The Identical Boy

by Matthew Stott

  His friend.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ said Sam, a sob in his voice.

  ‘Hey, I know, kid. I know.’

  They stayed like that for a long time. Relief. Hope. Happiness.

  Finally Ally released Sam and looked down, her cheeks streaked with wet tracks.

  ‘Did you know there’s a talking snake in a burnt-out bus not far from here? That’s a freaky thing to stumble across.’

  Sam laughed once, the noise surprising him.

  ‘Well, I’m afraid the surprises are just going to keep on coming,’ said Ally, and she looked back over her shoulder. ‘Come out, come out….’

  A shuffle of feet, and then someone else stepped into view from behind a tree. He was thick set, and his nose whistled as he breathed heavily, jaws clamped shut. ‘Hey,’ said Mark the bully.

  Sam’s heart began to beat fast, and he stepped back, ready to run away.

  ‘Hey, hey, come on, Samster. No need for that. Not now,’ said Ally

  Sam looked to her, and Ally smiled quickly and nodded once. He looked back to the bully, but … something was different. He could see it Mark’s eyes. He could see … shame?

  ‘I want…I just…’ Mark stopped, kicked at the ground, then looked to Sam again. ‘Sorry. I didn’t know. I didn’t realise, I—’

  Ally coughed theatrically, eyebrows raised.

  Mark looked at the ground. ‘I did know. I just didn’t care. I liked feeling … special. But when he … when it came for me. I just … I never want to make anyone feel like that. Not anymore. Not never. The only people I want to fight are people who make others feel like that. So that’s what I’m going to do. Promise.’

  Sam couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing.

  ‘I know, right?’ said Ally. ‘Kinda makes you believe in miracles.’ She winked and Sam smiled. He felt … different. He hadn’t helped kill anyone. He’d just been tricked, that’s all. Made a fool of. They were safe. He felt happy. He felt joy. He felt a warming glow spread around his body, kicking out the empty, cold despair that he’d been carrying around for so long. Since long before the monster had arrived.

  ‘So, I guess we’re stuck here then, huh?’ said Ally.

  ‘I saw a town back there, somewhere,’ said Mark, the former bully. ‘Maybe we can get a house, or something.’

  Think well of yourself, Sam Ward.

  Sam thought he understood. ‘No,’ he said, smiling.

  ‘No?’ replied Ally.

  ‘We can go back. We can! We can leave here and go back and be awake, I know it.’

  ‘How we gonna do that, then?’ asked Mark.

  ‘He told me. The big, faceless man. He told me everything I need to know. Think well of yourself! We’re connected, me and the monster. He is me and I am him, but he’s only me because I let him in. I let him be me. It sniffed out my sadness and dug its fingernails in deep. But I won’t be sad anymore. I don’t want to be. I don’t need to be!’

  Ally and Mark looked to each other, a little confused. ‘O-kay,’ said Ally. ‘But, well I mean, we’re still here, in this place. I’m guessing we’re not in Kansas anymore. Unless you can magic up one of those, you know, portal-door thingies for us to step through, then I think we’re kinda staying put.’

  Sam closed his eyes.

  ‘Um, Sammy boy? Hello? Now isn’t the time for a standing nap, you know.’

  Sam opened one eye. ‘Shh! I’m doing something.’ He closed the eye, scrunched both tight, and he pictured a door. The same kind of door that he’d walked through to get here, the kind that he’d seen appear in his own bedroom before. He pictured it so clearly, the detail sharp. He felt like he could smell the ancient wood and feel the coldness of the metal handle against his palm.

  ‘Well, slap my face and call me Bob,’ said Ally.

  Sam opened his eyes.

  The forest had a door.

  ~Chapter Thirty-Three~

  The door opened and Sam, Ally, and Mark stepped into the bedroom. The monster that looked just like Sam was curled up in bed.

  The trees behind them thrashed their branches in alarm. In warning. The boy’s eyes sprang open and he sat up, fumbling to turn on the lamp that stood next to the bed.

  ‘Hello,’ said Sam.

  The boy looked at them all, at the door, at the forest. He looked from one to the next in fury, in confusion, in terror.

  ‘No! You lost. You lost the game, Sam; this is my home now. Mine!’

  ‘I don’t care. I want to come home, so I am.’

  ‘Yeah, you evil little runt!’ said Ally.

  The boy stepped out of bed and looked at the trio with pure malevolence. His teeth were many and sharp, and the whites of his eyes now looked the bloodiest of reds.

  ‘I will eat you. Eat you all. Kill you all. Scare you all to death.’

  ‘No, you won’t,’ said Sam. ‘You don’t scare me. Because that’s all you are. Just fear. And I don’t want to be afraid anymore.’

  The boy blinked and his eyes were no longer red. ‘You are small. Alone. Nobody loves you. So alone, lonely, stupid, empty.’

  ‘I can love me,’ replied Sam. ‘And I don’t feel lonely or empty. Not now. I refuse to.’

  The boy doubled over, as though someone had just punched him in the stomach. He looked at Sam, furious. ‘I will eat you! Eat you all!’

  ‘I love Sam,’ said Ally. ‘You hear me, you little freak? I love my daft, skinny buddy here and I’ll never let him feel unwanted ever again.’

  Sam smiled and his heart felt as though it increased in size.

  The boy’s head snapped back and he screamed at the ceiling. ‘Won’t go,’ said the creature. ‘Won’t! I won. This is my home; mine, mine, mine! I worked so very hard for this and I want, want, want it!’

  ‘Well, you can’t have it!’ said Sam.

  ‘Even your own parents don’t want you! Don’t love you! They only love me!’

  Sam felt himself falter for a moment, but a look from Ally was all that he needed to fight back.

  ‘I know. And that’s sad. Really sad and really horrible. But that’s life, too. The sad things. The bad things. The lonely times. But there’s always hope and the future. The wide, rosy, anything-can-happen future! I’ll hurt, I’ll feel sad, but that’s just life. And life is so full of maybes and hope and good stuff that it’s worth living with the bad to get to it.’

  The boy twisted, its head shaking back and forth in a blur, fingers clawing at the air.

  Mark stepped forward. ‘You … you made me a better person.’

  ‘You?’ the boy hissed, panting, sweat beading on his face. ‘You are mean and stupid and hated, hated, hated.’

  ‘I know. But, I won’t hurt nobody ever again. I won’t. I’ll use my strength to help. You made me see what was rotten in me. Made me really see it and care. You made me good. I’ll make my Mum proud of me.’

  The boy fell to his knees. Sam could hear cracking, like the boy’s bones were snapping.

  ‘You found me when I was lonely and scared and you used me,’ said Sam.

  ‘You needed me! This is all you. All of it!’

  ‘I know. But you took advantage. You tricked. You made sure I relied on you. Well, I don’t need you now. The only person I need to make me feel happy is me. I don’t need a friend like you, and I take back my face.’

  The boy’s mouth hung wide in one last scream. It stretched and pulled, the jaw dislocating, the sharp teeth falling out, one by one. It looked at Sam with Sam’s own eyes, full of anger and despair. Then, like a painting that someone had knocked a glass of water over, Sam’s face simply streaked wetly from the creature’s head and onto the floor, leaving a grey, unformed lump in its place.

  ‘Gross,’ said Ally, though Sam noticed the gleeful smile on her face.

  ‘Awake,’ came a scratchy voice from the creature, as it shed skin after skin, and its bones cracked, and shrunk, and crumbled. ‘I was Awake.’

  ‘Yeah, but now it’s time for you to go away.’
Sam opened the lid of the trunk at the end of his bed. The chattering, leathery egg pieces leapt from within towards the diminishing creature. As they stuck, piece by piece, the monster continued to grow ever smaller, until all the pieces met, and the egg was whole.

  The trio stood in silence for a few seconds, staring at the egg.

  ‘Well, I wasn’t quite expecting that!’ said Ally, and she took Mark and Sam under an arm each, pulling them tightly.

  ‘My Mum,’ said Mark. ‘I’ve got to get home, tell her I’m okay. Tell her everything’s going to be okay.’ He ran for the door, stopping as he pulled it open. ‘Sam, I really, you know, I’m very—’

  ‘It’s okay,’ said Sam. ‘I forgive you. Think well of yourself, Mark.’

  Mark bit his lip, then ran from the room.

  ‘Well, I guess you sure showed that monster who’s boss,’ said Ally.

  Sam’s Mum burst into the room, followed by his Dad.

  ‘What have you done?’ his Mum shrieked.

  ‘Who let you in, hey?’ said Dad. ‘You can’t come barging into people’s houses in the middle of the night, you know.’

  Sam’s Mum knelt and lifted the egg, cradling it to her chest. ‘My boy. My poor, poor boy.’

  ‘You know, you have a son right here!’ said Ally.

  Sam’s parents looked at her as if she were insane. ‘We don’t want him,’ said Dad.

  ‘This is the only boy we want,’ said Mum.

  Sam’s parents stood and turned towards the door, towards the forest. They held hands, looking down at the egg that contained a monster as though they were proud new parents in a maternity ward, gazing at their wished- and hoped-for newborn.

  They stepped through and into the forest. They stepped Between.

  ‘Don’t worry, Mommy loves you very much.’

  ‘And Daddy! Don’t forget about Daddy!’

  The door to Between closed behind them.

  And vanished.

  Sam stood quietly for a moment, trying to take in everything that had happened. He’d done it. He’d won. He’d defeated the monster that had preyed on his sadness, that had made itself alive through it. Sam wondered what he would do now.

  ‘So what’s the plan, Stan?’

  Sam shrugged. ‘It’s just me in this house, now. I don’t even know how to cook myself dinner.’

  ‘Why would you need to know that? I’ll cook. I’ll teach you. Well, our Mum will.’

  Sam blinked once, twice, and looked at the beaming Ally. ‘Our Mum?’

  ‘Course, you’re my little brother now, aren’t you?’

  Sam didn’t know quite what to say.

  ‘That is, if you want a big, bad-ass sis like me….’

  Sam smiled and Sam hugged Ally close.

  They walked from the bedroom, from the house, and down the street.

  ‘I’m sure she’ll be a bit surprised at first, but when she finds out they abandoned you, I’m sure we’ll work it out. She is a police officer, after all.’

  Sam nodded. He knew Ally wouldn’t let him down. Wouldn’t let him feel alone. Not ever.

  Ally ruffled a hand through Sam’s hair. ‘You know, bro, I really think you could pull off green hair; what d’you think?’

  ‘Yeah? Yeah! Cool. Maybe! D’you think I could do that?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Ally, ‘I think from now on, you’re going to be able to be anything you wanna be, Sammy boy.’

  Sam and Ally left the house behind.

  And went home.

  *****

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