Dead Ringers

by Christopher Golden

  Tess didn’t see Maddie in the string of children waiting to be retrieved.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Devlin,” Mrs. Kenner said, bending to peer through the open passenger window. “Maybe you and Mr. Devlin got your wires crossed today?”

  Perhaps sixty, Mrs. Kenner had been negotiating the politics of broken families for decades. Tess could hear the kindness in the phrasing and the way the woman turned the words into a question. But panic would not allow her to be diplomatic.

  “Where’s my daughter?” she demanded.

  The kindness vanished from Mrs. Kenner’s face. Icy and stern, she leaned a bit nearer and put her hand on the door.

  “Your husband was in school earlier. I saw him in the corridor. I assume that Maddie left with him. She’s not my student, of course, but if there’s a problem—”

  The vice principal, Leonard Moss, appeared over Mrs. Kenner’s shoulder. “Please pull ahead a bit, Mrs. Devlin,” Moss said. “So Mrs. Kenner can continue with pickup.”

  “But Maddie—”

  “I’ll explain as soon as you pull ahead,” Mr. Moss said.

  Numb and hollow, Tess drove another twenty feet, keeping her car by the curb. Mr. Moss walked alongside and then took up a position at the passenger window, leaning on the car the way Mrs. Kenner had.

  “Mr. Moss—”

  “It had slipped my mind,” the man interrupted, “but your husband—”

  “Ex-husband.”

  “Mr. Devlin said he couldn’t reach you and that you might have forgotten that Maddie had a doctor’s appointment today. He thought you must be busy, but he asked that if you had forgotten, and came to collect her, that I tell you he would wait with Maddie at your house until you came home.”

  The arrogant little man gave her a condescending smile, peering through the open window. “I find in talking to them that most of our parents check their cell phones often, just in case of emergency.”

  Tess trembled with fear and rage. Moss’s tone only stoked that blaze higher.

  “Go fuck yourself,” she muttered.

  She hit the gas, skidding in a patch of sand. When Mr. Moss shouted, she remembered that the vice principal had been leaning against the window, but she didn’t slow down. The world blurred around her and she felt as if she floated outside of herself. The other cars on the road were just moving colors. Only out of habit did she manage to stop at traffic signals and stop signs. More than ever, her body felt like a husk, and she saw herself as a ghost holding on to herself by some invisible tether. Only love and fear gave her strength to drive, to turn the corner at the DiMarino’s Ristorante and drive past the little Catholic middle school whose patron saint she could never remember.

  Just a hair shy of four miles later, she sped around a corner and turned into her street, struggling to hold on to the wheel. The engine roared as she accelerated. A skinny, elderly man raking leaves shouted at her to slow down as she drove by. The front windows on both sides of the car were still open—she had not even noticed. As she blew through the stop sign at an intersection, a dervish of multicolored leaves spinning up in her wake, she gripped the wheel—felt it anchor her a little—and slipped back into her body. The scar on her chest and left shoulder felt stretched too thin.

  A gleaming Lexus sat at the curb in front of her house. In the driveway, a red Mercedes waited as if it belonged there. Either car might have belonged to guests of her upstairs neighbors, but she knew that wasn’t true. It was the middle of a workday afternoon. Nobody would be home in the second- or third-floor apartments in the old Victorian.

  Bile rose in the back of her throat as she hit the brakes and pulled up across the street. She only barely remembered to put the car into park before she popped the door, leaving it open and the engine running as she stumbled out. Her thoughts felt as if they were floating again, but her body—what little remained of her physical shell—seemed weighed down. She staggered across the street.

  The front door opened the moment she reached the front lawn and she saw herself emerge. Her eyes burned with tears she could not shed. Numbness reached all the way to her bones and she could only stare as the new Tess gazed at her with horrifying pity and came down the steps and across the grass toward her.

  The new Tess. That’s what she was.

  Her replacement wore jeans and cuffed boots and a belted leather jacket with a teal blue scarf, a casual ensemble that somehow looked elegant on her. Everything about the new Tess seemed to gleam in the fading afternoon light, her skin clearer and her eyes brighter and her spine straighter as she approached.

  The original Tess fell to her knees on the lawn, hooks anchored deep inside her, dragging more of the essence from her. She barely had the strength to lift her head and stare at her doppelgänger. The new Tess knelt by her, put a hand on her shoulder.

  “Don’t fight it,” New Tess said. “Really, it’s only going to make you fade faster.”

  The original glanced at the doorway, wanting to scream for Maddie but lacking the strength. Even her love for her daughter felt thinner somehow. She lifted a hand and reached toward the door, but her arm dropped when she spotted Nick standing in the doorway with Maddie in his arms. He looked so handsome, so thin and young with his hair freshly cut, wearing a beautifully tailored suit and a red tie. This Nick and Tess looked as if they had just stepped off a movie screen.

  In New Nick’s arms, Maddie cried out for her mother.

  New Tess turned toward the house. “I’ll be right in, darling.”

  “N-no…” Tess managed to mutter, but her breath would barely come. She felt thin. Faded. Not unraveling so much as drifting, like fog burning off at sunrise.

  “But who is that?” Maddie asked, frightened and pleading for understanding. “Who is that?”

  New Tess bent to whisper to the original, hand still firmly on her shoulder. Her eyes glinted with ice, sharp enough to cut. “You’re nothing now, understand? You’re not welcome here. We … my husband and I … we’re moving in. Maddie will have both parents again, the family together. You can’t give her that, but we can. She’ll be happier if you just stop resisting and let go. Run away, now, nothingness. Stay away. Fade away.”

  Maddie had begun to cry, but the sound became muffled and the original Tess glanced up to see that Nick had taken her back inside. The door still hung wide open.

  “Go,” New Tess whispered.

  “Nnnhh,” was the closest she could come to No.

  The grass felt strange to her touch. She’d gone down on all fours and her palms itched where the grass touched it, passed through it. So little remained of her now that she imagined herself made of glass, just a thin pane of transparency, awareness slipping away. The poisonous fury faded in her and she looked up at the beautiful face of a woman she might once have been, pleading with her eyes.

  New Tess might have smiled kindly, seen her off gently. Instead, she sneered. “There wasn’t much to you to begin with, was there?”

  She felt her eyelids flutter. Darkness swept in around her, long before evening would have brought it on, and she felt a sorrow unlike any she had ever known. She had very little feeling left, but the weight of New Tess’s hand remained on her shoulder. This woman had no scars, no old pains, none of the heartache of the original. Surely that made her more worthy of the name and the life? She was pure Tess, a new beginning. Would it be so bad to fade out, to make way for an unbroken version of herself?

  A car horn blared, three long, rattling sounds, as if an alarm had gone off. She blinked and glanced up at New Tess, saw the irritation on her face … and then saw worry there. The original blinked, a frisson of awareness passing through her, and she managed to pick her head up at the same time that two car doors slammed, one after the other.

  “Tess, get up!” a voice shouted. “Come over here!”

  For a few seconds, she thought the voice had spoken to New Tess. Then she mustered the strength to sit back on her haunches and turn toward that voice. For a few seconds, she did not
know the two women running up the driveway toward them.

  “Tess!” one of them called again. To her. The woman had spoken to her.

  “Lili,” she rasped. And then she recognized the other woman, too. Audrey Pang.

  “Get the hell out of here!” Lili said. “Right now, or I swear to God I’ll cave in your fucking skull.”

  The original Tess blinked. For the first time, she saw the crowbar in Lili’s hand—the kind that nearly every car had in the trunk with the spare tire.

  “But we live here,” New Tess said, so reasonable. Even polite. “I think you two ought to go before my husband and I call the police.”

  Nick came out the front door. Maddie, screaming in fear and confusion for her mother, tried to follow him out but he pushed her back inside and yanked the door shut. Just before it closed, the original Tess met her daughter’s gaze, and suddenly she didn’t feel like the original anymore. She felt like the only.

  “Go on and call them,” Audrey said. “I’d love to have a conversation with them about who you are and who that woman on the lawn behind you might be. Especially once we get the real Nick Devlin down here.”

  Not-Nick strode angrily up beside the imposter. “You’re making a mistake. This doesn’t have to be painful for any of you.”

  Not-Tess snickered. “Oh, I disagree.”

  Tess took a hitching breath and forced herself to stand. Wavering on her feet, she nearly puked. Instead, she spat on the grass between herself and the doppelgängers.

  “I still have the bruises to remind me how much you disagree about hurting us,” Tess said, then glanced at Lili. “Knock her goddamn head off.”

  Lili started forward, crowbar cocked back, but Audrey grabbed her arm to stop her. Audrey took her free hand from behind her back and revealed her cell phone.

  “I’ve already called 911,” she told the imposters. “You want to be here when they arrive?”

  The false ones exchanged a glance. Not-Tess twisted her mouth into an ugly sneer, turned, and grabbed Tess by the hair. Audrey shouted and Lili swore, rushing at them with the crowbar. The man who wasn’t Nick caught her wrist and she punched him in the throat with her free hand. He grunted and took a step back, still holding her. Twisting hard enough that she screamed as she brought the crowbar down on his arm.

  Not-Tess yanked Tess toward her, put her lips to Tess’s ear.

  Her breath felt like winter on Tess’s skin.

  “You will wish you had vanished,” the double hissed. “I promise.”

  She hurled Tess to the grass and stormed toward her red Mercedes. Lili swung the crowbar again, hitting Nick’s double in the side, but he only winced and shoved her away. He pointed a finger at Audrey and for just a moment, in the waning afternoon light, his features shifted to the rotting death mask Tess had seen in the mirrors of the psychomanteum.

  Audrey screamed, raising her hands and wheeling backward in fear.

  “Just stay right there,” Not-Nick warned, flesh shifting again.

  Audrey lifted her chin defiantly, visibly fighting her terror. “As long as you’re leaving.”

  He ran to his Lexus, climbing behind the wheel even as Not-Tess hit the gas and her Mercedes rocketed backward out of the driveway. The car tore away, and an instant later, the Lexus roared after it, leaving Lili, Audrey, and Tess standing on the grass exchanging looks of relief and disbelief.

  Audrey reached Tess first, grabbed her by both shoulders and studied her closely. “You’re all there.”

  Tess frowned.

  “When we drove up,” Lili said, “it was like you weren’t all there. Like part of you was invisible.”

  Tess still felt a million miles away, as if she had retreated deep inside herself now and could see these events unfolding from far off. She took several deep breaths and squeezed her eyes shut and the feeling abated, but she knew it would come again.

  “We have to stay together from now on, no matter what,” she said without opening her eyes. Her knees began to buckle, but Lili and Audrey caught her and held her up.

  Lili and Audrey, she thought. But could she be sure?

  She opened her eyes and studied first one, then the other. How would she know, really, if one of them had already been replaced, the way her double had tried to take over her life? Her double, and Nick’s.

  “For safety,” she said.

  “And so we know who’s who,” Lili replied.

  Audrey nodded in agreement, but Tess could see in her eyes that her thoughts had already gone to that same, dark place. It was too late to be sure who was who. They would have to pay very close attention to the words and actions of those around them, just in case. Beyond that, they would have to proceed on faith, which was in very short supply.

  The front door opened and Maddie rushed out, leaped from the top of the steps and nearly fell on the front walk before careening toward her mother.

  Me, Tess thought as the little girl rocketed into her arms. I’m her mother.

  “I love you so much,” Tess said, as Maddie cried, babbling out a dozen frantic questions.

  Tess put a hand behind her head and gazed down into her daughter’s red, teary eyes. “I don’t really know who they were,” she said, and it was neither the truth nor a lie. “But I’ll tell you what I can once we get everyone inside.”

  Lili came over and took one of Maddie’s hands while Tess held the other, and then headed back toward the house.

  “First, though,” Tess said, “we have to call your dad.”

  “That man wasn’t Dad,” Maddie said. “At first I thought he was, but then he was so mean, and Daddy would never…”

  Tess squeezed her daughter’s hand. She had so many misgivings about who Nick had turned out to be, but she never wanted to shatter Maddie’s faith in the man. That might happen soon, when Nick told her that he and Kyrie were moving to London, but Tess wanted no part of it.

  “That’s right, sweetie,” she said. “Daddy would never. Let’s get him on the phone and you can hear his voice. You’ll know right away that you’re right—that mean guy is nothing like your dad.”

  But Tess stumbled going up the front steps, still weak and hollow and barely tethered to her body. Though all the old pains were surging back, the feeling of fading remained, and she wondered about Nick. Had they already gotten to him? What if he had already been taken, vanished completely? What if the man who had slammed the door in Maddie’s face was all that remained of her ex-husband?

  “The phone,” she said to Lili as they walked into the apartment. “Hurry and get the phone.”

  FIVE

  Nick sat on a bench just inside the Voodoo Lounge on St. Paul Street, just down the block from the office of WBUR, the university’s radio station. St. Paul Street was narrow and intimate in comparison to Commonwealth Avenue, one of Boston’s main arteries. Boston University sprawled for miles along Comm Ave and there were dozens of chains, pizza joints, and cafés lining that stretch, but Nick had always preferred the spots that were sort of tucked away—the places you had to search for. Voodoo Lounge had several locations in the Northeast, but he didn’t think it would be fair to call it a chain. In his mind, it would have been impossible for a chain to serve food this good. He’d always liked Cajun and Creole food, and that was the specialty of the Voodoo Lounge—that and about ninety-nine kinds of beer.

  Sitting on that bench, he gazed out at St. Paul Street and watched the sidewalks, waiting for Aaron to appear. They were all supposed to gather again tomorrow, but Aaron had called a little after noon and asked if Nick could meet for a beer or a coffee in the afternoon. Nick figured it was as good a reason as any to walk the four blocks from his office at BU’s archaeology department to the Voodoo Lounge. They served the best gumbo he’d ever had outside of New Orleans, and on a chilly, gray day, a cup of steaming gumbo would be just the thing to warm his insides. He felt poorly—numb and lost in a fog, as if he were coming down with the flu.

  Not all there, he thought, scanning the sidewalk
across the street.

  He had chalked it up to distraction and worry. No matter how good the gumbo might be, it couldn’t cure him of those things—but as he sat there waiting for Aaron, he could smell the spicy aromas in the air and he knew that the gumbo would help, at least for a little while. He wouldn’t feel quite so cold or so empty.

  His stomach growled at the thought. The clock on the wall behind the hostess stand put the time at just about three o’clock, much too early for dinner, but a cup of gumbo was just a snack. An early appetizer. Tonight he needed to sit Kyrie down and try to explain the madness that had entered his life, so a little sustenance in advance of that conversation would not go amiss.

  He spotted a familiar figure bobbing along the sidewalk across the street, beneath a tree whose leaves had begun to turn a fiery red. Aaron glanced in both directions before stepping off the curb and sailing toward the front door of the Voodoo Lounge. His eyes darted around, and Nick knew he wasn’t scanning for oncoming cars. Aaron looked skittish, and when he came through the restaurant’s door and saw Nick waiting for him, he exhaled with relief.

  “You look like you’re about to jump out of your skin,” Nick said.

  Aaron nodded, glanced right and left. “Not in here.”

  Nick’s stomach growled, yearning for gumbo. “What are you talking about?”

  “Walk with me,” Aaron said, gesturing back through the door with a tilt of his head.

  “You think something’s going to happen in here?” Nick asked, trying not to let himself say the word paranoid out loud. Yes, they had things to fear, but not inside the walls of the Voodoo Lounge. Not now, in the middle of the afternoon.

  “I just want to keep moving,” Aaron said, his features pale. He stared into Nick’s eyes. “We all need to keep moving now. I’m out of this, my friend. Earlier today I packed up my car and tonight I’m driving out of here.”