resembled Konrad, bludgeoning it to death-and my stomach curdled. We needed to get it back to the cottage. It needed to come willingly. Then, once we’d locked it inside, I could decide what must come next. The shovel would only frighten it away. I dropped it.
“Good.” Elizabeth set off at once, leading us deeper into the forest, in the direction we’d last seen the creature. It seemed a poor plan, but I could think of no other, so I followed along with Henry. Strangely, Elizabeth seemed to know exactly where she was going, her face intent, eyes focused on some inevitable destination.
“Look,” she said, pointing to a pair of discarded shoes in the grass. They were indeed Konrad’s.
“How do you know the way?” I asked, and remembered how she’d known, even in her sleep, that the creature had been waiting outside the door of the chateau.
“I’m taking the easiest path through the forest,” she said. “Wouldn’t anyone do the same?”
I didn’t believe her. After half an hour we found a jacket caught on a branch, and not much farther on, a shirt, its buttons ripped. I hoped the creature was merely hot, ridding itself of restraints, and not bursting through its clothing because of a monstrous growth spurt. I regretted leaving the shovel behind.
Our route was uphill, and after an hour we came upon the creature on the shore of a small kettle lake, fed by a cataract of water running from the mountains. It was completely naked now, my size exactly, if not a bit bigger. On one of its shoulders was an ugly cut, dark with congealed blood, where I’d struck with the shovel. The Konrad creature was crouched by the water’s edge, its back to us, staring. At first I thought it was slaking its thirst, but it was gazing fiercely into the glassy water, and I realized it must be looking at its own reflection. Before this moment had it ever beheld itself?
“Konrad,” Elizabeth said gently, walking up to him.
It startled and turned to her, and the look of utter relief and joy on its face was so sincere and innocent that I felt my brutal resolve falter. It stood and shuffled toward Elizabeth with its head lowered, as if in shame. At once Henry took his jacket and tied it swiftly around the creature’s midriff to hide its nakedness.
Elizabeth placed a hand on the creature’s uninjured shoulder. “We’re going home now.”
It looked at her, surely understanding nothing but her face and the tone of her voice. Then its gaze settled on me. I’d expected wariness, but its eyes widened in amazement. Once more the creature turned to glance at itself in the still water. Wonderingly it touched its own face. Then the creature turned and pointed at me.
“He knows you’re twins,” Elizabeth said quietly.
And suddenly I knew it too. Impelled by a force I couldn’t control, I walked closer. So like Konrad. So like my twin. Very gently it touched my face. I exhaled. Its fingertips lingered on my cheek and then stroked my hair, then its own.
Elizabeth smiled. “It’s like a reunion.”
Maybe it would work, I thought. Maybe, once Konrad’s spirit was inside this body, it would be Konrad, regardless of how the body itself had been formed. The body was just a vessel, after all. Once inhabited by my brother, wouldn’t it truly become my brother?
The creature reached out once more and took my good hand, shaking it again and again, like some comic greeting, so that I almost laughed. I remembered Ernest doing something similar when he was little.
Then it pressed the wound on its shoulder, wincing.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
With a disconcertingly blank expression it lifted its bloodied fingers and placed them on my shoulder, gripping tight. I put my left hand on the creature’s and tried to move it, but its fingers were locked. I was suddenly aware of a great dormant power in its limbs. I looked at the impassive face.
“Let go,” I said quietly, feeling the first flutter of panic.
With its other hand the creature gripped my maimed one and squeezed, sending a spasm of pain through it.
“That’s enough!” I shouted, and shoved my full weight against the creature. Without releasing its grip on my hand, the Konrad creature staggered back and fell into the lake, dragging me in too.
The water was surprisingly deep, even right against the bank, and locked together as we were, we both went under. I came up spluttering and splashed toward the bank, mere inches away, but the creature was behind me and grabbed hold, pulling me back and down.
Choking, I thrashed up and about to face the creature. I wasn’t sure if its face was filled with malice or pure terror.
“He can’t swim, Victor!” cried Elizabeth. “Help him!”
I caught a glimpse of her preparing to jump, and just had time to shout, “Stay away!” before the creature was upon me, flailing and seizing hold of me in a cold iron grip. I went under again. A murderer could not have been more single-minded.
I came up briefly, enough to glimpse that all our thrashing had actually moved us much farther from the bank. From the corner of my frenzied eye, I saw that Henry had found a long branch and was stretching it out to us. Elizabeth was shrieking, “Help him grab the branch, Victor!”
But its face was livid with panic, and it clawed its way atop me once more. Down we went again, for too long. A great cold contracted round my heart, tunneling my vision. I kicked and hit sluggishly, and managed to knee the creature in its privates so that its grip loosened. Fighting my way up, I broke the surface, gagging for air.
The creature came up, head barely cresting, a terrible bawling coming from its throat.
“He’s drowning!” I heard Elizabeth scream, and saw she was in the water, swimming for us.
“Stay aw-”
And the creature pulled me close again, its panicked face sputtering against me. It wrapped its legs around me, trying to haul itself up onto my shoulders. I punched it in the face, and then again harder, my numb fist like a hammer. The creature recoiled, and I would never forget its expression-a kind of bleak incomprehension, and then panic once more-before it sank below the surface.
“Konrad!” Elizabeth screamed.
I hurled myself at her, intercepting her, gripping her with my arms and legs and trying to drag her back to the bank.
She cried and clawed and bit.
“Give me the branch!” I hollered at Henry, and he threw it to me. The water was murky, and I could not see the creature beneath the surface. My great fear was that it was under me and would drag me down for good.
“Dive for him, you coward!” Elizabeth screamed at me.
“You can’t drag a drowning man from the depths!” I shouted back at her.
The creature did not reappear. Not in ten seconds, twenty, or thirty. When a full minute had passed, I said, “It’s gone.”
“You killed him!” Elizabeth gasped.
“It would’ve killed us both!”
“He… he wanted you to help him…”
“Victor’s right, Elizabeth,” said Henry quietly. “There was nothing he could’ve done.”
“And where were you, Henry?” she cried.
“I found a branch as quickly as I-”
“Cowards, the both of you!”
We hauled ourselves out, cold and exhausted, and sat hunched on the grassy bank, shivering for some time, staring at the water. The silence was like a dreadful prison, entrapping me in my own bloodstained thoughts. Might I have saved it? But it needed to be killed, surely it did.
Then we stood and started the long walk toward home.
CHAPTER 17
The walk home was interminable, silent apart from the sporadic sounds of Elizabeth’s sobbing. She wouldn’t meet my eye, wouldn’t even let Henry place a consoling hand on her shoulder. We stopped only briefly at the glade
