The Other Side of the Mirror

by Lex H Jones

  “Is that even possible?”

  “This psychiatrist says so in her report,” Grant nodded, at which point Trent realised that the Commissioner was actually looking at the report amongst the other files on his desk. “Mind over matter, and all that. Anyway, the pills worked the way they were supposed to. One of the personalities was repressed, and it was Jimmy. Now, apparently it’s never clear which identity is going to remain, and sometimes they fight each other for dominance. There was no such case here, it was actually like Jimmy allowed Carl to remain, because he loved him. So Carl became all there was, despite the fact that Jimmy was actually the original, real version of him.”

  “And how did Carl deal with this?”

  “He had no idea what had gone on, but he obviously noticed that Jimmy wasn’t around anymore. His mom told him that Jimmy had moved away, and everyone went on with their lives. Carl grew up mean and hard, joined the academy, and because we buried all this stuff he became a cop, then a detective.”

  “Okay, I’m with you so far,” Trent nodded, taking a deep breath as though the sheer influx of information was exhausting him. “I understand why none of this was ever mentioned. It was buried, put to bed, didn’t matter anymore. So how did we get from there to the point where Carl... or Jimmy... is a masked killer?”

  “Carl had been taking his meds for close to thirty years, Trent. He thought they were for some form of vitamin deficiency, that’s what his mom had told him. So he happily takes them every day without ever thinking twice. Well, guess where he’d been getting his meds?”

  “Holy crap...” Trent gasped as realisation dropped on him like a great big sack of bricks.

  “Kenny’s Pharmacy, the one where real meds had been substituted for sugar pills for months now. Evidently Carl was one of the customers who had been getting something other than his actual prescription. And that’s been the case for long enough to allow Jimmy to make a return appearance. Only now, he’s an adult, of course. So he ‘turns up’, and Carl thinks his old friend is back. Only Jimmy has thirty years of repressed sexual urges to deal with... so he hits the town, hooks up with some guys... only he has a problem. Like I said, Jimmy knows that he and Carl are one and the same, so if he’s seen making out with a bunch of guys...”

  “He’s going to completely ruin Carl’s reputation for being a tough bastard...” Trent nodded as he wiped the sweat from his brow. “Jimmy’s only memories regarding his sexuality are of Carl getting the crap kicked out of him for it. Jimmy wants to protect him... so he wears a mask.”

  “And decides to cover his tracks even further by killing the guys he sleeps with. Using Carl’s old gun; the one he knows about because he has access to Carl’s memories and everything. The reverse isn’t true, of course, so Carl has no idea what’s been going on.”

  “Carl wasn’t getting any sleep. When he thought he was, he was actually out and about being Jimmy,” Trent nodded, his mind following the pattern more and more as knowledge formed clearer pictures in his mind. “Still, why did Jimmy kill these guys? Seems a little extreme.”

  “I thought that too. Which is why, before I asked you to come here, I actually managed to get hold of Carl’s old psychiatrist. She’s retired now, of course, but she remembers the case well. She wanted to publish it in some kind of journal, said it was her biggest challenge, but we’d never allowed her to. Well, she was still interested in the whole thing. Her job had been her life, so when I asked her some questions about this she was happy to answer. Her theory is that Jimmy had never developed properly. He’d been a kid, then nothing, then an adult. His mind wasn’t rational, it had been raced to adulthood to keep up with its ‘host body’, as she put it. That meant he wasn’t quite... well, he was a little deranged.”

  “He said he wanted to protect Carl. That’s what he yelled when he ran at me,” Trent said quietly, trying to fight off the tears that wanted to fill his eyes at the loss of his best friend.

  “That’s all he ever wanted, in his twisted way,” Grant nodded. “So that’s about it. One more death we can blame Petroni for.”

  “No one breathes a word of this, ever. It dies with us, Grant,” Trent said firmly, letting the tears slowly run down his face now and filing whatever embarrassment he may feel under the heading of ‘screw it’.

  “Glad we’re on the same page,” Grant nodded as he firmly shook Trent’s hand. “Go take a few days off. We’ll want you to speak at the funeral.”

  “Sure, I’ll speak. And what they’ll hear is that Carl Duggan was the best damn cop I ever worked with. That’s how they’ll remember him.”

  “Damn straight they will.”

  “You know what really gets me about this? Petroni’s never gonna know. He just gets to waltz around his mansion in Washington, not giving a shit about the lives he’s destroyed.”

  “That’s the way it is,” Grant sighed. “Don’t beat yourself up over it.”

  “I hate this damn City,” Trent sighed as he slammed the door behind him.

  Epilogue One;

  Snake Eyes

  D ice sat in the office above his casino, staring at the monitor screens that gave him a view of the casino floor. All those idiots just throwing their money away. They might as well just line up at the door and hand it straight to him. None of them ever left with more than they’d had in their pockets when they arrived. The lucky ones got out straight, but even they were few and far between. Dice had a permanent sneer fixed to his face, just as he always did when staring at his monitors. It was almost sexual, and he had in fact gone as far as to masturbate to the moving images on more than one occasion. Leaning over his desk, Dice poured himself a second glass of scotch, letting it fall over the ice cubes and splash up the sides of the glass. With a satisfied sigh he sat back in his chair, only to feel something cold and metal pressed into the back of skull.

  “If you want money then you should know I don’t keep any here,” Dice said nervously. “But if you let me call someone, I can have some bags brought up for you—”

  “I’m not interested in your money, Mr. Dice,” came a cold, softly-spoken voice.

  At this point Dice saw a hand reach onto his desk and place two red dies in front of him. On the back of the hand near the thumb, Dice saw a Hebrew symbol tattooed in black against the white flesh. He couldn’t read the symbol, but he now knew exactly who it was that had entered his office.

  “Look... Pope... whatever you want, we can—”

  “Roll the dice,” Pope instructed.

  “What?”

  “We’re going to play a game. Your fate is going to be decided by your namesake,” Pope explained.

  “I don’t... I don’t understand...”

  “Whatever number you roll, that is how many times I am going to pull this trigger with my gun aimed at your skull. The best you could hope for is snake eyes... that’s what you call two number ones, yes? That way your head might still be cohesive enough for you to enjoy an open casket.”

  “Pope, look... whoever has hired you... whatever reason you’re here—”

  “I am here for Felicity DuBois.”

  “I can pay you double whatever she gave you.”

  “She hasn’t paid me a cent. I love her.”

  “You... then you should know that I looked after her, and her sister...”

  “…Amber.”

  “Yes. Yes, Amber! She was safe with me, she would have never—”

  “She left you and ran into the arms of a murderous pimp because she was terrified of you,” Pope informed him as he pressed the barrel of his gun even more firmly into the back of Dice’s head. “All the beatings she had suffered at your hands, all the bruises she had been forced to cover... the rapes she had tried to make herself forget... she ran because of you. There are many responsible for her death, and you are a very black link in that chain, Mr. Dice.”

  “What can I say to change this? What can I do to—”

  “Roll the dice,” Pope repeated.

  Dice’s hand
shook violently as he reached for two small items of red plastic. His fingers trembled so much that it was almost impossible for him to lift the tiny, weightless things, but eventually he managed it. With a slight flick of his wrists he tossed the die onto the desk, letting them bump together and then roll to a stop. On both die, a single white dot was now faced upwards.

  “Snake eyes,” Pope commented. “Aren’t you lucky?”

  Epilogue Two;

  What’s there to Do In D.C?

  C harles Pope entered his hotel and closed the door behind him. The large, luxurious room contained a king-sized four-posted bed and a large window outside of which he could see the Washington Monument. He had hoped it might be possible to also see the Lincoln Memorial, but one was better than nothing. From the half empty champagne glasses and discarded food trays it was apparent that the maid had yet to arrive for the morning, but Pope had no problem with that. Seeing its aftermath reminded him of the previous evening, which brought a soft smile to his face and a warmth to his chest. This feeling was only increased when he heard the sound of someone taking a shower in the en-suite bathroom.

  Taking a seat on the edge of the bed, Carl took the television remote and turned on the large plasma screen that was fixed to the opposite wall. The news came on as the picture hummed into life, revealing a female newscaster holding a microphone, a small crowd behind her.

  “...still reeling from the news of the apparent assassination of Senator Carlito Petroni, who was found dead in his own home this morning. No leads are held regarding the suspect at this time but claims over the past few days have increased regarding the Senator’s alleged involvement with organised crime. Whilst sympathies have been expressed regarding his sudden death, his more vocal opponents have not hesitated to point out that any involvement with such activities could have given the Senator a long list of enemies capable of...”

  Pope switched off the television, satisfied that he had heard enough. He noticed that a newspaper was resting on the dessert trolley, which he reached for and sat back in the bed to read. The champagne glass on the bedside table was stained on the rim with dark-red lipstick, causing Pope to smile once again as he noticed it. He opened the newspaper and found himself staring at a list of names, quoting those who had died in the service of America in the past month; firemen, soldiers, police officers. When Pope saw the one name he recognised, he closed his eyes and uttered a quiet prayer. He knew the officer in question would have hated him for that, but he still thought it was necessary. Let him be angry, at least he was at peace. The noise of the shower came to a stop, and Pope heard a voice call out, “Sweetheart, is that you?”

  “It’s me, I just got back,” Pope replied, at which point Felicity DuBois entered the room, her slender figure wrapped in a short towel.

  “Where did you go last night? I thought I felt you getting out of bed.”

  “I just had some unfinished business to take care of,” Pope smiled.

  “I know how you hate loose ends,” she smiled, sitting next to him on the bed and holding herself close to him. “So did you do what you wanted to do?”

  “Of course,” Pope replied, kissing her softly. “She can truly rest now.”

  “I love you. You know that, right?”

  “I do,”

  “So can we leave Washington? It’s kind of a bore.”

  “I’ll arrange some flights. Where would you like to go?”

  “I don’t know. Where can we go?” Felicity smiled.

  “We can go anywhere,” Pope smiled in return. “Anywhere at all.”

  About Your Author

  Lex H Jones is a British cross-genre author, horror fan and rock music enthusiast who lives in Sheffield, North England.

  He has written articles for premier horror websites the ‘Gingernuts of Horror’ and the ‘Horrifically Horrifying Horror Blog’ on various subjects covering books, films, videogames and music.

  Lex’s first published novel was “Nick and Abe”, a literary fantasy about God and the Devil spending a year on earth as mortal men. Lex also has a growing number of short horror stories published in collections alongside such authors as Graham Masterton, Clive Barker and Adam Neville. He is currently working on both his ‘Harkins’ book series, the first of which ‘The Final Casebook of Mortimer Grimm’ is due for release Winter 2019, and also a trilogy of children’s weird fiction books centred around the reimagining of H.P. Lovecraft’s mythology.

  When not working on his own writing Lex also contributes to the proofing and editing process for other authors.

  His official Facebook page is:

  www.facebook.com/LexHJones

  Amazon author page :

  https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lex-H-Jones/e/B008HSH9BA

  Twitter: @LexHJones

  Also by Lex H Jones

  “Nick and Abe”

  Full length novel

  “At Peace Now”

  Published as part of “The Horror Collection – Gold Edition”

  “Ain’t Nothing Free”

  Published as part of “Dark Places Evil Faces 2”

  “Foundations

  Published as part of “Made in Britain”

  “For One Night Only”

  Published as part of “Carnival of Horror”

  “AC43R0N”

  Published as part of “Black Room Manuscripts Volume 3”

  “Bone and Bred”

  Published as part of “VS”

  “Red Frost”

  Published as part of “Under The Weather”

  “Sonneshill”

  Published as part of “Collected Easter Horror Shorts”

  “Kayla”

  Published as part of “Sparks”

  “Yet To Come”

  Published as part of “12 Days of Christmas 2016”

  “A Partridge in a Pear Tree”

  Published as part of “12 Days of Christmas 2017”

  “Uncommon Hunger”

  Published as part of “Full Moon Slaughter 2”

  “Everything and Nothing”

  Published as part of “Merchants of Misery”

  “The Life and Times of the Moustache Beetle”

  Published in “Cobweb Galaxy” comic book.

  Other HellBound Books Titles

  Available at: www.hellboundbookspublishing.com

  Made in Britain

  There is something quite special about this fine collection of tales of terror from the Sceptered Isle, each and every one crafted in the dead of the night by twisted, fevered minds, who have brought crawling and slithering to life the darkest denizens of the blackest shadows to terrify those brave souls amongst you who are brave enough to read...

  For your delectation, Dear Reader, we have assembled together between these illustrious covers an array of the finest British authors writing today:

  Guy N. Smith, James H Longmore, David Owain Hughes, Kevin J Kennedy,

  Ross Baxter, C. Bailey-Bacchus,

  Justin Boote, Munib Haroon, Lex H Jones, Michael Byrne, Lee Franklin, J. C. Michael, Bill Davidson, Andrew J Lucas, Nick Stead, David Turnbull, Michael Chapman,

  Richard Farren Barber

  Deadly Nightshade

  A surreal psychological thriller…

  Thirteen years ago: Summer’s End. A final night of vacation at New Mexico’s Gila Cliff Dwellings. A picnic under the moonlight for high school sweethearts meets a deadly end.. Things will never be the same again.

  After eloping, newlywed Virginia Campbell’s bright future grows dim. Eerie night visions begin to haunt her. Are they real or imagined? Her husband’s sudden aloofness raises suspicions of an affair. Unable to sleep, doubts torment her—doubts about her marriage, her unborn child, and her sanity.

  Then, there is blood. She awakens to blood-soaked sheets. Is it too late to save her unborn child? Her only hope is her charming doctor for whom she is falling. Can he snare her from this nightmare?

  Ten year old Kyle also suffers from insomnia and eerie night
visions. Something, or someone, sinister has brought them together...waiting for the moment to strike.

  Three years later: Mother’s Day. The nightmare is not over. A surprise visitor greets her with a gift that morning. What begins as a day of celebration is twisted into a violent, bloody confrontation as smoldering wounds resurface.

  ROAD KILL: TEXAS HORROR BY TEXAS WRITERS - VOL 3

  Everything is bigger in Texas - including the horror!

  A Piney woods meth dealer clones Adolph Hitler. A nightmare exorcist meets an inexorable fined. An eyeball collector gets collected. The apparition of a lynching victim tracks down his executioners. A Texas lawman is undone by shades of his past. A Baphomet recruits converts as a local summer camp. The tales of the baker’s dozen who appear in this anthology demonstrate why everything is scarier in Texas…

  Including tales of terror from

  Jeremy Hepler

  Madison Estes

  Bret McCormick

  James H Longmore

  ER Bills

  Shawna Borman

  And many more...

  I’ll Come Back to Get You

  In the midst of a Manhattan heat wave, Adel Daniels’ husband doesn’t return home from work. A few days later, she receives a Polaroid of him; on the bottom of the photograph are the words I’ll Come Back to Get You, on the back is written their six-year-old son’s name - is he the ransom, or the kidnapper’s next target?

  Assistant Chief Detective Steve Willards heads up the task force assigned to the case, along with FBI Profiler Gail Skillman. They quickly learn that every person involved has a secret, and the truth is only as reliable as memory.