Dead Ringers (10 page)

Tess backed toward the door, staring at one mirrored pane. Her reflection looked back. The gray light had faded further, the mirror darkening, and she blinked as she studied her own face, noticing a dull spot on the glass, a ripple in the image that seemed to be spreading.

“What…” she began, cocking her head and leaning closer, thinking it must be just a trick of the light.

Human eyes watched her, the reflection of a man behind her, as if he'd been there all along. Tess whipped around, hands up to protect her, cell phone flying from her fingers. It struck the table and skidded off onto the floor as she stood wide-eyed, heart machine-gunning against her rib cage.

No one.

She stood alone in the psychomanteum.

The reflection had belonged to her ex-husband. Those eyes had gazed at her with such love over the years but not tonight.

Tess pressed her eyes shut.
How?

Woman,
she heard him say.

Not breathing, heart clenched, she turned slowly to glance over her shoulder and saw the reflection there, in one mirrored pane. The reflection, but no one to cast it.

“No,” she whispered.

Keep away!

In that moment, she watched her husband die. One blink of her eyes and the shadowed reflection was that of Nick Devlin, and the next it turned to rotted muscle and skin stretched tight across an eyeless skull … jaws splitting open in a terrible, yearning maw that stretched toward her, darting outward as if the mirror were an open window.

Tess screamed as she jumped back, smashed into a chair and caught her leg. She fell, crying out again as she scrambled through the doorway and hurled herself out of the booth. Whispering prayers to a God she'd almost forgotten, she flipped over to face the psychomanteum, certain the dead thing must be right behind her, sure she could feel its breath on her neck. She scuttled a dozen feet back from the mirrored booth until she realized that nothing had pursued her out into the gloom of the empty restaurant.

Gaze locked on the psychomanteum, she began to rise, remembering its other name.
Apparition box
.

“No way,” she whispered, feeling her heart pounding in her throat and temples.

“Tess?”

She twisted around, darting away from the voice, only to find Lili frowning at her from two tables away.

“Whoa,” Lili said. “Relax, you spaz.”

Tess raised a trembling hand to cover her mouth, afraid she might scream again.

Lili moved toward her, alarmed now by the depth of her fear. “Tessa?”

With a shake of her head, Tess turned to look at the psychomanteum again. Nothing moved inside that little room, an archaic curiosity meant to be nothing more than ornamentation. She wanted to tell herself that her imagination had gotten the better of her, but what of the two men who had vanished inside the booth?
A magician's trick,
she told herself again.
All of it
.

She didn't believe it, but the idea gave her the strength to speak again. In halting tones, her heart slowly returning to normal speed, she told her friend what she had seen. Lili chimed in with a litany of quiet profanities and wide eyes that kept glancing over at the damned box.

“You dropped your phone in there?” Lili said when she'd finished speaking.

“Fuck the phone,” Tess whispered, moving toward the exit. “I'll ask someone from the hotel to get it.”

Lili started toward the psychomanteum.

“What are you doing?” Tess asked.

“Getting your phone.”

“You don't believe me.”

Lili paused just outside the mirrored box. “I mostly do. But you're not alone, now. Something happens to me, you can get help.”

Before Tess could protest, Lili stepped into the box. Tess could see her moving a chair aside and getting down on one knee to retrieve the cell phone. As she stood, Lili glanced around at the mirrored walls. In the fading gray light, she hesitated a moment and craned her neck as if she wasn't quite sure what she had seen in the mirror, but then she stepped out of the psychomanteum. Tess imagined the thing in the mirror coming after her, a hand reaching out from the gloom inside the apparition box.

“Shit,” Lili said, tsking as she strode over to hand Tess her phone. “Screen's cracked.”

Numb, Tess took the phone. Lili walked beside her and they left the restaurant. Only when they had strolled through the lobby and moved through the revolving door to stand beneath the hotel's awning, rain pounding down, did Lili speak again.

“You want me to come home with you?” she asked. “We can get some Chinese food, send the sitter home early.”

Tess scoffed. “Hell, no. The gallery manager said Devani Kanda's going to be there tonight. We're going.”

Lili offered a thin smile, hugging herself against the damp chill of the oncoming evening. “You really want to go over there after this?”

Tess fought the tremor in her hands as she opened her umbrella, forcing away the memory of the hideous death face she'd seen in the mirror.

“We have to go,” she told Lili.

“Why?”

“This is still some kind of mystery to you, just a puzzle to solve,” Tess said. “You're not afraid. But I have a feeling that when you see this woman, your double … maybe then it'll get under your skin.”

She turned and marched off into the rain and Lili followed. As night fell, every window in the city seemed to hold the promise of dead faces and whispered warnings. Tess tried to breathe and told herself that the rules of the solid, tangible world she had always known still applied. But she knew a lie when she heard one, even one she very much wanted to believe.

 

SIX

Tom Belinski didn't mind the rain. A good thing, because his three-year-old German shepherd, Kirby, never stopped to consider the weather when it came time for his walk. They had an apartment on Boylston Street, but their walk always took them over to Beacon Hill, past the golden-domed State House and into the neighborhood of exclusive mansions at the top of the hill. Belinski had been a history professor for years but now, well into his fifties, he'd dropped the professor part of his job description to concentrate on being a pure historian. His work in progress was a book about the old Granary Burial Ground, just blocks from where he and Kirby now wandered. Each chapter offered a slice of Boston's early history by profiling the lives of some of the city's early denizens—every grave in that burial ground, from Benjamin Franklin's father, Josiah, to the victims of the Boston Massacre, had its own story. His publisher had flipped over the idea, but Belinski had missed his deadline by months and still had months to go, and they were profoundly displeased.

Kirby tugged at the leash, sniffing the leg of a mailbox where some other dog had no doubt left its mark. He loosed a short stream of urine not because he had to go but because he wanted to obliterate the other dog's claim of ownership over that spot. Over his life, Belinski had owned four dogs and he had learned that each had its own personality, but Kirby had proven to be the oddest, by far. Like graffiti artists, dogs marked their territory almost as a challenge to others to take it back. Normal behavior for canines. But Kirby took it one step further. When they went to the Common on their morning walk he would always antagonize other dogs by stealing their toys and balls, running off to drop them on the ground nearby, just to piss on them.

Belinski had been told that his dog was an asshole, and he never argued the point.

“Come on,” he said, tugging the leash until Kirby fell into step beside him.

The shepherd stopped every dozen feet or so to sniff the sidewalk or the front of a building, undeterred by the puddles or the falling rain. It had eased up a little, but Belinski kept beneath his umbrella, making no attempt to shield the dog. He kept a towel by the front door to dry Kirby off so that they could both avoid provoking the ire of Belinski's wife, LeeAnne.

Kirby paused in front of the granite wall that hemmed in the yard of the second Otis Harrison House, the only freestanding mansion on Beacon Hill. The house had always been one of Belinski's favorites and he had written about it more than once. After the latest restoration a few years back, the brick building looked more magnificent than ever. He'd always found the use of Corinthian pilasters more than a bit odd, but who was he to question the great Thomas Bulfinch, who had designed the whole thing, right up to the octagonal cupola on the roof?

A low span of wrought iron separated the street from the tiny green yard. The leaves on the two oaks in front had turned a vivid red and orange, but in the rain and after dark they looked almost black.

He gave Kirby's leash a tug but the dog did not respond. Kirby had paused in his sniffing of the granite wall and as Belinski tried to pull him away, the dog began to growl. Belinski rolled his eyes—the dog had always indulged in this sort of drama—but he gave in when Kirby tried to drag him nearer to the house.

“What do you smell, boy?” he asked. “That little French bulldog?”

At the corner of the house, a curtain of rain spilling off the edge of the Federal's roof onto Belinski's umbrella, Kirby started barking. Just a few growling yaps at first, but they grew in ferocity. The dog backed up a step, hackles raised, barking wildly. Kirby had snapped at people before, but Belinski had never heard him like this.

“Hey, dummy, quit it!” he said, yanking on the leash.

Kirby stood his ground, straining against his collar. The dog howled, paws scratching the rain-spattered sidewalk as he threw his weight into an effort to pull away from his master. Belinski wondered if he'd caught some animal scent that had whipped him up into this frenzy, but couldn't imagine what it might have been. With his merely human nose, he couldn't smell anything except the rain.

“Jesus, Kirby, come on!” Belinski said, holding firm. “What set you off?”

The dog began to whine between snarls, digging in harder. Belinski gave up being gentle and tried to drag Kirby away from the house. Snarling, the dog refused to turn away, forcing Belinski to haul him backward, nails scraping the sidewalk. The wind gusted fiercely and blew up under the umbrella, which bent sideways and popped inside out. The rain swept down on him and suddenly Belinski had lost all patience.

“That's enough,” he said, pulling his way along the leash like they were playing tug-of-war.

He shouted the dog's name as he dropped to one knee on the rain-slicked sidewalk and grabbed hold of Kirby's collar, reaching around to force the German shepherd to look at him. Wild-eyed, slobber drooling over his black lips, the dog paused, huffing for breath. He whipped his head side to side to pull away from his master's grip, but Belinski held the collar tightly.

“Let's go, boy,” he said. “There's nothing for you here.”

The dog sniffed the air. His upper lip curled back in a silent snarl, and then he lunged. Belinski shouted in alarm and anger, grabbed Kirby's throat, and held him back for a few seconds until the dog twisted sideways and sank his teeth into his master's left wrist. Bone crunched and blood sprayed as the dog clamped his jaws down and shook his head back and forth, digging in.

Belinski screamed. His right hand slipped off the dog's collar. Kirby felt it, released his wrist, and went for his face.

And then his throat.

And then the meat of his arms.

And then the soft things inside his belly.

 

SEVEN

The cab ride passed mostly in silence, save for the African music playing through the speakers. The driver kept a clean taxi and unlike many of those in his occupation, didn't try to engage his passengers in small talk. Occasionally, voices crackled over the radio as the dispatcher ordered other drivers to addresses where they would pick up their fares. The wipers sluiced rain off the windshield. The taxi shot through a vast puddle, tires throwing a tidal wave onto the sidewalk.

“You're mad at me,” Lili said.

Tess kept her breathing steady, trying to ignore the throbbing in her spine. “I'm not.”

“But—”

“Let's just get there, okay?”

Lili pressed her lips together and turned to stare out the window. After twenty seconds or so she spoke a single, quiet word. “Okay.”

Minutes passed during which Tess reminded herself that they had been incredibly fortunate to get a cab. In retrospect they could have had the doorman at the Nepenthe call one for them, but neither of them had been thinking clearly when they had emerged from the hotel. Tess had just wanted to get away from the place. Fortunately they had passed Octavian Steak House, which was high-end enough to have a doorman all its own, and he'd had them in a taxi ninety seconds after they'd asked.

The African music quieted and the driver gestured to the street corner ahead. “Any particular spot for you, ladies?”

Tess bent to peer through the window and saw the bright white of the First Light Gallery's shop window. She wanted to tell the driver to keep going, give him her address and tell him to take her home.

“Right here's fine,” Lili replied.

“All right,” he said, his accent thick. “But you'll want those umbrellas. It's nasty out there tonight.”

The driver pulled up to the curb, creating a smaller, slow-motion tidal wave. Tess opened the door, not waiting while Lili paid. She popped open her umbrella and slid out, sheltered herself from the rain, and stared at the gleaming white light pouring out of the gallery. It seemed impossibly cheerful on such a dreary evening.

“Hey,” Lili said.

Tess glanced at her, then blinked in surprise as she realized the cab had already pulled away—was halfway up the block—and she hadn't even noticed.

“You okay with this?” Lili asked.

Tess managed to nod and start walking. Lili caught up, hiding from the storm beneath her own umbrella. The wind whipped the rain sideways and Tess felt it slicking her legs, colder than before now that the temperature had dropped. Her back ached a little, but the tightness would work itself out as she moved. It always did.