by Blake Crouch
I stared at the table, my heart racing. "I don’t know. That was a really fucked-up day."
"How many people were in that room after the detective left?" Goldston asked.
I looked up from the table. "You won’t believe me," I said. "It’ll seem like I’m crazy, like I’m grasping to save my life, and I’m not. I know they won’t ever let me out of this place."
"How many?"
"Two."
"One physical person walked into that police station, Andy. There’s a videotape of it."
"I know."
"Who’s Orson?" he said, but I shook my head. "You don’t know?"
"I don’t know what he is anymore."
"Is he in your head?"
"No."
"Then you actually see him?"
"Not since Choteau."
"What does he look like?"
"Like me. He’s my twin."
I felt a cool breath on the back of my neck. "Hey, big boy," he whispered, and I shivered.
"What?" Goldston said. "What'd you say?"
Orson walked around the table behind the guards. He stepped over the mass of cords that linked the microphones and cameras to the outlets and leaned against the wall. He smiled, wearing jeans and a dirty tee-shirt. His hair was buzzed like mine, and he had a two-day beard.
"What’s wrong?" Goldston asked. "Andy, you’re trembling."
"I’m staring at Orson right now," I said, watching my brother walk to the table.
"Andy, you’re looking at me," Goldston said. "You’re looking directly into my eyes."
"No, I’m looking at you," Orson said, standing beside me, his dirty hands on the table.
"Orson," I said, "listen to me…"
"Dr. Goldston, I’m Orson Thomas."
"It’s nice to meet you, Orson," Goldston said hesitantly. "Where’s Andy?"
"Right here," I said. "Watching you talk to Orson. He's beside me. I'm looking at him."
"No," Goldston said, "you’re looking at me."
"Who the fuck cares?" Orson said. "You wanna talk? Talk."
Goldston gathered himself and cleared his throat. Beads of sweat had formed on his forehead, and he wiped them away on the sleeve of his black jacket.
"What makes you come out, Orson?" Goldston asked.
"What do you mean?"
"What makes your personality come out?"
"I’m not a fucking split personality, Doctor. I’m always here. I run the show, not Andy."
"You’re always aware of him?"
"Yes."
"Is he always aware of you?"
"When I want him to be. He’s in la-la land most of the time."
"La-la land?"
"I send him away when I have things to do. Europe, Aruba. That’s his La-la land."
"But sometimes he physically sees you…"
"Because I make him see me."
"Does he know we’re talking now?"
I was speechless, walls of false reality tumbling down. Everything I'd lived for became a transparent curtain behind which Orson had lived and murdered. He'd given me a glimpse of it in Choteau, but I'd tucked that hideous knowledge away. I'd denied and forgotten it, letting my brother remain an enigma as I'd done before.
"Yes," I said, tears trickling down my cheeks.
"Shut your fucking mouth," Orson said, wiping the tears away.
"So you sent him away when you went to kill?" Goldston said. "How?"
"I don’t know how I did it. It’s like he lived in a fantasy world when I used him. But it was strange, because sometimes he wrote books about what I did. It was like some part of him knew what was happening even though I sent him away."
"Can you read Andy’s mind?"
"He’s as much a person to me as you are."
"Oh, man," Goldston muttered. He glanced back at Laura, her face white. Everyone’s face had blanched, even the cameraman and the two guards. Goldston turned back to Orson. "Who was born into this body, Orson? You or Andy?"
"We both were," Orson said.
"Andy, I want to talk to Orson for..."
"You don’t have to ask his permission."
"Okay," Goldston said. "When did Andy became aware of you and you of him?"
I wanted to speak, but I didn’t. I let Orson talk, though I feared what he might say.
"I don’t know how old we were," Orson began. "I lived behind his eyes. I could hear him talk, I saw what he saw, but I had my own, separate consciousness. When we were seven, I started talking to him. I don’t know how, but when I spoke to him, he saw me. I told him I was his twin, that no one else could see me. I told him not to tell anyone or I’d go away.
"Well, he told his mother, and she went right along with it. Just like I was his fucking imaginary friend or something. She’d set a place for me at dinner. She’d buy presents for me at Christmas. Jeanette was always a little weird."
"But you still didn’t have control over Andy’s body?" Goldston asked.
"No. Not until he was twelve. I can’t explain to you how I did it, but he was sleeping one night, and I moved his arm. I just thought about doing it, and it happened. I realized that when he was unconscious or asleep I could use his body. So I started going out when he fell asleep, and he never knew it. I did this for several years.
"As Andy got older, through high school and college, I think he started to realize I shouldn’t be there. Started feeling weird about me. We were close, and then in college he tried to ignore me. Tried to pretend I didn’t exist."
"Did that make you mad?"
"Don’t fuck with me." Orson glared at Goldston. "Anyhow, you gotta remember I’m telling this from my point of view. I knew what the fuck was going on. I knew I was inside of him. He didn’t know that. I'm not sure how, but he saw me. He physically saw me. Only thing I can guess is his mind created these hallucinations to compensate for what it heard. I don’t know. I’ve looked at psychology texts and there isn’t a damn thing on this sort of condition."
"I’ve never heard of anything like it," Goldston said. "What happened in college?"
"I was twenty-one. I didn’t like the prospect of spending my life sharing someone else’s body, watching them live. So I turned Andy off."
"What do you mean?"
"How can I explain it to you? I had an edge on him. I just turned him off. I could suggest things to him, by thinking into him. It’s impossible to explain. I told him to sleep, to dream. Told him he was in paradise, and he slept for seven years. He vividly dreamed that part of his life so when he woke up, he had a past that wasn’t mine."
"What do you remember, Andy?" Goldston asked.
"Why do you wanna talk to him?" Orson said.
"I’d like to hear what he dreamed, what he remembers."
"I remember the Caribbean," I said. "A long time ago. It’s very vague, like childhood."
"You didn’t think that was strange?" Goldston asked. "That your memory was fuzzy?"
"What did I have to compare it to?" I said. I wanted to cry but I didn’t.
"What’d you do during that time, Orson?" Goldston asked. "While he was asleep."
"I left Appalachian. Went to New York and was homeless there for awhile. Practically lived in the library. I read constantly, gave myself the best education you could imagine. Then I went to a school in Vermont called Middlebury. I made up this flawless resume. It said I got my Ph.D. in history at this college in Arizona which didn’t even exist. I made up all the credentials. It was ingenious. I taught in Vermont for a year until this prick named David Parker, a professor in the history department, too, found out that Baxter College didn’t exist. I was fired."
"Is this when you started killing?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because I could. And there were people who deserved it. But I'm not saying anything else about it. I won't sit here and let you put me in one of your categories. I killed. End of story."
"When did Andy come back?"
"When I started killing. I'd bought
this cabin in Wyoming. I could feel Andy starting to move again, especially when I’d wake up in the morning. Sometimes he’d have control of his body. He didn’t know where the fuck he was. I told him he was in the Bahamas. I talked to him constantly without him knowing it was me. Still do. It's really just subtle suggestion. Sort of like hypnosis. That’s when I found out how much control I really had. He thinks he only killed once, but he killed whenever I told him to. He was pretty good at it. He thought it was a game."
"I don’t remember any of that," I said.
"Of course not. I told you what to remember. About this time, I bought the lake house. It was a safe place to let Andy write. He was good, too. Wrote about the things I did. You know, it's funny. He thought he was making it up. A lot of what’s in his stories really happened.
"When his books started getting published and making money, I realized it’d be smart to let him keep writing. So I did. And the money he made allowed me to travel."
"Travel as in hunt?" Goldston asked.
"Yeah. I just had to be careful and let Andy have a small piece of his life, too. He'd made a few friends in the publishing business, so part of the time, I’d sit back and let him go. Let him keep up his connections. It took a lot of patience, but it paid off. The only time Andy was actually conscious was when he was writing and doing his book tours. I did a few readings, but they were boring. I'd have faked more of his life, but I’m a different person. People would’ve known something was wrong. Besides, I hated trying to act like someone else.
"When he wasn’t writing or touring, I’d travel and send Andy away. If you asked his friends, they’d say he traveled quite frequently. Always going to the islands. Always alone."
"Orson," Goldston said, "I want to show you something." Goldston pulled several pieces of paper out of the folder and laid them across the table. They were the letters Orson had sent to me. "I could never understand why Andy wrote these to himself," Goldston said. "Especially since he never used them to prove his innocence." He looked up at Orson. "You wrote these."
"Yes."
"Why go to the trouble of kidnapping your brother and bringing him cross-country to the desert when you had mind control over him? From what you’re saying, you could've just suggested he go to the cabin, and he would."
"But not of his own free will. I did, I do have control over Andy, but that gets old. I wanted Andy to act on his own."
"To kill on his own?" Goldston asked.
"To kill on his own. I wanted him to kill for the pleasure of it. Not because I suggested it. I guess I wanted us to be more like brothers. Real brothers."
"Did he?"
"I didn’t!" I yelled. "Not one fucking time did I kill for the pleasure of it. Even when I thought I was killing Orson."
"You tried to kill Orson?" Goldston asked.
"When Andy was at the cabin with me," Orson said, "he learned about David Parker from this cowboy who I’d purchased the land from. I'd used Dave's name from time to time as my own. Andy thought David Parker was the name I assumed when I was away from him. So I let Andy chase him down. What did I care? This guy had gotten me fired from teaching. I also wanted to see if Andy could do it. If he'd kill me, given the chance. If he'd do it in cold blood."
"And did he?"
"Oh yeah," Orson said. "Just to give you an idea of how much control I have over Andy’s mind, I’ll tell you this. David Parker looks nothing like me. I told Andy he was me. I convinced him I was a professor named David Parker at Middlebury College, and he tracked David Parker down and murdered him and his wife. Andy did it of his own free will, too, and he did a damn good job of it. I still don’t think they’ve found their bodies, and I know they never suspected Andy. I was really proud of him for that. I knew he had it in him."
Goldston scribbled furiously on his notes.
"Orson, let me…"
"No, Andy. I’ve heard enough from you. I’ve heard forty years of shit from you. You’ve had the past seven to yourself. It’s my turn now."
Goldston removed a thick stack of black and white photographs from the folder. I saw pictures of the desert, Washington D.C., the excavated backyard at the lake house, and a woman lying heartless on her back in the sand.
"I’d like to discuss some photographs with you. Why you chose certain victims, when and why you started removing the hearts. Was Washington your ultimate goal?"
"This is what you've waited for isn’t it?" I said. "The glory and the fame."
"This is what I’ve waited for," Orson said. "This and you to finish your book. It’s good, Andy. I’ll make sure you get some credit for…"
"It's not finished," I interrupted.
"I know," he said. "I have to finish it."
"What are you talking…"
"You know what I’m talking about," Orson said. He looked me dead in the eyes and squatted down beside me. "I'll take it from here, Andy."
"Excuse me," Goldston said, "but what…"
"I’m talking to my brother," Orson said. "You can wait two fucking minutes."
"Orson, please listen," I begged.
"No. You’re just gonna fuck all this up. You know I earned this."
"Orson, no."
"What? You wanna do this hard time with me? You wanna get the needle with me? That’s five long years away. You know I could send you somewhere bad, Andy. I could send you to hell before you actually get there, so don’t piss me off."
"Don’t do this here, Orson. Please. Wait till we get back to the cell."
"Why not kill you on national television?"
I screamed as loud as my voice would carry and shook in the chair. The guards’ eyes widened as they rushed around the table towards me, knocking over the cameraman. Goldston yelled something over and over, but I couldn’t hear him. I couldn’t form words. Hands grabbed me. I saw Orson smiling, his voice whispering harshly into my ears to be still…
# # #
The waves are crashing gently onto the white beach. The sun beats down on my chest, slowly turning my skin into a deep golden bronze. I look out over the turquoise sea. The blue-green water stretches out to the horizon, blending indistinguishably into the cloudless sky.
Sitting up in my chair, I lift my Jack and Coke from the sand, take a long, cold sip, and set it back down. There’s faint music in the distance behind me. I turn and see my hut a hundred feet above me on the lush, green hillside, its white roof showing through the trees.
I have a strong buzz now. A warm, fuzzy peacefulness.
I lean back in the wooden recliner and close my eyes. The salty breeze caresses my face, urging me into sleep. It’s such a mild day for the tropics, one that invites you to sleep right through it, beneath the sun, in the presence of the whispering waves.
LOCKED DOORS ALTERNATE ENDING
There's a saying about writing without an outline that's attributed to E.L. Doctorow: "Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."
Yeah. That sounds real nice and writerly, and I used to subscribe to this theory. In fact, all the way up to my book, Abandon, I made it a practice not to outline the last half of my books.
The result was disastrous. It haunted my writing process, leading to massive rewrites.
The upshot (for you, gentle reader) is that sometimes the original endings to my novels were pretty cool, or at least had their moments.
In the summer of 2003, I reached the end of the Portsmouth section of Locked Doors, with an unfortunately vague idea of how I wanted to conclude the book.
What follows is that 29,000-word original ending (roughly 140 printed pages). Be warned—this is quite possibly the darkest stretch of fiction I've ever written, and that's saying something. What I was attempting to do with the last half of Locked Doors, was to show how a man and a woman (in this case, Andy Thomas and Violet King) could be systematically turned into psychopaths.
While the original ending of Locked Doors has its flaws, the
Epilogue is one of my favorite things I've ever written. It's wild, it's out there, but in some ways, really fits the theme of the story.
Again, with the advent of ebooks, I can bring this 140-page alternate ending of Locked Doors to my readers. Enjoy!
# # #