“I tried to save her. That’s what happened.”
Scotty opened his mouth and then clamped it shut. His sunburned cheeks flushed even redder, like steam building up in his face.
“Do you have something to say?” I asked.
“No.”
“Don’t hold back, Scotty. Say it.”
He pushed into my space, his scarlet face inches from mine. His voice became a snarl. “Fine. You want me to say it? I will. You should have died out there. If it was me in that car, I would never have come out of that river without her. Either we both lived, or we both died. But there’s no way I would have let her die alone.”
My left hand flew. I didn’t even feel it happening. I never did when I lost control. My arm swung like a rocket left to right, and my fist collided with Scotty’s mouth. The impact was like hitting a wall. Blood sprayed from his lips and nose, and I felt the shudder knifing through my forearm. I wondered if I’d broken my fingers. His head snapped sideways, and he staggered back, spitting out a tooth like a kernel of popcorn.
I tensed, waiting for him to charge me. He was big enough and strong enough to give me a beatdown if he wanted. A part of me hoped he would. I wanted to feel the pain of his fists until I was unconscious on the floor. I deserved punishment. I’d failed, and it felt as if I was doomed to relive that failure over and over. Whenever I closed my eyes, I was in the water, swimming through nothingness, searching for the car where Karly was trapped. I had to find her. I had to save her. I dove and swam and searched, but each fragile second dragged her farther away from me. Her voice stopped calling my name. Her cries vanished. All that was left was a terrible silence in my head, a silence of guilt and death. She was gone. My wife was gone.
I hit Scotty because I knew he was right.
I’d let Karly die alone.
When it was obvious that Scotty wasn’t going to fight back, I left the house, nursing my bruised and bloody hand. I was consumed by a mix of adrenaline and despair. At the sidewalk, I met an elderly woman walking her Westie. She studied my face with suspicious eyes and noted the blood on my fingers.
“Is everything all right?” she asked me.
“Fine.”
“I heard loud voices. An argument.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Should I call the police?”
“Everything’s fine, ma’am,” I told her, continuing into the street.
“This is a nice neighborhood!” she called after me, with the reproach of a schoolteacher. “We don’t like that kind of thing around here! People shouldn’t fight!”
I didn’t answer her. I crossed through the traffic to Horner Park and then into the wet, open grass of the park’s baseball field. I used to come here as a kid. Roscoe and I would toss a football around and tackle each other in the mud. We’d talk about playing quarterback for the Bears, and believe me, they’ve had worse.
The drizzle had turned into showers, and the rain soaked me as I stood there. No one else was around. I winced, feeling the sharp burn in my hand. My fingers felt stiff as I tried to move them.
The sheriff called me a violent man.
You’re not.
But my history said otherwise.
Ahead of me, I saw a lineup of trees where the park ended at the narrow ribbon of the Chicago River. A fence discouraged kids from hiking down the riverbank and falling into the water. Not that it worked. As teenagers, Roscoe and I had explored the banks on both sides of the river, playing spies, throwing rocks, hunting rats. Today, in the rain, I walked all the way up to the fence and took hold of it with both hands and closed my eyes. I leaned my forehead against the mesh.
Without Roscoe, without Karly, I didn’t think I’d ever felt more alone. They’d gone on to other worlds, and I was still here. However, when I opened my eyes again, I realized that I wasn’t alone anymore.
He was with me.
I can’t tell you how I knew. I didn’t hear footsteps on the trail. I didn’t see anyone watching me. The trees were close in around me, and the gray sky made it seem like night. A stranger could have been six feet away, and I wouldn’t have seen him. But someone was on the other side of the fence, hiding on the riverbank the way I used to do when I was a kid. Like he knew this was where I’d go. Like he’d been waiting for me to come here. I tried to be patient, to stand there like a statue in silence and see if he’d show himself.
He was back. I was back.
My doppelgänger.
I stared into the brush, watching for movement in the shadows. I could see the tree trunks like soldiers, and among them, I finally spotted a dark outline that looked out of place. A person. I hadn’t been this close to him before. Only a few feet separated us. I also realized, as I had in the museum, that this wasn’t just about me. He knew I was here, too. He was aware of me, just as I was aware of him. We were connected. And what I felt emanating from him was an aura of sheer sadistic rage. It was like I’d handed this shadow all my anger, all my bitterness, all my frustrations.
I looked around to be sure that no one else was nearby. Just him and me. My hallucination. My mental breakdown.
“I know you’re there,” I called to him in a low voice. Then I added for the hell of it: “Talk to me.”
I waited for an answer, but I didn’t expect to get one. Hallucinations didn’t talk back. Even so, by speaking to him, I felt as if I’d taken a leap into a rabbit hole, and I had no idea where it would lead me.
“Who are you?” I asked.
I still got no reply. The silence around me was punctuated by the patter of rain on the leaves.
Then, like a statue coming to life, a voice spoke from the darkness. My voice, as if I were on the radio, when you can’t believe that’s how you sound to everyone else.
“I’m you.”
I lurched back in disbelief. Did I really hear that? No, I couldn’t have heard that. Alicia had told me: he’s not real. This was my fevered imagination at work, all my memories playing tricks on me. My body twitched. I dug my fingertips into the top of my skull, as if I could squeeze out what my mind was telling me. My eyes blinked over and over. I rushed the fence and grabbed hold of it like a prisoner in a cell.
“What do you want?” I hissed.
Again the rain was the only sound for a long stretch of time. He dragged out my torture by saying nothing. I was starting to hope that I’d awaken and realize this had all been a nightmare. I’d be sane again. I’d be back in my bed, and Karly would be next to me, and all the preceding days would have been a dream. But as I stood there, soaking wet, chilled to the bone, the nightmare deepened.
It got blacker.
I shouted at him. “Why are you here? Tell me!”
This time, my shadow man answered. He whispered from the trees.
“To kill.”
Chapter 6
I ran.
I ran without looking back at the river. I sprinted through the park’s wet green fields, dodged through random side streets like a man being chased, and finally boarded the first bus that passed my way. I didn’t care where it was going. It took me away, which was what I wanted. Eventually I got off and transferred, and then transferred again. A long time later, I made it back to the hotel. I hurried through the lobby without talking to anyone and twitched impatiently, waiting for the elevator. When the doors opened, I tensed, not sure what I would see inside. The same was true when I got to the floor where I was staying.
I expected to see him. Me.