Andrew Klavan - Nightmare City

And, as if the doppelgänger could hear him, he put his hand out, stopping the door, holding it open for a second.

“Wait,” he said. “Please don’t. I can see something’s the matter. You’re afraid. Let me help you.”

Karen Lee hesitated, doubtful. “You can’t. You don’t know what you’re getting into.”

“Then tell me,” said Tom’s doppelgänger. “I can’t do anything if I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Karen Lee looked at him through the gap in the door. The fear was plain in her eyes. Tom’s double let his hand fall—he couldn’t force her to let him in if she didn’t want to. It had to be her decision.

Karen Lee and the doppelgänger stood face-to-face at the half-opened door. Tom watched them in that moment of decision—and all at once, he realized: he knew what was going to happen next. Sure he did. He had lived through this scene already. It was his memory. But it was different from the memories he had seen at the school. Those memories had been ghosts. This one was real—more real than he was. It was he who was the ghost!

Karen Lee hesitated one more moment. Then, as Tom knew she would, she pulled the door open all the way.

“Come in. Quickly,” she said. “Before someone sees you.”

The Tom doppelgänger stepped inside the apartment. Tom himself hurried forward, hoping to slip in behind him. But before he could reach her, Karen Lee shut the door in his face.

Oh no , thought Tom.

Then—another fritz— another skip in the memory video—and Tom was inside the apartment, just like that. He didn’t know how it had happened. He didn’t feel he had passed through the door or anything. He was just suddenly there, that’s all. Standing there like an unseen specter while his own double and Karen Lee confronted each other.

Stunned, Tom looked around—and the doppelgänger looked around—and they saw that the apartment was in shambles.

“He came here,” said Karen Lee. “It was like he was insane.”

The chairs were all turned over on their sides. A lampstand lay toppled. Its lamp lay broken beside it amid a sprinkling of shattered glass. The curtains had been torn off the windows and lay in a pile on the floor, the curtain rods broken on top of them.

“He asked me if I was going to tell,” said Karen Lee. “I told him I didn’t know, I wasn’t sure. But I think he could see the truth in my eyes. He offered me money to stay quiet… but when I wouldn’t take it, he just… he went crazy. Lost his temper. He said he wouldn’t let me destroy him and his family. He would hurt me, he said. He said he would kill me if he had to. I was so scared… I promised to keep my mouth shut, but… I just can’t…” She made a noise, covered her mouth with her hand and started to cry. “I can’t keep quiet anymore.”

The Tom double stood there awkwardly, not knowing what to do, how to comfort her. Tom himself, in a gesture of kindness, moved to where the lampstand was lying. He crouched down and reached to pick it up. His fingers closed on the wooden shaft of it—and they went right through!

The sight was such a shock that Tom tried again. Same deal. He couldn’t grip the lamp. He couldn’t touch it.

I’m fading , he thought. I’m fading away .

He stood up. The doppelgänger came toward him. Afraid he would pass through him again—afraid of that awful feeling of nothingness—Tom moved quickly out of his way. He watched as the double did just what he had done. He crouched down, too. He took hold of the lampstand. He gripped it, lifted it, as Tom had tried to. He set it right. The doppelgänger could do it and he couldn’t.

I’m fading away to nothing. Soon I won’t exist at all .

The double looked at Karen Lee as she cried. “You should call the police,” he told her.

She shook her head. “He has friends on the police force. He has friends everywhere. A lot of them. Powerful people. I don’t know who to trust.”

Tom’s double nodded. “You can trust me,” he said. “Once I write the story, once it’s public, he won’t be able to do anything to you. If he does, everyone will know it’s him. Who is he? What is he trying to keep secret?”

Karen Lee stared at the doppelgänger, her eyes bright through the tears. Tom could see she desperately wanted to speak, to tell the truth. She forced the words out.

“He was the one who sold drugs to the team,” she said. “I’m his receptionist and assistant. I saw everything. The coach—Coach Petrie—he would come to him after hours at the office. He brought him cash, and the doctor gave him hypodermics full of steroids. And pills to take, too. He told me if I told anyone about it, I would go to prison, the same as him. So I was scared. I kept my mouth shut. I kept it secret for three years. But then—then when I heard about your story in the school newspaper, I realized I’d been wrong. I should’ve told at the start. I shouldn’t have stood by and let it happen. I told him: They’re going to catch us eventually. We should do the right thing. We should tell the truth. Maybe that way the law won’t be so hard on us. But he… he got upset. And then he came here. Threatened me…”

Watching Karen Lee—watching the doppelgänger—Tom felt his heart sinking inside him. He knew what was going to happen next, what they would both say next. He remembered. He even remembered the shock he felt the first time he heard it. He didn’t want to hear it again. He didn’t want to be here anymore.

But he stayed where he was. He stood and listened. He had looked too hard for the answers to run away from them now.

“Who was this?” said Tom’s double. “Who sold the players the drugs? Who threatened you like this?”

Karen Lee, still crying, whispered the name: “Dr. Cameron.”

The next moment was beyond belief. Tom saw it happen with his own eyes and still couldn’t take it in, couldn’t get his mind to grasp it.

“Dr. Cameron,” said Karen Lee—and Tom’s double straightened in surprise. Dr. Cameron? Marie’s father! The double began to step back… and then stopped. No, he didn’t stop. He froze . He froze completely in mid-step, his foot half lifted off the floor. Before Tom fully comprehended what he was seeing, his gaze shifted to Karen Lee and he saw that she, too, had gone utterly motionless. She was standing unblinking, with her lips still parted on the name of Marie’s father.

Tom looked around him. The apartment was silent. It was not an ordinary silence. It was complete. Nothing disturbed it. The refrigerator wasn’t humming. There were no voices from other apartments or from outside. The air itself seemed to have stopped moving entirely.

Tom stared at Karen Lee. He stared at his double. He moved to his double and looked right into his face—right into his own face—and yet the doppelgänger did not budge. Quickly, Tom went around him. He went to the glass doors that led out onto the balcony. He looked through.

The rain was motionless in the sky. It streaked the air but didn’t fall. Stupefied, Tom looked down the hill. He saw the cars on the town’s main street. They were no longer moving either. Beyond that, he saw the ocean, saw that the Pacific itself had ceased all motion. Its waves did not rise and fall but were frozen at their crests, reaching up toward the low clouds, which likewise did not so much as shift in the sky.

His eyes wide, Tom spun back to the scene in the apartment. It was just as it had been. Tom’s double stepping back in shock. Karen Lee locked in the instant after she had spoken. A scene so uncanny, it filled Tom with a sense of helplessness, not to mention fear. A million explanations began to form in his mind, but each trailed off unfinished. Because nothing explained it. It was impossible.