Mr. Murder

First, he went upstairs to check the fax and answering machines in his office. By now Paul Guthridge’s secretary should have called with a schedule of test appointments at the hospital.

He also had a wild hunch his literary agent had left a message about a sale of rights in one foreign territory or another, or maybe news of an offer for a film option, a reason to celebrate. Curiously, the storm had improved his mood instead of darkening it, probably because inclement weather tended to focus the mind on the pleasures of home, though it was always his nature to find reasons to be upbeat even when common sense suggested pessimism was a more realistic reaction. He was never able to stew in gloom for long; and since Saturday he’d had enough negative thoughts to last a couple of years.

Entering his office, he reached for the wall switch to flick on the overhead light but left it untouched, surprised that the stained-glass lamp and a work lamp were aglow. He always extinguished lights when leaving the house. Before he’d gone to the doctor’s office, however, he’d been inexplicably oppressed by the bizarre feeling of being in the path of an unknown Juggernaut, and evidently he’d not had sufficient presence of mind to switch off the lamps.

Remembering the panic attack at its worst, in the garage, when he’d been nearly incapacitated by terror, Marty felt some of the air bleeding out of his balloon of optimism.

The fax and answering machines were on the back corner of the U-shaped work area. The red message light was blinking on the latter, and a couple of flimsy sheets of thermal paper were in the tray of the former.

Before he reached either machine, Marty saw the shattered video display, glass teeth bristling from the frame. A black maw gaped in the center. A piece of glass crunched under his shoe as he pushed his office chair aside and stared down at the computer in disbelief.

Jagged pieces of the screen littered the keyboard.

A twist of nausea knotted his stomach. Had he done this, too, in a fugue? Picked up some blunt object, hammered the screen to pieces? His life was disintegrating like the ruined monitor.

Then he noticed something else on the keyboard in addition to the glass. In the dim light he thought he was looking at drops of melted chocolate.

Frowning, Marty touched one of the splotches with the tip of his index finger. It was still slightly tacky. Some of it stuck to his skin.

He moved his hand under the work lamp. The sticky substance on his fingertip was dark red, almost maroon. Not chocolate.

He raised his stained finger to his nose, seeking a defining scent. The odor was faint, barely detectable, but he knew at once what it was, probably had known from the moment he touched it, because on a deep primitive level he was programmed to recognize it. Blood.

Whoever destroyed the monitor had been cut.

Marty’s hands were free of lacerations.

He was utterly still, except for a crawling sensation along his spine, which left the nape of his neck creped with gooseflesh.

Slowly he turned, expecting to find that someone had entered the room behind him. But he was alone.

Rain pummeled the roof and gurgled through a nearby downspout. Lightning flickered, visible through the cracks between the wide slats of the plantation shutters, and peals of thunder reverberated in the window glass.

He listened to the house.

The only sounds were those of the storm. And the rapid thud of his heartbeat.

He stepped to the bank of drawers on the right-hand side of the desk, slid open the second one. This morning he had placed the Smith & Wesson 9mm pistol in there, on top of some papers. He expected it to be missing, but again his expectations were not fulfilled. Even in the soft and beguiling light of the stained-glass lamp, he could see the handgun gleaming darkly.

“I need my life.”

The voice startled Marty, but its effect was nothing compared to the paralytic shock that seized him when he looked up from the gun and saw the identity of the speaker. The man was just inside the hallway door. He was wearing what might have been Marty’s own jeans and flannel shirt, which fit him well because he was a dead-ringer for Marty. In fact, but for the clothes, the intruder might have been a reflection in a mirror.

“I need my life,” the man repeated softly.

Marty had no brother, twin or otherwise. Yet only an identical twin could be so perfectly matched to him in every detail of face, height, weight, and body type.

“Why have you stolen my life?” the intruder asked with what seemed to be genuine curiosity. His voice was level and controlled, as if the question was not entirely insane, as if it was actually possible, at least in his experience, to steal a life.

Realizing that the intruder sounded like him, too, Marty closed his eyes and tried to deny what stood before him. He assumed he was hallucinating and was, himself, speaking for the phantom in a sort of unconscious ventriloquism. Fugues, an unusually intense nightmare, a panic attack, now hallucinations. But when he opened his eyes, the doppelganger was still there, a stubborn illusion.

“Who are you?” the double asked.

Marty could not speak because his heart felt as if it had moved into his throat, each fierce beat almost choking him. And he didn’t dare to speak because to engage in conversation with a hallucination would surely be to lose his final tenuous grasp on sanity and descend entirely into madness.

The phantom refined its question, still speaking in a tone of wonder and fascination but nonetheless menacing for its hushed voice: “What are you?”

With none of the eerie fluidity and ghostly shimmer of either a psychological or supernatural apparition, neither transparent nor radiant, the double took another step into the room. When he moved, shadows and light played over him in the same manner as they would have caressed any three-dimensional object. He seemed as solid as a real man.

Marty noticed the pistol in the intruder’s right hand. Held against his thigh. Muzzle pointed at the floor.

The double advanced one more step, stopping no more than eight feet from the other side of the desk. With a half-smile that was more unnerving than any glower could have been, the gunman said, “How does this happen? What now? Do we somehow become one person, fade into each other, like in some crazy science-fiction movie —”

Terror had sharpened Marty’s senses. As if looking at his doppelganger through a magnifying glass, he could see every contour, line, and pore of its face. In spite of the dim light, the furniture and books in the shadowed areas were as clearly detailed as those items on which the glow of lamps fell. Yet with all his heightened powers of observation, he did not recognize the make of the other’s pistol.

“—or do I just kill you and take your place?” the stranger continued. “And if I kill you—”

It seemed that any hallucination he conjured would be carrying a weapon with which he was familiar.

“—do the memories you’ve stolen from me become mine again when you’re dead? If I kill you—”

After all, if this figure was merely a symbolic threat spewed up by a diseased psyche, then everything—the phantom, his clothes, his armament—had to come from Marty’s experience and imagination.

“—am I made whole? When you’re dead, will I be restored to my family? And will I know how to write again?”

Conversely, if the gun was real, the double was real.

Cocking his head, leaning forward slightly, as if intensely interested in Marty’s response, the intruder said, “I need to write if I’m going to be what I’m meant to be, but the words won’t come.”

The one-sided conversation repeatedly surprised Marty with its twists and turns, which didn’t support the notion that his troubled psyche had fabricated the intruder.

Anger entered the double’s voice for the first time, bitterness rather than hot fury but rapidly growing fiery: “You’ve stolen that too, the words, the talent, and I need it back, need it now so bad I ache. A purpose, meaning. Do you know? You understand? Whatever you are, can you understand? The terrible emptiness, hollowness, God, such a deep, dark hollowness.” He was spitting out the words now, and his eyes were fierce. “I want what’s mine, mine, damn it, my life, mine, I want my life, my destiny, my Paige, she’s mine, my Charlotte, my Emily—”

The width of the desk and eight feet beyond, eleven feet in all: point-blank range.