Dead Ringer Page #4

I'm a huge fan of horror because I find that it is most often the most suitable genre to realize our fears in a safe space where the bad things that happen are make believe but the outcome is often a sense of catharsis. We faced our fears, and though we really had nothing to lose because it was all pretend, we still grew stronger for it. Horror is also a perfect vehicle to make a statement, whether creative, personal, political, or any way else, horror is an excellent way to make a point. That's partly why I wrote this story, but the other reason is a little simpler; I love a good scare.

• Horror

								

Bleary eyed, Tom peered up as his assailant slowly descended the stairs after him, not like a maniac but rather a stately debutante, elegant and methodical. Sprawled out on the hallway floor in nothing but his briefs, Tom’s first notion – absurd as it may have been – was to cover himself with his hands as if he were Adam realizing for the first time that he was naked in the presence of God. Yet, it wasn’t the absurdity of his abrupt self-consciousness that caused Tom to freeze, it was the sight of the man he was staring up at. For the man slinking toward him wasn’t a man at all, but rather a child. A child Tom recognized so well that he at first wondered if he were unwittingly staring into a mirror.
The child on the stairs looked like Tom himself.
“Wh-who are you?” Tom managed to say, though talking was alarmingly painful. Had he broken a rib in the fall? It sure felt like something sharp was jabbing the muscles in there.
“Who am I?” The Tom imposter said with a grin so vile that it would put even the Grinch to shame. Though he appeared to be twelve, just like Tom, he spoke in the tones and air of an adult. “Maybe the better question to ask is, who do you think you are?”
What a ridiculous question! He was Thomas Billings, twelve, went to Fever Springs Jr. High where he got mostly good grades and was never beat up by the bigger kids. He lived on Chester Street where nothing ever really happened. Well, until recently, of course. He had a mom and dad and older brother who loved him.
“Oh, no, no,” Thomas II said as he stepped off the stairs and stood over Tom’s pained, prone body. “You’re just looking at the surface of things. Those trivial matters aren’t who you are, they’re merely your circumstances.”
What!? How did this guy know what Tom had been thinking?
“Who you are is in here.” He bent down and tapped Thomas on the head with one pointing finger. “Dig a little deeper and you’ll see, there’s a lot you don’t know about yourself. There’s a lot we all don’t know about ourselves because most of us, well, we’re just too scared to look.” He pressed his hands together before his earnest face as if he were about to pray.
Tom shook his head violently. “No,” he shouted. “No. No! NO!”
“Oh, but yes,” Thomas II continued. “Even yourself. You’ve been too afraid to look inward as well. Terrified of the darkness you’ll find lurking inside your own mind, or the fact that you – like anyone else – are capable of some of the most heinous of crimes. You don’t look because you don’t want to find…me.”
Thomas tried to kick himself away, but found that his sweating feet only skidded across the polished wood floor. He felt oh so trapped, like a fish out of water. “I’m just a kid,” he said, though for some reason, his assertions on this matter only sounded like pleading to his own ears. “I couldn’t do bad things. I couldn’t kill someone.”
“Oh?” Thomas II asked with a smirk. “You already have.”
That wasn’t true! Not true at all! Who was this psychopath? Why was he impersonating Thomas like this?
“Lies!” Thomas screamed. “Lies! You’re a liar! You killed those people!”
“Oh, you’re so silly. You really should look in a mirror because I am you,” the other Thomas said in a voice so calm, so convicted that Tom couldn’t help but believe it. He knew it was true. Knew it. But how could that be?
Thomas II reached down and offered his hand. “Get up. Come with me.”
No way! Thomas absolutely did not want to go with this lunatic. And yet, he felt utterly compelled to oblige. What the hell was going on here? Nothing made sense! Not even the confused, conflicted feelings of repulsion and desire Thomas felt in the presence of this other.
“There is no other, Thomas. A lot of people would do well to open their eyes to that.”
So, he reached forward and allowed (?)himself(?) to lift him off the floor and lead him into the living room.
Blood! There was so much blood in here! Blood was splashed on the walls, the tv, the couch. Blood had pooled on the hardwood floor. Lying crisscrossed on the couch lay the blood drenched bodies of his mother and brother while in the corner, propped up like a macabre mannequin in his easy chair, sat the mutilated body of his father. How long had good ol’ Dad been there like that? All night? Impossible! No one had been in here when Tom had gone to bed.
And yet, he was no longer so sure of that.
Was that why they had never come home? Because they’d been here, dead, the whole time? How had Tom not known this?
“We need to leave now,” Thomas II said, turning away from the macabre scene before them. “Secrets like these don’t stay secret very long. Someone will be around to get us.”
“But I didn’t do this!” Tom said, shaking uncontrollably and pulling free of the imposter’s grasp. He darted back into the hallway, ready to tear open the front door and scramble into the rainy night in search of some help when he happened to catch his reflection in the mirror at the foot of the stairs. This time, instead of disregarding himself, he paused.
Staring back at him was the stark, terrified face of a twelve-year-old child. Himself, of course, but almost unrecognizable. Blood had smeared across his face, crusted in the corners of his mouth and eyes, was streaked through his hair. With tears forming in his eyes, he peered down to his hands to see that blood had stained them too, was caked beneath his fingernails and in the creases of his knuckles.
With ice in his chest, he spun around only to find that he was now all alone. The other Thomas was no longer in the living room, no longer in the house at all, he was certain. Because the other Thomas didn’t exist, at least not in the physical sense. Both were him. The light side he allowed himself and everyone else to see, and the dark side he kept hidden. Just like all of us.
He still didn’t know exactly what had happened. He was not so much having a Norman Bates moment as he was simply trying to actively separate himself from the horrible things he had done to his family and the other victims. He remembered it all, but only if he allowed himself to.
Like a bad dream.
With the new understanding that he could run from the terrible things he’d done even if he could never escape himself, Tom opened his front door and was swallowed up by the thundery, autumn night.
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