Duality

by Nasser Rabadi

  When he turned back to leave, Rose was standing in the doorway in her soaked clothes. She looked at him, troubled, a little frightened.

  “Shawn?” Rose said.

  “Let’s go,” he replied.

  “I’m so cold.”

  Shawn put his note in his room while Rose dried off with a towel and looked through his mom’s clothes for a new shirt. She found some money stashed away in one of the drawers and put it in her pocket.

  “You ready?” Shawn asked, then held up the keys.

  “Yes.” Rose nodded. “I’m ready for Raven Hill.”

  With that, they hurried out of the house. Shawn took the hammer with him and kept it in a plastic bag. Then Shawn hopped into the driver’s seat, and Rose sat in the passenger seat.

  “You’re a killer now,” Rose said. “And here I am trying to find another one.”

  “Are you mad at me?” Shawn asked.

  Her eyes, as he waited for her to answer, gave no clue to her feelings. Silence, then: “No, Shawn. I’m just confused and I want to make sense of this all.”

  “I heard your voice in my ear while I did it,” Shawn said. “You were telling me to do it. Then we could be free and run away.”

  “I heard her screaming,” Rose said.

  Soon, they were on the street, driving away from Carpenter—hopefully forever. A new sense of calmness and freedom fluttered around them. The voice in his ear was right. They were free. And they’d both be happy.

  “How do you figure we’ll find the killer?” Shawn asked. “Have you been… you know, keeping notes or something? Clues? I don’t know how this stuff works.”

  “It seems like the killings happen further and further out,” Rose said. “We’ll just get to Raven Hill and start piecing clues together as a team. I’m fucking clueless on what we’ll do, but I want to do it for her. I want to see this person dead.”

  A killer was waiting in Raven Hill. He waited in the thick forest that lined the road that ran through the town. A big, vine-ridden sign with moss overtaking the pole read, “WELCOME TO RAVEN HILL” and another sign read “SPEED LIMIT 45”.

  Earlier that day was the latest kill. It was just a girl. She’d be forgotten. Just like Emily Oakes, who had been missing since the first murders, when Valerie and Shelly were killed. Emily was already forgotten by Carpenter before she vanished. But her disappearance didn’t get the attention that the murders were getting—even if she fit the bill. Gorgeous. Between seventeen and twenty-five. Dark hair. Bright eyes. Beautiful smile.

  The connections didn’t end there. She vanished on the same day Valerie Hart and Shelly Hawthorn died. She was last seen in that area, too. But two dead bodies outweighed one missing one. She didn’t get much coverage, and perhaps she never would.

  But Emily wasn’t just missing—she was murdered. And although her body was found, nobody knew it yet.

  The latest victim rotted in a park below gorgeous beams of sunlight. Her body would be found in an hour. Nobody in Raven Hill would identify her. Nobody would care. One eye was plucked out and her nose was missing. The ocean of cuts on her face made her unrecognizable.

  A couple of cars passed by. The killer smiled. The killer was happy.

  There was another tale from the nameless land that Talia came from. A man stood below the cascades of water that tumbled through the rocky structures and ran into a gorge. He fished. The birds sang all around him. It was a peaceful place on a peaceful day.

  And as he pulled his rod up, a fish on the hook, he saw afar off Princess Talia’s coffin—it was open. He ran to it, crying, “Princess! Princess!”

  The perplexing emptiness of the coffin looked back at him. As it drifted in front of him, a cloud passed over the sun, and he thought maybe it wasn’t sealed well enough. Perhaps it opened and her body fell out and sank to the depths. He hoped his hook would not catch her body. And then he wondered about the royalty of the past. Where had their bodies gone? Where had their coffins ended up? Surely they had to end up somewhere—but where? Did the waters drift on forever and wash off the planet? Did the coffins fall with them off the edge of the earth and into oblivion? It was a thought he did not like, and it was broken by a terrible cry.

  “Help me,” a silvery voice cried.

  It was behind him.

  He turned to see Talia, and said, “Princess! Are you not dead? Were you not poisoned?”

  She fell over into the shallow water, and he rushed as fast as he could to get her out. She was coughing and her face was turning blue. Her hair was a shade lighter than he remembered. She was definitely sick; she was not herself. The man laid her down on a dry space in the gorge.

  “How can this be, Princess Talia? They held a funeral for you.”

  “I do not know,” she said. She looked down at her dirtied dress. “I do not know.”

  It was then that he noticed the cut on her cheek. “I will go bring you help.”

  And so he left, glimpsing behind himself along his walk through the water to be sure that she was all right. And she was all right the first two times. Then, the third time he peeked back, she wasn’t in her spot, so he ran all the way back. The clouds passed over the sun again and for a minute, everything was cold.

  “Talia?” he shouted. “Oh no, where can she be?”

  As the words left this mouth, a hand as cold as a glacier gripped his shoulder and turned him around. He shivered as he turned and saw Princess Talia standing before him. He was confused—she looked much different. The corners of her mouth had gone purple, and blood dripped down from them.

  She kissed the fisherman. He closed his eyes. It felt like kissing death; her lips were ice. Blood from the corners of her lips smeared against his skin, and the blood, too, was freezing. Nerves ran through his stomach, and when he opened his eyes, her eyes were solid black and evil, searching through his soul.

  He pushed her away and screamed.

  He never saw the rock in her hand. She slammed it into his eye; he heard the squirting noise and felt warm liquid slithering over his face and passing through the smeared remnants of blood from her mouth. He put his hands over his damaged eye. Bolts of pain raced each other through his spinning head. He stumbled back and fell into the water.

  She sat on top of him then slammed the rock into his nose. The pain was deep and warm. The rock met his soft flesh again as she twisted the rock into his cheek. She smashed the rock into his forehead. He was dead at that point, but she repeated the same motion move and over, raising the rock with both hands above her head then bringing it down on the gooey remains. The lifeless body rocked in the gentle waves of water.

  The ghost—if that’s what it was—of Talia would kill again.

  Chapter Nineteen

  There were no other cars on the empty road. Ten minutes into their drive, and it seemed like they were the only people left on earth. Rose thought about how nice that would be. Then she thought about what must be happening right now. She imagined that Mr. Hart probably got the news already. She felt loss when Mrs. Hart died, but she knew it would be nothing compared to what Mr. Hart would feel. Not only did he lose his wife, but his house was burned down along with all his belongings, and his daughter—at least, who he thought was his daughter—ran away. He was a man who woke up that day with everything, and in a few hours he had nothing. Rose felt like shit for causing it.

  Then her mind drifted to her real family as she pushed the seat back, turned to the window, and stared at the murky sky. She wondered how they were dealing, and how they’d react if she were to run into her home and tell them she was really alive and pretending to be Valerie. But she was way beyond that point—she crossed into the threshold of no return the minute she decided to stay in character.

  I bet Orion is probably cooking or meditating right now, and Dad’s probably complaining about bills, and Mom is probably reading a book and crying about me. I bet she cries about me every night. She still cries for my sister, Summer, who died when she was only three months. Oh God, I’v
e ruined… let’s see… Mom’s life, Dad’s life, Orion’s life, Shelly’s life, Shelly’s mom’s life, Shelly’s dad’s life, Valerie’s life, Mrs. Hart’s life, Mr. Hart’s life, Shawn’s life, Mr. Porter’s life, Mrs. Porter’s life… my life, too. I’ve ruined so many people’s lives… I hate myself.

  I fucking hate myself. I can’t believe Shawn cares for me. Why the hell should he? Does he… does he really like me? Or is this all for her? For Valerie? He’s called me Valerie twice now, and I’ve ignored it. Who does he really like? Me or the dead girl? I can’t even compete with a corpse, can I?

  But so what if he wants her? She’s not alive, is she? Is he only coming with me to find her? I can be her. I am her. I had to be her. I carried on her life for her… I am just as much Valerie as I am Rose.

  Wait. No. What am I thinking, here? I’m not Valerie. I’m just Rose. And I’ve caused so many people pain…

  It’s this town, is what it is. Carpenter. The people here aren’t right. They’re not normal. I’m not normal and neither is Shawn—he killed his mother for crying out loud, how can I just sit next to him? But I’m—I’m also no saint. I’ve ruined more lives than I can count. How do I live with myself? I must be the worst person on the planet.

  A loud cry left Rose’s throat. It was so sudden that she didn’t realize she did it. Shawn took his eyes off the road for only a brief moment, looked at her, then looked back to the road.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Do you really care for me or do you just like me because you think I’m Valerie? You’ve called me her name before, and I don’t know what to think. And I’m a terrible person, I’ve ruined so many lives and brought people so much pain.”

  “What? No—of course I care for you,” Shawn said. “Valerie is dead. I’m sorry I called you Valerie before, I don’t know what came over me. I’m sorry, Rose.”

  “Are you really sorry?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I wouldn’t run away with someone just because they look like someone else.”

  “I love you, Shawn.”

  “You’re not a terrible person like you think,” he said. “Listen, you didn’t ruin anyone’s life. Their lives—our lives too—and everything in this world is out of our control. You didn’t do it. Whoever runs this show did. Don’t be hard on yourself. You’re a great person. That’s why I love you, too.”

  “Are you still mad I want to find the killer?”

  “I was never mad.”

  Rose sighed. “I can tell you don’t want to.”

  “Maybe I don’t see the point in it, but I’ll give it a chance. I just think it will be dangerous. I’m sure you know that.”

  “I know.”

  “Don’t let your anger get the better of you,” Shawn said, then took her hand in his. “This killer is crazy.”

  Rose looked back to the menacing sky. “Aren’t we all a bit crazy?”

  Shawn said, “You know I meant dangerous—a threat, when I said crazy. Look, can we just forget about it? We still have the rest of this drive ahead of us.”

  Rose closed her eyes. “Okay.”

  Shawn held his breath when he saw the bridge half a mile away. It was a small bridge which passed over a lake, but even if it had only been a foot long, he still would’ve been tense. He recalled the time he had to pass over a similar bridge on a field trip, and hid on the floor with his hands over his eyes. Everyone laughed at him.

  Rose heard him gulp. She turned to him. “You okay?”

  “A little, um, nervous for the bridge. I don’t like them.”

  “Want me to—”

  “No, hon, I got it.”

  Rose looked at the car’s right mirror and a shiver passed through her. There were no other cars on the road. No witnesses. Both she and Shawn were uncomfortable.

  “Shawn?” she said. “I just had the eeriest feeling. Shelly and Valerie must have been alone that day on the road. Here we are alone… oh, you won’t let anything happen to me, will you?”

  “Nothing will happen to you,” he said. They were now beginning to go over the bridge. “Not as long as I’m here.”

  “I still miss them so much,” Rose cried. “Everything brings me back to them and that day and I feel so bad.”

  “I feel nothing,” Shawn said. “Death doesn’t bother me anymore. My grandma died years ago, and I don’t care. I see pictures of her. I remember her. I hear my parents talk about her. But I just don’t care. I don’t have any feeling about it.”

  “But I thought you missed Val?”

  “I did,” he said. “I missed her. But death feels quite normal to me. As if I can’t be sad over it. I can miss the person—hell, I miss her and I don’t miss my grandma—but it—but things don’t bring me back to the dead like they do for you.”

  “I wish I could feel that,” she said.

  “Do you?” Shawn asked. “Are you sure you want to feel nothing but numbness? Emptiness? Thinking about hurting yourself just to see if you still feel?”

  Rose, a little shocked and a little amused, replied, “Did you hurt yourself?”

  “No, but the idea has crossed my mind plenty of times. I wonder if, at this point, if I can feel again. Rosie, outside of my feelings for you, all I have is emptiness.”

  They were off the bridge; Shawn sighed in relief. It would only be a few more minutes before they would arrive in Raven Hill.

  “Bet they’ve found the book bags by now,” Shawn said.

  “Will they even remember us in a week? There… you know, there was a girl, and… wait…”

  “What?”

  “It was the day the murders started, there was a girl named Emily Oakes who vanished,” Rose said. “And nobody talked about her, but she was in that same area when she was last seen and she looked just like me and Valerie.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “But Carpenter is so strange, it just sank to the bottom of the news and I think only a couple of us even remember her. I haven’t—I didn’t hear a single person at school mention her.”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “All the dead girls have looked the same and they all died the same way, the missing eye and nose, and their faces all torn up beyond recognition. But Emily, she was just like that, and… why wasn’t her body found?”

  “Maybe she ran away,” Shawn said.

  “No, no, no,” Rose said. “I remember hearing about her, it was only briefly but she didn’t run away, nothing pointed to that.”

  “You said it got no coverage, so what do you possibly know about it?”

  “Not a lot,” Rose said. “But is it not strange? So strange.”

  “I wonder where she might be,” Shawn said.

  Rose checked out the sky again. She was infatuated with it. And when she saw that the muddy black Carpenter sky extended even into the nearing Raven Hill—something she knew couldn’t be real, it had never been like this before—she shrieked. She wouldn’t be escaping it. The darkness stretched out for miles and miles. Rose wondered if it ever ended, or if the whole entire sky around the world was engulfed in such a rich blackness.

  “Why is it following us?” she asked and pointed above. “The black sky should’ve stayed in Carpenter, but look, it’s here too.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you,” Shawn said. He looked quickly at the sky, then back to the road, and added, “Weird.”

  “Is this real life?” Rose asked. “Nothing makes sense anymore and just a few weeks ago it did make sense. Carpenter was weird, but it’s like reality has altered. I can’t take it I can’t take it I can’t take it!”

  “Breathe,” Shawn said. “We’re almost in Raven Hill, we are almost free.”

  “But did we escape it? The sky—”

  “Enough about the sky. Stay indoors if it makes you feel better, Rosie.”

  Scattered throughout the forest in Raven Hill, dozens of eyes waited and watched for the car they were expecting. The road had been empty for half an hour—it was perfect. It w
as nothing they hadn’t done before.

  An early darkness fell over the land. It no longer looked like the afternoon—it was sunset. Purple hues fought against the charcoal sky but faded into obscurity. There was no beating the sickening darkness. The darkness would always win. There were never blue skies over this part of the earth.

  Sunlight dialed back a little too quickly, and it made Rose uneasy. Shawn did not seem to notice—his eyes were glued to the road. As they passed through the thick forest, Rose studied it in fear. Her morbid curiosity searched deep between the trees, and her imagination wondered what beings might call this place their home.

  Screams as sharp as shattered glass shattered the air. Shawn hit the brakes and looked out his window.

  Rose shouted, “Don’t stop! Go!”

  He hit the gas, and moments after he did, a girl that could’ve been Rose’s sister ran from the trees and darted into their path. Her long hair flowed past her shoulders and was soaked with blood. Her face was scarred with a long gash down each cheek. Her arms stuck out in front of her.

  There was no stopping or swerving. She was dead on impact.

  “Oh, shit,” Shawn said. “We have to call the police!”

  “No! We can’t,” Rose wailed. “We can hide the car somewhere once we get to town. I’ll buy soap and rags and clean the blood off and nobody will ever have to know. Please, Shawn, we can’t stop and we can’t tell anyone!”

  And that would’ve been the plan, if the ocean of glass and nails in the road hadn’t come next. The car flipped twice after the tires were destroyed. Rose tried to see out the shattered windows and orient herself, but everything was blurry. As best as she could tell, there was a wall of fire in the middle of the road, as well. The noise of fragmented glass spun in her ears. She glanced at Shawn. A flow of crimson bathed his face. Rose’s ear slammed into the window and pain traveled hand in hand with the adrenalin that filled her. The crash seemed impossibly long.