Byron Starr - Doppelgänger

“Can I at least stay and help you?” Emilio asked.

“No. Only I can be here, and don’t ask me to explain, because I can’t.”

“Well, I don’t understand what good it did us to go through all this crap to make it seem like I was going to be here tonight just to have my ass hauled out to West Texas,” Emilio snapped. “It just doesn’t make any sense.”

James didn’t answer, or look up; he glanced at his watch and said, “You’d better be getting on the road.”

Emilio looked as though he had more to say, then picked up his suitcase and limped over to the patrol car. He put the suitcase in the backseat, opened the driver’s door and slid into the driver’s seat, carefully avoiding bringing his wounded knee into contact with the steering wheel.

Before he shut the door, he said, “Please tell me this isn’t just a hare-brained plan to take a pot-shot at this killer and hope you’re lucky.”

“It’s not,” James said, without turning to face his friend.

Emilio shut the door then rolled down the window and said, “Good luck.”

“Thanks,” James said.

After Emilio drove off, James remained leaning on the truck, thinking. James remained propped up on the SUV for about five minutes. When he finished, he got up and walked into the trailer. He went to Emilio’s bathroom, and looked in the cabinets. Finding a bottle of Emilio’s cologne, he put it on, heavily. He then took off the clothes he was wearing and put on some of Emilio’s dirty clothes that were in a hamper in the bathroom; they were a loose fit, but they would have to do.

After James finished in the bathroom, he returned to the living room. He turned on the TV, flipped to the weather channel, and plopped down in the recliner. He placed the remote on the floor beside the recliner, and Greg’s pistol was taken from its holster and kept ready in James’ right hand.

The plan hinged on several minor details. If any one of them went wrong everything would fall through. The first minor, yet exceedingly important, detail was that James had to fall asleep, and this was no small task. Alone, James was about to face a creature that had killed his son, his wife and unborn child, his best friend and twelve other people over a span of a little over a month, and just last night attacked a jailhouse filled with armed men leaving five dead and one critically injured. It was hardly the best circumstance to be catching a nap.

The second minor detail was that James would have to wake up, but he would worry about that when — if — he got there.

James glanced at the clock: 10:09 p.m.

For what seemed like an eternity, James sat in Emilio’s recliner, watching The Weather Channel. This had always been a foolproof way for James to get to sleep. A world ago, he could remember Angie picking on the fact that every time he tried to catch the weather before he went to bed he would fall asleep in his recliner. She would pass through the living room, see him watching the Weather Channel, and comment, should I bring you your pillow? But tonight it didn’t seem to be working. James then tried the time-honored tradition of counting sheep. That didn’t work either.

James glanced at the clock on Emilio’s VCR: 10:31 p.m.

James was beginning to worry that he wouldn’t get to sleep in time. This was a problem on top of a problem. The more he worried, the less likely he was to be able to fall asleep. It wasn’t until what seemed like the one-hundredth time that Your Local Weather scrolled across the screen that James finally began to even yawn.

10:54 p.m.

On the weather channel, a young brunette lady was pointing out the highs in the Midwest. In a way, she looked like Angie. Although her hair was a different color, it was long like Angie’s when they had first met. The young weather-girl’s eyes were blue, not blueish-green like Angie’s, but they had the same shape. James closed his eyes and concentrated on the girl’s voice. Her voice even sounded like Angie’s.

… highs in St Louis will be around…

… snow flurries are expected in the…

… a cold front moving in…

… and on to the West…

…Diego expect a low…

… rain and sleet through…

… I love you, James.

James was asleep.

The night air was cold. Another front was moving in, pushing cold air ahead of it. In the distance, flashes of lightning could be seen dancing across the horizon as a storm approached.

The beast crashed through the underbrush. It followed its own scent along a route it had traveled just three days ago. It loped along with its crippled right arm drawn to its chest. Its left side and right shoulder were somewhat sore, but not enough to restrict movement. The beast’s injured left ankle caused it to have a slight limp when walking on two legs; it was but a mere annoyance and certainly no hindrance to its mobility.

The beast was battered, but it was still just as deadly as it had been a week ago. Maybe even more dangerous, as any animal grows more dangerous when it’s wounded.

Of course the beast was no animal, not really. It had the heightened senses and instincts of a predator, the intelligence of a human, the sadistic depravity of a demon, not to mention the strange ability to enter other creatures’ minds and change their perceptions of itself. What was this beast? Where did it come from? Why did it come? Not even the beast itself knew for sure. But like James Taylor, The One Who Sees, had said, It doesn’t matter where the damn thing came from. All that matters is it’s here.

The beast was now within about a half mile of the den of The One Who Caused Pain. It slowed its pace. Hatred hadn’t overridden the beast’s actions tonight as it had when it made its daylight attack three days ago.

It continued along, crossing a road and passing into a thin line of trees. On the other side of the trees the beast could see the lights from the den of The One Who Caused Pain.

James was still sitting in Emilio’s recliner, with Greg’s old pistol in his hand.

He awoke suddenly, but, incredibly, he was calm.

Here goes nothing.

James closed his eyes, but he could still see. It was like all of his senses were floating ahead of him in an out-of-body experience that would have been very disorienting to another person, but it was something James had become quite accustomed to. Only this time he wasn’t riding along in some creature’s mind while his body lay asleep miles away. His plan hinged on the belief that if he and the beast shared the ability to see through each others mind as they slept, maybe they shared the beast’s other ability as well. So far it appeared as if James had been right.

His senses shot forward and passed through the wall of Emilio’s trailer and sped across the front yard toward the row of trees that blocked the view of the trailer from the road.

When James’ free-floating senses first reached the row of trees, he didn’t see or hear anything. This was something James hadn’t accounted for. He was working with his own human senses rather than the creature’s incredibly heightened ones. James knew the beast had been on the edge of the woods, looking at the trailer, and he was quite sure it had been to the left of Emilio’s driveway. So James moved to where the driveway passed through the line of trees. He then guided his senses along the tree line, moving quite fast, because time was of the essence. As his senses sped along, he almost passed right by the beast, which had moved just outside of the trees and was standing on two legs. James’ senses came to a stop behind the beast, turned toward it, and passed through its body.

As James’ senses hovered in front of the beast, no more then six inches from its face, he took full note of its horrible ugliness. The skin of its hairless face was wrinkled and splotched, like that of an old man with liver spots, except instead of thin frail skin, the beast’s dark skin looked to be thick and leathery. Its ears were perched high on its head; currently they were raised high and pointed forward, but they would be laid back when the beast was running or attacking. Its nose looked extremely alien; it ran from the center of its eyes to above its mouth like a human’s, but it didn’t look at all human-like. It had an abnormally wide bridge — about one inch wide — and slits in its nose where normal nostril holes should have been. Its lipless mouth and its two rows of teeth were too big for its head; some of the serrated teeth were about an inch and a half, some were less than a half an inch, and there seemed to be no order to how they were distributed in its mouth. Its eyes were horrible. They had an elongated evil squint, and sloped down toward the nose. It appeared that its eyes lacked any color whatsoever, just a solid flat black. If the eyes are the window to the soul, then this beast had a soul as vile as the devil himself.