Doppelgänger (20 page)

Anine rattled the pocket doors. “Help!” she shouted, pounding on the doors. “Clea, Mr. Shoop, Mrs. Hennessey, anybody! Help, we're trapped!”

“
FITTA
!”
Julian blasted.
“I won't listen to you anymore!”
He held his breath again. Weak from lack of oxygen, he crumpled to the floor, still clutching his hands to his head against the silent torment of the trumpet.

Anine looked over her shoulder at him. Doubling over, almost in a fetal position, he let out his long-held breath with a gasp.
“Not true!”
he shouted.
“Parmenter killed the Indian! I was trying to stop him! I WAS TRYING TO STOP HIM!”

Abandoning the door, Anine rushed to her husband's side. She knelt down and touched his shoulder. He recoiled.
“POOOOOH!”
he let out the breath he'd been holding. Gasping, he screeched,
“I'll kill you! God damn it, I'll kill you for this, you bitch!”
There was no doubt he was in communication with the
spöke
. He took another breath, so deep his eyes bulged out of his head. She couldn't even imagine why he kept holding his breath.

“What is it saying?” she said. “What is it telling you?”

Julian, his cheeks ballooned, looked up at her. Sweat was breaking out on his forehead and in fact all over his face. As he writhed over on his side Anine saw a wet dark spot spreading across his groin; he had urinated in his trousers.

There was, finally, another sound besides the crackling of the fire. It was a terrible scraping noise, deep and grinding, like a metal implement digging into stone. Something above her fluttered. Anine looked up at the fireplace above them. The portrait of Thomas Jefferson was quivering, shaking slightly against the wall.

The scraping continued. A chalky white gash, scored deep like the gouges in the silver tray, appeared on the left side of Jefferson's face. It moved upwards, then curved around, forming a recognizable symbol:
R
.

Julian let out his breath which he had been holding for more than a minute. He was trying to shout but he was so exhausted his voice was barely a whisper. “You're trying to break me,” he gasped. “You won't do it! I'll kill you first, you hear me?”

Another gouge traced itself into the canvas of the Jefferson painting. To the right of the
R
, a letter
F
formed, crooked, haphazard, like the writing of a child. It looked a little like the chalky hash marks, but the
spöke
seemed to have learned how to form recognizable words.

Why can't I hear the trumpet?

SCRAPE…SCRAPE…
Julian had by now begun to breathe again in great jagged gasps. He too looked up at the Jefferson painting. The letters
R F
were visible, then, further to the right, a
D
, and to its left,
L.
As if writing with an invisible awl, the doppelgänger slowly scored a word into the picture:

GARRFEILD

Garfield
. The doppelgänger was taunting Julian. As soon as he recognized the word he burst into a long crying sob. The sudden clutch of terror was over, and Anine realized the
spöke
had departed; it had said what it came to say.

Julian, sobbing, released his ears. The imprints of his hands could be seen, red and throbbing, on his temples.

“Oh,
God
,” he wailed, sounding now very much like a child. “Oh
Christ
, why does this thing hate us so much?” He blubbered, crying into his sleeve.

Anine put her arm around him. For the first time in a very long time, he seemed to welcome her comfort.

“It can't help it,” she said. “It's what it is.”

“Did you
hear
it? That squeaky trumpet—that horrible, awful, squeaky trumpet—”

“I didn't hear anything. It was speaking to you alone.”

He continued to cry. Only after a while did he look down and realize he was wet. “Oh, Jesus. I pissed myself. I pissed myself like a little baby. I'm sorry.”

“It's all right. I'll help you get cleaned up.”

“I'm so sorry.” He sobbed, propping his head against Anine's shoulder. “I'm so
sorry
.”

She held him for a while. It was very awkward. This was the first moment of real tenderness that had occurred between them in months, and that it had to come now—after what had just happened—seemed vile, an obscenity. She did not feel closer to Julian, though she should have. She felt dirty and used. The foulness of the
spöke
permeated her like a bone chill.

Anine left the Red Parlor—the doors were now free—and rang a bell cord in the entryway. It was not Clea but Bryan Shoop who responded.

“Did you hear me shouting?” she asked him. “We were pounding on the doors. They were stuck.”

“No,” the teenager shrugged.

“Surely you heard the commotion. Mr. Atherton was shouting at the top of his lungs.”

“I heard nothing.”

She was annoyed, but not at him.
He's probably telling the truth
.
The
spöke
wanted no one to interfere with its torment of us.
She was mindful of Julian's dignity. “Mr. Atherton spilled something in the parlor. Bring a towel and get one of his dressing gowns. Bring them to me here, then retire to your room. I'll take care of him.”

He went away and Anine remained in the dim entryway. The gas in the huge chandelier was turned low, unusually low. She walked over toward the dimmer switch on the wall. Suddenly, with what seemed like the force of a charging elephant, something invisible, strong and brutal shoved her with terrific savagery against the wall.

All the air went out of her lungs instantly.
“Unghhh!”
She was spread-eagled, her right cheek pressed against the wallpaper. The suddenness of the attack shocked and terrified her. Again it felt like her corset was constricting around her—one of the
spöke's
favorite tortures. In fact she could hear the threads and seams actually creaking against the whale-baleen stays just under her breasts. The doppelgänger was literally trying to smother her.

Julian! Clea! Anyone, help!
She tried to scream. Her mouth was open but no sound came out, only the last bit of air being squeezed out of her body. It felt as though an enormous hand was pressing on her, rolling her from foot to head, systematically flattening her.

She noticed that her left hand was only a few inches from the gas dimmer switch.

Something else seemed very strange, but through the pounding of her heart—straining terribly with no oxygen to sustain it—and the rush of adrenaline it took her several moments to notice it. She was pressed against the vertical wall of the entryway, but she could have sworn it felt like she was lying prone on the floor, as if the entire room had turned ninety degrees on its side.

Screeeeeeeeeeee!
Anine winced as a terrible high-pitched note sliced into her head like a steel cable. It was literally painful to hear, causing an instant sharp agony crackling against the inside of her skull. As the note changed in pitch she realized it was the sound of the silver trumpet—the voice of the doppelgänger.

Then, through the trumpet, it spoke to her.
“Don't think I can't do anything I want to you!”
it said, shrieking so loud that it sounded like the bell of the silver horn was pressed right up against her ear. It was, unmistakably, a woman's voice, and it spoke Swedish.

But what happened next did not feel like a woman at all. The same invisible hand that had flattened her against the wall now suddenly forced her legs apart under her skirt. She gasped, realizing at once she could breathe, almost as if she'd forgotten how—
was that what happened to Julian?
—and as she gulped for another breath of air, which felt in this desperate moment like it would be her last, she looked down and saw the bustle of her skirt rising, roughly and sharply. An invisible spear, needle-sharp and icy cold, suddenly arrowed its way between her buttocks, pressing painfully on her anus. There was barely enough air in her lungs for her to emit a feeble scream.

Anine lunged. The force was pressing her so hard against the wall that she felt as though it actually lengthened her body. Her fingers reached the dimmer switch. She twisted it as hard as she could. The gas came up, bright blazing yellow, and instantly the nightmare was over.

“Ma'am?”

Anine let out the breath she realized she'd unconsciously been holding.
“POOOOH!”
Her vision clouded. She grasped at the bosom of her dress, which was unmarred; she looked over and saw Bryan Shoop standing before her, a towel and one of Julian's silk dressing-gowns draped over his arm.

Dear God, what just happened?
She looked down at herself. Her dress was in perfect order. She was standing up against the wall, but nothing was the matter.

She paused only a moment, then walked forward, snatched the towel and the dressing-gown and headed for the door of the Red Parlor. She suddenly understood the frantic threats her husband had shrieked at the doppelgänger. The
spöke
's hatred of them was quickly becoming mutual.

Anine did not sleep at all during the night. When morning came she was literally nodding off to sleep while trying to eat breakfast. Julian returned home from his office at mid-morning, which to Anine's recollection had never happened before. He met her in the entryway. He too looked haggard and sleepless, his eyes ringed with dark bags. He was carrying a crumpled telegraph form in his hand.

“I came from the telegraph office,” he said. “Aunt Lucretia has agreed to put you up for a couple of weeks at her winter home in St. Augustine. You may pack three trunks. The boat sails tonight at eight. Bring your nigger maid with you because she sure as hell isn't staying here. I'll sell the house while you're gone. When you get back you'll give me a son. Don't even open your bitch mouth to complain.”

Then, shuffling like an old man, he walked right past her toward the doors of the Red Parlor, never meeting her gaze. The telegraph sheet dropped lazily from his hand and lay in a ball on the carpet. She did not pick it up.

Chapter Fifteen

The Job

Of course Julian Atherton had no intention of selling the house. The horrors that he had seen and experienced there—worst of all the assault by the doppelgänger in his own parlor—had strengthened, rather than weakened, his resolve to make the house his own. There had been more times in the past few weeks than he cared to admit to himself that he'd been tempted to take Anine and Dr. Dorr's advice, sell out and leave. The evening after the horrifying séance he came very close to deciding this.
After all, it's just a house
, he thought.
We could make a fresh start. I am going to have to live with Anine for a long time whether I like it or not. Pretending otherwise is foolish
. But the brazenness and spite of the doppelgänger rankled him. This was
his
house. Mrs. Quain didn't live here anymore. He would not be turned out of his own home.

Once this decision had been made the next course of action was grimly inevitable. He had few moral qualms about it. He did not buy Dorr's explanation that the doppelgänger was some sort of schizoid opposite, that Mrs. Quain's supposed happiness and gentleness were the precise qualities that spawned the spirit's ugliness and rancor. To Julian, the doppelgänger
was
Mrs. Quain's spirit, and it was indubitably foul. To snuff out such a person would be a great service to the world. The only question was how best to do it and how not to get caught.

When Anine left on the boat to St. Augustine Julian was relieved. He was quite tired of her and relished the notion of three weeks, or perhaps even longer, without her. He did not wish to stay in the gloomy house alone with the specter and feared that if he did, it might somehow learn of his plans. Immediately after Anine and Miss Wicks left the house he dispatched Bryan Shoop to reserve him a room at the Grand Hotel on Broadway. He tossed some clothes into a portmanteau and then rang for Mrs. Hennessey. As she entered the Red Parlor he was writing out a check for her.

“I will not be staying in the house while Mrs. Atherton is gone,” he explained coolly. “Therefore we have no need of a cook. Here are three weeks' wages in advance. If we still need you when she returns, I'll hire you back. If you happen to secure other arrangements in the meantime, that will be fine with me.” He tore the check out of the book and handed it to her.

The cook seemed stunned. “You're discharging me?”

“That depends on the situation in three weeks,” Julian shrugged. “But I'm leaving right now and I'm closing up the house.”

With an indignant look on her face Mrs. Hennessey folded the check and put it in her bodice. Then she said: “You are a vile man, sir,” turned, walked into the entryway and departed.

Julian barely gave her a thought. In fact he was glad she was gone; he never liked her cooking and thought she was too partial to Anine. He quickly turned off the gas, grabbed his coat, hat and the portmanteau and locked up the house.
You'll have the place to yourself for a while
, he told the doppelgänger silently.
You'd better enjoy it—it will be over soon enough
.

From the Grand Hotel Julian wrote the letter to Lucius Minthorn with which he intended to set his plan in motion. Contrition was difficult for him and thus the letter came out stilted and awkward, but he knew that in order to lure Mrs. Quain to the city he had to create a genuine impression of sorrow. He hoped it was enough.

I regret, sir, that relations between my family and yours have become so strained. Upon reflection and prayer, I realize my own actions were inexcusable. I am very sorry for the way I treated Mrs. Quain. Your wife communicated through my wife a very generous offer to purchase the house at 11 West 38th Street. If that offer remains open, let us come to terms at once.

I also wish to apologize personally to Mrs. Quain. Only such a personal meeting could set my mind at ease. Again, I am very sorry for what happened. Let us, as gentlemen, make this situation right.

Although the Minthorns lived on Fifth Avenue only a few blocks from West 38th Street and a short carriage ride from both the Grand Hotel and Julian's law office, it took six days for any sort of reply to be received. Julian suspected that there was a great debate within the Minthorn family as to whether they should entertain the offer, reject it or simply ignore it entirely. The reply was very short and terse, but hopeful.

As personal feelings, however strongly held, should not come between gentlemen with a common design, I hope you should be disposed to join me for supper at Henry Maillard's restaurant, in the lower level of the Fifth Avenue Hotel, on Saturday November the 13th, at 6:30 o'clock.

Lucius Minthorn

Lucius Minthorn was a curiously swarthy man. With his short stature, dark hair, beady eyes and chiseled features there was hushed talk that he was secretly a Jew, but he certainly carried himself with the elegance and bearing of the most prominent of New York gentlemen. He presided over a successful shipping business and it was said that he owned vast tracts of land out West, with which he had gotten even wealthier by leasing to the railroads. He dressed far better than Julian, spoke with greater eloquence and precision and knew exactly the rhythms of small-talk, gossip and business with which to pad the course of an evening.

Julian found the dinner conversation quite boring. There was not a word of their business, but instead aimless chatter over financial trends, politics (Minthorn was, surprisingly, a Democrat), the dreariness of New York's climate in November and some of the places in London and Paris that they had visited in common. When the plates were cleared away and Minthorn said, “Would you care to retire to the smoking room for a cigar?” Julian knew, at last, that the business was at hand.

In the mahogany-paneled room, lit mostly by the fireplace, Minthorn sat in a wing chair, lit a colossal fat cigar and sat silent for several moments. The only other gentlemen in the smoking room occupied a corner far from them and thus their conversation was reasonably private. Julian had been in the practice of law too short a time to have conducted many negotiations but he hoped his skill would be at least partially useful to the advancement of his plan.

“I was pleased to see the contents of your letter, Mr. Atherton,” said Minthorn, who did not make eye contact. “Though I confess your sentiments would have been much more effective in softening the mood of my family had they come several months ago.”

“I regret my behavior, sir,” Julian replied, and this was difficult for him to say. “I've handled the entire affair quite poorly, I admit. I thought that finding the house was a great stroke of luck. It seems now to have been one of misfortune.”

“What changed your mind?”

Julian had an answer rehearsed for this, but it too was galling to say. “My wife. She convinced me I was being stubborn and bull-headed. I should have listened to her earlier. I should have embraced her efforts to find a solution together with your wife instead of spurning them.”

Minthorn blew a cloud of smoke toward the fireplace. “The offer of $125,000 for the house is now closed. That should be understood first of anything. I authorized my wife to offer it only on the condition that it be accepted immediately, so we could put this matter behind us as quickly as possible. Nevertheless, something
could
be arranged…”

Come on. Get on with it.
Julian cared little about the financial details, which he expected would have only momentary effect anyway. Minthorn batted about certain possibilities, such as trading properties—there was a charming little house on West 26th Street that he had purchased with the intention of giving it to his eldest son, soon to be married—but over the course of three cigars and several glasses of port a clear solution began to take shape. It was evident to Julian that Minthorn himself cared little about the 38th Street house. He wanted to rid himself of Mrs. Quain as well as the distraction of the scandals surrounding the whole matter.
I don't blame him
, Julian thought.
Who would want to be saddled with the presence of that vile woman for the rest of her life?

“So, then it's agreed,” said Minthorn, stubbing out his cigar in a silver tray. “You will keep ownership of the house, but grant a life estate to Mrs. Quain to return to live there. In exchange I will pay you fifty thousand dollars for the life estate plus five hundred a year, which increases to a thousand if Mrs. Quain should live longer than five years. I will also offer you and your wife greatly reduced rent on the West 26th Street house for as long as you wish to remain there. When Mrs. Quain dies all rights to the 38th Street house vest in you, and your tenancy on West 26th Street, should it still be in existence, will come to an end.”

“Yes. That sounds equitable. Do you want me to draw up the legal papers?”

“Oh, you needn't concern yourself with that. My lawyer will take care of it. Expect the papers no later than Monday afternoon.”

He doesn't trust me
. Julian nodded in agreement. “Very well. I'll take a look at the West 26th Street property tomorrow.”

“What date shall we set to put this all in motion? Say, January the first? Moving before the Christmas holidays is so uncivilized.”

Julian felt a twinge of nerves. Anine was due to return from St. Augustine on the first of December.
I can put her off, but not a full month
. He had no choice but to speed things up. “Sir, if you don't mind, I'd like to get this taken care of as quickly as possible. I'm sure Mrs. Quain is eager to return to the house and there's no sense in waiting. Assuming we get the legal papers signed, she could move back into the house in, say, two weeks' time.”

Minthorn looked surprised. “Two
weeks
?” He chuckled. “My dear Mr. Atherton, I can hardly believe that you could have all of your belongings crated, stored and shipped within so short a time. And your wife—surely she will want time to plan and decorate the new house. You know how women are.”

“My wife is in Florida, and she does what I say. Two weeks.”

A skeptical look crossed Minthorn's face. “Three weeks,” he countered.

“All right.”
I'll just tell Anine not to come back so soon. What choice will she have?
He extended his hand. “I'm very glad we could come to terms.”

Julian made sure he didn't raise his next and most important point until the two of them were getting up from their chairs, with the expectation that the meeting was concluded. He'd wanted it to seem like an afterthought. “Oh, when you have Mrs. Quain's affairs arranged, would you please let me know ahead of time when she will actually be arriving at the house? It's important to me—and to my wife—that I apologize to her face to face.”

Minthorn's skeptical look returned. “I'm not sure that will do you much good, Mr. Atherton. Mrs. Quain is quite insensible. She barely acknowledges anyone. There is no need in any event. Now that we have the business straightened out—”

“No, sir,” Julian replied firmly. “I insist on apologizing personally.”

“I'll see what can be done. Good evening, Mr. Atherton.”

Julian wasn't sure that
I'll see what can be done
was as firm a commitment as he needed, but there was no further chance to press Minthorn on the matter. As he returned to the Grand Hotel he thought that he'd made rather a good deal: fifty thousand dollars for a life estate that Mrs. Quain would never live to enjoy was an excellent windfall, and the cost of hiring the assassin could come from this fund instead of being drawn from Julian's usual accounts. That might come in handy if, as he expected, there would be an investigation. But the investigation would turn up nothing if Mrs. Quain died
before
she reached 11 West 38th Street. On that the whole plot depended.

Several days later, wearing a threadbare coat and a second-hand hat he borrowed from Bryan Shoop, Julian walked a considerable way down the length of Manhattan Island in an icy drizzle to its most notorious—and dangerous—neighborhood. When he was younger he had driven by the Five Points in a carriage and even stopped on its outskirts to gaze in curiosity at the mean unwashed poor who came and went along the streets near Paradise Square, but until tonight he'd never actually gone into the heart of it. He was searching for a dive called the Morgue, so named supposedly because the liquor sold by its proprietor was so strong it could double as embalming fluid. He found it, as promised, on Mulberry Bend, in the blackened doorway of a sagging brick building that looked on the verge of collapse.

The interior of the place was so dark Julian almost couldn't navigate. Its plank walls were painted black and the foul-smelling air was obscured by thick clouds of smoke. The patrons were mostly shady-looking men in black clothes and weathered hats, though he passed a congregation of “ladies” with flashy dresses and chalky make-up, one of whom he thought was probably a man. He found the bar only by following the feeble orange blazes of what he guessed must have been lamps or candles.

A rough old fellow with stringy gray hair and a lazy eye stood behind the bar. He reeked heavily of body odor. “Whiskey,” Julian said, flipping a coin onto the bar. The stinking old man gave him a dirty glass of some greasy fluid that smelled like lamp oil. When Julian tasted it he was certain it
was
lamp oil, or at least had been cut with it. It left a burning trail down the back of his throat.

“I'm looking for a man called Piker Ryan,” said Julian, just as the bartender was about to turn away from him. He looked annoyed at the interruption. “I'm told he frequents this place.”

“Corner table,” the bartender grunted, pointing off into the darkness.

Julian did not thank the man, but he left an extra coin. Bringing his drink he again braved the smoky blackness, inadvertently running into someone—“You want a shank in your throat? Watch where the fuck you're going!”—and at last stood in front of a table whose surface was littered with spilled drinks and tobacco ashes. Behind it sat a perfectly odious specimen of humanity.