Doppelganger (15 page)

We talked about school and stuff for a while as we ate. I let Echo do most of the talking. I liked to listen to her funny stories about school. She was a pretty smart kid and knew how to tell a good story, better than I could, anyway. Then, halfway through a story, she suddenly stopped.

“Where's Dad?” she asked.

“I don't know,” I said. I'd been so distracted thinking about the job ahead of me that I hadn't noticed Barry had never come home. “It's Friday. He's probably at Twisty's,” I said. Twisty's was his favorite bar.

“Maybe we should call,” she murmured.

“He'll be home in a while,” I said. “Besides, it's nicer without him here. Don't you think?”

She shrugged and nibbled at the corner of her sandwich. I could tell she didn't like me talking that way.

“I'm going out tonight,” I told her, to change the subject. “I don't know when I'll be home.”

“Are you going on a date?” she asked, brightening.

“Sort of,” I said. “You going to be okay here? You got a movie or something to watch?”

“I have a book. The new Lemony Snicket came in at the library. I got to sign it out first.”

“What's Lemony Snicket?”

“He's a writer. He writes these books. They're called ‘A Series of Unfortunate Events.' They're really funny.”

“‘A Series of Unfortunate Events,' huh?”
I could write a book like that
, I thought. “Well, good, then,” I said, finishing my sandwich. I got up and did the dishes. By the time I finished, it was quarter past seven. Time to go.

I grabbed my jacket, snuck out to the garage for my things, and went to leave. Just as I was coming out of the garage, though, a pair of headlights turned into the driveway, shining right on me, shovel and all.

Blocking the headlights with my hand, I saw Amber sitting behind the steering wheel watching me. She turned off the lights and got out of the car.

“Hey,” was all I said.

“Where you going?” she asked.

“Nowhere,” I said. “Just picking up around the yard.”

“At night? In the dark?”

“Something like that.”

“Chris,” she said. I started when she said the name. She'd stopped calling me that after learning the truth, and it felt strange to hear her say it now. Then I realized she wasn't calling me that at all.

“You're going to Chris, aren't you?”

I nodded. “I've got to take care of him,” I said. “I didn't do the best job before, and now—”

“All the cops looking around,” she said. “That Springfield Killer.”

I nodded again and started to walk by her. As I did, she grabbed my arm and looked up into my eyes.

“You're not him are you?” she asked.

“Who?”

“You know. The one they're looking for?”

“The Springfield Killer?” I said. I started laughing. Probably not the nicest thing to do, but a look of relief came across her face. “No,” I said, “but it doesn't matter. If the police find the body…well, you can imagine.”

She let me go. But as I reached the end of the driveway, she called out.

“Wait!” she said. I stopped and turned as she approached. “I want to come with you.”

“Amber, I don't think that's a great idea. It's bad enough if I get caught, but I don't want you to be involved. Besides, it could be pretty gross. I mean, it's been three weeks. You know what I'm saying?”

“I don't care,” she said, shaking her head. “I want to help.”

I hesitated.

“Please, let me do this,” she said.

I shrugged. “Let's go.”

I threw the shovel and pack into the back of her car, and we headed off toward the abandoned lot at the edge of town next to the tracks. We didn't say a word, but as we drove away into the night, I realized I'd never been so happy not to be alone.

 

“How much farther?” she asked. Even though Amber was right behind me, holding on to my jacket, her voice sounded far away as we walked along the tracks.

“Not much,” I said.

There wasn't any moon out, not yet at least, but between the stars and the lights from town, I could see well enough. Amber's human eyes had a tougher time. Still, I
didn't want to use the flashlight. Not yet, anyway. I didn't want anyone to see us. Not only that, I had no idea how long the batteries would hold out. The last thing I wanted was for the flashlight to die in the middle of digging.

A couple minutes later, the trees on our right fell back. We were coming to the clearing. It looked different in the dark without the campfire. It seemed bigger.

I smelled Chris twenty yards from the culvert, that odor of decay that's sweet but not sweet. It wasn't strong, but it was enough to make me pull up.

“Sorry,” I whispered as Amber bumped into me.

“What's wrong?” she asked.

She was nervous. I could hear it in her voice. I wanted to tell her it was okay, that I was nervous too, but I held back. I figured it would only make her feel worse if I told her the truth. Besides, it actually made me feel better to pretend not to be afraid. Like pretending made it real.

“We're close,” I said.

We went a little farther, and then I spotted the culvert. By then we were close enough that Amber could smell him too. I heard her take a sharp breath and groan a little, but she didn't say anything.

We scrambled down the bank and paused by the edge of the culvert.

“Hold these,” I said, handing her the pack and shovel.

I reached way into the culvert as far as I could. For a second I couldn't feel the plastic, and I got scared. I had this sudden fear—what if they'd found him? What if they'd taken him away and only the smell had stayed? But then my fingers brushed along the edge of the rolled sheet. It was a weird feeling—both relief and revulsion at the same time.

Planting my feet, I reached in with my other hand, got a good hold, and pulled.

To my surprise, the body slid out pretty easily. In fact, I almost fell over and would have pulled him right on top of me if I hadn't caught myself at the last second. It seemed as if Chris had lost a little weight.

“Ugh,” Amber gasped as the smell suddenly grew stronger. I could hear her breaths starting to come quick.

“If it weren't for the cold and the plastic, it would probably be worse,” I offered.

“You think?” she murmured.

“Breathe in through your mouth.”

“I'm trying,” she said.

I leaned over to her, opened the pack, and pulled out the flashlight.

“Wait,” she said, grabbing my arm in the dark.

“Amber, we need to see. I have to find a spot. Somewhere to dig.”

“Don't shine it on him,” she whispered. “Not yet.”

“I won't,” I said.

I flicked the light on. It was bright. Painfully bright, even with it pointing straight at the ground, and I felt like every cop in the area suddenly knew we were here. Then my eyes adjusted, and it wasn't so bad. I left Chris and headed toward the edge of the clearing. Amber was right beside me. I didn't blame her for not wanting to be left back there alone.

After a little bit of poking around, we found a good spot behind some trees in a little opening where the ground was soft. I planted the spade and turned to go back for Chris, when Amber stopped me.

“Leave him there,” she said. “Dig the hole first.”

“Good thinking,” I said.

And so I did. For the next hour, I dug while Amber stood by holding the flashlight on me, lighting up the dark shower of earth that flew from my shovel with every scoop. It takes a lot longer to dig a grave than you might think, especially when you're trying to make it deep. And I was going for the six-foot standard. It wasn't just about keeping the dogs or whatever else away, not anymore. I wanted him to stay buried for good. So I tried to be careful, to do it right. In fact, I spent almost as much time cutting up the sod into squares and setting them aside to put back later as I did digging the hole.

We didn't say much, though at one point Amber asked if she could help dig for a while, to give me a break. I told her no, that it was my job.

“After all,” I said, “I'm the one who killed him.”

“Maybe so,” she said, gazing down at the hole, “but I'm the one who wanted to.”

We looked at each other for a moment, then I went back to digging.

Not long after that I finished. We went and got Chris, pulled him across the grass and up beside the grave. I was about to roll him in when Amber spoke up.

“I want to see him,” she said.

“You do?” I said, stepping back from the body.

She glanced up at me and nodded.

I took the jackknife I'd swiped off Barry's workbench from my pocket and opened it up.

“You're sure?” I said, holding the knife over the plastic. She nodded again, holding the flashlight close to herself so
that her breath sent little puffs of steam into the light's beam.

I cut through the layers of plastic, one at a time, until I made it all the way through, then pulled the layers apart so that everything was open from the shoulders up.

Then I stood back. She slowly moved the light until it was shining on his face. Needless to say, he didn't look too good. In fact, he almost didn't even look like Chris, but enough so that there was no mistaking him.

Amber turned the light on my face for a second. I squinted and covered my eyes. When she pulled the flashlight away, I could see she was shaking her head.

“What's wrong?” I asked.

“I'm still trying to get my head around all this. I think a part of me was holding out, believing that you—or him, I guess—had just gone insane. Some bizarre schizophrenic crack-up, you know? And this story of the doppelganger. This crazy, elaborate fable…”

“It's no fable,” I said. “Sorry to disappoint you.”

“No, I'm glad.”

“Why?”

“Because now I don't have to feel guilty,” she replied.

“For what?”

“For playing along. For letting him be crazy because I liked him better that way.”

We were quiet for a minute, staring down at the body, a decayed echo of my own form.

“We'd better get going,” I said, pulling the plastic back together to cover him as best I could. “We've got more work to do.”

I was going to just roll him in, but at the last second, it
didn't feel right. Like it was the wrong thing to do. So I had Amber grab the legs and I took the top, and we dropped him down in as gently as we could.

We started piling dirt on. Even Amber helped, kicking dirt down in, sometimes scooping it with one hand while she held the flashlight with the other. I shoveled like crazy. It's like we both wanted to get it over with as fast as we could, especially at first when the dirt hit the plastic, making a weird sort of crackling sound. Then it was dirt on dirt and real quiet and not quite so bad. We finished by laying the sod, with its long grass, back in place. It wasn't perfect, but it looked okay.

We stood back, side by side, me holding the shovel, her shining the flashlight on the slightly mounded ground. Our breath, heavy from the exertion, clouded in the cold. We were both dirty, but it was done.

Amber reached over and took my hand. All of a sudden she started to cry, a little bit at first, but pretty soon she was choking back sobs. It was over pretty quick.

“Sorry,” she said, sniffing.

“Don't be.”

“It's just that I grew to hate him so much, especially these last couple months,” she said, wiping her eyes. She kept looking at the ground.

“He used to hit me, you know,” she said. “Not much at first. More toward the end.”

I didn't know what to say. I'd already figured as much, but to hear her say it was still strange. Maybe it was the way she said it, like it was a confession, an admission of sorts, even though she'd been on the receiving end. Maybe she was saying it for him, because he couldn't.

“I thought at first that it would stop, that it was just a temporary thing, like when you come down with a cold for a few weeks and then it sort of disappears.” She shook her head. “I was so stupid, to let him treat me that way, to just sort of block it out like it was happening to somebody else. In the end it only made me feel worse. I felt like I was nothing.”

She hesitated. “That's why I hated him so much,” she said at last. “Because he made me hate myself.”

“But it's over now,” I said. “If it makes you feel any better, Chris hated himself too. For the same reason. I know,” I said. “I saw it in his eyes that night, right here in this clearing.”

We lingered for another minute. I didn't want to leave yet. Not now, not after what she'd said, no matter how true it was. Chris was a messed-up kid, no doubt about it. But there was more. There's always more.

“I didn't know Chris when I killed him,” I said. “But I still felt bad. And now after being him, even for just a little while, I feel worse. He didn't deserve it, Amber.”

“Maybe he didn't,” she said. “But who's to say why things happen the way they do?”

She leaned her head on my shoulder, and I put my arm around her. I felt so good all of a sudden. I shouldn't have, but I did.

“We'd better say good-bye,” I said. She nodded.

“Tell me something about him,” I said. “Something good. Let's say good-bye that way. There must be something.”

“There's lots of things,” she said. “He was an asshole most of the time, but every once in a while, he'd let his
guard down. There was this side to him, like a little kid.” She paused for a moment, thinking. “He had these sheets,” she said suddenly.

“Race cars,” I said.

She laughed. “I thought they were cute. I even picked on him once about them. He got pretty mad, but he never took them off,” she said. “What about you?”