by Hunter Shea
“They stayed here for one week and we put him through everything we could think of. He scored a remarkable above-average on several tests, high enough to pique my interest at the time. Whatever untapped powers that had been opened to him from the encounter with the doppelganger, if that was truly the catalyst, were sadly short-lived. Within a year, he reported back to me that he was no longer anticipating what people would say before they spoke or having visions of events moments before they occurred. It was as if it had given his brain a short-lived charge that could power his extra sensory abilities until it just fizzled out. That wasn’t unique in and of itself, but the fact that he and his girlfriend had been seeing a doppelganger before it happened was.”
Eddie wasn’t sure where this was going or how this information was supposed to help him. Dr. Froemer didn’t keep him hanging long.
“Morgan Stern and Gigi Staub lived in Massachusetts at the time, a little north of Boston. I could see if their phone number still works and ask if they could meet you. They’re a nice couple, very sincere. Maybe talking to them could help shine a light on your situation.”
“That would be fantastic. We’re about an hour away from Boston, so we could meet them any time.”
“Good. I’ll call them later this morning, after my meeting. I’ll let you know.”
Eddie hung up and knocked on the connecting door to Jessica’s room.
“Any luck?” she asked.
“There’s a couple near Boston that had their own experience with a doppelganger. We may be able to meet them.”
Jessica gave him a hard fist bump. “We’re two for two. I just got off the phone with Rita Leigh. Greg is at work and she wants us there. We’re going back now.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
After Rita Leigh had gotten off the phone with Jessica, she asked Selena if she could take Ricky out to the park so they could both get some air. Selena had eyed her suspiciously, but there were times when a mother had to protect her kids. Rita did not want either of them around when Jessica and Eddie returned. First, she wasn’t sure how Selena would react to seeing a picture of her double. Second, she didn’t want them to have to lie to their father. This way, they were none the wiser about the entire thing.
Jessica and Eddie rang her bell fifteen minutes after Selena had taken Ricky with great reluctance to the field several blocks away. Neither of the ghost hunters looked as if they had slept much. “Can I get you both some coffee?” she asked, showing them into the living room.
“Coffee would be great,” Jessica said.
Rita couldn’t help but notice her shaking hands as she stuffed the filter into the coffee maker and poured in the water. She was nervous as hell. Preparing coffee delayed the viewing of the picture, which would mean complete validation of everything that had been happening. It was a welcomed validation as much as it was terrifying. It meant they weren’t all crazy, but it also meant they had a bigger issue to face.
She laid out some cookies and sat across from them.
“Believe me, Mrs. Leigh,” Jessica began.
“Please, call me Rita.”
Jessica fumbled with her phone, turning it over in her hands again and again. “Rita, we would never have come back here unless we thought it was absolutely necessary. I understand why your husband was upset and kicked us out. That was very unprofessional of us.”
Rita slowly nodded and took a sip of her coffee.
“What I’m about to show you is pretty intense. It’s the reason we’re here now, and I hope you can convince your husband to let us stay. When you see it, you’ll understand why I didn’t even bother asking you if Selena had been home last night.”
She pressed a button and made a few finger swipes across the screen. Rita felt her heart tap dance in her chest and she could hear the rush of blood in her ears. When Jessica handed the phone to her, she held it in both hands to keep it steady.
“It all started when Eddie heard knocking on his door at three a.m. At first, we thought it was Selena. But there was something about the way she looked and was acting that didn’t seem right. When I tried to approach her, she ran off, bumping into and tearing off a car mirror. Eddie had been taking pictures and it was too dark in all but this one, the first one he took. Seeing it confirmed that it wasn’t Selena that had found us at our hotel.”
A rush of tears sprang to Rita’s eyes as she looked at the grainy image on the phone.
Sweet mother of God, it can’t be! How is such a thing even possible? But there was no denying it, not this time.
It showed something that looked like Selena, but pale, its features as waxen as a full moon. It had been in the process of turning away from the camera, though she could still see most of the face—Selena’s high cheekbones framed by strands of her straight hair, her thin upper lip and the distinctive bump at the bridge of her nose, a result of having broken it while playing soccer when she was nine.
But the eyes!
They were just two black pits, at least four times the size of a normal person’s eyes. They reminded Rita of pictures of gray aliens that she’d seen on TV shows and books.
And if she needed further proof that the being caught on camera was, in actuality, not her daughter, the diaphanous body, so insubstantial that she could see the car behind it through its gauzy form, settled things for good. She pushed the tears from her cheeks with a hasty swipe and gave the phone back to Jessica.
Eddie was the first to speak. “Despite what you just saw on the camera, to our eyes, she looked as real and solid as your daughter.”
“It didn’t take long for us to realize something was off. At first, I thought Selena was in shock, but there was just an odd feeling about her that didn’t seem right,” Jessica added.
For the first time since this entire madness had started, Rita felt true, stomach-clenching fear. She knew she had to show this to Greg, to get him to understand what was going on, and to let Jessica and Eddie help them. Her brain buzzed with differing scenarios on how her breaking the news to him would work out.
Jessica asked, “Would you mind if we stayed here for the afternoon? Just to get a feel for the house, learn its sounds so we know what’s normal and what’s not?”
Rita checked her watch. Greg wouldn’t be home for another six hours.
“Yes, I would like that,” she said, her voice shakier than she would have liked. She was about to ask if they preferred her in the house or not when Eddie’s eyes flicked somewhere over her left shoulder. His body stiffened.
“Is everything all right?” Rita asked, snapping her head around in the direction of his gaze.
“Don’t mind me,” he assured her. “I thought I saw a spider on the wall. I have a thing about spiders. I’m happy to report it was just my eyes.” He gave her the same kind of grin that she would give her kids when she lied to keep them from knowing something that wasn’t meant for young minds. She decided to let it go, not ready to hear any more strangeness this morning.
“Well, I think I’ll meet my kids at the park, maybe take them out to lunch in a little bit. The house is yours until four o’clock. I’ll be back by then, and my husband gets home around five.”
Jessica reached over the coffee table and clasped her hand. She could feel the tight muscles in the slight girl’s hands.
“We won’t change anything around in the house or make a mess, I promise. This is what I wanted to do last night, which is just sit still and absorb things. I’ll make sure we wrap up before you get home.”
Rita thanked them, got her purse from the kitchen table and left, eager to see her daughter. She needed to hold her and she didn’t give a damn whether Selena wanted the public display of affection or not.
Once Rita closed the door behind her, Eddie jumped from the couch and strode toward the stairs. He pointed to the upstairs hallway.
“I’ve got some news that I think you, of all people, are going to like.”
Jessica eyed him with growing suspicion. “I was looking that way, t
oo, and I didn’t see Selena’s doppelganger.”
“I didn’t, either. No, what I did see, though not in the sense that I saw with my eyes, was something else entirely. Now I know why everything was coming up a blank. Remember when I said it felt like something was consciously blocking me?”
Jessica nodded as she turned on her audio recorder.
“It was because there is something in the house trying to keep itself hidden.”
“Something else?”
“Jess, we’re not alone right now. There’s an entity, or EB, whatever you want to call it, in this house. It’s powerful and it’s not nice at all.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Jessica joined Eddie at the bottom of the stairs and was about to make her way to the second floor when he tapped her arm.
“It’s not up there, not now,” he said.
“What is it? You said it was powerful, so that rules out a residual haunt. Is it a non-human EB?”
Jessica referred to these types of hauntings as demonic, but she wasn’t sure of Eddie’s personal religious philosophy. She didn’t know if implying there was a demon would have him dismiss her outright. It had been proven to her that there were dark forces in the world, and demonic workings were at play, somewhere, every minute of the day. Whether they were demonic in the religious sense was still up for debate. Biblically based or not, evil was evil and forces of evil were best labeled as demonic.
Eddie shook his head. “No, this was definitely a person, and I stress the word was. It felt strongly like a male and he was very interested in our conversation. I think he was concentrating so hard on us that he forgot to conceal himself from me. Once he realized I had latched on to him, he slipped back into the void.”
“Did you get anything like a name or the reason he’s here?”
“It was just a quick impression, but it was enough to make me wince. There’s some bad shit surrounding this EB. It makes that Edwin Esposito EB look like Casper.”
Jessica was happy to see that he had adopted referring to ghosts as EBs, even if it was just to stay on her good side. A question popped into her head.
“Is there any chance this male EB is also masquerading as Selena’s double?”
Eddie walked back into the living room and paced. It looked as if he was searching for something but had no idea where to start. Next, he went to the kitchen, stooping down to open cupboards.
He looked up at her. His hair had fallen across his face and he had to blow a lock out of his eyes. “To answer your question, I don’t know. Like I said, I have zero experience with doppelgangers. I don’t think we’d be going out on a limb by following that line of logic, though. The bigger question is, why is he here and then, why is he choosing to be seen as Selena’s doppelganger? Until we get more information, we’re just connecting the dots on a page where ninety percent of them have been erased. So, what’s next? You’re the expert on this part.”
Jessica pulled a second audio recorder out of her pocket. “Your Spidey sense telling you the best place I should put this and let it run?”
Eddie rolled his eyes. “Spidey senses. Very original. Like I said, he just came and went. I have no idea where he is now, if he’s even here at all.”
“You’re positive he’s not hiding under the sink?”
“You’d be surprised where spirits hide out. Having zero mass makes it easy to find a spot where you won’t be disturbed.”
“Point taken. I guess I’ll just put this in Selena’s room and keep the other one down here in the living room.” She jogged upstairs, placed it on Selena’s desk and came back down. “Now for the fun part. This is where we get to sit quietly and just let the house come to us.”
“Something tells me our nasty little EB isn’t going to be back any time soon,” he said, taking a seat around the kitchen table.
“I don’t mean the EB. I…we need to understand the house better. That way, when something does happen, we can filter out the common from the uncommon. You comfortable down here by yourself?”
He crossed his hands behind his head. It reminded Jessica of Liam. He almost never sat without the back of his head cradled in his hands. “For the moment. It’s getting hotter. Is it a rule to keep the fan off?”
“Yes, it is. The fan noise will ruin the audio.”
She felt satisfied by the look of resignation on his face.
“You won’t be suffering alone. I’ll be upstairs sweating my ass off.”
She spent the next several hours alternating between sitting in Selena’s room and the hallway. A couple of times, she heard Eddie walking around, but overall he did a very good job of keeping as still and silent as could be expected. It was almost three when she stopped the recorder and came downstairs. It had been uneventful, but that was normal. Other than the Haunted Mansion in Disney, houses were typically pretty sedate, even the haunted ones.
“You can turn the fan on now,” she said.
Eddie wasted no time switching on the ceiling fan and positioning himself under its cooling breeze.
“Anything else come to you?” she asked.
“Nada, other than a very strong personal feeling that we need to come back.”
Jessica bit her upper lip. “Yeah, that’s the part that worries me right now. I’m hoping that Rita can convince Greg that we need to be here. A doppelganger doesn’t seek you out in the middle of the night without a damn good reason.”
Rita returned at four on the dot with Selena and Ricky. The young boy was wearing a Red Sox cap rimmed with sweat and dirt. He barely gave them a second glance before running up to his room.
“He’s having video game withdrawal,” Rita explained. “When I saw your car outside, I told him that we had exterminators out to check on the house.”
“I would have done the same thing,” Eddie said.
Selena’s face brightened when she saw them, a wave of relief softening her posture as her shoulders dropped, relieving the obvious tension she’d been carrying around all day.
“You’re back!” she exclaimed.
“Yes, your mom was nice enough to let us in.”
Standing behind her daughter, Rita motioned with her hands to keep it short, meaning she hadn’t told Selena about last night. Jessica winked in acknowledgement.
“Mind if we talk to just your mom for a little bit?” she asked.
Eddie piped in, “You know what, I wouldn’t mind talking to Selena while you two catch up. Is that okay with everyone?”
Rita at first looked reluctant, so Jessica added, “That sounds like a good idea.” Eddie had broken her rule about interjecting himself but she realized it was a good idea to deal with them separately.
Rita nodded and Selena said, “You want to talk out in the yard? We can sit on the patio in the shade. I’m all sunned out today.”
Eddie followed her out the back door. Once they were out of earshot, Jessica told Rita about the male EB that was in the house and her feeling that it may be the same thing posing as Selena. It was a difficult conversation because Rita looked as if she was about to pass out once she mentioned that the EB was giving off a negative impression. Jessica spied the clock in the kitchen, counting the minutes she had left before Greg Leigh came home and threw them out on their ears, again.
The air was much cooler in the yard. The patio was surrounded by two ash trees, providing plenty of shade. Cicadas chittered away. Eddie remembered calling them heat bugs when he was a kid and how their buzzing music always signaled the heart of summer.
Selena had brought out two bottles of cold water. He had to restrain himself from chugging it all at once.
“So, how long have you been doing this?” she asked.
Eddie almost choked on the water. “Me?”
“Both of you.”
He was at a crossroads—did he lie and tell her he was a battle-tested expert, or admit that this was only his second investigation? She looked so tired, so desperate for answers. He couldn’t bring himself to lie to her.
“But I thought Jessica had this big website and did all kinds of cases,” she said when he told her this was his second time.
“Don’t get me wrong. Jessica is younger than me, but she has a lot of experience. She’s the pro here. I’m like the apprentice.”
Selena narrowed her eyes at him. “I’m a girl and I can tell that Jessica isn’t someone who needs or wants any help.”
“How would you know that?”
“Call it female intuition.”
Eddie recalled the various tests he’d seen performed at The Rhine, analyzing just that. When all was said and done, female intuition turned out to be no better than chance guessing. Lab tests aside, past experience with the fairer sex had taught him better.
“You’re right, I’m not exactly an apprentice.”
She sat back in the Adirondack chair and smiled, satisfied. Her yellow tank top pulled up to reveal her taut, tanned stomach. “I knew it. I’ve always been good at reading people. So, what are you to her?”
He knew that she needed something to give her strength, to make her realize that she was no longer in this alone, that help was here and her sleepless nights were coming to an end. Facing a doppelganger wasn’t only terrifying, it was also intensely personal. Her core had been shaken and there were cracks in the foundation. What he said next had to help rebuild her.
He knocked back the rest of his water and placed the bottle on the table.
“Do me a favor and pick up that bottle,” he said.
Selena’s eyebrows knit. “Why?”
“Just humor me.”
She shifted forward and took the bottle in her right hand.
“Now, hold on to it, but not so tight that you crush it.”