Byron Starr - Doppelgänger

The house sounded so empty.

James reached the bedroom door and hesitated, then he opened the door and went on in. It had dawned on Greg what a shock it would be when James finally returned to his now empty home scattered with various painful memories, so he and Darren had done their best to hide most of Angie’s things from plain sight. But the effort proved in vain. When James went into the bedroom and turned on the light, the sight of the empty bed brought tears to his eyes. He remembered Angie’s touch, her smell. He remembered holding her and wished he could hold her again. He left the bedroom without putting up his things. He could live out of a suitcase for one more day.

As James went down the hall he sped up when he passed by Jimmy’s room. He knew he couldn’t handle that yet. No, there was no way he could look on Jimmy’s toys, his clothes, and those boots just like Daddy’s that he’d wanted so bad and gotten last Christmas.

James went into the kitchen to put his medicine in the cabinet. Then he stopped, looked at the bottle, and walked over to the kitchen garbage can and threw them away.

When James returned to the living room he lay down on the couch. I guess a few more nights on a couch won’t hurt.

The silence was horrible. James picked the remote up off the coffee table and turned on the television just for the noise, then he tried to settle down for a nap. He restlessly pitched and rolled for several minutes before he finally got up and walked to the door. “Lady, come here, girl.” As she drew near, he backed into the house calling her inside.

The floppy-eared lab came to the door, but stopped there. Her tail wagged furiously, jostling her butt from side to side, as she nervously debated whether or not to go into this place she wasn’t normally allowed.

“It’s okay, girl,” James said. “You’re going to be a house dog for a while.”

After giving the situation much thought, Lady finally came in. But the sudden admission to such a forbidden place caused her to become overly excited. She was practically bouncing off the walls. Once James got her settled down, he returned to the couch. Perhaps it was because she was the closest thing he had to a living family member, but bringing Lady in the house proved to be just what James needed. When James stretched out he found himself as relaxed as he had been since the funeral, even without the medication. Soon he was drifting off to sleep.

No sooner had he dozed off than the phone rang, scaring Lady — who was still nervous about being inside — into jumping on the couch with him.

“It’s okay, girl,” James muttered to Lady, who was practically perched on his head.

Coaxing his dog from the couch, he scratched her ears.

The phone continued ringing away.

James got up, walked into the kitchen and answered the phone. “Hello?”

“Now why’d you go and leave when I was just gettin’ used to having your smelly ass on my couch?” Greg asked.

James laughed, then said, “I thought it was time for me to get home.”

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Greg asked, now sounding serious.

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“I wish you’d stay a little longer.”

“Greg, I even kept you run out of your own house half the time,” James said, and, perhaps it was his head clearing as it came out from under his physician-prescribed cloud, but James suddenly realized how rude he’d been. “And I’m sorry about that. I shouldn’t have imposed on you like I did.”

“With what you went through, you had a right to impose.”

“Yeah, but…”

“Yeah but nothing. I was glad to help. Besides, in the afternoon it was nice having another man around the house. I’m so used to being outnumbered two to one.”

“Speaking of which, tell Sandy thanks,” James said.

“I will,” Greg said, then he added, “I’m sure she and Carissa are going to miss having you around, too.”

Yeah, right, James thought, Sandy couldn’t stand to look at me and Carissa was scared to death of me. However, he replied, “I’m going to miss them, too. Oh, by the way, thanks for cleaning up the place.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“Well, I’d better go and try to get a little sleep. I’ll see you around.”

“Are you sure you’re all right? I can come over if you want.”

“No, really I’m fine.”

“Okay, then. Like I said, just call if you need anything.”

“Okay, Mom, bye,” James said jokingly.

Greg laughed and said, “Bye.”

When James turned to walk back into the living room, he almost tripped over Lady, who was sitting right behind him. James got back on the couch and got settled, but he couldn’t go to sleep. Like someone who can’t stop picking at an open sore, his mind kept returning to the night Angie and Jimmy were killed. He remembered the night before, when the beast saw James’ tracks in the mud. Something didn’t fit.

At noon the next day James surprised Guy Baldwin and showed up for work. He didn’t stay long, though. James had planned to come to work and try to get back to life as usual, but he found it wasn’t so easy. It seemed every time he had almost calmed down, a picture of Angie’s bloody arm in the doorway would pop into his head. He could see it almost as if it were right there before him: her arm, her hand, the ring, the blood. He could see it all in such unmerciful clarity. After staying at work for only two hours, James went home.

As soon as he got back to his house, James went back into the back bedroom and lay on the bed for the first time since the night before Angie and Jimmy were killed. The memories came flooding back again, in force.

He started crying.

James got up and walked to the bedroom closet and opened the door. He was surprised to find the old shotgun; he figured the Sheriff’s Department would have confiscated it after what happened. James then fished in some of the drawers and found two more shells and put them in the chambers. James tossed the loaded shotgun on the bed and got a piece of paper and pen out of Angie’s stationary drawer. He sat down to write his suicide letter, but couldn’t.

As tears once again began to build in his eyes, he let out a bark of laughter at the sad irony. I would write a suicide note, but I don’t know who to address it to. Whether it was hysterics or not, James wasn’t sure, but all of this suddenly became the funniest thing he’d ever heard. He fell back on the bed guffawing loudly.

Lady ran to the bedroom door to check on him, and when James looked up and saw her standing there with her head tilted and ears perked up in a look of concern, he began to laugh even harder. That’s who I could address it to: Dear Lady.

When James finally managed to stop laughing, he decided against suicide. He stretched out on the bed and went to sleep.

That was the first night James was off the medication. He went to bed early and slept well at first, but when night came he started dreaming of the beast again.

The beast crawled out from under a spidery knot of tree roots that had been exposed by the creek eroding the dirt from around them. The woods were thick in the area.

Once the beast was out from under its little den, it set out at a determined stride. It was hunting again, ambling along for a while, then stopping to sniff the air. As it moved along through the underbrush headlights from a car could be seen just off to its left; it was traveling parallel to a road. The beast continued on its way until lights could be seen ahead.

As it crept forward, it stopped to sniff what had once been a large dog, but was now a mass of mutilated meat. Probably last night’s kill.

The beast began creeping toward the lights until it could see a small trailer-house, and a small metal outbuilding. The beast sniffed the air then closed its eyes. Its detached senses sped forward. However, it didn’t go in the house at first; it went under the back porch where it found an old blue tick hound. Though the dog’s eyes were closed, the beast’s senses still passed through its eyelids and into its mind. Once it had found a suitable memory, it left the sleeping dog and went straight upward, passing through the floor. It then passed through the silent house until it found an extremely obese old man asleep in his recliner. The man’s head had lolled to the right, pulling the small plastic tube that normally ran from his nose to the green oxygen bottle beside his recliner until it had come out of his right nostril and had stretched his left to an oblong slit. The deep rumble of this man’s snoring echoed through the tiny living room.