Doppelgänger (24 page)

Back to the letter
.

She dipped her pen in the inkwell. As she touched the metal tip of the pen to paper a sudden skittering noise somewhere to her right startled her. She turned her head. At that instant something flew at her—something bronze-colored and very fast—and a short scream blasted from her throat. The thing landed on the writing desk, knocking over the inkwell, and scampered away. In a split-second it was gone.

Anine's heart felt like it would seize in her chest. The thing that had flown at her was the Abyssinian cat. It left a single smeared paw-print in India ink on the edge of the final page of her letter, which was rapidly growing dark from the spilled ink spreading across the surface of the desk.

The only words that could rise in her mind against the sudden tidal wave of horror cresting inside of her were:
det är tillbaka
.
It's back.

She bolted up from the chair, recoiling from the spectral cat, but it had already vanished.
“Julian!”
she cried.
“Julian! Where are you?”
She dashed to the door of the Green Parlor, just as the gaslights in the fixture above flickered and went out.

They were out for only a moment. But when they came up again—it took only a second or two, but seemed an agonizingly slow process—Anine found herself not at the door of the Green Parlor but against the far wall, where the bell cord was. During the moment of darkness the fireplace remained where it was, but it seemed, inexplicably, that the rest of the room had rearranged itself instantly and silently around it, and everything was different.

Well—not
totally
different. The chair that Anine had just been sitting in, and the writing table where she'd written the letter, were still the same but they were against a different wall. The Chickering piano with its gleaming mahogany top was now a mirror-image of itself, the curved edge now bowing to the left instead of the right. The pocket doors, still open to the entryway, were on the opposite side of the room. In the painting of St. James's Park above the mantelpiece, the pathway through the grass ran toward the upper left-hand corner of the picture instead of the lower right-hand corner.

“What the hell is
this
?” Anine gasped, in a whispering voice frosted with panic.

She snatched the bell cord and rang it. Outside another throaty burst of wind flung ice pellets against the pane. She ran for the doors, now across the room to her left.

After four or five steps she was suddenly struck by a terrible burst of dizziness in her head. Her vision clouded. Her right knee buckled but she managed to catch her step and prevent herself from falling into a heap onto the thick green carpet. Staggering from the head rush, she reached out for the fireplace mantel and grasping its hard unyielding marble steadied her. The grayish cloud across her eyes cleared. But the room had changed yet again.

Now the writing table, its surface covered with spilled ink, was to the left within arm's reach. The piano was several feet away, but there was a settee between it and Anine. The path in the painting of St. James's Park was straight, not curved. And the pocket doors were again the farthest thing from her, ten or fifteen paces away across the room.

I'm not going to be able to get to that door
, she realized.
The
spöke
wants to keep me here.

“Julian!” she shouted. “
Julian!
Miss Wicks! Mr. Shoop! Anybody! Can you hear me?”

A male voice—distant and strangely garbled—sounded from the open pocket doors far away to her right. “Ma'am?”
It's Shoop. He can hear me.
“Are you all right?”

“No, I am
not
all right! Something's wrong!”

Before he could answer Anine was terrified to see the lights dimming in the room. Looking up at the frosted glass globes which a moment ago were blazing bright yellow, she saw they were turning dark orange. It was happening much slower than the previous flickers, as if the
spöke
was physically standing at the dimmer switch, turning it down. Bizarrely, the light of the fireplace, to which Anine was still holding, was also dimming. In a few seconds the parlor would be black.

“No!” she cried at the growing darkness. “You're
dead
! Julian killed you! You have no business here!
Leave us alone
!”

The darkness—and the doppelgänger—did not answer. Indeed its stony silence was almost more terrifying than its hateful tinny voice, speaking through Percy Quain's toy silver trumpet. As the room sank into blackness the panic reached its climax inside of her, and she let out a long piercing scream.

Some time later—Anine had no idea how long—things were again slightly different. She was still near the fireplace, but the light of the fire was now visible, dimly illuminating the parlor. She was bent double, gasping, trying not to hyperventilate.
All right. I'm all right. I'm not hurt
. Through her clouding vision and the darkness it was difficult to make out anything in the room but she thought she saw the dim bluish light from the window gleaming off various polished wood surfaces, one of them certainly the piano. She couldn't tell quite what the arrangement was this time, but the pocket doors were again far away, opening onto a gaping maw of blackness that was the entryway.

Through that maw a voice called: “Miss Anine? Where you at?”

Clea
. She didn't sound as distant as Bryan Shoop had earlier, and she thought it strange that now she could not hear him at all. It sounded like Miss Wicks was at the top of the stairs, shouting down into the entryway.

“I'm—I'm in the Green Parlor!” she shouted back. She was afraid to let go of the fireplace mantel.

“You got lights in there?”

She looked up at the ceiling. The gas fixture was totally dark except for one tiny flicker of a flame, faintly illuminating one of the glass globes.

“There's one jet, and it's almost out,” she called back.

“Come out into the entryway, Miss Anine. I don't know why the gas failed, but I'll bring you a lamp.”

Anine's heart pounded.
No! Don't ask me to do that!
She now had a terrible certainty that the moment she let go of the mantelpiece the room would change again. But even beyond that she felt as if a set of invisible bars, inches away from her, surrounded her on all sides. “I can't! I don't think—I don't think I can move!”

“Miss Anine, there's nothing there. It's just the lights went out, that's all.”

“No! There
is
something here! I can feel it!”

As soon as she said this she felt ashamed of herself.
I know Clea's right
, she thought.
There's nothing ahead of me. There are no bars. I can put my hand out and prove they aren't there
. And she did; with the hand that wasn't clutching the edge of the mantel she reached forward and swiped the empty air.
But what if the bars are just out of reach?
This thought was absurd, she knew. The whole thing was absurd, but that didn't make it any less terrifying.

“All right,” said Miss Wicks from the top of the stairs. “I'll come to you. Stay where you are.”

It's laughing. The spirit is laughing at me!
She couldn't hear it except in her head: the sound of cackling tinny silver-trumpet laughter, probably more her imagination than anything else. But the malevolent presence was back. Or, more accurately, it had never left. Anine understood now that it had been biding its time, hiding in beams of sunlight and the corners of well-lit rooms, trying to lull them into thinking it was gone. She couldn't understand why. The death of Mrs. Quain should have destroyed it. But it hadn't. Perhaps it was no longer even a doppelgänger, but a pure
spöke
—a ghost, ephemeral and eternal, taking glee in its evil return.

“We'll leave,” she whispered into the darkness in Swedish. “Is that what you want? We'll leave tonight. I know Julian will agree. We'll leave the house to you and you can have it. You win. Let us go. Please, let us go in peace. We have no quarrel with you anymore.”

“I'm coming, Miss Anine,” Clea called from the stairs. “It's going to be all right. I'm coming.”

Anine looked through the doors into the dark entryway. Curiously the doors seemed closer now, closer by several feet. Anine saw a small dot of yellow-orange light far up in the darkness at the top of the stairs. Clea was carrying a hand-held oil lamp. Anine watched the little light bounce and jiggle as she started down the first flight of stairs from the garret.

Thank God for Clea
, she thought.
She doesn't question, she doesn't judge, she doesn't rebuke. However silly she thinks this is, she's still there for me. She may think it's just her job, but it's a lot more than that.

For several seconds she watched the bouncing light on the stairs. “You still all right, Miss Anine?” said Clea.

“Yes,” Anine called back. She swallowed. “I think—I think I can hang on until you get here.”

“It ain't nothing, ma'am. Nothing to worry about.”

Suddenly the jiggling light stopped. In its glow Anine could see Clea's head turn, outlined by the shape of her lower jaw, a thin curve of dim yellow. In a gasp of horror Clea Wicks said,
“My God!”
but Anine couldn't see what she was reacting to. There was nothing there but darkness.

Yet
something
struck her. Clea lurched violently to the side as if hit bodily by a savage blow. The lamp flew out of her hands, crashing to the carpeted stairs, its fragile glass shade shattering. In the sudden flare of the lamp oil bursting into flame Anine saw Clea Wicks's body tumbling down, end over end, the many bumpy stairs to the bottom. The shrill echoing pitch of Anine's horrified scream masked the sounds of Clea's bones snapping with each brutal impact on the steps. Her body fell into a heap onto the floor of the entryway, supine, mouth gaping, staring at the dark ceiling, and then she was ominously still. There followed a great rending crash—from upstairs, from the entryway itself, from the Red Parlor—the sound of glass and porcelain shattering, wood splintering, as the vengeance of the
spöke
roared angrily to life.

Chapter Nineteen

The Fading

“My God!”

Bryan Shoop's exclamation was a strange mirror of Clea Wicks's last words. Anine looked to her left through the pocket doors of the Green Parlor and saw Shoop standing in the entryway, having evidently entered from the direction of the dining room. He too had seen Wicks tumble to her death. He looked dumbfounded, completely frozen in shock. As the pinging and smashing noises began from upstairs his body seemed to grow tense, like a cat just before springing away from danger.

“Help me!” Anine shouted. “Help me, please!”

He turned; perhaps he had been unaware that she was in the Green Parlor. He ran towards her. As he grabbed her hand away from the mantelpiece she jerked her arm, recoiling in fear from the invisible bars that weren't there. A sudden smashing noise from above drew their attention. Two of the glass globes of the light fixture had suddenly shattered. Anine noticed that now all the gas jets in the fixture were alight, though each flame was tiny and dim.

“What the hell
is
it?” said Shoop.

“Never mind,” she said. “Let's get Julian and get out of here!
Now
!”

They ran for the doorway. As she crossed the invisible bars Anine felt suddenly winded, every molecule of air sucked out of her lungs in a terrible instant. She crumpled to the carpet just beyond the threshold of the Green Parlor door. Shoop hastened to bring her to her feet. As she stood up another tremendous violent crash made them jump. The huge longcase grandfather clock just inside the front door—six feet tall, weighing hundreds of pounds—toppled over like a stack of child's building blocks. Its wooden case splintered and the clock itself exploded into a dimly-glinting cloud of brass gears, springs and metal pegs. The round face of the clock rolled away into the darkness.

“Get back!” Shoop cried, shielding Anine with his body. The grandfather clock had fallen directly across their path to the front door. The
spöke
did not want them to leave.

She was still gasping for breath. It was hard to get any oxygen, although her throat wasn't constricted and her chest didn't feel tight. “Julian,” she said. She had meant to shout it at the top of her lungs, hoping to get his attention—the billiard room was on the second floor, down the hall—but she had so little breath that it came out as barely a sigh.

Shoop seemed to take her meaning.
“Mr. A.!”
he shouted upwards through cupped hands. “Where are you? Are you all right?”

Both Anine and Shoop looked up at the sudden sound of tearing metal. The immense chandelier hanging in the entryway was suddenly canted nearly 45 degrees to the side. As the invisible force released it, the fixture swung, and the sound of wrenching, crinkling metal repeated itself. The ornate metal collar bolting the chandelier to the ceiling popped off and crumpled. Anine could see the gas pipes exposed now and she noticed one of them had already ruptured.

“It's going to fall on us!” she cried.

The chandelier—Anine was too frightened to be anywhere underneath it—blocked their path through the entryway to the door. And what about Julian?
We can't leave without him
.
The
spöke
will destroy him.

Shoop looked around for refuge. The Red Parlor was across the entryway, the pocket doors closed, but they would have to cross directly under the swaying chandelier to reach it. Miss Wicks's body lay at the foot of the stairs and the small fire where the lamp oil burst into flame was still burning. They had one avenue of retreat: the dining room. Taking Anine's hand, Shoop ran toward its doorway just as the chandelier detached itself from the ceiling, swooping down in a dreadful crash.

But it didn't fall all the way. Though the glass jet shades shattered and most of the dangling crystal bangles went flying, one of the copper gas pipes held fast, violently jerking the fixture like a dog who had reached the end of its leash. The chandelier hung on this slender pipe, gently rocking from side to side, pulling the single gas pipe thin and taut like an elastic band. This, Anine realized, was almost worse than if the whole thing had come down. Now the chandelier was an ominous sword of Damocles, dangling precariously over the entire entryway, its broken pipes belching gas and its remaining razor-sharp crystal bangles bared like the teeth of an angry bear.

They ran into the dining room. Instantly Anine knew it was a mistake. As they passed the sideboard, where several crystal decanters of spirits were lined up, each bottle exploded in turn, showering Anine and Shoop with bits of glass and droplets of brandy, cognac and sherry. She screamed again. A teacup and saucer launched itself from the shelf on the far side of the room directly at her head. Dashing herself to the floor, the crockery impacted on the wall behind the dining room table.

“Jesus!” Shoop gasped. The
spöke
then flung at him the heavy glass stopper of one of the crystal decanters. It left a dent in the wall, tearing the wallpaper. He and Anine scrambled under the dining room table.

It was another mistake. The shelf on the opposite wall was well-stocked with fine crockery, the expensive Crown Derby set that had been Lucretia's wedding gift to them. Taken collectively it was an awesome array of ammunition the spirit could fire at them. Anine watched a plate spring spontaneously from the shelf, spin through the air and impact violently on the surface of the table. It was followed by another teacup, two saucers and a bread plate.
THUNK.
Looking up, Anine saw a silver fork embedded, tines-first, in the seat of the upholstered dining chair above her.
TINK! PINGGGG!
A knife and another fork soon joined it. The
spöke
was throwing everything it could at them.

Bryan Shoop, who Anine guessed had virtually no knowledge of what had been going on in the house, looked on the verge of panic. “It's the Devil!” he gasped. Instinctively he and Anine embraced each other, huddled together in a ball under the table as the crockery continued to rain down from the shelves above.

“Not the Devil,” Anine replied, panting. “But something close.”

TING! CRASH! CHUNK!
They were relatively safe under the table, but Anine wasn't sure the
spöke
was trying to destroy them. There was a large heavy light fixture in this room too, hanging above the dining room table, and if detached with sufficient force—an ability Anine was certain the
spöke
possessed—it could probably collapse the table and crush them. Certainly the spirit could wrench it from the ceiling, and, as in the entryway and the Green Parlor, there was enough feeble flame in the jets to ignite the escaping gas and cause a fire, or perhaps the catastrophic explosion of the entire house.
But the thing doesn't want that
.
It wants to pin us down, frighten and horrify us, at least for now.
So far it was doing an excellent job.

Piece by expensive Crown Derby piece, the
spöke
worked its way through the china shelf. Anine leaped and jumped in Shoop's arms with every impact. In a few minutes the floor around the dining room table was a sea of broken porcelain shards and she imagined the surface of the table was even worse. The seats and backs of the dining room chairs became pincushions for the silverware hurled into them; the
spöke
even flung the spoons so hard that they embedded in the upholstery too. At one point, spontaneously and without warning, the legs of one of the dining room chairs exploded into splinters and the chair collapsed crookedly to the floor, shaking loose some of the silver stuck into it.

“We have to get to Julian,” she told Shoop once she had caught her breath, which in the panic and tension of the assault took considerable time. “He's in danger.”

“Will this thing let us?”

“Sooner or later it's going to run out of crockery.”

It did, but that didn't slow it down. Once it had emptied the china shelf Anine heard a terrifying thump and crash, louder and more violent than anything yet, and she saw the table above her quiver. A moment later a length of wax candle, snapped in two, rolled off the top of the table and fell to the floor. She realized the spirit had thrown one of the heavy silver candleholders from the mantelpiece. Julian had told her they were two hundred years old. The second holder the
spöke
fired directly at the floor. It impacted at an angle, snapping in two, further pulverizing some of the porcelain shards.

The final act of violence was against the fireplace. The dining room fireplace was shaded by an elaborate brass screen shaped like a peacock's bustle, its polished feathers spreading like a fan. From under the table Anine could see it. She watched as the fan crumpled suddenly and savagely in the center as if under the blow of an invisible axe. Several of the brass feathers sprang out of the frame and the gilded peacock itself went flying toward the ceiling. One of the feather blades—three feet long, roughly teardrop-shaped—landed on the floor just under one of the chairs. It began to quiver and shake violently. Anine and Bryan Shoop moved aside, away from it. The metal feather was buckling under some intense invisible force.

As she watched, now equally in amazement and horror, the feather from the fire screen began to curl up into a cone shape. It looked like the
spöke
was trying to fashion it into some sort of implement. The brass pinged and strained under the invisible force. The feather was literally rolling itself up, pushing aside shards of broken crockery as it did so. A terrible screeching noise began to emanate from it. For some reason the tone seemed to disturb Shoop with particular vehemence. He let go of Anine and clapped his hands over his ears. His teeth gritted. “What's it doing?” he gasped, trying not to hyperventilate, as Anine had nearly done several times already.

“I think it's trying to communicate,” she said.

A horn. It's trying to make a horn.

After half a minute or so the
spöke
either gave up or decided that what it had done was good enough. The brass feather from the fire screen was now a rough cone-shaped funnel. The voice that came out of it was surprising. It was still tinny and disturbing, but it wasn't the harsh animalistic screech in which the spirit had communicated before. It was a woman's voice, smooth and buttery, sounding almost peaceful and motherly. And, astonishingly, it spoke perfect Swedish.

“This is your own fault, you know,” said the
spöke
. “I gave you every chance.
Every
chance.”

Shoop's eyes bulged from his head. Squirming and writhing in panic—not being able to understand the spirit must have been even more terrifying—he said, through chattering teeth, “What's it saying?
What's it saying?
”

“I wanted to leave,” said Anine to the
spöke
. “You know I did.”

“But you didn't. Even after you knew what was happening, you
didn't
leave.”

“Let us leave now. We'll go. We won't come back. I promise.”

“It's too late for that,” said the spirit, with terrifying calmness.

“What's it saying?”
Shoop screamed.

“It's threatening us,” she replied in English. To the
spöke
she said in Swedish: “Why do you hate us so much? Why do you hate
me
? I never harmed you.”

“Why do
you
hate
me
?”

“I don't hate you.”

Then there issued from the little brass cone a peal of laughter. It was feminine laughter, airy and happy-sounding, but it chilled Anine's blood to hear it.

As soon as the spectral laughter ceased the brass cone crumpled itself flat. It was an instant motion, a sudden violent
slap!
as if the boot of an invisible giant stomped on it. One moment the cone was three-dimensional and the next it was a thin flat triangle of crinkled metal pressed to the floor.

End of conversation
, she realized.

At the same time as the makeshift horn collapsed, the small jets of gas in the overhead light snuffed out. Now the only light in the room was from the fireplace, but there was no more destruction. For the moment at least the
spöke
was at rest.

“It's gone,” Shoop gushed.

Gingerly Anine crawled to the edge of the table. “I'm not sure it is.” Peeking her head up over the edge of the table she saw thousands of jagged shards of broken crockery, glass and part of one of the candlesticks covering it. She looked up at the light fixture. It was hanging slightly crookedly and all of the globe shades had burst but it didn't seem to be in danger of falling. She saw that, contrary to what she'd assumed, the jets had not gone completely out. They were tiny blue flames at the very ends of the pipes, but all were still burning.

She spoke in Swedish: “Let us go to Julian and get out of here. We'll leave tonight, right now. Please don't try to stop us from leaving. This is what you want, isn't it?”

There was no answer, no reaction. The entire house seemed quiet. Anine was up on her hands and knees, her head brushing the underside of the table. She looked back at Shoop.

“It
might
let us go,” she said. “We have to get Julian.”

Shoop lost no time. He crawled out from under the table and stood up. Anine heard broken porcelain crunching under his shoes. “Here, wait,” he said. “There's broken glass all over. Let me turn the gas up.” He went to the wall and touched the dimmer switch.

The instant his fingers made contact with the switch all six jets of the light fixture suddenly and spontaneously flared. A ribbon of flame, looking almost like the flying tongue of a frog, leapt from one of the jets and connected with Shoop's arm. Instantly the sleeve of his jacket burst into flame. He screamed, flailing his burning arm, and it took half a second for the fire to spread to the rest of him. In panic Anine scrambled away, screaming. Bryan Shoop was a human torch, his entire body wreathed in flames. Wailing in agony as the fire seared his flesh, he bounced and thrashed about the dining room like a moth in a jar until he fell to his knees and finally slumped in a flaming heap between the end of the dining room table and the doorway.