I started to close up the phone, when I heard her call out, “Wait!” I hesitated, then brought the phone back up to my ear.
“What?” I snapped.
“If you won’t come to me as I am, then I’ll take a form that I know you’ll find appealing.”
My stomach fell, and for a second I just closed my eyes. I knew who she was talking about. Until this moment I’d been trying to fool myself into thinking that it wasn’t going to come to this, but really I knew. The second I caught her scent in the air at school, I sensed deep down that it meant trouble.
I glanced through the windshield at the big house. Amber was somewhere inside, waiting for me. And I could go in there, I could protect her tonight, even tomorrow. But not forever. Somehow the sheganger would find a way. After all, it’s what we’re good at. It’s what we’re made for.
That and one other thing. Suddenly I knew what I had to do.
“You still there?” she said.
“All right,” I said. “You know Parson Woods? The forest outside of town where you ditched the Subaru?”
There was a pause. She was trying to figure out how I knew. “Sure,” she said at last.
“Meet me there at eight thirty.”
“I knew you’d come to your senses.”
“Let’s just get it over with,” I said. “Half an hour.”
“Sounds good,” she replied. “I’ve got some business to take care of anyway.”
“So do I.”
I closed up the phone before she could say good-bye. I didn’t want to hear her say another word.
I started up the car and backed out of the driveway as fast as I could. Trying to keep one eye on the road as I headed down the street, I flipped the phone open again and pressed the button Amber had showed me earlier. It wasn’t easy—I almost dropped the stupid thing my hand was shaking so hard. A few seconds, later Amber’s voice was in my ear.
“Hi, Amber,” I said.
“Chris?”
“No, it’s Gabriel,” I said, trying to laugh.
“Sorry,” she said. “I can’t believe I forgot. It’s going to take me a while.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “Listen, Amber, I’m going to be late.”
“What’s wrong?” she said. She wasn’t dumb. She could tell something was up.
“Nothing serious. There’s just something I’ve got to do first. I’m sorry. I’ll tell you all about it later.”
“You promise?”
“I promise,” I said.
There was a pause on the other end. “Okay,” she said at last. “Oh, by the way, did Ms. Simpson call you yet?”
“No,” I whispered.
“Well, we had this long talk. It was really weird, but it was good. And that whole thing that happened yesterday—when I saw you two—we cleared it all up. Sorry again that I overreacted. Anyway, there’s a quiz you need to make up. She said she’d get a hold of you.”
“Thanks, Amber,” I said. “I’ll see you soon.”
“See you soon,” she said.
I glanced at my watch as the headlights appeared through the trees. Eight thirty. She was punctual, all right. Somehow that didn’t surprise me. I leaned against the hood of Barry’s car and tried to seem steady, tried to seem cool as the headlights came around the corner and flashed onto me as she pulled up.
She stepped out of the car and walked toward me.
“Hey, gorgeous,” she said.
“Did you take care of your business?” I asked. I had an idea what it was, but I wanted to make sure.
“Just needed to tie up some loose ends. Write a few letters, that sort of thing. It seems Ms. Simpson has abruptly resigned and left town for unknown parts so she can—how do they like to put it?—go find herself.”
“So you’re dropping her just like that?”
“Why not? After tonight I won’t need her anymore. Besides, think of it as a public service—should supply this town with enough gossip to get them through the next few years,” she said. “Then again, who knows? Maybe she won’t even be missed.”
“She will be. I know I miss her.”
The sheganger sighed. “Ms. Simpson? You’ve got to be kidding me. And all this time I thought you didn’t like the teacher.”
When I didn’t say anything, she took another step closer. Even in the shadows, I could see her eyes sparkle as she smiled at me, her breath coming in little puffs of steam in the night air. My nostrils flared as her scent started to reach me through the cold.
“Well, I brought her along if you want to say hello. She’s right back there in the trunk.”
“No thanks,” I said, taking a few steps back. I needed to get away from her smell.
She laughed. “Look at you. Even now, you’re still fighting it. All because of some human female. Some silly little girl.”
“She’s not some silly girl,” I said. “And I’m doing this for her.”
She sniffed. “How noble of you. You know, I might just kill the pathetic little thing anyway when this is over.”
“Why do you have to go and say something like that?”
“Well, somebody has to teach you a lesson. You can’t get all involved with these people. Otherwise, how can you be what you are? It’s not good for you. It’s certainly not good for them. You need to understand.”
“I understand, all right.”
“Good. Now, let’s get down to business, handsome. Which backseat do you want, yours or mine? Mine’s more comfortable.”
I pulled the pistol from my pocket and raised it. It was Barry’s gun. I’d gone back for it after leaving Amber’s. I wasn’t sure I’d use it, I wasn’t even sure I could. Now I’d find out.
The gun shook slightly in my hand as I pointed it at her.
She squinted for a moment, as if she was trying to figure out what I was doing. Then she started to laugh.
“A gun?” she said. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
I didn’t say anything.
“You can’t seriously be thinking about doing this,” she sneered.
“I told you to leave her alone. You wouldn’t listen to me.”
“What the hell is wrong with you? I mean, just for the sake of argument, so what if I did take the girl? It’s no different from anything you’ve done.”
“It is different!” I shouted.
She shook her head in disgust. “All right, enough. Put the gun away and let’s go. It’s time.”
“No,” I said. The gun lowered slightly. “I told you before, it isn’t going to happen. I don’t want it to.”
It wasn’t completely true. A part of me still wanted to, even after everything. And seeing her there right in front of me, her scent so close, didn’t help. But it wasn’t what I’d come here for.
“Of course you want to,” she said. “You have to. That’s just the way it is. You can’t fight nature.”
“I’m going to try,” I said, raising the gun again.
“By killing me?” she said, her voice rising slightly. I could tell she was starting to get a little worried. “You don’t want to couple, fine. But you can’t kill me. We don’t kill one another. We never have.”
“Why not?”
“We just don’t. There are too few of us to engage in that sort of nonsense.”
“I don’t care,” I said. “I can’t let you hurt her. I can’t let you hurt any of them. Not anymore.”
“But that’s what I do. That’s all that I am, you know that. I kill. I’m a doppelganger.”
“So am I,” I whispered, cocking the gun.
She shook her head again. “They really got to you, didn’t they? You know, it’s kind of ironic if you think about it. I mean, you talk about defying nature, resisting me, resisting your urges, but if you hadn’t given in to them, if you hadn’t killed Chris, you never would’ve gotten to this point.”
“Life’s funny, I guess,” I said.
“It certainly is.” She smiled and looked down at the ground.
“Turn around.”<
br />
She took a step toward me. “I know what this is about,” she said. “You think that if you do this, it’ll be over, right? All the conflict you feel, the guilt, the self-loathing, it’ll all come to an end by killing me. Isn’t that so?” She took another step.
“Stop it!” I shouted. “Turn around!”
“Well, it won’t,” she said, then paused. “It won’t ever end, because the urge will always be there. In fact, it’s there right now, isn’t it? It’s been a while since the last time, after all. Since you took Chris.”
I was shaking pretty bad now. She started walking toward me again.
“Please don’t do this, Chris,” she cooed. “I know you can’t. You can’t kill your own teacher.”
“I’m not Chris,” I whispered. “And you’re not her.”
“I can be whoever you want me to be,” she said.
Her arms reached out.
Nothing can prepare you for the first time. No matter what you’ve seen on TV, no matter what anyone tells you, there’s something about shooting a gun—the noise, the recoil, the muzzle’s flash—that takes you by surprise.
I don’t doubt that the look of shock on my face matched her own as we both stared down at the hole in her chest. She reached up and put her fingers to the spot, then pulled them back to gaze at the blood blackening her hand.
When she looked back up at me, the shock was beginning to fade and the slightest smile had settled in.
It lasted only a moment.
Soon she began to twitch, then bubble and blur as her human face slowly dissolved and her true features emerged, starting with the eyes—the wide bulbous orbs mingling with Ms. Simpson’s nose and mouth. At that point I turned away. I just couldn’t watch.
When I looked back, she had crumpled. The transformation was complete.
I walked over to where the sheganger lay sprawled across the gravel and watched the slit of her mouth as it opened and closed a few times. Then, in the headlights’ glow, she went still.
CHAPTER TWENTY
For a long time, I just kind of sat there, crouching in the gravel beside the body. I was starting to feel really lousy—headache, nausea, hot flashes, cold flashes. It was like my body was turning against me, a sort of biological rebellion. I’d been holding on for so long that I think my whole system was going into toxic shock. And then seeing the sheganger lying there like that with her head turned toward me, it was almost enough to push me over the edge.
In the end I just focused on being Chris. That’s what got me through—keeping my will bent on holding the form and thinking like a doppelganger.
The first thing I did was stick the sheganger in the trunk of the Jetta. It wasn’t easy. Sure enough, Ms. Simpson—the real one—was back there, looking none too good, and it took a bit of cramming to get the doppelganger in beside her.
After that, I got in and drove off, out of Parson Woods and back through town. I needed to get rid of the bodies—both of them—and I needed help to do it.
It was after nine by the time I reached Amber’s. For almost an hour, I just sat in the car, trying to control the shaking that had come over me. I was all screwed up. I wanted to go in there so badly, to see her and smell her and hold her again, even though it had been only a few hours since we were last together. It was like I needed her. But at the same time, the idea of going in there and asking her to leave with me and help do what she’d already done for me once before—well, it made me sick, to be honest. I mean, tonight was supposed to be special. It was supposed to be our night, and now it was ruined. Everything was ruined.
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t ask her to help me. In fact, the more I sat there thinking about things, the more I realized I couldn’t ask anything of her, no matter how much she might want me to. I couldn’t put her through the awfulness that lay ahead of me, that would always be there. I mean, she didn’t deserve it. And on top of all that, what would I do if another sheganger came calling?
I looked back at the house. Television light flickered from the living room windows. I knew I had to go in there. Not to ask her to help me, but to say good-bye.
I forced myself out of the car, went to the door, and knocked.
Amber didn’t say anything when she saw me, but I could see her eyes widen as she opened the door. For a second I was afraid I’d lost Chris and reached up and felt my face. Everything seemed to be in place, no monster eyes that I could tell. Then I realized it wasn’t fear on her face, just worry for the pale, trembling wreck standing there in front of her.
She pulled me inside and shut the door. Before I could say a word, she threw her arms around my neck and pulled me into a long, deep kiss. It was the first time we’d kissed since she discovered who I really was, and maybe that was why this time I didn’t feel afraid. This time I felt like it was for real. At that moment it seemed to be the only thing that was real.
At last she released me, and as we stepped back and looked into each other’s eyes, I discovered I’d stopped shaking. All of a sudden, I felt real still inside and free, like I’d suddenly escaped.
“I’m glad you’re here,” she said, putting her head against my chest.
“Me too,” I said. “I’m sorry I’m late.”
“It’s okay. It doesn’t matter. None of it matters. Like you said this afternoon, we can worry about things later. Tonight we can forget.”
I didn’t know if she was saying it for me or for herself, but it didn’t matter. At that point, I couldn’t have told her about what had happened with the sheganger anyway, let alone say what I’d come to say. Not after the kiss. I mean, she was asking me to join her in a place I’d always wanted to go, a place where everything was normal, where the truth didn’t matter or maybe even exist. I just couldn’t say no. I would forget about all of it for her.
For a while we just lay together on the couch in the living room watching TV, like we were just another couple, like it was any old night. Except that I wasn’t really watching. I was too busy caressing her arm, her hair, taking in her scent. I wanted to take in all of her, to breathe it all in and hold it so that it would never leave me.
Then she asked me to come upstairs with her, and I did.
I had been nervous before about the idea of sex, and on the way up the stairs the feeling came right back, even more so since the sheganger had gotten me all stirred up. But when the moment actually came, the nervousness went away. Amber helped me through. It was tender, gentle—I don’t know, it just felt right. After all the killings, after all that had happened with Barry and everyone else, this was as far away from that as you could get. And for the first time, being with her, being a part of her, I forgot about the monster that I was. I felt human to the core, not just on the surface. I remember wishing I could stay that way forever.
Afterward I held her in my arms. We didn’t say much. It was like we both felt a little shy, but in a good sort of way. It was all okay.
“Don’t worry, Gabriel,” she murmured. “We’ll figure it out. We’ll figure everything out tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow.” It was the last word she said to me before she fell asleep. I wish she hadn’t. For some reason it stuck in my head, and all of a sudden I started thinking of Macbeth, of that sad, terrible soliloquy at the end: “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow…” The words kept echoing through my brain, and after a while I began getting the itchy feeling all over again, along with the hot flashes, and I knew that I hadn’t really escaped. Chris was falling away.
And that wasn’t all. As I lay there beside Amber, I began to feel the urge. At first I thought it was just the strain of holding on to Chris, but pretty soon I could tell that it was coming back, the old familiar clenching. It was the goddam sheganger again—she’d cursed me by mentioning it right before I shot her. That had to be it.
For the rest of the night, I lay there as still as possible, trying to ignore it, hoping it would go away, that it would all go away. But it didn’t. If anything, it got worse, slowly building with ea
ch beat of Amber’s heart against my chest, like grains of sand falling through an hourglass onto an ever-climbing pile, beat after beat, grain after grain, tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. It was as if, in the act of being with Amber, I had used up the small part of me that was human. All that was left was doppelganger, and I’d been a fool for thinking it could be any other way.
At last I couldn’t take it. I detached myself from Amber, climbed out of bed, and headed for the bathroom. I thought I was going to be sick. After a few steps, though, I felt so dizzy I just sat right down at the end of the bed. I put my head in my hands and took some deep breaths, and soon I started feeling a little better. So I picked my head up.
And that’s when I saw him.
I almost cried out at the sight of the creature staring at me in the dim glow of the nightlight. I looked away and rubbed my eyes, and when I looked back at the mirror hanging on the bathroom door, all I saw was Chris. The doppelganger was gone. I glanced down at my hands, at my arms. Sure enough, they were still human.
Get a grip, I told myself. But there I was, shaking all over again, worse than ever. I’d forgotten how ugly I was. You’d think seeing the sheganger earlier would have softened the blow, but I guess it’s different when it’s yourself.
I reached up and felt my neck. This time pieces of skin came off in my hands, big, dry flakes, and I wondered how much time I had left. Probably only a few hours, if that. I looked over at Amber, lying there under the covers, her hair fanned out across her pillow. She looked so peaceful. So perfect.
I stood up and started putting on my clothes. I couldn’t stay, I couldn’t let her see me as I really was. And now that the urge was creeping back, I knew for sure that I had to go. It wasn’t so much that I was afraid of hurting her. I just didn’t want to feel that way around her. It wasn’t right. The whole thing was one big mess.
I finished dressing, then removed the medallion from around my neck and took one last look at good old Jude, patron saint of lost souls, before placing it on the pillow beside her. I supposed I needed him more than she did, but I wanted her to have something to remember me by. I needed her to.
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