Byron Starr - Doppelgänger

The sound seemed to move to a position directly behind the tree, not too far away from the stand itself. It stopped there for quite some time.

Damn, it must’ve smelled me, Johnny Paul thought.

Then he heard it move again. It was coming directly toward the stand at a steady pace.

Johnny Paul was confused. It still seemed to move more like an animal than a clumsy man, but he could swear he was hearing the steady movement of a man’s footsteps rather than the fluid tempo movement of a four-legged creature.

The mysterious sound moved right up to the tree, then began to slowly make its way around to Johnny Paul’s right. Johnny Paul shifted to a left-handed grip on his rifle. He’d practiced shooting left-handed a few times, but he had never brought down a deer this way. However, a right-handed grip wouldn’t allow him to fire to his right without shifting his body, which could scare off the deer — if in fact it was a deer. Besides, at this range how could he miss? He took aim and waited.

“Johnny Paul, what in the name of Sam Hill are you doing here?” a familiar voice asked as a human shape stepped from around the tree.

Johnny Paul was stumped. It was too dark for him to make out the face, but the voice sounded very familiar. It could be one of the game wardens — he knew them all by name and they certainly knew him — but he was sure a game warden wouldn’t be addressing him in such a friendly manner.

“Who’s there?” Johnny Paul asked, lowering his rifle.

“Yo mama, that’s who,” the shape answered. “It’s Alan, shit-for-brains.”

Johnny Paul, couldn’t quite make out the face, but he could plainly see the outline of Alan Craft’s scraggly beard.

Johnny Paul was really confused now. He’d been partying with Alan earlier in the night. Alan had caught his seventeen-year-old live-in, Tory Leeman, talking on the phone with her ex-boyfriend, and beat the hell out of her. He then went over to Rick’s and proceeded to drink an entire half-gallon of vodka by himself. By the time Johnny Paul had shown up at Rick’s, Alan was over halfway finished with the bottle and was describing to everybody who would listen how he was going to put a pistol in Tory’s mouth and pull the trigger if he ever caught her talking to that son-of-a-bitch again. By midnight Alan had finished the bottle. He had thrown up all over the kitchen, bathroom, and living room before he finally, mercifully passed out. There was just no way he could have recovered from that kind of a drunk in just a few hours and followed Johnny Paul to Newton.

But, here he was.

“Alan?” Johnny Paul asked. “What are you doing out here?”

“Just seein’ if you wanted to tilt a few back with me.”

“How the hell did you find me?” Johnny Paul asked, leaning closer for a better look.

Suddenly something struck him in the mouth, hard. His left cheek was split open in three deep cuts. One of these gouges extended his mouth from its original corner to the hinges of the jaw bone. All of his teeth on that side were knocked out. The momentum of the blow slammed Johnny Paul’s head against the tree. The pain was excruciating. His mouth was mangled and ruined, yet he managed to scream quite loudly.

Despite the unstable nature of the stand, the blow didn’t instantly knock Johnny Paul out of the tree. His head still swimming from the blow, he toppled out a second after his scream had pierced the night air. He fell to the ground, bringing the wooden platform with him. The fall was a lucky one, however, as the beast had just lunged for him. It swung, but caught nothing but air.

As soon as Johnny Paul hit the ground, he scrambled to his feet and started running. Still holding the rifle in his left hand, he aimed it blindly behind him as he ran, firing it with one hand, like a pistol. The recoil caused the rifle to jump over his head, but he managed to hold on to it.

The bright muzzle flash caused a blue spot to dance before his his eyes, adding to his blindness. He could only hope that whatever was out there was having the same problem. He continued crashing through the woods until his shoulder collided with a tree, sending him sprawling. For a while he lay where he fell. He tasted his own blood and his tongue ventured gingerly over his ruined jaw and along the edge of the split in his cheek. Johnny Paul held his breath and listened, but all he could hear was the sound of his own sobs as he began to break down. Terror took hold and his sobbing increased until he was bawling like a baby.

Then he heard something moving. He fought off his panic and once again held his breath. He listened.

The sound came again. Something was moving slowly through the underbrush directly behind him — stalking him.

When Johnny Paul had collided with the tree, he’d dropped his rifle. Now he frantically patted the pinestraw around him, searching for his lost gun.

The sound grew much louder. Something was approaching at a very fast pace.

Johnny Paul gave up his search for the gun, clamored to his feet, and took off running again. He made no more than two steps before a powerful force hit him in the back. He fell to the ground face first. There was a tremendous pain between his shoulders. He tried to rise, but something was on top of him. He heard a horrible crunching sound as the beast savagely bit the back of his neck.

The next morning, Tom Webster came strolling down the little path to his deer stand. As he approached, he saw that his little platform had been knocked down. At first he thought maybe a strong gust of wind had blown the platform out of the tree, but when he picked the platform up, he found blood. He looked around and found quite a bit of blood around the tree. Then he climbed his makeshift ladder up to the limbs that had supported his stand; he found even more blood up against the tree trunk.

He got back down from the tree and stood over the fallen platform. Rubbing his chin, he thought, What in the hell did this?

Then it dawned on him what it had to be. “Aw, Hell!” Tom cursed, removing his camouflaged cap and throwing it to the ground.

He’d heard stories of tree-hugging Yankee liberals who would sneak into the woods and sabotage a man’s hunting stand, but he’d never figured he’d be one of their victims. His stand was ruined now. The hippies had put blood all over the tree and the platform, and they’d probably pissed all over the clearing. The fat deer he’d been seeing over the last couple of months would never show back up now that human-smell was all over the area.

After a short barrage of cussing, Tom trudged back to his pickup and headed home.

Tom Webster had never been accused of being very bright.

Greg had been given two weeks off to let his ribs heal, but in light of the fact that there had been two unsolved killings in less than a week, Bill asked him to come back to work as soon as he could. Besides, in order to give James some time to himself, Greg had already been spending a considerable amount of his time off at the Sheriff’s Department. Greg went back to work on Sunday, six days after the incident at James’ house. After he finished his shift at six in the morning, Greg was called into Bill’s office.

For a man to be as much of a stickler for detail as Sheriff Bill Oates was, his office was a wreck. The only furniture was a small metal desk with a cheap office chair behind it, a large filing cabinet, and two folding metal chairs in front of the desk for guests; two more chairs were folded up behind the door in case they were needed. Noticeably absent from Bill’s desk was a computer. There was a computer in the squad room, but Bill didn’t know how to use it and wasn’t going to learn (by God). In place of the computer that was so customary in other sheriff’s offices throughout the nation were stacks of paper, some loose, and some in manila folders. There were a few pictures on the walls of prize cows he had bought at 4-H auctions throughout the years, a few pictures of himself and some of the older Texas Rangers (the police force, not the baseball team), one cluttered bulletin board that couldn’t possibly hold another single message, and one small, extremely old, picture of his wife, Faye. The biggest picture however, was directly behind his chair; it was an enlarged reprint of an old brown and white photo of Lieutenant Jonathon Oates of the Texas Rangers, Bill’s grandfather.