More Deaths Than One

by Pat Bertram

  “Who’s there?” he called out.

  Getting no response, he flipped on the light. He didn’t see anyone, but he could still feel the eyes on him. He looked under the bed, behind the chair, in the closet. No one.

  He stood in the center of the room and pivoted slowly.

  His gaze fell on the still-drying painting propped on a chair. He sucked in his breath and stared. Someone or something hidden in the fetid jungle looked out at him. He shifted position, thinking it a trick of the light, but the eyes still followed him. Unable to bear the feeling of those eyes on him, he thrust the painting behind the chair with all the others, and crawled into bed.

  But not to sleep.

  ***

  At seven-fifteen in the morning, Bob heard a knock. He hurriedly rinsed off the shaving cream he’d lathered on his face, pulled on a shirt, and went to answer the door.

  Kerry smiled at him, looking as bright-eyed as if she’d spent the night sleeping instead of working. She’d changed out of her pink uniform into a white oxford-style shirt over blue jeans.

  “You’re early,” Bob said.

  “I know. I got my side-work done before my shift ended, so I came to look around. I’ve never seen a boardinghouse before. Can I come in? Of course I can.”

  Bob waited a beat, then stepped aside.

  Kerry prowled around his spacious room, stopping to test the easy chair and hassock upholstered in a blue and yellow floral fabric that matched the drapes and bedspread.

  She nodded her head. “Nice. Too feminine for my taste, but nice. I especially like the way the French doors lead right out to that big yard.”

  Bob glanced outside. The tree-shaded yard, with its manicured lawn, pruned rosebushes, neatly trimmed hedges, and tubs overflowing with pink and purple petunias, contrasted sharply with the untamed exuberance of his garden in Bangkok, but it had a sedate serenity he found appealing.

  “I like it, too,” he said. “It’s the main reason I took this place.”

  Jiggling her keys, she moved toward the door. “I’ve seen enough. Ready to go?”

  “I haven’t finished getting cleaned up.”

  She made shooing motions with her hands. “Go on. Hurry.”

  When Bob came out of the bathroom, face tingling from his after-shave lotion, he found Kerry sorting through the paintings he had stashed behind the chair.

  “What are you doing?”

  She glanced up with a saucy smile, apparently not at all put off by his curt tone. “Looking at these paintings. They’re very good. Why aren’t they hanging on the walls where you can enjoy them?” She pulled out a two-by-three-foot canvas and propped it on the chair where last night the jungle scene had lurked.

  Bob peeked at the canvas. The painting depicted a pond with no ripples, surrounded by forest.

  “This is lovely.” Kerry swayed as she focused on the picture. “Very serene.”

  All of a sudden, she stiffened and stepped back. She blinked rapidly, then bent forward and peered at the painting. A visible shudder went through her.

  “Jeez,” she said. “Whoever painted this is either an artistic genius or a very disturbed individual.” She reached out as if to touch the painting, but jerked her hand away before it made contact. “You can almost see the monstrous thing that lives in the slime deep at the bottom of the pool.”

  Bob studied the forest scene. Feeling disquiet creep over him, he averted his gaze.

  “Who painted it?” Kerry asked.

  He hesitated. “I did.”

  She whipped her head around and stared at him. “Jeez, Bob. What the hell were you thinking?”

  Stealing a look at his creation, Bob shivered.

  “I tried to paint what’s in here,” he said, tapping his chest with a fist. He gestured to the picture. “I don’t know how that happened.”

  “Are you a famous artist or something? I think I’ve seen a picture like this before. In a magazine, maybe.”

  Bob shrugged.

  “Well, are you?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  Putting her hands on her hips, she narrowed her eyes at him.

  “It’s the truth.” He strode to the bedside table, retrieved a letter he had received before he left Thailand, and read aloud. “‘Dear Mr. Stark: Mr. Ling Hsiang-li has informed us he will no longer be acting as your agent and that we must now deal directly with you. There is a growing regard for your work. We are interested in enough paintings for a showing, which would include an evening with the artist. Please contact us at your earliest convenience.’”

  Bob set aside the letter. “It’s from a New York art gallery. Now you know as much as I do.”

  “So what’s the deal?” she asked. “Who’s Ling Hsiang-li?”

  “My mentor. A man who was more than a father to me.”

  “But you didn’t know he sold your paintings?”

  “Not really. I once mentioned that I painted one picture over another because nothing I did was any good, and he said, ‘You’re just an artist. How would you know what’s good? Bring them to me and let me be the judge.’ When I protested that they all had a terrible flaw, a hidden evil, he responded, ‘That flaw, as you call it, is what makes you an artist.’”

  “He’s right,” Kerry said.

  Bob hunched his shoulders. “Maybe so, but I don’t have to like it.” He forced himself to relax. “Occasionally, Hsiang-li would hand me a wad of cash and announce he had sold another painting, but until I got that letter, I never knew if in fact he’d sold a painting or if the money was his way of encouraging me.”

  Seeing more questions forming in Kerry’s eyes and on her lips, Bob said quickly, “We should go.”

  “Go? Oh, right. I can’t believe I forgot about the other you.”

  ***

  “It looks like a park,” Kerry said, pulling up to the gates of Mountain View Cemetery. She got out of her blue Toyota Corolla. “Where’s your mother buried?”

  Bob led the way to the newly sodded gravesite. The headstone read the same today as it had yesterday.

  Kerry bent and traced the grooves of the date. “Don’t you think it’s strange that the headstone is in place? When my grandmother died, we didn’t get the stone for months.”

  “Knowing my mother, she probably picked it out herself years ago and had all the engraving done except for the date. She always prided herself on her foresight and preparations. Like buying side-by-side plots for her and my father.”

  Kerry stepped over to the next stone and gazed at it. “It must be terrible losing both parents.”

  “I’ve had plenty of time to come to terms with their deaths.” Twenty-four years before, he had stood in this very spot with his mother, his brother, and a whole phalanx of cops, attending his father’s funeral. His mother hadn’t abandoned her grief when she had died of cancer and been buried next to her husband. Whether that death had occurred twenty-two years ago or recently, she was definitely dead now.

  Bob turned away and made for the car. Kerry hurried after him.

  ***

  They found Robert Stark’s address in the phone book. Kerry drove to the house on Ironton Street off Eleventh Avenue in Aurora and parked across from the faded yellow bungalow.

  “Now what?” she asked.

  “You tell me,” Bob said. “This was your idea.”

  She fixed her laughing eyes on him, apparently amused by his touch of asperity. “We go talk to him.”

  “And say what? That he stole my life?” A shaft of pain stabbed Bob behind the eyes. He stifled a gasp. “Maybe another time. Let’s keep watch for now. See what we can learn.” The headache diminished. He opened his window and listened to the sounds emanating from Robert’s house. Doors slamming. Feet thudding. The television squawking. Children shouting, laughing, whining, sobbing. Lorena yelling.

  “My God,” Kerry said. “It is you.”

  Then Bob saw him—an unimpressive man dressed in a dingy white short-sleeved shirt, a mud-colored tie, and gra
y gabardine pants, trudging down his toy-strewn driveway to the ancient, wood-sided station wagon parked in front of the house.

  The man, Robert, climbed into the vehicle and took off. With a screech of tires, Kerry made a U-turn and hurtled after him, braking abruptly when she caught up to the slow-moving station wagon.

  They followed the station wagon along Havana Street to a shopping mall called Buckingham Square where Robert entered a computer store. He went through a door at the back, came out a minute later and half-heartedly cleaned the counter and straightened merchandise on the shelves.

  A young, expensively dressed woman, who looked about Kerry’s age—twenty-six or twenty-seven—marched into the store.

  Bob, standing outside the door, pretending to chat with Kerry, heard Robert ask diffidently, “May I help you?”

  The woman moved away from him. “Just looking.”

  Robert made no effort to follow her.

  A young man immediately approached the woman. He was dressed like Robert, but his shirt was snowy white, his pants sharply creased, his tie bright. Seemingly unconcerned by the woman’s lack of interest in his patter, the young man continued to pursue her.

  An older couple hesitantly entered the store, and Robert went to wait on them.

  Bob drifted away from the door.

  Kerry trailed him. “I thought this would be fun.”

  “It never is.”

  She blinked. “You’ve done this before?”

  “Yes.”

  A brief silence, then, “You feel no need to explain that remark?”

  “No.”

  As Bob continued to watch his other self, he could feel Kerry’s eyes on him.

  “Do you know why you interest me?” she said at last.

  He glanced at her, wondering if she were setting him up for a joke. “I haven’t a clue.”

  “I’d like to say it’s because you have hidden depths, but your depths aren’t hidden, they’re obvious.” She chuckled. “Maybe you have hidden shallows.”

  The corners of his mouth twitched.

  She drew back in mock surprise. “Is that a smile I see?”

  A few minutes later, she yawned. “Jeez, I’m tired.”

  “You should go home and get some sleep,” Bob said, “but if you don’t mind, I’d like to make a call first.”

  She swept her arm out in a magnanimous gesture. “Go ahead. I’ll keep watch.”

  He found a pay phone and called the computer store. A woman answered.

  “How late does Robert Stark work today?” he asked.

  “Six o’clock.”

  “Thanks.”

  When Bob returned to his post, he noted with amusement that Kerry had situated herself so she could see both the computer store and a dress shop.

  She pointed to the window displaying new fall fashions. “Which is my color, blue or red?”

  “Deep rose,” he said without hesitation.

  She wrinkled her nose. “Pink?”

  “Not pink. Deep rose. Bold, direct, courageous, but without the strident aggressiveness of red.”

  Her eyes sparkled, but for once they were not laughing as she regarded him.

  Then the laughter returned. “It appears that your hidden shallows have hidden shallows of their own.”

  A tall, skinny man with a receding hairline and a prominent Adam’s apple approached Bob. “Hey, Hank, how’ve you been? I haven’t seen you for a long time. You living in Denver now?”

  Bob nodded.

  The man moved away, walking backward. He shot both index fingers at Bob. “Call me. I’m in the book. We’ll get together.”

  Bob glanced at Kerry. She stared back at him, open-mouthed.

  “That man called you Hank.” She whacked herself on the forehead with the palm of her right hand. “God, I’m so stupid when it comes to men. This whole thing has been one big set-up, hasn’t it? You’ve been messing with me.”

  “No, I haven’t,” Bob said quietly. “He mistook me for someone else. That’s always happening to me, and it’s easier to go along than to explain that I’m Robert Stark.”

  The angry flush faded from her cheeks. “You do have one of those faces. Even I thought you might be somebody I knew when I first saw you.”

  A huge yawn overtook her. Knuckling her eyes, she said, “You’re right, I do need to get some sleep.”

  “I’ll be here until six. Do you want to pick me up, or should I call a cab?”

  “I’ll come back.” She smiled happily, but Bob could not tell if the tacit permission to leave pleased her, or the invitation to return.

  ***

  That evening when Bob saw Kerry stop in front of the computer store and look around, he stepped out from behind a group of people.

  Her eyes widened. “Hey, cool. You’re good at this stuff. I never even saw you.”

  Bob continued to watch Robert. Kerry chattered about everyone who passed by, seemingly unconcerned that she carried on a one-sided conversation.

  Promptly at six o’clock, Robert limped out of the store.

  “Why is he limping?” Kerry asked. “You don’t limp.”

  “Maybe he’s tired.”

  They followed Robert back to his house. From where they were parked a few car lengths back, Bob could hear someone inside the house call out, “Daddy’s home.”

  The front door burst open, and Robert’s children came tumbling out to greet him. Beaming, Robert picked up one small, giggling girl and planted a big kiss on her chubby cheek. A shy little boy slipped a hand into his father’s and gazed at him as if he were every super hero rolled into one. Even though all the children talked at once, Robert seemed to have no trouble keeping track of everything they said, and answered each in turn.

  “I thought of another explanation,” Kerry announced. “You could be doppelgangers. A doppelganger is the ghost of a living person.”

  “If we are,” Bob said, watching the other Robert Stark, “then which of us is the living person, and which of us is the ghost?”

  Chapter 3

  The gingerbread-trimmed boardinghouse stood second from the corner on a quiet side street off Seventeenth Avenue. While waiting for a bus after a quick breakfast of granola and orange juice prepared in the communal kitchen, Bob looked across Seventeenth Avenue at City Park. The sun shone. The warm air smelled of mowed grass. Perhaps he should walk to his childhood home on Twenty-Second Avenue.

  No. Better to save his energy for exploring the old neighborhood.

  ***

  Two hours later Bob made the return trip on foot, tired, breathless, feeling out of place and out of time.

  Very little of what he had observed seemed familiar. The wide empty streets where he had once played appeared narrow and inhospitable. Like spectators at a parade, parked cars lined both sides of the street while a steady stream of traffic made its way between them. The red brick house where he grew up had been painted white and looked smaller than he remembered. He did have a vague recollection of the four large pillars supporting the flat roof of the porch, but he did not remember the ornate carvings encircling them. Nor could he recall which room had been his, which window Jackson had broken and blamed on him, which tree he had climbed to escape his father’s wrath.

  How could he have forgotten so much? Maybe because he hadn’t given a single thought to his childhood during the past eighteen years?

  He trudged through City Park, which he did remember, and tried not to listen to the voice in the back of his head suggesting that perhaps all parks bore a decided similarity.

  A flash of yellow on a bird’s wing caught his gaze. Stopping to watch the bird until it flew out of sight, he became aware of the day’s blinding brightness. The grass shimmered in the sun like green fire. The sky reflected a blue so deep it looked purple: the color of infinity, he thought.

  All of a sudden, a sharp pain exploded behind his eyes. The sky turned black. He stumbled, fell to his knees. Cradling his head in his hands, he rocked back and forth. He tried to s
uck in air, but his lungs seemed to have forgotten how to work.

  Over the sound of the blood throbbing against his eardrums, he heard the voice of a little girl.

  “Mommy, what’s wrong with that man?”

  A loud sniff. “Probably drunk or stoned. Come on, let’s get away from here.”

  Gradually Bob’s vision cleared and his lungs started to function again. He took several shallow breaths, then deeper ones. The pain receded to the back of his head.

  He struggled to his feet and dragged himself back to the boarding house. Collapsing on his bed, he waited for the oblivion of sleep.

  But with sleep came the nightmares.

  ***

  The next morning Bob took a cab to the Veterans Administration Hospital in Aurora. After an enormous amount of red tape and hours of waiting, he found himself in a room containing both an examining table and a small metal desk with a computer. Convenience? Bob wondered. Or a chronic shortage of space?

  The doctor, a gray-haired man in his late fifties, marched in thirty minutes later.

  “Dr. Albion,” he said with a curt nod.

  Although Dr. Albion had the barking voice and commanding presence of a general, he did not have the posture; his shoulders sagged as if all the ineptitude throughout all his years of service weighed them down.

  Dr. Albion seated himself at the desk, shuffled through some papers, then glanced at Bob. “Robert Stark?”

  “Yes.”

  The doctor steepled his hands and tapped the tips of his fingers together. “What seems to be the problem?”

  “Headaches, nightmares, disorientation.”

  “When did you first notice these symptoms?”

  “Vietnam. I had a mishap with a mine.” Bob paused, remembering how he’d awakened in a hospital in the Philippines, feeling much as he did now, and being told he’d been unconscious for five days. That had been disorienting, but nowhere near as disorienting as discovering a twice-dead mother and another self. Realizing the doctor had impatiently cleared his throat, Bob said, “The symptoms mostly disappeared until about three weeks ago.”

  “Did you experience any change in your circumstances at that time?”

  “I returned to the United States. I’ve been gone for eighteen years, two in Vietnam, the other sixteen in Thailand.”