The Third Twin: A Dark Psychological Thriller

by Darren Speegle

  I was not okay. I had not been okay for a long time. Dumbo? Motherfucking Dumbo! I understood in the most primal way Higgins’ urge to kill. Oh, yes I did. And woe to the elephant man should I learn how to apply my urge outside the fleshly realm.

  “Barry,” came Dianna’s voice, very close as she leaned across my leg to look up into my face. “Barry, are you okay?”

  “I’m okay,” I said. “Momentary loss of grip.” I looked at the newest member of our club. “You’re not a World War II buff, are you, Higgins?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Dianna, maybe we should call Maya down to our tea party.”

  She was silent a moment. Then: “No, I don’t think that’s necessary.”

  I raised my brow.

  She seemed reluctant to have it said out loud. As if it might be a betrayal. But when she did, there was resolve about it. “She’s not of one us.”

  ***

  After dinner we returned to our private spheres. Higgins read. Ritter cleaned some of his gear. Maya brooded over the fire. Dianna lay on her blanket for a while, catnapping, then at some point while I was immersed in the spaces between the lines of the book Higgins had lent me, left the shelter. When dusk was well into its descent and she still hadn’t returned, I grabbed my jacket and hiked down to find her at the spot she’d staked as her own under the tree. She already had the makeshift blanket spread out for me.

  “Aren’t you cold out here?” I said as I took my place.

  “Better now,” she said, accepting the interiors of my jacket.

  We didn’t talk for a couple minutes, enjoying the warmth of each other’s bodies. Then, with a lazy quality to it, she said, “Tell me about yourself, Barry.”

  “What would you like to know? I’m a fantastic lover. Shouldn’t even have to say that. I’ve a prosaic hand but a poetic eye; so a review said of me once. I’ve been known to drink a beer before noon while on vacation. Anything else?”

  “Seriously, Barry, I’d like to know you, outside of our current circumstances. I know what’s happened to you. But where are you from? What are your roots? What was your childhood like?”

  Of all the directions she could have gone in—what motivates you? what are your political leanings? what is your favorite color, song, animal, book?—she had to go in that one. I sighed. “It’s not the prettiest picture.”

  “I don’t care, Barry. Tell me.”

  “I was born in Laramie, Wyoming, on October 31—that would be Halloween—1958. Which makes me fifty-one, believe it or not.”

  “It’s hard,” she said, snuggling closer.

  “My mother was half Shoshone—a Native American tribe indigenous to the western U.S. My father’s roots were Irish. The name Ocason is very likely a distortion of whatever ‘O’ our immigrant ancestors brought over, or left behind, as the case may be. Papa was a drunk, they tell me, with a fierce temper.”

  “They tell you?”

  “My biological parents were in my life for all of three, thankfully un-recollectable years before the old man killed my mother with his fists and was sent off to prison, where his Irish temper eventually caught up with him and he found himself at the wrong end of a screwdriver, if you gather my meaning.”

  “My God, Barry.”

  “I was shipped to a small town outside of Denver, Colorado, to live with the next of kin, a cousin on my father’s side who was extremely religious and dominated his household, running the place like a proverbial prison camp. I learned very quickly to abide by his law or suffer the consequences—and they weren’t pleasant. Somehow I managed to grow up a reasonably well-adjusted, independent lad in spite of the circumstances. Every chance I could get away, I was up in the mountains skiing or hunting. Dad believed in guns very much. One time, after he found out from a neighbor that I’d crossed over into private property while hunting, he made me stand against the barn door while he shot holes around me with the rifle he’d given me for my fourteenth birthday. By eighteen I was gone. Dropped out of school my senior year, the whole bit, and never saw my quote unquote family or that town again. I wandered for a while. Hitchhiked to the east coast, didn’t like that scene and hitchhiked all the way back across the country to California. It was there I was introduced to some of the other outdoor sports like surfing, snowboarding, eventually hang gliding and skydiving. Met a girl along the way who talked some sense into me and I got my equivalency and went to college. I started at a junior college but wound up at Berkeley—too late for the hippie scene unfortunately—where I got my arts degree, which never did much of anything for me, except sound cool. But I was writing by then. Started with a paper, then went to freelancing, eventually wrote my first novel, though I was mainly supporting myself through odd jobs. After my third book grazed the bestseller list, and I started selling travel articles at a pretty good rate, I found myself no longer needing the odd job. After the gal and I broke up, I moved to San Diego for a while. Then down to Santa Fe to be among artist types. Next, it was Vegas. Then Reno, where I met Felicia. We had our beautiful girls, moved to South Lake Tahoe with her Forest Service job. The rest you know. How’s that for a life in a capsule?”

  “Informative, but empty of emotion. You’re forgiven, considering.”

  “I really do not like to talk about it. And usually don’t unless pressed.”

  “I didn’t press you.”

  “No, you didn’t, which makes me want to run far, far away. But not without you.”

  “Silly.”

  “So what about yourself? Tell me about Dianna Lautens? No need to tell me what I already know, though. Like how absolutely gorgeous you are.”

  “Are you sure you’re not fifteen rather than fifty?”

  “Fifty-one, gal.”

  “I was born in February of ‘79, which makes me thirty-one. Twenty years is quite the gap. Will I be spoon feeding you one day, you think?”

  “Payback for my having to change your diapers.”

  “I hardly think that’s fair since I’ll probably be tasked with changing your diapers down the line.”

  “Tasked, you say.”

  “Do you want to hear about me or not?”

  “I would consider it a necessity if we are to endure, that is, enjoy, each other’s company for as long as we both shall live. Sorry. Freudian slip.”

  “Don’t think that referencing my countryman will win you any points,” she said before breaking from the questionable notion of tomorrow to proceed with her own capsule. “My life will seem dull compared to yours. I was born in Innsbruck, Austria. As you know my father is Swiss and my mother, Austrian. They moved to Innsbruck from Bern two years before I was born so my mother could be near my grandmother, who was ill. They claim I was conceived on the Inn River in a boat my father borrowed from his new employer, but I’m tempted to think that’s a fabrication intended to add some romance to their lives. Not that Innsbruck doesn’t supply plenty of that. I may be fonder of Innsbruck than Salzburg, probably because I lived there for most of my youth. I remember how depressed I was when at age fifteen I found out we were moving to Salzburg and I’d be leaving what few friends I had and all that natural beauty behind. But Salzburg is beautiful too, of course, and eventually I grew to love my new home. I attended college there at the University of Salzburg, botany, as I’ve told you, being my primary discipline. I never married, maybe because men don’t like the place they see when they look in my eyes. I remember a lover once telling me—it may have been when he was breaking up with me—that at first my eyes are shocking, then mysterious, then beautiful, then cold. Do you think that’s the case?”

  “I would agree with the first three, but cold? No.” I did find it interesting, though, that she used a ‘place’ analogy.

  “What then?” she said, offering them to me in the deepening twilight.

  “Must I be forced to do this?” I said.

  “Yes.”

  In the growing darkness I could scarcely make out those terrains I had previously perceived, and re
lied on memory to give her as honest an answer as I could. Elaborate or eloquent it was not, as no matter how I dressed it, I kept returning to a single word. “Loneliness. The place is a lonely one, not a cold one.”

  She paused, thoughtfully. “Yes, I think that’s more accurate. It’s of my own doing. I don’t know when I started becoming so . . . withdrawn, but I’m sure it’s to do with my relationship with my dead sister. You know how in writing, whether it be poetry or prose, we become so absorbed in our worlds, our fugues, the pictures we are painting that we grow introverted in relation to the real world? To society? It’s like that with Dalia. At first she was just a dream character, an imaginary creature, but later she changed into something more. She would appear outside of context. We would acknowledge each other, rather than just interact. Later, we would speak to each other with the circumstances in mind. As our relationship continued to grow from there, I think I grew more apart from the world around me. Not until after college, I think, did I finally begin functioning normally in society. Oh, I’d made do. I had friends, as I’ve mentioned, but they were usually either superficial ones or outcasts like me. When I say ‘functioning normally’, I’m talking about finding the balance necessary to engage fully in both worlds. Do you understand what I mean?”

  “I do, Dianna. And well said. I can actually empathize to some degree. My upbringing also created a distance between me and the world around, but while I did tend inward, I also became somewhat extroverted. Not in the social sense, more in terms of the activities that interested me. The distractions. Diversions. I’m sure they’ve some name in psychology for this contradictory tendency, that I’m one of a gazillion people who’ve reacted that way to their environment. What’s important is that balance you’re talking about. I found mine, too. For me, it manifests in extremes—dangerous sports, closed-door writing sessions—but it’s a balance, and it works.”

  We were quiet for a while then. The both of us I’m sure trying not to let the question of tomorrow, of whether there would even be a tomorrow, disturb our musings. Dianna was the one to break the silence, gazing into the trees’ dusky folds as she said, “Barry, can I talk to you about something?”

  Noting the seriousness in her voice, I said, “Of course.”

  “In Munich, as you were telling Maya and me about what your family had been through, I noticed that when Kathy was the subject, you seemed more removed. I mentioned at the time that you seemed to have been left cold by everything—for which I apologize; poor choice of words—but you seemed especially detached when talking about Kathy. Is this because you fear there might be truth in the idea that she is allied with the elephant man?”

  Again, a direction I did not wish to go. This one worse than the last, far worse. I paused for some moments before answering, even considered not doing so. But this was Dianna. Because of our own alliance, she could not be denied such a crucial thing. Her name might as well have been the watchword that unlocked the compartment. It wasn’t just she who had a right to an answer; it was me, too. How long, after all, could a father keep his daughter locked away? When I finally answered, I did not do so directly. I was caught in a backdraft, a backdraft through time.

  “Kathy and I were so much alike. When I looked at her, I saw myself at her age. At my own age, in some respects. She was flighty, headstrong, a daredevil. When she took up skis, she was off down the intermediate slope after the first lesson like it was a ride at an amusement park, only without the metal bars to protect her. Or others. She almost killed a boy, ran right over him at the base of the slope. We were always doing things together. Hiking, snowmobiling, fishing. She lost interest in things, was bored by them after the initial thrill was gone, but she was always right there when the next thing came along, dragging me into it with her . . . like I needed dragging. Understand, my relationship with Kristin has always been equally as strong. But with Kathy it was different. Maybe because when she was younger, she required more attention, being an often difficult, unruly child. She was always something of a rebel, but those younger years . . . ” I shook my head, half smiling, half battling tears. “You see, Dianna, I haven’t allowed myself to even think about the subject because while I know she would never knowingly ally herself with evil, I can conceive of a situation where she might be attracted to a mystique, if that makes sense.”

  Dianna sat up so she could look in my face. Her expression was suddenly earnest, discernibly so in spite of our gradual immersion in shadow. “It does make sense. But Barry, sweet Barry, I bring tidings to you. Tidings from beyond. I’ve communicated recently with my sister Dalia, and she told me that Kathy is assuredly not in alliance with him. It’s a lie designed to further frustrate you, your family. Dalia was not guessing at this. She knew such to be the case.”

  Boom. I looked at her and had no words. Could this news be believed? Could that one gargantuan burden be lifted from me? What about the deeper implications, which I could not help but think about even in my tentative joyful state? If Dalia could provide information about Kathy’s relationship with the elephant man, could she also provide information about the elephant man himself? Information that could be passed along in a direct manner, as opposed to the piecemeal sort I’d gotten from Kimberly. That boundary-exceeding thought dislodged the words.

  “But how does Dalia know Kathy?”

  “I don’t know, Barry. Maybe they were drawn together over there as we have been here. But get this, they work together, Dalia says. On something she calls the God project.”

  Talk about your one-two punches. “You’re not serious.”

  “I am. Can you imagine? Work on the other side? She says they convert formulae.”

  Christ the Living Son of God Who does not exist, I double-dipped from blasphemy’s pool. To her, I shook my head. “I cannot imagine. In my mind I picture . . . I don’t know, a giant chem lab with all these ghosts writing symbols on chalkboards. Convert formulae to what?”

  “Who knows. It’s not something we can understand, apparently.”

  As fantastical as it all sounded, was it any more unbelievable than the idea of our veil-crossing adversary? Taking a more sober tone, I said hesitantly, “If she knows Kathy . . . does she also know the elephant man?”

  She was neither surprised nor unready for the question, which she had probably anticipated while trying to figure out how to best approach me with this news. “I asked her that very question, and not for the first time. But this was the first time she seemed to be able to communicate any sort of answer. The elephant man is unknowable among the dead. He is a shadow. A mystery. Over there they call him Lamia—it’s Latin for witch or vampire; I’ve actually used the word in verse. That is not the point of this conversation, Barry. I’m trying to impress on you that you can at least take this one load off your mind.”

  Yes, it was time to quit resisting and to let the more important thing, the most important thing in the world right then, have its way with me. Observing and obviously approving of my expression, Dianna smiled at me then lay back against my shoulder, positioning her head to best advantage in relation to my own.

  Her next words were music, yes they were. “My eyes are closed.”

  “So they are.”

  “Kiss me, dummy. Like you do in the dream.”

  I didn’t know how I did it in the dream, but I did it then, and I swear the moment our lips touched, the snow, after hours of restraint, began falling again. At some point during the timeless minutes we spent realizing each other in a way that consummated the preexisting bond we shared, I felt her tense in my arms. Though my mouth was reluctant to part with hers, I relinquished our explorations, following her eyes to where they had strayed.

  “It’s Maya,” she said unnecessarily, and with the faintest hint of . . . fear?

  I understood the feeling, whatever its name, as my eyes rested on the figure standing silhouetted in the alcove’s mouth. The great granite brow above her dominated the picture, but not the presence that she was within it. Something
about her stance, the way the fire outlined her luxuriant hair, gave her a wild and sorceress-like appearance, though that comparison might well have been an association, considering the witch/vampire aside. More disturbing than her appearance, though, was the suggestion of purpose, of intent in her sentry. I doubted she could decipher more than our shapes among the trees in the almost fully assembled dark, but she knew we were there. Everything about her said that we were the focal point, and that she merely watched us find our harmony with the last strains of twilight was eerie.

  After indeterminable moments at this motionless standoff, she finally raised her arm in a ghostly salute, then left us to our shadows.

  17

  When I opened my eyes on the morning of the seventh day, faces lingered in the snow shower that greeted me, warping, swirling, dissolving among the driven flakes, among their own echoes. The snow came hard, and on an unfriendly and capricious wind, and the bed was now at least six inches deep. But Ritter wasn’t going to let us off this time. He’d had us get our packs ready and do what body cleaning we were going to—the usual boiled water and alcohol-based wipes—before we went to sleep. He gave us just enough time to shovel down our Pop-tarts and brush our teeth before we were on our way.

  The going was tedious from the outset, and the blow only intensified as we went. We tried to keep our path as shielded from the brunt of it as possible, but there was only so much navigable ground, and Ritter’s memorized route to keep. The exposed stretches among the slopes and rock faces were brutal, the walls serving to funnel the wind to its nastiest effect. Even worse were the completely open areas, where we had no walls at all. We pushed through these patches like hunched medieval monks on some flagellant pilgrimage. We slipped on the uneven terrain at times, sometimes catching ourselves or each other, other times falling to our knees or backs. It was a bruising as well as scouring affair, and by the time we found the shelter of a wide overhang near the base of a precipice, we were throbbing, raw, and saturated.