Case File 13 #3 (18 page)

“Look!” the doppelgänger said, pointing to the ground. “See, I
do
have a shadow.”

Nick squinted. The doppelgänger was right. There was a shadow. It was so light you could barely see it. A very pale gray, unlike the much darker shadows of Nick and Angelo. But it was definitely a shadow. “Carter?”

“Yes,” the doppelgänger said, struggling to its feet. “It's me. And I am never going on a search-and-rescue operation with you guys again.”

“I think it really
is
him,” Nick said, releasing Carter's arm. “But what's wrong with his shadow? It's like it almost doesn't exist.”

Angelo reluctantly began to let go of Carter. “How do you feel?”

“How do you think I feel?” Carter yanked his arm out of Angelo's grip. “I've had it with you two never trusting me.”

“It's not that we don't trust you,” Nick said. “It's just . . .”

“No.” Carter shook his head. “My doppelgänger was right. You guys think all I ever do is eat and joke around. And you know what? I'm sick and tired of it.” He turned and stomped through the door. “I'm rescuing Carter Junior by myself if I have to.”

Nick wished there was something he could say. Maybe Carter was right, though. They hadn't trusted him—not when he'd said he'd heard something outside the tent, not when the homunculus escaped, and not now. It was a pretty lousy way to treat a friend. He rubbed the back of his neck and followed Carter into the house.

“Anybody home?” Carter shouted.

“Shhh,” Angelo hissed. “What are you doing?”

“Would you rather find out someone's home now or when we're halfway through ransacking their house?” Carter asked.

“We're not ransacking anything,” Angelo whispered. “We're finding the homunculus. Grabbing it and getting out.”

With all the lights off, the big house was dark and more than a little creepy. “They don't have a dog, do they?” Nick whispered.

Angelo paused and looked back. “I don't think so.”

“This is not how it works in
Mission Impossible
,” Carter muttered. “Where are the night-vision goggles and gloves that let you climb walls?”

“Actually,” Angelo whispered back, “I have a pair of night-vision goggles in my backpack. But I'm hoping we don't have to use them.”

When they reached the stairs, Angelo motioned up. “I'm guessing her room is on the second floor.”

Nick wasn't sure why they were being so quiet when they'd already determined no one was home. But he stuck to the side of the staircase anyway to keep from making the steps squeak. At the top of the stairs, Angelo tried the first door. It was a music room with a violin on a stand, a flute, and a grand piano.

“I always wanted to play the flute,” Carter said. “Like those guys in the Revolutionary War. I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy.”

“Be quiet,” Angelo said with an irritated look back.

Carter glared. “Some people have no appreciation for music.”

Nick shook his head. It was like the two of them were intentionally trying to get on each other's nerves.

The second door opened into what appeared to be a guest room. Nick had never seen a bedroom so clean in his life. It looked like if you dropped so much as a feather, a dozen alarms would go off. Come to think of it, they were lucky that an alarm hadn't been set.

The third room they checked was so pink it nearly made Nick's eyes water.

“This is it,” Carter whispered. “Seriously, her parents should be arrested for child abuse. This much pink is illegal in at least twenty states.”

“Okay,” Angelo said. “We have no idea if she's keeping the homunculus here or somewhere else. But this is as good a place as any to start. You check the closet, I'll look under the bed, and—”

“Carter Junior, are you in here, buddy?” Carter called.

Angelo shot him a dirty look. But instantly a muffled copy of Carter's voice called back, “Are you in here, buddy?”

With a shout of joy, Carter ran to a large cedar chest and threw it open.

“I'm hungry!” the homunculus called happily from inside a cage of tightly woven wire mesh.

Carter grabbed the cage, fiddled with a latch that was located where the tiny creature couldn't reach it from the inside, and opened the door. The homunculus leaped for his shoulder, but it missed and barely managed to catch the front of his shirt.

“Are you okay?” Carter asked.

As Angelo knelt down to take a look, the homunculus gave a raspy cough. “He doesn't look good,” Angelo said. “We need to get him back to the woods as soon as possible.”

“How are we going to do that?” Nick asked. “It's not like we can ride our bikes there.”

Angelo grabbed his iPad and did a quick search. “There's a bus that leaves in two hours. If we're careful, the doppelgängers shouldn't have any clue we've left.”

“I wouldn't count on that,” a voice said.

Nick spun around to find three figures blocking the doorway.

“Nice to meet you in person,” a familiar voice said. The figure stepped forward and Nick felt the blood drain from his face. He was looking at an exact copy of himself—from his clothes to his face, to the way his hair stuck up a little in the back.

Except it
wasn't
him. There was something about the eyes staring back at him—something evil and hungry—that made him want to turn away. All at once he could understand why people had died after seeing their doppelgängers. It was like seeing a dark reflection of yourself, a piece of you that until that very moment had been hidden from view.

Angelo and Carter's doppelgängers stepped into the room as well. They eyed the three boys and grinned. “Sorry, guys. The game is over. And you lose.”

Nick tried to speak but the words wouldn't come. “Give us the homunculus,” Evil Nick said.

Carter hugged Carter Junior to his chest. “You can't have him.”

“
You can't have him
,” Carter's doppelgänger repeated in a whiny voice. “Dude. No wonder Angie and her friends don't want to hang with you. You're pathetic.”

Evil Angelo elbowed Evil Carter. “I hate to say it, but I think your double is even more annoying than you are.”

Evil Carter sneered. “Well, you should know everything there is about annoying. You wrote the book on annoying, and then read it until you had it memorized.”

“Would you two quit arguing,” Nick's doppelgänger said. He looked at Nick. “Why you choose to hang around these two is beyond me. Seriously, they are like a couple of little old ladies in a grocery store arguing over who gets the last cantaloupe. You know?”

Nick nearly nodded, before remembering who he was talking to.

“I thought you three were supposed to be taking our places in school,” Angelo said.

His double took off his glasses and polished them on his shirt exactly the way Angelo always did. “Technically, we were there until just a minute ago. But a kindly neighbor lady across the street, who happens to be one of us, spotted your bikes out front. So we thought we'd
pop
in.”

“You guys better back off,” Nick said, his tongue feeling twice as big as normal.

“Or what?” Evil Nick asked with a mocking smile. “Are you going to call your mommy? I'll bet if I go to your house right now I can get her to kiss me on the head and feed me pancakes.”

Nick raised his fist and, like a mirror image, his double raised his. He took a step to his right and at almost the same time, his doppelgänger matched his movement. He cut back to the left and Evil Nick was right there.

“Look,” Evil Nick said. “We know all about the things you guys have done in the past. We have your memories too. But what you need to realize is, that's all over now. We think like you, we act like you, we look like you. And in another twenty-four hours, we will
be
you.”

Evil Carter pointed at Carter and laughed. “What's freaking hilarious is that if you guys had gotten here a day earlier—”

“Stop talking so much!” Evil Angelo scolded. “Go check the kitchen. Maybe there's a bag of doggie treats for you to snack on.”

“Why don't you go read a book?” Evil Carter said. “Try looking up the Latin translation of know-it-all.”

Nick's double raised his hands as if to say,
How do you put up with this?
“Here's the thing. By now you know that we are what you call doppelgängers—although we have existed long before that name.”

“You might want to write this down in your monster notebook,” Evil Angelo said. “Which, by the way, I'm planning on keeping up when you're gone.”

Angelo frowned, but he unzipped his backpack and took out his notebook anyway.

Evil Nick shook his head. “In the past we were spread across the world, appearing now and then to people, watching them, warning them, occasionally causing a little mischief. But mostly trying to teach them.”

“Teach them what?” Carter growled. “How to be buttheads?”

“Buttheads,” Carter Junior repeated weakly.

Angelo's evil double held a hand out toward Angelo. “Please tell your companions that if they continue to interrupt, we will never get through this. But use small words or they might not understand.”

“I don't tell my friends what to do,” Angelo said.

Evil Angelo shook his head. “Another reason your attempt to stop us has always been doomed to failure. Very well, let's make this brief. In the past, our kind tried to teach your race to stop hiding their true feelings—to let their inner personalities come out. Not everyone liked our message. They started rumors about us, blamed us for their own misfortunes, and trapped us in ‘sanctuaries' like the one where you discovered us.”

“Luckily, you doofuses opened the door,” Carter's doppelgänger said.

“I told you to zip your lips,” Evil Angelo told him.

Evil Carter snorted. “And I told you to stick your head in a toilet. If it would even fit.”

“What door?” Angelo asked.

His doppelgänger brushed the question away like swatting a fly. “It's not important. What
is
important is that we're free now, and we're not going back. Trying to teach you didn't work. So instead, we're going to become you. It's already happening. Once we finish becoming, you disappear.”

Nick balled up his fists. “We didn't know we were letting you out or we never would have done it. And we're going to find a way to send you jerks back where you belong.”

“Dream on,” Evil Nick said. “It's too late to send us back. And even if it wasn't, you weenies would never have a chance. Haven't you noticed you're losing your strength? Your shadows are disappearing; you're feeling sick, tired. Trust me, you're the ones who are going where you belong—bye-bye.”

“I wouldn't have put it in those exact terms,” Evil Angelo said. “But he
is
right. We are
replacing you. Once we scrape out all the things that get in the way—what you call being polite, civilized, and kind—we will dominate the rest of your species, then the world.” He held out his hand. “So leave the homunculus here and you can go.”

Carter grabbed the metal cage and held it over his head like a weapon. “We aren't leaving here without Carter Junior.”

“If you knew he was here, why didn't you come and get him yourselves?” Nick asked. It didn't make sense. “What do you need him for?”

“We don't
need
him,” Evil Carter said. “Little dude's about to croak anyway. It's just that—”

Evil Angelo whirled around, his jaw tight. “I told you to stop talking!”

While Evil Angelo was facing Evil Carter, the real Angelo slipped his hand into the backpack he had unzipped moments before. “While it does appear to be true that you have both our physical and mental capabilities, there is one thing you do not have.”

“And what would that be?” Evil Angelo asked, his tone and expression clearly indicating he couldn't imagine anything he didn't have.

Angelo pulled a small metal can from his pack, flipped the cap off with his thumb, and shot a cone of mist at the Evil Twins. A thick vapor filled the air around the doppelgängers and they immediately fell back, coughing and gagging. “Pepper spray.”

“I have something you don't have too!” Carter shouted. He flung the cage he'd been holding and it bounced off Evil Carter's head with a loud
twang-g-g
.

“Put these on,” Angelo said, pulling out three surgical masks. “And cover your eyes.”

As Nick put on the mask, his doppelgänger stumbled toward him, eyes streaming. Nick grabbed one of Kimber's chairs and swung it like a baseball bat. It caught Evil Nick just at belt level, doubling him over. “Now who feels sick?” he shouted.

“Run!” Angelo yelled. He covered his eyes and ran past the reeling doppelgängers.