by Hunter Shea
Crissy shrugged. “Sure. Just grab whatever you want out of the fridge, except the vodka in the freezer. My mother keeps tabs on the level. Like I’d ever drink her booze.”
Julie shot Selena a look that said, what the heck have we gotten ourselves into?, got a bottle of water and joined them in Crissy’s room.
Surprisingly, it was bright and uncluttered. There were no posters of anarchy symbols or Rob Zombie and it smelled faintly of potpourri. They all sat on her bed and Crissy said, “Okay, tell me again what happened.”
That was one thing about Crissy. Always eager to get to the point. She never did have time for meaningless pleasantries.
Selena took a deep breath and told her about the thing in her closet that had looked just like her, as well as what had happened to her father and mother. Crissy listened with rapt attention, asking for more details here and there. Julie pulled her knees to her chest and shivered.
When she was done recounting the weirdness in her house, Selena leaned against the headboard and massaged her temples.
“And that’s why I can’t eat and sleep on the floor in my little brother’s room. Sounds crazy and pathetic, right?”
Crissy was lost in thought. Suddenly, she jumped from the bed and went over to her desk. “I know what it is!” she shouted, hammering at the keys on her computer. When she found what she was looking for, she tilted her monitor toward them.
“This is serious shit, Selena,” she said. “What you saw in your closet is called a doppelganger.”
“A what-a-ganger?” Julie asked.
“A doppelganger. It’s German for double walker. Check this out. All throughout history, there have been reports of people coming face to face with their own double.”
“You mean, like someone who looks just like them? Kinda like they say everyone has a twin somewhere?” Selena wondered.
“Not really. These doppelgangers aren’t living beings. They’re kind of like a phantom. Most times they appear as solid as a regular person, though there have been many cases where they’re semi-transparent or their basic coloration is just off, dull. This stuff goes all the way back to Egyptian times where they believed the soul had an exact copy of itself called the ka. They even made special rooms for the ka in Egyptian tombs.”
Julie moved closer to the screen. Crissy was scrolling down to read the text on a website dedicated to doppelgangers.
“OMFG,” Julie said. “So these things are, like, twins to our souls?”
“It’s not that simple,” Crissy said, shaking her head. “There are tons of theories on the nature of doppelgangers. Some say they’re simply astral projections, while others think they’re independent beings, sent from the great beyond to a person’s life for a very specific reason. Since no one’s been able to capture one, all we have to go on is theory and conjecture. Although, some people have been known to have whole conversations with their doppelganger. This site doesn’t list anything that might have been recorded about those conversations. I can’t imagine what a trip that would have been.”
Selena turned toward the window, watching the rain cascade down the glass in winding rivulets. She was too afraid to look at the website.
Crissy continued, “In almost all cases, people feel that the doppelganger came to warn them of an impending disaster. There are a lot of cases where famous people saw a doppelganger. Mark Twain saw and spoke to the double of a woman at a party. The real woman was miles away at the time. Percy Shelley, the poet and husband of Mary Shelley, the chick who wrote Frankenstein, supposedly saw his weeks before he drowned. Writers Goethe and Guy de Maupassant had their encounters as did lots of Catholic saints from Saint Ambrose to Padre Pio.”
“Isn’t Padre Pio that Italian priest who had the bleeding hands thing?” Julie asked.
Crissy arched an eyebrow. “It’s called stigmata. How the heck did you know that?”
“My mom’s into saints and stuff like that. She buys all these special candles with saints on them and reads these pamphlets the church gives her. That woman loves to pray.”
Selena paced around the room clutching a tan throw pillow to her chest. “So what does this all mean? Why are we all seeing my doppelganger and what can I do to get rid of it?”
The tension in her voice was only matched by the intensity of the storm.
Crissy mumbled to herself and she worked her way down the web page. Julie came to Selena’s side and rubbed her upper arms.
“Okay, in some cases, they’re what they call a bi-location of the self, which is just a fancy way of saying an out-of-body projection. These are the kind seen by other people, like when this woman saw her brother’s, even though he was in another country. His doppelganger looked and sounded exactly like her brother, except he never moved his left arm. He visited her in her living room on three successive nights, just popped in while she was sitting down to read, sat in the chair opposite her to say a few words, then walked out the door, or more like through the door. When her actual brother did return a month later, she fainted when she saw that his left arm was missing. He’d had an accident and lost it in a threshing machine. Communication wasn’t the best back when this happened, so he wasn’t able to get word to anyone until he was able to take a ship back home.”
“That’s crazy-eerie, Crissy. Are there other types?” Julie asked, plopping onto the bed.
Crissy drew a deep breath. “Selena, you may want to sit down for this.”
Selena stopped her pacing and sat close to Julie on the end of the bed.
“The thing that is most associated with the appearance of a doppelganger, especially when it’s your own, is death omens. More times than most, when people see their double, it’s a warning that they’re about to die soon.”
Tears welled up in Selena’s eyes. It was hard to breathe.
Crissy was quick to add, “But, it’s not one-hundred-percent, so don’t freak out just yet. If this was something that happened a lot, you would have heard it on the news by now and not on some website.”
“So how do we tell this thing to get lost?” Julie said, speaking for her friend who was too shocked to form words.
“Give me a few minutes to check.”
Julie pulled Selena’s head to her chest and gently rocked her. “It’s going to be all right, Sel. You’ve got me and now we have Crissy. We won’t let anything hurt you.”
All Selena could think was I’m going to die. It played over again and again, ratcheting up her fear and despair with every repetition.
After ten minutes of searching, Crissy threw her hands up. “I can’t find any instances of a doppelganger being eradicated, except for this one case but it was reported by this paranormal group that I know for a fact is full of shit. It’s like doppelgangers go just as mysteriously as they arrive. Selena, you said you found some places that you think could help?”
Selena wiped tears from her eyes and fumbled to get her laptop out. “I bookmarked about ten different websites.”
“Good. Let’s get started looking at them. We’ll find the right one and email them today.”
Selena could only watch with mute fascination as Julie and Crissy went through each website she had found a few nights earlier and cross-checked each on both computers. She couldn’t help but be lost in her own thoughts, wondering how it could be that a sixteen-year-old girl should face her own mortality thanks to some death-omen-carrying double of herself. Everything felt too hallucinatory to be real. Yet here were her friends, accepting what she had told them, doing their best to find some answers. Maybe she did have a chance. Maybe they would find the right person to help them.
But the bigger question overrode any glimmers of hope. Why was her doppelganger here?
And what was it trying to tell her?
Chapter Twenty
The air around Eddie and Jessica filled with enough static electricity to raise the hair on their heads straight up. The sounds of growling and short chuffs surrounded them. It was like being dropped in a cage full of t
igers, except they were invisible and highly agitated.
“This can’t be good,” Eddie muttered.
“You won’t find this in any ghost hunter manual,” Jessica replied from within the dark. “I told you, I seem to bring out the best in these things.”
Eddie cried out with a sharp yelp before dropping to a knee. Jessica swung her arm in an arc behind her, searching for him.
“Are you okay?” she said.
Through pained breaths, Eddie choked, “Don’t call…him a…thing. He…he really doesn’t like that.”
There was a loud crash behind them, but it was impossible to see what had been tossed on the floor. It sounded as if the old shovels had been picked up and launched against one of the rough cement walls.
The EB’s presence was all around them, wrapping them in a cocoon of angry, crackling energy. Jessica’s fingertips found the top of Eddie’s head. She knelt down to whisper in his ear.
“You getting anything from him?”
Eddie paused, then replied, “Just anger. There’s so much rage right now, it’s like trying to spot the moon through a storm cloud.”
She patted his shoulder. “Just keep your connection open or whatever it is you do. I think I detected our moment.”
Before he could muster a reply, Jessica was back on her feet and shouting.
“You don’t like being called a thing, huh? Well, you like to scare little kids, so that makes you a pathetic, weak, dickless thing in my book.”
A warning rumble, like the steady gnarling of an approaching bear, echoed throughout the basement. It was meant to frighten them into leaving. It was only logical that a person would run from the house, never to return, if they were to hear such a sound in the darkest recesses of a cellar.
Jessica saw it as her chance to keep on the offensive.
“Did you like to play zoo animals when you were alive or something? How does it feel to be reduced to a thing that sits in a crappy basement, so impotent that you can only make lame noises and move furniture around? God, I’d hate to be a meaningless thing like that.”
She didn’t know what prompted her to duck, but she was glad she did. She felt the sharp breeze of something sail over her head. It struck the back wall with a loud clang.
Eddie, who was still on the floor, grabbed her calf.
“It’s going to hurt you if you don’t stop.”
“Maybe.”
Tiny pinpoints of white light materialized from the darkness and flitted about the dark like fireflies on a humid summer night.
“Oooh, pretty. Now we get a light show,” Jessica said. She clapped her hands, loud and slow, in mock applause. “Isn’t that neat, Eddie? It can make teeny little lights.”
Eddie hadn’t let go of her leg and she could feel his hand tense around her calf. She heard him suck in a quick breath, then groan. “My head is going to split.”
“Just hang in there for a little bit more,” Jessica said. Eddie released her leg and she moved deeper into the basement. Then, to the EB, she shouted, “You know what, thing? The McCammons are going to sell the house. Yep, you heard me, they’re tired of your antics and they’re moving out. But here’s the part you won’t like. I think I’m going to buy it from them. That way, you and I can have nice chats like this day after day after day. Just me and my thing in the basement.”
Something grabbed her from behind and she felt herself being lifted several inches off the floor. Her shirt bunched up under her neck, making it hard to swallow. Her body felt as if it were immersed in ice water. For the first time since entering the basement, Jessica felt fear.
She gripped the collar of her shirt with both hands, swallowed back her rising terror and continued. “If you don’t like me calling you the ‘T’ word so much, why don’t you just tell me who you are?”
Her voice trembled a bit and she worried she had lost her advantage.
Eddie, in the meantime, had regained his footing and rushed up to wrap his arms around her waist. He tugged as hard as he could until her feet were back on solid ground.
“You leave her alone!” he shouted.
She heard him wheeze as he pressed his face against the back of her neck and his grip on her loosened.
When her body began to rise again, he reached out, accidentally grabbing her breasts. She didn’t care. She needed him to keep her grounded, in more ways than one.
“Just don’t show fear,” he whispered. “He’s about to crack.”
Eddie let the barn doors of his mind wide open. He felt the male spirit walk right on through, bursting with unbridled fury, careless in its anger. This was the way it worked for him. When he was young, spirits came to him at their will, invading his dreams and waking hours with stories, laments, requests. It got to the point where he couldn’t concentrate above the din of the dead that surrounded him.
When he turned fourteen, his dad taught him how to close them out, how to let them in when he was ready. His father, being raised on a farm in Iowa, had created his own mental totem, a place that stood guard at the divide between the living and the dead. He passed that totem on to Eddie, who had been using the image of the barn ever since. The big red doors were closed tight most of the time, even when he sensed the scratching of the disembodied on its wood slats.
Only now, he threw the bar that rested within the metal holders on either side of the frame free and the doors sprang open. The full image of the man’s spirit raged into the barn. He was tall, rangy, with narrow eyes creased by deep crow’s feet. A heavy, brown mustache drooped down past his chin. A dark, well-worn fedora was perched on his head. The spirit’s lips pulled back in a sneer. Oh, it was not happy. Not at all.
Eddie stood before the door, siphoning its essence, searching for what he needed.
He got that and much, much more.
Eddie hissed in her ear, “Edwin Esposito. His name is Edwin Esposito.”
Jessica’s courage returned. Gotcha!
“Show’s over, Edwin Esposito! Now I know you, and I order you to leave this place. You can go to heaven or hell, but this place is no longer your home!”
Jessica felt the temperature in the basement begin to rise and the sounds of moving objects and growling ceased. The moment the last word left her lips, the spirit of Edwin Esposito vanished into the ether.
Jessica turned the camcorder light on and scanned the basement. The place was a mess. No box had been left undisturbed and all of the old gardening utensils and tools were scattered about the floor.
“He’s gone,” Eddie said, his shock impossible to hide.
“That he is.” She waited for him to say something else, then added, “You can let go of me now.”
“Oh…yeah…right. Sorry. Just wanted to make sure you didn’t float away,” he said with a heavy dose of embarrassment. Jess was sure that if she shined the light in his face, it would be as red as a McIntosh.
“Come on, let’s go upstairs and see what’s what,” she said.
With Jessica leading the way upstairs, they went through every room in the house. The kitchen floor was a disgusting mess, but nothing else had happened to it while they were in the basement. Other than the dining room, the rest of the rooms on the other floors were undisturbed. Best of all, she could tell that they were devoid of the EB’s presence.
It was almost four in the morning when they finished packing things up. Jessica said she wanted to wait for Tim McCammon to get home and tell him the good news, face to face. In the meantime, she reviewed the video footage from the basement. All that had been caught was a few tools being tossed against the wall. Unfortunately, the camera hadn’t been turned her way when Edwin Esposito decided to play rough and lift her off the floor.
While she watched the video, Eddie sat in an opposite chair with an icepack over his head. Even after four aspirin, the pounding in his head refused to go away.
She had just shut the camera down when Eddie asked, “How did you do it?”
“Do what?”
“You know,
make Edwin’s spirit take off just by saying his name and telling him to hit the bricks. I’ve never seen or heard of anything like it.”
Jessica zipped up the camera case and rested her arms on her knees, studying him. “I don’t know. I only know that it works. Better I should ask you how you got his name like that.”
“I told you I could talk to the dead. No parlor tricks. But with all the things I can do, I don’t have your kind of power.”
“You call it power. I think they’re just afraid of me. Without you down there, I wouldn’t have been able to use it. He damn near choked me out. And I’ll bet his name wasn’t captured on any audio. It was either you getting that for me or nothing.”
Eddie pulled the icepack from his head and tried to smile. It made him wince. “So, I did good?”
Jessica nodded. “Yeah, you did. We still have four hours before Tim gets back. What do you say we get some sleep so we don’t look like a pair of zombies? Unless you think Edwin is still around.”
“I can assure you, Mr. Esposito is someplace far, far away.”
“Good.”
Jessica yawned, leaned back on the couch and was asleep in seconds.
Chapter Twenty-One
Rita Leigh opened her son’s door a crack, wincing when the hinges wailed in protest. Ricky was asleep in his bed, his covers already tossed on the floor. He’d always been a restless sleeper. Selena lay curled up on the blow up mattress, her back to the door. Rita watched her for several minutes to make sure Selena was asleep and not faking. The soft, gentle rise and fall of the sheet that was tugged up to her shoulders assured her that the mild sedative she had given her had done the trick.
Rita’s heart broke. As a mother, she had almost gotten used to those moments that were out of her hands, like when the kids were sick and all she could do was nurse them back to health. There was nothing in the parent guidebook on how to protect your child from what she could only think was a ghost—a spirit that for some reason had decided to make itself look exactly like Selena.