Doppelgänger (3 page)

Julian pushed past her into the entryway. “First we have to find out how much Bradbury stole,” he hissed. “Then I'm calling upon the police.” He tried to light one of the smaller wall sconces, but his match flared out. The darkness—and the stench of rot—remained unbroken. “God
damn
it! The gas doesn't even work down here!”

The rising fear was like a cold claw gripping the back of Anine's neck. “Julian, please. Take me out of here,
please!
”

He ignored her. “Hopefully some lights work up here.” He started up the stairs. They were carpeted, so his feet made no sound.

Suddenly alone in the darkness of the entryway—though she could still hear Julian—Anine felt as though she was about to be pounced upon by some kind of beast. She sensed danger somewhere above her. She was being watched.

“Julian!” she cried.

“What is it?”

“Someone's here!” She could not help calling out in Swedish.
Någon är här!
“We're not alone!”

“There's no one here,” he called back in English. “Trust me, Bradbury is long-gone.”

Julian walked up to the second level. There was a gas fixture on the wall near the stairs. With another snap of a match he lit it.

As the second floor lamp blazed, another frozen animal shape loomed out of the darkness. Something large was hanging from a great height, dangling down above the stairs into the entryway. Anine's terror at feeling a presence about her turned suddenly to revulsion and horror. The thing hanging above her had human feet with great knobby toes, like the grotesque feet of trolls in old legends Anine remembered from her childhood.

“Dear God!”
Julian gasped.

The feet belonged to the body of a man hanging from a rope looped to the top of the balustrade on the third floor. His neck had been wrenched to one side, his jaw hanging slack. His form was barely more than a skeleton over which a thin layer of rotted, leathery skin was stretched. He was clad in thick woolen pants but no shirt, one suspender still looped over his shoulder. Evidently the man shit himself at the moment of death; there were black stains on his pants. He had obviously been dead a long time, perhaps months. The rope on which he hung was eerily still.

“Bradbury,” Julian breathed.

Anine did not hear him. She was screaming, scrambling backwards toward the door, panic surging through every nerve in her body. She tripped on her skirt and collapsed to the floor, fearing at first that the hideous dead thing hanging in the entryway was attacking her; she remembered little more.

She did not think she had been unconscious, but in the next moment of which she was aware Anine found herself sitting up in a large comfortable bed, gas lights glowing softly around her, and a woman with a kind pleasant face and gray hair was spooning her soup from a bowl with a gilt-painted rim. She did not recognize the woman, but she did look familiar; she had Julian's beautiful sea-green eyes.

“There, I told you the soup would rekindle your light,” said the woman. “I used to make this for Julian and Sarah when they were sick as children.”

Recognition flooded back to her.
Lucretia
.
Julian's aunt
. She'd been at the wedding. She raised Julian and his sister after their mother died. This must have been her house. Anine had never been there, but Julian mentioned that she lived up on Lexington Avenue.

“Where's my husband?” Anine asked, after a few more spoonfuls of soup.

“He's still at the police station.”

Anine grasped Lucretia's wrist as the spoon, full of chicken soup, thrust toward her again. “I'm all right. I can eat by myself.”

“You've had quite a shock,” said Lucretia. But after a look from Anine she surrendered the bowl and the spoon to her.

While she ate it Lucretia stood, smoothing out the skirt of her summer evening dress, and then busied herself setting right the glazed porcelain knickknacks on the mantel over the fireplace where a flame gently crackled. “You and Julian are welcome to stay for as long as you need to,” she said brightly. Then, her voice lower and more somber, she remarked: “Awful thing.
Awful
. I tell you that I'd need a good long spell of taking the waters at Saratoga to recover from a shock like that. I've recommended just that to Julian. I hope he listens to me for once.”

Anine did not feel especially weak or sick, but she knew that if she tried to rise from the bed of Lucretia's guest room the woman—and her maid, who came to check on her frequently—would simply not be able to believe that she wasn't completely weak and prostrate from shock. To avoid that argument she elected to stay in bed. Julian remained out until late in the evening. Anine sat up in bed, trying to pass the time reading a Walter Scott romance, but she couldn't concentrate on the words. Bradbury's rotting visage seemed to leer at her out of the pages.

At half-past-ten the wheels of the carriage finally clattered up to the house and Julian entered. Anine heard him speaking to his aunt downstairs, and that was followed by the creaking of the stairs under his shoes. He entered the guest room reticently, perhaps half-expecting Anine to be asleep. She smiled, grateful at last of the company, and set the book aside on the bed.

“I spoke to my father,” said Julian, his first words upon entering. “I've arranged for us to stay at his cottage in Newport for the next few weeks. We'll leave from here on the morning train.”

Great. More traveling
. She was sick to death of trains. But she didn't protest; the alternative was either to stay here or go back to the house so soon after the horror. Neither option appealed to her. “Fine.” She motioned to the chair next to the bed. “Come sit with me a while.”

Julian dropped his lanky frame into the armchair. It was improper to smoke a cigar in a lady's bedchamber, and he didn't seem to know what to do with his hands. Ultimately he set them on his thighs. He said nothing.

It's up to me to mention it?
Anine was exasperated. “You spoke to the police?” she said.

“They went over the house pretty thoroughly. Bradbury's personal effects were neatly packed in the servants' quarters in the garret. No sign of any disturbance. It's quite clear that he took his own life. On the table in the office we found a newspaper and some correspondence with a furniture company, both dated June third. Inspector Lewis believes it happened on that date, or shortly thereafter. I hired him on May thirtieth.”

June third!
Anine shuddered. “So he was hanging there for two and a half months?”

Julian nodded. “It explains why nothing was done—I mean, hiring servants and seeing to the furnishings and all. I went to the Stein Company where we ordered some of the furniture. There was still a man there at the office. He confirmed they received the order we telegraphed from Europe and received payment from Chenowerth, but he told them to wait for Bradbury to contact them with delivery instructions, and he never did. The furniture's still in their warehouse. It's likely the same story with the others, but I'll have to wait until tomorrow to make the rounds of their offices.”

She shook her head. “Why? Why would he do this? And after only four days in the house?”

“I've no idea. Lewis said he's going to look into Bradbury's background and interview some of his family just to be sure. He may have been mad. There were bottles in the kitchen; perhaps he was drunk. We may never know.”

There was silence between them. The fire crackled. Anine said, “I'd like to send a note of condolence to his family.”

“We didn't know him.” Julian shrugged.

“I still want to send a letter. It's the decent thing to do.”

A particular fear had been gathering inside of her for much of the evening. Now that Julian had returned it was palpable; she dreaded asking him the question but guessed now she had little choice.

“Darling, I must ask you something.”

“Yes?”

“I'm not going to have to go back there, am I?”

“Back where?” He seemed to catch on, but his expression was still one of puzzlement. “You mean to the house?”

“Our first day—our first five minutes in that house—and we come home to
that
. I keep replaying it in my mind. It's so horrible. I couldn't imagine setting foot in the place again, much less living where such a thing happened.”

Julian smiled. He reached forward and touched her hand. “That's what you're worried about, Anine? Having to live there after what happened today?”

His tender touch melted her. She smiled too.
Thank God he understands
.

“You needn't be concerned,” he said, still smiling. “You'll feel much better after three weeks in Newport. While we're gone I'll hire a new caretaker and he'll get all our furnishings settled. I'll make sure they scrub and repaint the place from stem to stern. By the time we get back you won't even recognize it as the same house. Don't give it another thought.”

He rose from the chair. She was still smiling but his words were beginning to sink in.
What did he say? Oh, God, he doesn't
mean
that, does he?
“Julian—”

“We shouldn't have come back in August anyway,” he said, as if this had been the cause of the whole thing. “The summer air in New York is so thick and disagreeable. Yes, Newport will make us both anew. I'm certain of it.”

With that Julian Atherton stepped out of the guest room, without even looking back at his wife; thus he did not see the expression of shock on her face.

The dreams began that very night.

At first her dream was very pleasant. She was walking along the shore of Lake Vänern on a warm summer afternoon, wearing a white dress with flowers in her hair. She carried a parasol. Julian was with her. He looked as he did when she met him nearly three years ago. He was twenty then, a tall, thin-framed boy who had just barely gotten past an extended phase of adolescent gawkiness. His hair was red, his eyes sea-green, his fingers long and spindly. His cheeks and the back of his hands were covered in light freckles. She didn't know it then but he also had freckles across the back of his shoulders and on his calves. Julian the Awkward Boy had charmed her in a way that Julian the New York Gentleman could never quite do. The way he looked at her and smiled at her as they walked rekindled the forbidden passion she'd felt for him when they first met.

“Such a beautiful day,” she said, admiring the glinting blue waters shimmering gold in the sunlight. “I like to think God paints days like these, the way a painter creates a picture.” She was speaking Swedish; all of her dreams were in Swedish.

“Perhaps He does. God loves beauty.” He winked at her. “After all, He created you.”

As he spoke these words she noticed that the quality of the light was changing. Looking up through the leaves of the birch trees she could see gray clouds suddenly boiling into the crystal blue sky, much faster than was possible in real life. The disk of the sun became diffused and the forest and lake were plunged into a blank overcast grayness that obliterated shadows instantly. “God is painting, all right,” she sighed, closing her parasol. A cold wind blew brownish leaves in swirling eddies through the forest. It was as if autumn had come in seconds.

Then there were noises around her, strange rustling sounds in the leaves and underbrush. It came from several places in front of her and behind, to each side, even above. “I'm frightened,” she said, clutching Julian's hand. “Take me back to the cottage.”

“What is there to be frightened of?” Julian looked about but seemed not to notice the change in their surroundings. “Who can be scared of anything on a day like today?”

She did not see the place from where the dark shape came. It was a blur, a smudge of black and yellow and red that flew suddenly out of the woods and instantly was upon him. The blade of a knife glinted in the dull overcast light. Julian cried out, but the blade flashed against his throat. Arterial blood sprayed in a broad arc across Anine's arm and her face. She screamed as Julian crumpled to his knees, gasping and clawing at his cleaved throat. The fear that seized her was like an iron glove closing suddenly around her, crushing the life and breath from her.

The blade flashed again, the roaring assailant plunging it downward into the top of Julian's back. Now the thing that had attacked him stood still enough for her to see. It was a man dressed in ragged clothes, torn and stained with dirt. The remains of a blue necktie hung in mud-smeared rags. A yellow silk waistcoat was marred with broad stains of dried blood. A jagged splinter of wood six inches long protruded from the monster's mangled neck.

The thing was a relic of the grave, but its pale blue eyes still looked very human. As it withdrew the knife—Julian's body, still gushing fresh blood, slumped to the floor of the forest—the ghoul that had once been Ola Bergenhjelm stared directly at Anine, rotting lips pulling back from its blackened teeth. Oily sludge leaked from its mouth.

“No!
No
!” Anine fell backwards, tripping over the bustle of her dress. She tried to scramble away from the living corpse that was now approaching her. It was making noise, straining for words, but the piece of the carriage axle in its throat rendered them hoarse unintelligible groans. With his dead fingers now nearly skeletal Ola gripped the handle of the knife, still dripping Julian's blood.

“Forgive me,” she gasped. “Please, Ola, forgive me! I'm sorry!”

The thing lunged at her. She felt its cold oily hand grasping her neck, and a moment later the blade of the knife plunged into the lace of her bodice. The stench of death and the feel of Ola's hand on her nearly made her retch. She struggled, but the monster held her in some kind of paralysis that made her helpless against it. All she could do was watch as the knife tore away her clothes, touching but not breaking her skin. Ola had come from the grave to claim his bride.