Case File 13 #3

by J. Scott Savage

  “Now isn’t the time to be thinking about food,” Nick snapped.

  Carter grunted. “I think better when my stomach isn’t growling.”

  “Mr. Blackham got me thinking with his talk of causality,” Angelo said, ignoring Carter’s disgusted expression. “Let’s go back to the beginning. What events preceded us finding the homunculus in the first place?”

  “He swiped my food,” Carter said with a wistful expression. “A homunculus after my own heart.”

  “Okay, good.” Angelo wrote 1-Food on a piece of paper. “Somehow he managed to get into a locked car. Which means he has the ability either to pick locks or squeeze through small spaces.”

  “The car window was open only half an inch or so,” Nick said. “That would be an awfully tight squeeze.”

  Angelo nodded and added that to the notes. “What happened after that?”

  “Well,” Nick said, “Carter woke us up. We heard noises. You guys were a bunch of chickens. So I went outside.”

  “Chicken.” Carter rubbed his stomach and groaned.

  “After that”—Nick closed his eyes, trying to picture the scene outside the tent—“I was freaked out because I thought Bigfoot was about to . . .” He remembered something that hadn’t occurred to him until this very moment and jumped off the bed. “Angelo, pull up the pictures you took at the campsite.”

  Angelo powered on his iPad and scrolled through his photos until Nick said, “Stop.” It was the picture of the huge footprint they’d found outside the tent.

  Angelo slapped his head. “I forgot all about this.”

  “Carter Junior didn’t make that,” Carter said. “Twenty homunculi together couldn’t leave a footprint that big. And there were more of those prints farther into the woods.”

  Nick studied the footprint. “If Carter Junior didn’t leave that footprint, what did?”

  “Maybe the homunculus and the Bigfoot hung out,” Carter said. “I could totally see Carter Junior going all, ‘Dude, wash your toes sometime! Those big feet of yours reek like rotten cabbage.’”

  “Hey, what about the movie we made the next morning,” Nick said. “The one where we were following the cookies. Did you ever go back and study it?”

  Angelo smacked himself again. “I’m the worst scientist ever.” He opened his bag and began rummaging through it.

  “Speaking of cookies,” Carter said, “I’m going to poke around your kitchen and see if you have any human food.”

  “Here we go.” Angelo pulled out the digital camera and connected it to his computer. When he clicked play, a shaky video showed a close-up of Carter—his face so pale that each of his freckles stood out like one of those connect-the-dots games.

  There wasn’t actually much to see. Angelo talking about the origins of the term Bigfoot, Carter searching for cookies, lots of crazy angles on trees. “So much for my career as a cameraman,” Nick said.

  “Don’t touch it,” Angelo’s on-screen voice said. He stepped in front of the camera, looking down at the three straight lines. He turned to look back at Nick. “This can’t be accidental. Are you recording this?”

  Although Nick couldn’t see himself because the camera had been strapped to his head, he remembered nodding and moving around for a better look. Sure enough, the camera bobbed up and down, turned for a moment, and then zoomed in on the three lines.

  “Hang on.” Angelo paused the movie, then slowly began to move it forward.

  “What is it?” Nick asked. “Did you see something?”

  Angelo stopped the video on the huge redwood they’d found Carter Junior hiding behind. “The same three lines are on the tree.”

  “Sure,” Nick said. Three lines on the left, three on the right, and three on top. “It has to mean three of something. Three homunculi? Three Bigfoot?”

  Angelo reversed the video. “Right after you nodded, just before you straightened out the camera, I thought . . .” He froze the film. As Nick had been moving around to get a clear shot, he’d tilted his head. On the screen, everything was sideways; the trees looked like they’d all been blown over in a huge storm. He started to turn his head to see more clearly, but Angelo stopped him.

  “Wait. Look at it from this angle. What do you see?” Angelo asked. He was clearly excited about something. But Nick couldn’t tell what.

  “The same thing we saw then,” Nick said. “A bunch of trees. Carter’s dirty shoe. And three lines of cookies.”

  “Three lines,” Angelo agreed. “But not the vertical lines, three horizontal lines. When you look at it from this direction, the three parallel lines go from left to right instead of up and down.” He reached into his backpack and pulled out his math book. He quickly flipped it open to a page and pointed to a symbol just like the one the cookies were arranged in. Nick read the definition written below the symbol.

  “Equivalent. Identical to.” He looked at Angelo, excitement racing through his body. “What does it mean?”

  “Identical to,” Angelo muttered to himself. “German. Equivalent. People not acting like themselves.” He glanced toward the mirror above his desk and his eyes opened wide. “That’s it!” he shouted so loudly that Nick took a step back.

  Angelo ran to his closet and began hastily rummaging through books. A moment later he found what he was looking for. He slammed a thick book on the table, checked the table of contents, and opened to a section halfway through.

  Nick leaned over to take a look. It was a picture of a man staring at an exact duplicate of himself—like the reflection Angelo had seen of himself, only without the mirror. Beneath the picture was the definition.

  Doppelgänger: The spiritual or physical duplicate of a living person. From the German doppel (double) and gänger (goer).

  Nick licked his lips and looked at Angelo. “You think?”

  Angelo nodded. “The man we saw jogging down the street this morning wasn’t Old Man Dashner. It was someone or something that looked just like him. Ms. Schoepf wasn’t Ms. Schoepf. It was her doppelgänger.”

  Nick had a horrible realization. “The guy who told my mom and me that we were going out to eat wasn’t my dad, it was his doppelgänger. That means there’s something in my house right now, pretending to be my dad!”

  Carter walked into the room munching on a bag of tortilla chips. “Did I miss anything?”

  Nick started for the door. But Angelo grabbed him.

  “I have to go make sure my parents are okay,” Nick said, pulling out of his friend’s grasp.

  “How will you even know if they’re your real parents or not?” Angelo asked. Nick paused. “For all you know, you could be talking to a doppelgänger without even being aware of it.”

  Carter stopped with a chip halfway to his mouth. “What’s a doppelrainer?”

  “Doppelgänger,” Angelo said. He picked up the book. “Doppelgängers are mythical creatures capable of looking and sounding just like their doubles. Although the German word meaning ‘double goer’ is fairly recent, history is filled with stories of physical or spiritual duplicates. Ancient Egyptian mythology called it a ka. In Norse, it’s a vardøger. In Finnish folklore, an Etiäinen is a spirit double.”

  “What do these doppelgängers do?” Nick asked. “What do they want with my dad, and Mr. Dashner, and Ms. Schoepf?”

  Angelo checked the book. “Not all the stories agree. But according to many accounts, a doppelgänger’s appearance can mean bad luck, danger, or even death.”

  Nick felt like someone had some slammed a lead weight on his chest. He could barely breathe. “My dad’s going to die?”

  “Come on,” Carter said, grabbing a handful of chips. “You’re trying to make us believe there are a bunch of what? Evil twins, running around the neighborhood getting ready to kill everyone? Let me guess, they’re all riding purple unicorns and blowing party horns.”

  Angelo glared. “I didn’t say they were going to kill anyone. I said their presence has been known to occur shortly before something bad happens—whi
ch, at times, has been death.” He flipped the page. “According to several reliable sources, shortly after Abraham Lincoln was elected he looked into a mirror and saw two reflections of himself. One was normal. But the other looked pale and deathlike. His wife thought it was a warning that he would be reelected to a second term but wouldn’t live to see the end of it. And that’s exactly what happened.”

  Nick grabbed the book. “Let me see that.” He scanned the text. There were dozens of stories of people who saw doubles right before something terrible happened. A guy saw a duplicate of his pregnant wife in France shortly before she lost her baby in England. Percy Bysshe Shelley, the husband of the woman who wrote Frankenstein, met his own doppelgänger. The doppelgänger pointed to the Mediterranean Sea, and a few days later, Shelley drowned there. It was scary stuff.

  But in at least a few cases, the doubles didn’t seem to do any more than cause mischief. “Listen to this,” Nick said. “In France there was this thirty-two-year-old schoolteacher named Emilie Sagée. She was writing on the chalkboard when her students saw her exact double appear standing beside her. The two looked exactly the same, except the doppelgänger wasn’t holding any chalk.

  “Another time a bunch of girls were in class. When their teacher left the room Sagée’s double appeared again—sitting in the teacher’s chair. A couple of the girls tried to touch her, but their hands got pushed away by some kind of force.”

  “How do they know it was a doppelgänger?” Carter scoffed around a mouthful of chips. “Maybe the teachers were just pulling a trick on them.”

  “Pretty tough to do when the girls could look right out the window and see the real Emilie Sagée planting flowers in the garden. According to this, lots of people reported feeling sick or weak either just before their double appeared or right after he left.” He stared at Angelo. “My dad said he wasn’t feeling good right after his doppelgänger told us we were going out to dinner. And didn’t you say you were feeling tired right about the time Angie and her friends said you were telling them to meet you at your house?”

  Angelo dropped into his chair. “I have a doppelgänger. That was who talked to the girls pretending to be me. They must suck some kind of energy from you.”

  Nick nodded. “Like psychic vampires.”

  “You guys really buy that mumbo jumbo?” Carter asked. “It’s total garbage. But you won’t listen to me. I’m sick and tired of you two thinking you’re so much smarter than I am. All Carter can do is eat and crack jokes. Well, you know what? I’m the only person in this room with a bit of common sense. You can believe whatever you want, but I’m out of here.” He threw the bag of chips on the floor and stomped from the room.

  “What was that about?” Angelo asked.

  “No clue,” Nick said. “Maybe we better go after him.”

  Before they could, Carter came back into the room. “Man,” he said, rubbing his stomach. “I was looking for food when all of a sudden I got major stomach cramps. Totally thought I was gonna hurl. But then it went away and I just felt kind of tired.” He glanced down at the bag on the floor. “Who brought the chips?”

  “Whoa!” Carter chomped a mouthful of chips. “You’re saying I was in here just a minute ago?”

  “Not you,” Angelo said. “Your doppelgänger. It sucked some energy from you to create itself. That’s why you got the stomachache.”

  “Dude, that is totally awesome!” Carter dug another handful from the bag. “What did I say? Was I like, ‘Hey, bro, I’m Carter. What’s happening? Do you guys want to par-tay with me and my twin?’”

  “It wasn’t like that,” Nick said. “Mostly it was complaining that we don’t take you seriously enough. It said we think we’re smarter than you and all you do is eat and crack jokes.”

  He thought Carter would laugh at the idea, but instead his friend nodded. “It’s kind of true, you know. Sounds like my doppelgänger’s not all bad.”

  “What are you talking about?” Nick asked. “Of course it’s bad. Doppelgängers cause trouble, and sometimes people even die after their double appears.”

  Carter dropped the chips. “I’m gonna die?”

  “We don’t know that,” Angelo said. “I wish I’d realized it wasn’t you. I could have taken pictures or asked it questions.”

  “How many of them do you think there are?” Nick asked.

  Angelo checked his book. “In the stories it’s just one at a time. It could be one here copying many different people. Or it could be a lot.”

  “We have to get rid of them,” Nick said.

  Carter raised his hands. “What if we just pretend we don’t know anything about them and hope they leave, like Carter Junior?”

  “I’m not sure that’s an option,” Angelo said. “Your double heard us talking about doppelgängers. They’re aware that we know about them.”

  “How do we stop them?” Carter asked. “Do we stab them in the heart with a wooden stake or cut off their heads with a samurai sword?”

  “They aren’t vampires,” Nick said. “And this isn’t Highlander.”

  Angelo flipped through his book. “I can’t find anything in here about how to kill them. No one even seems to be sure that they’re actually alive. The first thing we have to do is figure out how to recognize them. Then we have to find a way to reverse whatever created them in the first place.”

  “I need to get home and make sure my dad’s okay,” Nick said.

  Carter looked out the window. “The sun’s almost down. No way I want to be outside after dark. I bet that’s when they’re the most powerful.”

  “I told you, they’re not vampires,” Angelo said. “But you’re right. We should go home. Nick, you check on your dad. I’ll do some more research. And Carter . . . you’re as smart as any of us. So you do some research too.”

  Carter gave him an odd look. “All righty, then.”

  “Keep an eye out for you-know-what,” Angelo said, peeking out the door.

  All the way home, Nick watched for doppelgängers. Mrs. Wood was out front watering her flowers, which she always did. Mr. Lewis was shooting hoops with his kids. He missed most of his shots, but he wasn’t a very good basketball player, so that probably didn’t mean anything.

  When Nick got home, Mom was in the living room reading a magazine. He studied her from the kitchen, trying to spot any differences that might reveal her as a double. She looked up from her magazine. “Need something?”

  “No,” Nick said. “Just saying hi.” He tried to sound casual as he asked, “Where’s Dad?”

  “Upstairs on his computer.” She went back to reading, and Nick went to check on his father.

  Dad looked up from the computer with a distracted expression when Nick knocked on the door. “Whatchu doin’?” Nick asked.

  His dad rubbed his eyes and smiled. But it wasn’t the creepy smile from the night before. “Well, I came upstairs to email the company I booked our campground through. I’m positive I filled out the right month. But that was twenty minutes ago. I guess I must have dozed off.”

  “That’s cool,” Nick said. He searched for any sign of the Evil Dad double, but he didn’t really know what he was looking for. If doppelgängers looked exactly like the people they were copying, there would be no way to tell them apart. At least not from their appearance.

  He tried going with a different approach. “I was wondering if you might consider increasing my allowance? I was thinking maybe double?”

  Dad chortled. “Sure. Just as soon as you start doing twice the chores.”

  “Fair enough.” Nick grinned and went to his room. That was definitely the real Dad.

  The next morning, Nick woke up before his alarm had even gone off. He’d been having a nightmare where his mom and dad were snowmen. The sun had been melting them just enough to reveal horrible monsters beneath their snow-white skin. Trying to shake off the memory of the dream, he peeked in on his parents, made sure they were both sleeping normally, and left a note on the kitchen table explaining
that he’d gone to Angelo’s to catch up on some schoolwork.

  Angelo answered the door on the first knock.

  “Any luck with your research?” Nick asked.

  Angelo led him into his room, where books and papers were spread over every available surface. “Wow!” Nick said admiringly. “You don’t do things halfway, do you?”

  “We have to know what we’re up against,” Angelo said. “And, frankly, things don’t look good.” He grabbed a handful of notes. “The first thing we have to figure out is where the doppelgängers came from. There seem to be two theories on that. The first is dark magic. Sorcerers are supposed to be able to create doubles of themselves or others using something called bilocation. That’s probably out unless you know a sorcerer who’s ticked off at you.”

  “Not at the moment,” Nick said.

  “Okay, well the other option is that something lured them here.”

  “Carter Junior,” Nick said at once.

  Angelo nodded. “That’s what I was thinking. This is just guesswork on my part. But let’s assume the homunculus and the doppelgängers are both from the same place.”

  “That could explain the big footprint.”

  “Maybe,” Angelo said. “No one knows exactly what a doppelgänger looks like when it isn’t copying a real person. It could be that they are huge. It could even be that all those Bigfoot sightings were really doppelgängers in their native form. If that’s true, the theft of the homunculus could have upset them. Or, even worse, it could be, like, attracting them.”

  Nick pressed a fist to his mouth. “Like bears going after a pot of honey.”

  “Exactly,” Angelo said. “And Mama Bear is hungry.”

  “Okay, so that means we just find Carter Junior, return him to the woods, and the doppelgängers all go home. Right?”

  “It might not be so easy.” Angelo turned to his computer and pulled up a map. He pointed to an area of nearly uninterrupted green. “This is where we were camping.”

  Nick leaned over his shoulder. “Looks like the middle of nowhere.”