by Jeff Deck
“Well, duh,” I say. “Did you see their election coverage?”
Agent Jeong makes some administrative calls to clean up the growing tangle of loose ends we’ve generated. Of course, we’ve still got a final task tonight before either of us dares to sleep, and that doesn’t even include finding my evil twin. As soon as he puts his phone away, he turns to me and says, “Let’s go.”
“What about Ximena?” I say, nodding at his colleague.
“We have our own doc, and she’s on her way now,” Jeong says to me. “I just updated McGuinness and Barnes on the situation. They’re going to keep guarding the Port until we get over there. Barnes mentioned she already turned away a couple of Portsmouth cops suspicious about what was going on. We don’t have much time before they complain to another agency and break up our party.”
Motion forward is a good thing. We hop back into his car. As we make the short drive over to the park, I say, “I’m worried about another killing spree.”
“Yeah,” he says. “I’m hoping you got through to her. In any case, I’ve got people looking out for someone of your description—in your old clothes, of course, but I’d also like to keep the cops from arresting you again by accident.”
“Thanks,” I say. I grab Graham’s sketchpad out of my jacket and flip through. At the back, I find what I’m hoping for: two sets of phrases in the same strange tongue Neria tried to articulate for us. I stare at them, feeling my mind twist as it wrestles with the language. I realize after a moment that the first set is for opening the Port, and the second is for closing it. Neria only told us the opening phrase, which makes sense, because she never got to see Graham close the Port.
I speak the crackling syllables of the closing phrase aloud.
“Hey,” Jeong says. We’ve parked in front of Prescott Park. “Knock it off, you’re making my head feel weird.”
“Sorry, just practicing.” Now that he mentions it, my brain feels a little funny too. Maybe I shouldn’t use these words when not in the vicinity of the Port.
I get out of the car. My phone buzzes. It’s Sol. Shit, I forgot to listen to his voicemail, but there’s no time now. I ignore the call. I need to focus on closing the door to the twinned-serpent hellscape, but my brain keeps jumping back to the problem of my MIA clone. Where would I go, if I were not me but still me?
Maybe the better question to ask is: who else was on my mental hit list, before therapy helped me get over it?
Evil Allard’s rampage left a lot of cops alive. She could track down any one of them to their homes (or to the hospital, in the case of Chief Akerman). Since I know where most of my old colleagues live, I’m sure she does too. My heart curdles at the thought of Evil Allard darkening Milly Fragonard’s door. After all that Milly did to help us back at the station, that would be a fine thank you indeed.
And who else? Somebody who cut me off in traffic once? A telemarketer? My anger isn’t always based on reason. In fact, most of the time, anger is an unthinking beast. Now that beast is running around cloaked as a person, liable to strike out at anyone or everyone in this city. I did this.
I have to stop thinking about her before I go insane. Jeong swats my shoulder and says, “Come on.”
Then I see Sol Shrive running across the park toward me.
“Oh, thank God, Divya!” he calls out. Then he slows down and halts a safe distance away. “Hey, it . . . it is you, right? The real Divya? Please tell me it’s the real you!”
“It is,” I say. “It’s okay. I’m not a killer.”
My friend comes closer and dares to give me a hug. Jeong gives me a curious look. I pat Sol’s back and disengage.
“Some seriously weird shit has been happening tonight,” says Sol, apparently uninterested in my companion. “So Eric—you know, reporter from the Porthole—he came by the Friendly Toast. Wanted to know about Graham Tsoukalas, poor kid. I didn’t know Graham, but I knew he was part of this weirdo exercise cult, the Tenacious Trainers. And I also knew his best buds, intimate buds from what I hear, were Wallace Riggs and Neria Francoeur . . .”
Damn. If I’d confided in Sol when I encountered him at the Friendly Toast earlier tonight, I could have saved myself a lot of headaches. I wouldn’t have needed the FBI to rescue me from the late Skip Bradley for one thing—oh well, fuck it. I couldn’t have known. But now I look at Sol with newfound respect, at least as a source of useful information. “And then Eric Kuhn went haring off after Wallace and Neria?”
“Yeah,” Sol says unhappily. “My bad. I cut out of my shift at the Toast early after that. I’d started thinking maybe it wasn’t a great idea to let Eric go off alone into the night when there was a killer on the loose. I called a ride to take me to Islington Street where those two kids lived, but on the way I saw Eric in his car, coming back toward town! I—”
“This has got to wait,” Jeong breaks in roughly. “I’m sorry.”
“Just one sec,” I say, holding up a finger. “So you followed him back to the park. And saw ‘me’ kill him and then you called the cops.”
Sol’s face is pale at the memory. He nods. “But that wasn’t you. I knew it. Do you have a sister?”
Jeong taps an invisible watch on his wrist and looks at me pointedly.
“No. Or not that I know of. My parents only adopted one kid. She’s—listen, this killer is still on the loose.” I leave out the fact that she was briefly not on the loose before we lost her again. “Now Agent Jeong and I need to find her before she can kill anyone else.”
I turn away, Jeong’s face relaxes into relief, and then Sol cries out: “That’s what I wanted to tell you! I would have if you ever answered your phone!”
“Oh, my God,” the FBI agent hisses.
“I know where she is right now,” Sol babbles on. “I just got a call from somebody who knows somebody who lives on South Street. The second somebody saw you in the neighborhood. Walking into the cemetery.”
“You could have led with that part,” I say. “OK, now we really have to go!”
“Wait, I’m coming with you,” he says, and Jeong groans. “I can’t let another person die tonight. You might need backup.”
“I’m the backup,” Jeong says. “You’re a civilian with no weapons.”
Sol Shrive gives him a strained smile. “There’s a lot more I need to tell Divya. Vital stuff. Please just let me come along.”
I’m not going turn him down this time. “Fine, but let’s hurry. And you have to do everything we say.”
Jeong and I climb back into his car, and Sol crawls into the back seat. Hopefully McGuinness and Barnes can keep people away from the Port for just a little while longer; collaring Evil Allard in the cemetery is our new priority. Jeong checks in with his colleagues on the phone as he drives. Meanwhile, Sol chews my ear off:
“So this isn’t a long-lost sibling situation. Or you having a split personality. I bet it’s your, uh, evil double. I think during extreme emotional stress, under the right conditions, in the right places, our shadow selves can be made flesh. My great-uncle wrote a story like this once, and it was fiction but he was, like, going off established occult sources. It’s totally supported by paranormal researchers. It’s like we’re tapping into this emotional plane just behind our reality, and—”
“No,” I finally interrupt him. Please tell me this isn’t his “vital stuff.” “No, Sol. Or not really. It’s—I’ll try to explain when this is all over.”
Will I? I don’t know if it’s wise to keep indulging Sol’s curiosity. Then again, he already knows enough to get himself in a heap of trouble.
We park on Richards Avenue, across from the entrance to the South Street Cemetery. As we walk past the enclosed yard at the corner of Richards and South, I look for the two sheep who live here, but I don’t see them. They must be tucked away in the shelter for the night. Rommie McNair, former Portsmouth mayor and current sheep- and goose-keeper, is my best guess for Sol’s somebody’s somebody. I wonder if she’s watching us right now.
> We walk through the ancient gates of the cemetery. It’s vast and dark. The graves up front date back to the 1700s, when Portsmouth was the happening spot in New England to trade spices and slaves from the Caribbean. There are thousands of graves here spanning the centuries. But tonight I know exactly where to go. I motion for Jeong and Sol to follow me, navigating by the light of our phones.
The moon comes out from behind the cloudbanks to reveal your gravestone. But Evil Allard is nowhere in sight.
“Damn,” I say. “I really thought—”
Then Sol lets out a strangled cry. I whirl to see my double with her cuffed hands around Sol’s neck. She must have sneaked up behind him. The handcuff chain squeezes against the soft flesh of his throat.
Ethan Jeong has his Springfield up in a flash, though he knows as well as I do that he’s more likely to hit Sol than Evil Allard. I leave my gun in my belt and take a soft step toward her. I say: “Hey. You.”
The extra pair of handcuffs is still hanging from my double’s cuffed hands. It clanks as she turns to me. Evil Allard’s face is set in a despairing growl that gives me the shivers. “Tell me who I am, Divya Allard.”
“You’re my anger,” I say. “Just like the Marsterses were her ambition. And Graham’s clone was his suicidal impulse.”
“Not good enough,” she seethes. “I’m not the fucking embodiment of an emotion. I am a person. Sure, a very angry person—but I’m still a person!”
I’m at a loss. I don’t know whether she really deserves personhood. She’s a manifestation born out of a gateway to another dimension. And an evil one at that, too.
But hell, I guess if corporations can be people, then Port-spawned doppelgängers can be too.
“Okay, you’re a person,” I say. “But you don’t get to be me. There’s already one of those.”
“I can’t—can’t draw the distinction,” Evil Allard says. Her voice is uneven with panic. “You filled me up with these horrible feelings, these instincts. Bad memories. Prejudices. Vendettas. But where’s all the good stuff? I thought coming here would help. Thought Hannah could help me find something worthwhile inside me. I’ve been trying, but I just feel . . . nothing.”
“You never got the chance to love Hannah,” I say, softly. “I did. Maybe love doesn’t transfer like hate does.”
Evil Allard bares her teeth at me. I cringe away from the sight of my own twisted, feral face. “Well, fuck you very much for the rotten gift. Now what am I supposed to do?!” She screams the last word and yanks the handcuff chain against Sol’s throat. He makes a choking sound. I can see tears on his cheeks, reflecting the moonlight. But to his credit, he doesn’t beg for his life, doesn’t utter a word at all.
For the first time, I wonder if that pipe in Marsters’s office was old and weak after all. I was able to physically subdue Evil Allard back at the police station, but . . . is she getting stronger? Should I be worried now?
“Just say the word, Divya,” Jeong snaps. “She’s gonna kill this kid.”
Hearing an implied anyway at the end of Jeong’s sentence, I immediately say, “Do not shoot!”
Then I refocus on my twin, trying to make my tone as soothing as possible. “Let me help you. You can’t figure this all out alone.”
“You were going to put me into ‘special containment’ at the FBI office,” she says, thrusting a finger at me. “You were going to ABANDON me. Don’t pretend that you’re my fucking friend now, you backbiting, crotch-kicking whore.”
“I won’t abandon you,” I say.
I mean it, because I have to mean it. Being me, she’ll see right through me otherwise. I go on: “Please, Div . . . Divya, or Allard, or whatever name you’d like to choose for yourself. Do you want my middle name? Benazir, how does that sound?”
She doesn’t respond. But neither does she renew her effort at choking the life out of Sol.
“Please come with me,” I say. “We’ll need to restrain you, but I promise I won’t abandon you.”
For a moment, I think I’ve actually gotten through to her. She relaxes her pose and searches my eyes, eyes that are hers too. Then the blind demons of rage that pushed her to kill five people now seize her again and stiffen her. She says, “No. I won’t go into restraints. You can’t imprison me for your own crimes. I’m walking away, Allard.”
“Not with Sol you aren’t,” I say. “Let him go.”
“Then your agent friend shoots me.”
“He won’t,” I say. “Right, Ethan?”
“Goddammit, Allard,” he says. He doesn’t lower his gun.
We’re at a standoff that only I can break. My thoughts race. I find, in my heart, I don’t truly believe that Evil Allard would kill someone whose life we—I—had already saved once. Sol is probably not in real danger. She probably wouldn’t hesitate to kill Ethan Jeong, though, if she had the opportunity. And Ethan may not hesitate to kill her if Sol gets out from between them. Someone is going to die if I don’t act.
“Take me instead, then,” I say. “I’ll be your hostage.” Slowly I draw the Glock from my belt and lay it in the grass, so she can see I’m now unarmed.
“Allard, if you do this . . .” Jeong says.
“Don’t pretend you’d shoot me, Ethan,” I say. “I know you at least well enough to know that. Put your damn gun down.”
He exhales an angry sigh and then lowers the Springfield. I wait until I’ve gotten close enough to Evil Allard—Benazir?—to block his shot, then I say, “Let Sol go.”
My doppelgänger lifts her cuffs enough for Sol to escape. She lifts her eyebrows at me. The fact that I don’t know the true extent of her strength and speed is enough to hold me to my word; I won’t risk losing a fight and letting her go after my friends. I turn my back to her and let her slip the cuff chain over my throat.
I suppose this is the moment when I find out whether, like Graham, I have any deep-seated suicidal tendencies after all. With one hard squeeze, Benazir could snuff out both of us.
“Pick up the gun, kid,” Jeong hisses. I watch Sol awkwardly scramble for the Glock I dropped. But he doesn’t point it at us. And Benazir seems unconcerned; like me, she probably knows Sol could never pull the trigger.
“Where you going to go?” I ask Benazir. “You want to walk, so where exactly are you going to go? You have no ID, no money, no accounts. With no past, you have no future. You can’t have my past, because this time there’s no way you can pass for me. Far too many witnesses back at the station.”
“I’ll figure it out,” she murmurs. “We can improvise. We’re good at that.”
She tries to move, but I plant my feet. The chain presses against my throat, and I see black spots. “Hey,” I gasp. I grab the chain and hold onto it. “There is no ‘we.’ I’m not going to help you with a damn thing if you run. But if you give yourself up—I’ll be your ally. I’ll make sure nothing bad happens to you. You hearing me?”
I listen to Benazir’s ragged breathing for a few seconds, hot against my ear. Finally she says, “You’re no ally of mine.”
“I’m your only friend in the world,” I mutter. “Just look at their faces. That’s how everyone will look at you, for the rest of your short life, unless you let me help you.”
I let her process my words. I keep up a steady glare at Agent Jeong so that if he decides to shoot, he’ll at least be looking me in the eye when I die. Then, finally, the pressure at my throat releases. Benazir Allard lifts her arms and frees me.
I wait a beat before turning back to her, just to show her how unhurried I am to act. I see that my twin has sunk to her knees. Gently, I crouch in front of her.
“Shoot me,” she growls. “I’d rather be dead than a monkey in a cage for the rest of my life.”
“That won’t be your life,” I say.
Ethan Jeong draws near with his gun trained on Benazir. “Divya,” he says quietly, “don’t make her promises that you can’t keep.”
“I haven’t,” I say.
Sol comes over and ha
nds me the Glock, looking glad to be rid of it. He rubs at the red flesh of his neck as he gawks at Benazir. “You sure this isn’t your shadow self?”
“She was created by a gateway to another dimension,” I say. “So no. This isn’t a psychological concept, this is . . .” I look at her. “A person.”
“A person who is definitely going into special containment,” Jeong says.
“Let’s talk about that in a bit. For now we should hightail it back to the Port. We have to close that thing before anyone else decides they need a clone or two.”
“With her along?” Jeong responds sharply. “Do you really want to risk another Houdini act? Or are you planning to stuff her back through before you close it?”
“No,” Evil Allard says from the ground.
“No,” I say. My tone is, I’m hoping, definitive. “She’ll behave now. She understands her situation.”
“Fine. What about Sir Tagalong?” says Jeong. I don’t get the veiled hostility. He can’t be jealous?
“I humbly request to accompany you there, m’lord, m’lady,” says Sol, grinning and bowing. “I’d like to see what a gateway to another dimension looks like, if you don’t mind. I’m not saying you owe me, but . . .” He rubs his neck again.
I admire his resilience after nearly getting strangled by a handcuffed madwoman. But I still feel like wiping that grin off his face.
“Okay,” I say, “if you’re ready to get scared out of your gourd. You might just wish she choked you to death after all.”
15
We arrive at the Port not long later. Agent Jeong held onto the shopping bag full of coal briquettes that Wallace and Neria dropped at the warehouse, and now I’m carrying it. Jeong and Sol are close behind me. Benazir Allard walks beside them, as docile as she promised to be, though that doesn’t stop Jeong from sweating.
We step into the Sheafe Warehouse, where two agents await us. One is a stocky black woman in her mid-thirties with tied-back curly hair and a crooked smile. The other is a taller white man approaching fifty; though he’s lost most of his hair, with the remainder going to grey, his face is remarkably unlined for his age. Had it not been for his wrinkled, bony hands, I might have assumed he was younger. I assume they’re Lena Barnes and Mike McGuinness, respectively.