No, that is not the work of a ghost.
Not a ghost, but certainly a doppelganger. And I believe this is just the tip of an iceberg we are about to discover.
Between us, we manage to convince the woman that – appearances aside – we are very sincere in wanting to find out more about John. Standing outside, I tell her in bits and pieces about Don’s amnesia.
Finally, she relents and lets us into the house.
“I almost had a heart attack,” she says, rubbing her scrawny chest as she leads us through a shabby lounge which also serves as a dining room. The interior is spartan but clean. The curtains have been bleached to a faded shade of blue and the furniture bears the marks of age.
The old woman’s name is Martha Simmons. She beckons us into a bedroom. Above the lintel of the doorway hangs the portrait of a handsome soldier. His features are shockingly similar to Don’s.
“He died in Iraq,” Martha explains. “Stepped on a homemade bomb in one of those Baghdad buildings and was blown into smithereens.”
I imagine Don’s doppelganger doing just that and I quail inwardly.
Don looks around.
“What is it?” I murmur.
He replies in a low voice, “I don’t recognize this place. None of it stirs any memories. If anything, I felt more of a vibe at the lakeside.”
“You owe it to yourself to investigate this place anyway. It’s too uncanny, you being the spitting image of John Simmons.”
He agrees. “Who happened to die twenty years ago.”
An uneasy doubt needles me but the connection refuses to be made. There’s something here, of course, despite Don not recognizing anything. But it’s nothing as simple as it suggests.
Martha Simmons and the little girl cannot take their eyes off Don.
“Do you have any family albums or photos of John Simmons?” I ask.
Martha nods.
As she goes to another bedroom to retrieve her albums, I say to Don, “I’m not liking this one bit. You have a vision of Neverlake, Kansas. But in reality, it isn’t as you saw it. The NPB is a covert government organization which investigates paranormal phenomena. And you turn out to be the double of a man who has been dead for twenty years.”
“So you are saying I’m a ghost?”
“Not a ghost . . . but . . . ” I shake my head. I catch my reflection in the mirror. I look every bit as bewildered as I feel.
Martha comes back, carrying with her a faded photo album. “Why don’t you come down to the living room and have a look at these photos?”
We go downstairs and make ourselves comfortable on the old sofa. As Martha makes us some coffee, Don pores over the photos. There are pictures of John Simmons as a child, doing the usual childhood things people snap photos of. He’s a very beautiful kid, and I can well see what Don himself must have been as a boy. Birthdays roll one after the other, with the candles on the cake getting progressively more numerous. There’s one of John with an arm sling, grinning at the camera.
“He was twelve at the time,” Martha says, tears misting her eyes. “Fell off a cherry tree. Broke his arm in three places.”
Don glances down at his own right arm. A memory seems to stir within.
“What is it?” I persist.
He shakes his head as if to dispel the thought. “It’s nothing.”
A man with a mustache appears frequently in John’s childhood photos. In several, he’s teaching John to ride a bike.
“That’s my husband, Stuart. He died when John was nineteen.”
“Does John have any brothers or sisters?” I ask.
“Just one. A sister, Mary. She works in Delaware.” Martha turns the page and points out to a photo of a girl in pigtails who bears a startling resemblance to the little girl who led us here. “Susan’s her daughter and I’m taking care of her.”
The pages of the album continue to turn, chronicling a boy’s life. John grows up into an incredibly handsome man. John joins the army. Gets his stripes. He’s startlingly handsome in his uniform.
“John was so proud . . . so proud.” Martha wipes a tear off her eye. “He wanted to fight for his country so badly even though I knew no good would come out of it. And I was right.”
She turns a page and jabs at a photo of John with his arms around a pretty curly-haired girl.
“That’s Melanie. They were engaged to be married before John went off to Iraq.”
Gazing upon Melanie’s photo, a premonition begins to unfold within me. I don’t know. This is a man who died twenty years ago that we are talking about. Melanie’s smiling photograph stares back at me, showing white teeth. Her hair is raven-black and shoulder length, and she has dimples in her cheeks. While not plump, she’s pleasingly proportioned in her face and arms.
Call it a sixth sense or what you will, but I just know I will meet Melanie. And the circumstances will be bizarre and unhappy.
The album comes to an end.
“He died when he was twenty-seven years old. This was the last letter I got from him.”
Martha takes out a folded piece of paper and smoothens it out. John’s longhand script is almost illegible. Don stares at it for a long while.
“May I have a pen and paper?” he says.
I produce a ball pen and notepad from my purse. Don writes ‘My name is Anonymous’.
Dread drops like a lead ball in my chest when he finishes the sentence.
He compares the two scripts. They are almost similar.
Martha claps her hand to her mouth. I feel like doing the same.
“What does that mean?” Don implores me out of anxious, frightened eyes.
I have no answer because there comes the screeching of car tires and the squeal of brake pads being applied viciously. We all look up. Outside the window, four black cars and one black van, similar to the one we stole, crowd upon the little driveway. The doors open and several men in suits get out.
Several men and one woman.
Agent Sansky strides to the front door and pushes it open. She casts a gimlet stare at Don and me.
“The two of you are under arrest,” she says.
10
It’s no use resisting. There are ten of them and two of us. I sense that Don doesn’t even try putting up a fight because he’s frightened and confused. Like me, he wants and needs answers. And maybe the NPB will be the ones to give them to him.
We are put in the back of the black van. Our wrists are cuffed before us and a stone-faced agent sits with us with a gun, trained specifically at Don. There are no windows in the back of the van for us to peer out from, and a lone light on the ceiling is our only comfort.
“I’m sorry I got you into this,” Don says in a low voice.
“You didn’t coerce me into doing anything I didn’t want to do.”
The agent merely stares at us in silence.
I clear my throat and raise my voice. “Where are we going?”
More stony silence.
“Are you taking us to the NPB headquarters or whatever you call it?”
Zilch.
“How’s that for manners?” I grumble to Don.
He murmurs, “If I look like John Simmons and if I have the same handwriting as John Simmons, does that make me John Simmons?”
“Maybe we’re about to find out.”
“If I’m not a ghost – ”
“You’re not a ghost.”
“ – perhaps John Simmons wasn’t killed in Iraq as presumed. He became part of a NPB experiment.”
I frown. “That allows you not to age? Because John Simmons died twenty years ago.”
Don’s features are troubled. “I don’t even remember a place called Iraq. Is it near Kansas?”
Okayyyy. If my hands weren’t cuffed together, I would have reached for his arm. “I believe we’ll find out about John Simmons soon enough.”
“I only wish you weren’t part of this, Jean. They can do anything they like to me, but if you are involved – ”
I won�
��t deny being scared. A few days ago, I was lonely and miserable and contemplating an entire life of being lonely and miserable. Don has reversed this by making me more alive than I ever have been.
I will never regret having Don in my life, however briefly.
We drive for what must be hours before the van finally rolls to a halt. The back doors are yanked open, and we are ushered to a concrete compound. Low buildings sit all around us, as well as silos and barracks. ‘Restricted’ and ‘No Entry’ signs are posted on almost every door.
They take us through one of these ‘No Entry’ entrances. We are marched through grey corridors of indeterminate length where we pass several people in lab coats. They all scrutinize us with an intensity usually reserved for pinned insects on a dissection slab.
Don and I are separated. An agent leads me to a hospital-like room, complete with a double bed, a bathroom and artificial flowers on a desk. There are no windows anywhere, and the adjacent bathroom is small but clean, possessing only a shower space.
The agent slams the door behind him and bolts it.
I am effectively a prisoner.
*
I spend an entire night wondering what has happened to Don. Are they interrogating him? Fat lot of good that would do, seeing as he can’t even remember Iraq. If they don’t get the answers they want, what would they do to him?
I picture all kinds of worrisome things happening to Don. Electroshock torture. Waterboarding, like I’ve seen government agents do to spies in movies. Or is Don one of the NPB’s own creations, now brought back to their fold after having escaped?
If I am privy to something I am not supposed to know, then I have clearly seen and heard too much. I can kiss all semblance of a normal life goodbye.
But I’m not sorry for having met and fallen in love with Don. Not one bit sorry. If I had to do it all over again, I would do it in a heartbeat.
My door opens without warning. I am in bed, and I clutch the bedclothes to my chest. I am thankfully not naked, having donned the pair of white pajamas they gave me. Still, they are being very rude.
The same agent who accompanied us in the van stands at the doorway.
“Come,” he says. “You are wanted.”
*
The agent leads me to white door with a panel beside it on the wall. He depresses the panel and it folds in, revealing a boxlike niche containing a scanner. He places his index finger on it. A red light buzzes and the door slides open.
“Enter,” he says.
As if I have an option.
The room inside is clinical, with a table and several chairs as well as a hospital bed. Don lies on the bed, wearing just a pair of white briefs. He is surrounded by several men and women in lab coats. Agent Sansky and two other male agents stand by the wall. Agent Sansky’s arms are folded.
Don tries to sit up as soon as he sees me, but a male doctor with a short white beard presses him down.
I cringe inwardly at Don’s appearance. He is magnificent as always, of course, especially half-naked. But electrodes snake from his chest to a heart monitor where steady yellow wavy lines run. I catch the reading on his heart rate – it’s a very low 42 beats per minute. There is a bandage around his right forearm.
“Jean? Are you all right?” Don says anxiously.
Agent Sansky turns to me, and then back to him. “As you can see, she’s perfectly all right. If you would like to keep her that way, it would wise for you to comply with everything we ask of you.”
“Don?” I say in a shaky voice. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.”
“Touching, very touching.” Agent Sansky says this in a manner that suggests she doesn’t find this touching at all. “Now that you have seen her, we shall resume, shall we not?”
She shoots a glance at the agent behind me. “Take her away.”
The agent catches hold of my arm and manhandles me out of the door, but not before I catch the stricken look in Don’s eyes.
I understand perfectly now why they are keeping me here.
I’m collateral.
*
It’s a whole worrying day before Agent Sansky oils her way into my prison cell.
“Leave us,” she tells the agent who accompanied her.
As the door shuts, she turns to me. We do not exchange any pleasantries for a long while as she studies me, and I her.
She finally murmurs, “What he sees in you, I will never know.”
My pulse quickens. So Don has feelings for me, feelings which he has probably confessed – for better or for worse – to our captors.
Is that a gleam of envy in Agent Sansky’s eyes?
“Why are you here?” I demand. “To crow over me? What are you doing to him?”
We both are standing, facing off each other. I’m aware that physically, I am no match for her. It’s not just her size. She reeks of ‘professional assassin’ vibes.
“Him,” she repeats. “Yes, let’s talk about him. He appeared overnight in your storm shelter. At least that’s what he tells us.”
So she wants to corroborate our stories.
“Yes.” I grit my teeth.
“He’s a fine specimen, and I don’t mean just in the aesthetic sense.” She lifts her chin. “I’m not sure you know what you are even dealing with.”
“Then tell me.”
“He has the muscle fibers of an Olympic sprinter and the healing capacity of something beyond human.”
“Are you saying he’s not human?”
I’m a little alarmed. He’s not a ghost, is he? Ghosts don’t have hearts, let alone resting heart rates.
She laughs. “No. He’s very human, as you’ve undoubtedly found out. But quite unlike any human we know.” She pauses. “In this world.”
Here it comes. I’ve suspected as much.
“Then what is he?”
I know she’s going to tell me because she wants this knowledge to wound me, not out of any kindness to keep me informed.
She smiles. “Do you know how we found you?”
I picture the rush of officious black cars to the lakeside house.
“No.”
“You were very careful not to use your credit card or cellphone. I’ll give you marks for that. Truly, you have more of a criminal mind than you realized.”
Her perfect white teeth shine like tombstones in her scarlet splash of a mouth. I’m sure she didn’t mean that as a compliment.
“However, you neglected to erase your Google Search history from your laptop. I was able to find out where you were going quite easily.”
So that’s how she found us. Deleting my Google Search history had never occurred to me then, or ever.
“Yes.” She walks over to the table where remnants of my lunch smear the plate. “Not a potato person, are you?”
I clench my jaw.
Agent Sansky picks up my fork and twirls it. “He’s not one of ours, just in case your speculations go down that path. He’s not something we created in a vat of DNA.”
“Then stop beating around the bush and tell me who he is.”
For answer, she flashes me a secret smile. “Since you’re not going anywhere, I’ll tell you.”
That sounds ominous. She means me to take this knowledge to my grave.
“You can’t keep me here forever. I’ve done nothing.”
“You have assaulted a government agent. You aided a government fugitive. You’ve done enough for us to keep you under lock and key forever. Believe me, there are plenty of people in this facility who have done a lot less than what you have.”
Unease crawls down my spine. Still, I want to know.
She goes on, “The Umbra Project was created to harness the power of the tornado.”
The pieces suddenly come tumbling down.
“However, it generated an unexpected side effect. Through accident, we found that a portal in the time space continuum can be opened in the eye of a tornado.”
I hold my breath. “Portal to what?”<
br />
“Your guess is as good as ours.” She sounds almost conversational, as if discussing a dissertation with a fellow scientist. “The portal is open for only a very brief period. During that time, we have managed to pick up objects from different places.”
I am piqued despite knowing that I am not meant to let this knowledge travel beyond these walls. “What do you mean – places?”
Agent Sansky seats herself at my table. She leans against the back of the chair with the air of someone who knows she has total power over me.
“Once, we picked up a bowl, completely intact. At first, we thought it was carried from somewhere else in the tornado’s path, but the bowl contained particles unlike anything our world has ever known.”
She lets this sink in.
My throat is dry. “What else have you picked up?”
“The Umbra Project was renamed Project Oz, which gives you an inkling of where all these objects were coming from. We picked up a metal fan with strange writing which corresponds to no known writing in our world. On another occasion, we picked up a living creature.”
I can see where this is heading.
“A cephalopod. Not a documented species in our world either. A pity it died three days in captivity.”
I remember Don’s fainting spell and nosebleed, and a sudden rush of dread fills me.
“Your friend, the one you call Don and whom we codenamed Subject A21, is our most significant yield yet. He appeared on Oz’s scanners as an infrared signature. But we lost him as the tornado we were tracking spun out of projected path. We hazarded that he was somewhere in the vicinity, and providence led us to you.”
Yes. I guessed as much. Don was just too strange, too otherworldly. Still, to have the truth laid so starkly in my face . . .
“So where is he from?” I say in an awed voice.
“Your guess is as good as ours. It’s no doubt he’s from a different place. It might be in our world, though it’s looking highly unlikely. He might even be from a different era, and I’m willing to bet he’s not from our past.”
She lets this trail and I fill in the blanks.
The Gorgeous Naked Man in my Storm Shelter (Erotic Suspense) Page 7