  Instead, still trying to flush the nightmare imagery from her mind, she took her phone from the nightstand and slid under her covers. Head on her pillow, she texted Lili with the same intensity her fifteen-year-old self had used to write emo poetry in her journal back in high school.

  Dickhead moving to London with spunky GF, she tapped. Oh and btw, intruder in the house last night. Beat the shit out of me. Tess considered elaborating, but didn’t want to put the truth in a text, didn’t want to talk about doppelgängers or mention that the intruder had her face in a communication that the police might read someday. Lili would call her as soon as she saw the text and then Tess could elaborate.

  But the phone remained still and silent in her hand. Minutes passed before Tess realized that Lili must have been teaching a class. Her head throbbed, pain wrapped in cotton, and she clicked on the television to distract herself. A blond bobblehead and a friendly giant cohosted a morning chat show and Tess left the channel on, thoughts drifting, half her mind still focused on the phone that lay beside her on the bed.

  When the nine o’clock chat show had given way to a ten o’clock version with a different host, she called Lili and listened to the ringing on the other end of the line. The call switched to voice mail and Tess left a message. “Call me.” Nothing more.

  Insidious worries gnawed at her.

  Her double had come for her in the night—or come for Maddie, or both. The woman had slipped away when she’d heard the police sirens, but Tess knew that she and her daughter might both have been killed. So where was Lili? Had she received a visitor in the night as well?

  She texted again. Not kidding. Call me asap.

  The television audience laughed. To her ears, it sounded like they were mocking her, so she clicked it off. Turning on her side, she held the phone in her hands like some kind of talisman. The flannel pillowcase felt soft against the unbruised side of her face and she breathed in, exhaling in a shudder of exhaustion and uncertainty.

  Her head and her side throbbed with pain, but a shroud of weariness enveloped her and in moments her eyes drifted shut.

  Tess jerked awake at the buzz of the phone in her hand.

  Lili, she thought, and she blinked as she held up the phone to stare at the screen. For a few seconds the words made zero sense. Not Lili. Alonso. Who was Alonso? Still half lost in dreams, it took her a moment to remember the bartender.

  We still on for tomorrow night?

  The screen dimmed and she had to tap it to wake it up again. What could she say?

  The week hasn’t started off great.

  Tess watched the ellipses that signified Alonso was typing a reply. The pain in her face and side had been magnified by rest instead of healed by it. A giant bottle of Advil and a whiskey would have helped but she had neither of them at her bedside.

  Is this your segue into canceling? I had this fantasy about a romantic dinner and dancing under the stars. Or pizza and beer. I can go either way.

  She smiled until she remembered her double. Felt the kicks in her side all over again. In her mind, she saw the woman holding Maddie, whispering comforts to her.

  I’m not really in any shape to go out. Had a break-in last night. Woman assaulted me.

  The ellipses blinked.

  Holy shit. Do you need anything? Are you okay?

  Tess began to tap a reply but paused. Of course she was not okay. She’d had some truly surreal and frightening encounters in the past couple of days. But the team from the Harrison House project was gathering in seven hours or so. She had allies and friends. Their presence would not erase her fear, but just being with people would make her feel better. Maybe the psychomanteum was just as much magician’s trick as it was a mirror box. Maybe she had been too quick to believe in the impossible.

  Definitely not okay, but I will be, she texted.

  Sounds like you really need a night out, but I understand if you don’t feel up to it.

  Tess stared at the message from Alonso and found herself exhaling. Some of the tension eased from her shoulders. The pain had not ebbed, but some of the cobwebs that had cluttered her mind this morning were swept away. For a few seconds, she considered actually keeping the date, but then she pictured herself trying to flirt with Alonso while in a constant state of anxiety and creeping unease. Never mind that she looked like she’d gone a few rounds in a boxing ring.

  I swear this isn’t a blow-off but I need a few days to deal with last night. Can we talk at the end of the week?

  Not that she had any confidence that things would be resolved by Friday. It just seemed nicer than telling him she’d call him when she could make the time.

  However you want to play it.☺ Rain check.

  Absolutely.

  The conversation with Alonso over, Tess glanced back at the bathroom door, tempted to go and look in the mirror to see which face would be looking back. Instead, she stayed in bed, thinking about the mirrored walls inside the psychomanteum and what she had seen there. Mirrors, she thought. It was all connected, of course. The apparition box and the woman who had attacked her last night.

  They’re apparitions. Ghosts.

  But the bitch who had her face hit pretty damn hard for a ghost.

  Tess stared at her phone, willing Lili to call her back.

  FIVE

  The first thing Lili felt was the dryness of her throat. Awareness crept in like dusk gathering outside the windows of her mind, somehow slow and deliberate, and yet sudden at the very same time. She took a shuddering breath and her eyes fluttered open. Her stomach ached badly and her eyes burned. She rolled onto her side and curled into a fetal ball, hoping to alleviate the clenching pain in her belly, and only then did she feel the carpet against her cheek.

  Groaning, she forced her head up and looked around her living room. Her eyes took a moment to focus but she managed to read the clock on her DVR: 10:37. Judging by the light outside, it was 10:37 A.M., but her thoughts were in such disarray that she had needed the sunlight to be sure.

  Her skin crawled with dread. How had she ended up here? Blackout?

  There had been a time when drinking enough to black out was common enough for her that she would not have woken up in confusion. She’d go on a date—not a first date, she
was expert at those, but a third or fourth—and the guy would be sweet and want to take things further and instead of curling up into a fetal ball the way she often wanted to, she would undress him. Then herself, but always with the lights on. She told herself it was safer with the lights on, that she’d be fine if she looked at his face the whole time and focused on how she felt and how she was making him feel. Sometimes the sex would be mediocre or even unpleasant and other times it would be sweet or even, occasionally, mind-blowingly excellent. Sometimes she managed to prevent her subconscious from firing up the home movie projector of her mind and showing bits and pieces of the night she’d been raped at a frat house on Professor’s Row. But many times she waited until the guy had left and then drank herself into oblivion.

  The trauma had receded over time. She’d been in love more than once, had sex many times without getting shitfaced afterward. Sometimes she went days without thinking about it, and other times she studied other women and wondered what they had endured. Tess had been through her share of ugliness, but not like this, and Lili envied her that. There were days she just wanted someone to take the memories away or wanted to be someone else.

  She sat up fully and the floor tilted under her. Her stomach rebelled against the sudden movement and she had to prop herself up on both hands and take long, slow breaths to avoid puking her guts up. Was that where the pain in her stomach came from? Had she thrown up during the night? There was no sign of it, but the whole evening stretched behind her into vague shadows.

  “Shit,” she whispered, an ugly certainty forming in her mind. That night at the frat party she had drunk a cup of punch a guy had poured for her and had woken up seven hours later in the basement laundry room. The whole punch bowl had been roofied. Lili knew from whispers that she hadn’t been the only one raped, but as far as she knew none of the others had come forward.

  She had worked hard to put the pieces of herself back together and she felt strong now. Stronger than ever before.

  Lili knew she was strong, because she suspected she’d been drugged last night and instead of panic she felt anger. She ran her hands over her body, finding all of her clothing still in place. Her thoughts were fuzzy and her stomach a bit queasy, but if someone had drugged her, it didn’t seem like they had done anything worse. Relief drained all of the air out of her for a few seconds, then she forced herself up and sat on the edge of the coffee table. The sofa seemed too far away.

  The ache in her stomach began to abate, but her thoughts still felt muddy and her mouth and throat seemed even more parched. She’d had her share of hangovers, but the only empty cup in the room was a mug she presumed she had used to make tea. Presumed, because she could not recall. There were no open bottles around, nothing to suggest she had gotten herself drunk or taken any pills. Whiskey would not have surprised her—even beer—but Lili had never been a fan of drugs, so what the hell was this?

  Rubbing her hands over her face, she tried to remember the night before. Images flashed in her mind, entirely mundane flickers of the past twenty-four hours. She had watched television, maybe old episodes of something on Netflix, and had eaten leftover sesame chicken, but even those details she saw in momentary fragments.

  On the glass table beneath the television set, her cell phone vibrated. It created an echo in her head—had it been vibrating before she came around? Lili felt pretty sure it had. Moaning quietly, she forced herself to stand and walk over to her phone as it buzzed a second time. Plucking it from the table, she blinked in surprise as she saw that she had three missed calls from Tess and a litany of texts from her as well.

  “What the hell?” she whispered.

  Her doorbell rang and she flinched. Figuring it must be a package delivery, something she ordered from Amazon, she tapped the phone to open her texts, but then whoever had come to her door began to knock heavily. Four times in rapid succession—thumpthumpthumpthump.

  Lili caught her breath. Phone forgotten, though still clutched in her hand, she stared toward the arched doorway that led into the foyer. She took two steps in that direction, feeling strangely vulnerable, exposed in her own home. Her baby blue pajama pants and long-sleeved white T-shirt seemed thinner, and she put an arm across her breasts, wishing she had passed out wearing a bra. The absurdity of the idea struck her—what possible shield could a bra provide?—but somehow she felt more in danger without one.

  The doorbell rang again. She reached the archway and froze.

  “Who is it?” she called.

  Three knocks now, firm and quick. Then a voice. “Police, ma’am. Open up!”

  The pain in her gut gave a fresh twist. What the hell was this? Lili went to the door and pulled back the sheer curtain tightly drawn across the sidelight. She saw a badge and a uniform. Irritation battled with lingering fear inside her. What was so urgent?

  She opened the door and stared into the face of the palest man she’d ever seen. The sun made her squint her eyes and raise a hand to block the glare, even as the fall chill swept in around her, red and brown leaves eddying in around her feet. The cop smiled at her, goofily handsome.

  “Long night?” he asked.

  “I’m sorry?” Lili said, hackles rising, arm still across her breasts. “You scared the crap out of me with that banging. What is it?”

  He winced and she saw a flash of hurt in his eyes. “Huh. Not what I expected. After last night I figured we were good. My shift starts in an hour and I know you don’t teach until after lunch on Mondays, so I figured I’d … I mean, I wanted to see you. Thank you, ’cause I thought you’d forgiven me.”

  Lili felt something stirring in the back of her head, unfurling like a cat rising from sleep.

  The cop shrugged. “I guess not.”

  He started to turn away and she darted over the threshold to stop him.

  “Steven,” she said, blinking as he turned to face her. Horror spread through her as his features painted themselves into her mind. A thousand images filtered in, more than a year of shared history. “Oh, my God.”

  The hurt in his eyes vanished, replaced by concern. “Hey … What’s going on with you? Are you okay? Last night you seemed—”

  Lili hurled herself at him, wrapping her arms around his waist and burying her face against the stiff blue fabric of his uniform. Her heart beat so fast it felt like a swarm of furious bees inside her chest.

  “Steven,” she said again, anchoring the smell of him in her mind along with the image of his face. Somehow she had lost him for a minute, forgotten him entirely. It couldn’t be, and yet it was.

  “Something’s wrong with me,” she said.

  Steven took her by the arms and held her away from him, studying her eyes. “You look terrified. Talk to me, Lili. You left my place eight hours ago and you were fine. Happy. What happened?”

  Lili shook her head, feeling as pale as Steven looked. Another breeze rustled the leaves that had already whispered through her open door.

  “That’s just it,” she said. “I don’t think I did.”

  Her memories were a strange archaeology all their own, fragments of artifacts left behind, but what little she could reconstruct told her she had not left her apartment at all. Pajamas, leftover sesame chicken, and something on Netflix. Gilmore Girls, she thought. The one when Rory’s grandfather rigs her Yale interview.

  “I don’t think I saw you at all.”

  Steven stiffened. Something in her manner had triggered him, altered the gravity of his thoughts, and she saw him shift from ex-boyfriend to police officer in the space of a single moment.

  “That doesn’t sound like you’re talking metaphorically,” he said. “Maybe you’d better tell me what you mean.”

  Lili thought about it. Last she knew—last her sudden resurgent memories told her—she had been furious at Steven for cheating on her, but not really surprised. Things had been tenuous between them for a while and she had started to freeze him out, afraid of how serious things had become. How adult. That didn’t mean she forgave hi
m for cheating, but she had engaged in her share of infidelities with past boyfriends and knew that behaving like an asshole for a little while didn’t make him a monster.

  Whatever his flaws, he was a good man and a good cop, so far as she knew. If he thought her mind had begun to unravel, he would be honest about it.

  “Come inside,” she said. “It’s a long story.”

  At her kitchen table, over cups of coffee, she told Steven everything. It was clear that he did not believe her, but he didn’t laugh at her either.

  Steven sipped his coffee and watched her warily over the rim of his mug.

  “Tell me again,” he said, as if her story were some scientific theory and he was her competition, wanting to find fault in her research.

  Drained, she told it again in a near monotone. When she was done, she held up a finger for him to be patient while she called her TA and told him he would have to take her afternoon classes. The grad student inquired after her health and Lili told him she’d been feeling poorly all morning, which was true enough. He wished her a speedy recovery and she almost laughed.

  Steven had gotten up while she was on the phone and gone to look out the window over her kitchen sink. The autumn light limned his pale face in a shade of gold, as if he existed in a world slightly out of step with Lili’s own. Perhaps that was true.

  “So?” she asked as she ended the call. “You ready to lock me up?”

  He turned around, but stared at the floor, and Lili hugged herself, feeling alone.

  “This would be a pretty elaborate story to make up if you just wanted to pretend it wasn’t you in my bed last night,” he said.

  “You think I’m making it up?”

  Steven gazed at her, brow knitted, wrestling with a question he did not like at all.

  “You’re meeting Tess and the others at six?” he asked.

  Lili nodded.

  Steven rested his right hand on the butt of his service weapon. “I go on duty at noon. You should sit tight here or go and hang with Tess until tonight. I’m not telling you, by the way. I know how you feel about being told to do anything. I’m just suggesting. I’m off at ten o’clock. If you’re okay with it, I’ll swing by my place and get a change of clothes and then come and stay here tonight.”