fugue? Picked up some blunt object, hammered the screen to pieces?
His life was disintegrating like the ruined monitor.
Then he noticed something else on the keyboard in addition to the glass.
In the dim light he thought he was looking at drops of melted chocolate.
Frowning, Marty touched one of the splotches with the tip of his index
finger. It was still slightly tacky. Some of it stuck to his skin.
He moved his hand under the work lamp. The sticky substance on his
fingertip was dark red, almost maroon. Not chocolate.
He raised his stained finger to his nose, seeking a defining scent.
The odor was faint, barely detectable, but he knew at once what it was,
probably had known from the moment he touched it, because on a deep
primitive level he was programmed to recognize it. Blood.
Whoever destroyed the monitor had been cut.
Marty’s hands were free of lacerations.
He was utterly still, except for a crawling sensation along his spine,
which left the nape of his neck creped with gooseflesh.
Slowly he turned, expecting to find that someone had entered the room
behind him. But he was alone.
Rain pummeled the roof and gurgled through a nearby downspout.
Lightning flickered, visible through the cracks between the wide slats
of the plantation shutters, and peals of thunder reverberated in the
window glass.
He listened to the house.
The only sounds were those of the storm. And the rapid thud of his
heartbeat.
He stepped to the bank of drawers on the right-hand side of the desk,
slid open the second one. This morning he had placed the Smith & Wesson
9mm pistol in there, on top of some papers. He expected it to be
missing, but again his expectations were not fulfilled. Even in the
soft and beguiling light of the stained-glass lamp, he could see the
handgun gleaming darkly.
“I need my life.”
The voice startled Marty, but its effect was nothing compared to the
paralytic shock that seized him when he looked up from the gun and saw
the identity of the speaker. The man was just inside the hallway door.
He was wearing what might have been Marty’s own jeans and flannel shirt,
which fit him well because he was a deadringer for Marty. In fact, but
for the clothes, the intruder might have been a reflection in a mirror.
“I need my life,” the man repeated softly.
Marty had no brother, twin or otherwise. Yet only an identical twin
could be so perfectly matched to him in every detail of face, height,
weight, and body type.
“Why have you stolen my life?” the intruder asked with what seemed to
be genuine curiosity. His voice was level and controlled, as if the
question was not entirely insane, as if it was actually possible, at
least in his experience, to steal a life.
Realizing that the intruder sounded like him, too, Marty closed his eyes
and tried to deny what stood before him. He assumed he was
hallucinating and was, himself, speaking for the phantom in a sort of
unconscious ventriloquism. Fugues, an unusually intense nightmare, a
panic attack, now hallucinations. But when he opened his eyes, the
doppelganger was still there, a stubborn illusion.
“Who are you?” the double asked.
Marty could not speak because his heart felt as if it had moved into his
throat, each fierce beat almost choking him. And he didn’t dare to
speak because to engage in conversation with an hallucination would
surely be to lose his final tenuous grasp on sanity and descend entirely
into madness.
The phantom refined its question, still speaking in a tone of wonder and
fascination but nonetheless menacing for its hushed voice, “What are
you?”
With none of the eerie fluidity and ghostly shimmer of either a
psychological or supernatural apparition, neither transparent nor
radiant, the double took another step into the room. When he moved,
shadows and light played over him in the same manner as they would have
caressed any three-dimensional object. He seemed as solid as a real
man.
Marty noticed the pistol in the intruder’s right hand. Held against his
thigh. Muzzle pointed at the floor.
The double advanced one more step, stopping no more than eight feet from