Doppelgänger (25 page)

All told Shoop's death took twenty seconds, perhaps less. Anine cowered under the table, her eyes wide, staring at the smoking form on the floor in front of her. Soon she could smell the horrible stench of burning human flesh. In the exaggerated jets of the light fixture the room was now brightly-lit. Through the flames of Shoop's body Anine saw something in the doorway. It was a pattern of colors, deep red and black—a woman's dress. She had seen it before.

Mrs. Quain!

Backing away from the burning man, Anine crawled out under the opposite end of the table. As she hauled herself to her feet she saw Mrs. Quain standing in the doorway as plain and solid as if she was a real person. She looked thirty-five or forty, much younger than Anine thought the widow had been at the time of her death. The red and black ball gown had a huge bell-shaped skirt, a crinoline cage, and the woman's hairstyle was many years out of date. She wore pearl earrings and the fingers of her tiny white hands flashed with rings. This was not the Mrs. Quain who had perished under the knife of a robber three blocks away. This was the woman who had lived in this house years ago—the raw, unadulterated, unaltered visage of the doppelgänger in its natural state and its warm blue eyes were now drilling deep into Anine's soul.

“And now I must ask you and your husband to leave my house,” said Mrs. Quain.

Anine understood.
The deaths of the servants are the price of our escape
, she realized.
Clea was my confidante, and Bryan Shoop was Julian's. She wants us to feel guilty about them—and to picture ourselves in their places if we ever come back here
.

She nodded. Gingerly she stepped around Shoop's smoldering corpse, and when she looked up the apparition in the doorway was gone. Her eyes squinted shut, Anine leaped through the doorway and into the entryway, but there were no invisible bars here; the
spöke
made no attempt to impede her.

The entryway was a ruin of hazard and carnage. The chandelier still dangled ominously from the single copper pipe, all its other jets dark, but light was now coming from the wall sconces. The shattered grandfather clock had spilled its mechanical guts in a wide swath in front of the door. Miss Wicks's broken body lay at the foot of the stairs, and it was to her that Anine rushed. She pressed her fingers to Clea's neck. There was no pulse and the body was already going cold. Fighting back tears, Anine closed Clea's staring blank eyes.
“Gud vare med dig, min vän,”
she whispered.
God be with you, my friend.
She would miss Clea Wicks desperately. Looking up at the stairs she saw the carpet smoldering where the handheld lamp had shattered, but no flame. Anine could smell gas leaking from the chandelier.

She stepped over Clea's body and mounted the stairs.
“Julian!”
she shouted upwards. “Julian, are you all right? Answer me!”

It seemed like the stairs leading up to the second floor were endless. For a few moments Anine thought that perhaps the same thing was happening on the stairs that had happened in the Green Parlor—the strange reorganization of space in order to harass and confuse her—but she ultimately reached the landing. The air in this part of the house was difficult to breathe, filled with gas from the ruined chandelier and smoke from the fires. She also noticed many things were broken: vases on the end tables in the hallway, a mirror, the globe shades on the light fixtures. She quickly became light-headed.

“Julian!” Reaching the closed door of the billiard room she pounded on it with her fists. “Julian, it's me! Open the door! It's me, Anine! Are you all right?”

There was no answer.

Filled with terror, swallowing back a lump in her throat, Anine grasped the brass doorknob. Instantly she let go of it. It was very hot. It wasn't hot enough to burn her skin, but being much warmer than she expected she'd let go of it on instinct. Gingerly she touched it again.
Is there a fire behind this door? Dear God, did the
spöke
burn him up?
She twisted the knob and flung the door open.

What she found inside the billiard room was very strange. The air stank of sweat and gas. The fireplace was dark. The shades on the gaslights here were not shattered and the dim jets glowed as little flickering squiggles of flame behind the frosted glass. The interior of the room was stifling hot. It was sticky-hot, humid, like Stockholm in a heat wave, but she couldn't ever remember Stockholm being as warm as this. Nothing in the room looked broken or out of place. The billiard balls rested on the green baize of the table as if someone had just finished a game. Anine saw clothes—a pair of shoes and socks, rumpled trousers, a waistcoat, a jacket—thrown pell-mell around the room. The waistcoat hung on one corner of the billiard table. Peering around it Anine saw one naked male leg, covered in rusty-red hair, sticking out from under the table.

“Julian!”

She bent down to him. At first she thought he was dead but as she touched his shoulder he raised his head and coughed. He was naked, his entire body slick with sweat. Locks of his red hair were plastered wetly to his glistening forehead. His face, neck and shoulders were flushed and red. A pool cue lay on the floor next to his hand as if he'd kept it near him as a weapon.

He looked at her with eyes that seemed dazed. “Anine?” he whispered.

“Are you hurt? What happened?”

With an air of great weariness he began to haul himself out from under the billiard table. “The heat,” he gasped.

“Heat? What heat?”

“The fireplace.” With his forearm he wiped his sweaty brow. “It just started getting…hotter. The fire…it was…it was just getting
hot
. It was so hot I was afraid my clothes were going to burst into flame. I tried the door but I couldn't get out. And I heard—
her
voice.”

“Mrs. Quain?”

He nodded.

“What did she say?”

“She said, ‘This is a taste of what it's going to be like for you in Hell.'”

As he said this his countenance broke and he lapsed into a sob. He put a sweaty naked arm around her, weeping into her hair. “Oh,
Christ
, I'm so sorry. She's right. I belong in Hell. I never thought—I never would have
thought
—”

So he did murder her.
She felt curiously numb; an hour ago the admission would have ruined her, but there was no time for regrets now. Anine struggled to haul him up into a standing position. “We have to get out of here at once. I saw her—
it
—the
spöke
. It said we should leave this house right now and never come back.”

“Jesus,
yes
. Let's go and not look back.” He reached for the pool cue. Confident now he could stand on his own, Anine began snatching up his clothes. Through the open door he called, “Bryan!
Bryan!
Miss Wicks!”

“They're gone,” said Anine.

“They got away? Thank God.”

“No. They didn't get away.”

He looked at her, eyes widening, horror flashing behind them as he understood. “Dear God.
Both
of them?”

“There was nothing I could do.”

He took her hand and lurched for the doorway. “Come on. We have to get out of here right now.”

Julian, still naked and carrying the pool cue, started down the stairs. Anine followed, clutching his clothes in a ball to her chest. “We'll need some money,” she said. “To hire a coach or a hotel room or something. I think there's a pocketbook in the bedroom—”

“Leave it. I don't care about that, or about anything. I just want to be out of this place.”

He turned and faced the top of the last half-flight of stairs leading down to the entryway. For the first time he caught sight of Miss Wicks's body lying on the floor. He froze. Anine pushed past him, turning away from the tragedy. Staring at her friend's corpse, he walked down slowly. He looked dazed by the whole experience.

As she reached the ground level, her shoes touching the carpet next to Clea's dead form, for the first time the tragedy of it all struck Anine with full force.
I just watched two people die. And Rachael before that. Julian killed three—Mrs. Quain, Lucius Minthorn and the Minthorns' driver. Before that there was Mrs. O'Haney and Mr. Bradbury. And perhaps I should even count Ola Bergenhjelm, without whose death I would never have come here. Nine people dead who should still be living. This house oozes death like water from a sponge.
Thinking of the terrible toll, the world suddenly felt very heavy on her shoulders. She stopped walking and dropped the clothes. The pile landed on the floor with a soft
wumph
.

The tears finally started. Julian came up to her and put his arm around her. She didn't know how to feel: furious at him for having caused this disaster, grateful that it was (almost) over or sad at everything that had happened. Although the psychic wound was very fresh she knew that what had occurred between these walls tonight would torment her for the rest of her days. And him too—but perhaps he deserved it.

They had only a moment's worth of contemplation. With an ominous creak the loose chandelier swayed, and both of them looked up at it, breathless.

Then there came another sound: someone pounding on a closed door. It was coming from somewhere to her left. She turned her head and looked at the closed pocket doors of the Red Parlor. From behind it issued a man's voice.

“Hey! Help! Anine, Bryan, Miss Wicks, anyone! Help! Unlock the doors! I can't get out!”

It was Julian's voice.

In puzzled terror she swiveled her head to look at the man next to her. Julian too looked amazed and horrified, glancing back at the door of the Red Parlor. “It's
her
,” he said, his voice almost a low hiss. “It's trying to trick us!” He gripped the pool cue tighter and began to approach the doors of the parlor.

“Help! Who's there? Open the doors! Anine! Are you all right?”

Anine brought her quivering hands to her face. She looked at the man creeping slowly toward the Red Parlor doors, holding the pool cue like a baseball bat. Muscles tensed and rippled in his naked legs and buttocks. He glanced over his freckled shoulder at her and seemed to plead with the doubt in her eyes.

“It's
me
, I swear,” he said. “She's trying to trick us. She took on my form so she would confuse you—”

Lowering her hands, Anine cried in Swedish: “If it
is
you, please do what I say. Don't go in there. Turn away from the door. Take me out of here. This is our chance, Julian.
Please
.”

The entity behind the Red Parlor doors could hear their conversation. “Anine, is that you?”

“Don't open the door!”
she said in English.

Julian—the Julian in the entryway—seemed torn. His body was taut, his arms coiled and ready to strike with the pool cue, but he was now looking between Anine and the parlor doors. Clearly he wanted to destroy the entity behind it, if he could. At first Anine thought that if he opened the doors and attacked whatever was inside, that would prove that he was the
spöke
and the being in the Red Parlor the real Julian; for if the Julian on this side of the doors was the genuine article, what would he have to lose by simply walking out of the house and leaving the spirit to its fate? But perhaps the real Julian wouldn't be able to resist attacking his tormentor. He'd killed Mrs. Quain once already, and he looked eager to do it again. But most of all he looked confused.

CREEEEEAK!

She looked up at the chandelier. It seemed to be hanging lower now, pulling more of the copper gas pipe out of the ceiling. The few crystal bangles left on it tinkled softly.

The sense of terror was like a foul stench. Sensing it, the Julian inside the Red Parlor shouted, “Anine, don't worry about me! Just go! Get out! Run away as fast as you can!”

The Julian in the entryway looked over his shoulder again—
its
shoulder. Its sea-green eyes flashed with a strange inhuman malevolence. The doppelgänger said with curious coldness
“Jag älskar dig”—I love you
—and then reached forward and, screaming in bloodlust, wrenched open the parlor doors.

Julian was blindsided by the
spöke
's attack. He had sensed in the last few seconds that a terrible danger lurked outside the doors he'd been shouting to be opened, and his warning to Anine was utterly sincere. But to see a double of himself lunging at him, brandishing the pool cue, was something he was utterly unprepared for. He'd been trapped inside the Red Parlor for an hour now, hearing and experiencing nothing, but now he understood in one panicked moment that the doppelgänger had been keeping him captive, unruffled and untouched, to preserve him for the moment of its revenge.

The pool cue caught Julian under the chin and knocked him instantly to the floor.
“Ungggh!”
He could hear Anine screaming from the entryway. He saw his own naked body launching itself at him, and a moment later the two mirror Julians were wrestling frantically on the parlor floor. The
spöke
fought with savage strength. It pressed the pool cue against his throat. He could feel the cold wood shaft crushing his Adam's apple. He gasped, desperate to will strength into his muscles, and with quaking hands he managed to grasp the ends of the cue. He pushed with all his might, sending the doppelgänger reeling. The pool cue spun away through the air, landing on the carpet just inside the parlor doors.

He ran.
“Anine! Go! Go! Open the front door!”
He got three steps before a sudden powerful clutch snapped around his ankle like a bear trap. Julian flung himself forward, landing half-in and half-out of the parlor doors. The doppelgänger—screeching, uttering horrifying guttural sounds—clawed at his trousers, tearing the fabric, sinking its fingernails into his leg. Julian screamed. He swung around and kicked the doppelgänger's head. His shoe connected with the creature's forehead and the bear-trap grip released long enough for him to get away.