Chapter #31How the Date of Your Dreams Took a Very Bad Turn by: Seuzz   Carson doesn't want to go find Javits, and you don't feel strongly enough to press it. You do rock-paper-scissors to see whether you'll drive out to confront Joe or Frank, and since you win, you take the wheel on the drive to your old house. On the way, you and Carson exchange more notes and hypotheses about what's going on. He tells you about his talk with the professor, who had no news, but was very interested to hear that Frank and Joe had changed places with the two of you.
It's dark by now, and you're just turning into your subdivision when a ghostly white truck appears, going the other way. You slam on the brakes and turn around: "That's my truck!"
"Awesome. So follow it!" Carson retorts. You grind the gears as you comply.
You keep your distance, trying not to be obvious about the tail. Maybe you succeed, or maybe he just doesn't care, for the driver in front makes no effort to shake you. But your sense of disquiet grows as you recognize where he's going, and your hands are trembling when you stop at the end of the street half a block from where your truck pulls to the curb. "Where are we?" Carson asks.
"Linwood Acres," you say hollowly. "That's Lisa Yarborough's house up there."
"Lisa? The fuck is he doing here? I thought she was going around with—"
"Will you shut up? I wanna see what's going on."
"So how's my talking screwing with your watching?"
You slap him, and he slaps you back. And you fume as the skinny kid who looks like you goes up to Lisa's door, and returns a little later with her on his arm. They drive off.
"Okay, that's definitely Joe," you hiss as you put the truck in gear and follow them. "Son of a bitch! He's after Lisa!"
"After her? Like how?"
"How do you think? All those girls he had back at Eastman, and now he has to get mine back at Westside!"
"Oh, Christ, she's not your girlfriend anymore, Prescott. In fact, wasn't she going around telling people she never was?" He blocks you as you hit him again. "And aren't you supposed to be on a date right now with some cheerleader that Joe was chasing?"
"That's different!" you sputter, and punch the accelerator to jump a red light.
"How?"
"It just is! Joe's taking advantage of Lisa! She thinks that's me, but it's that fucking reptile!"
"So? You're taking advantage of those girls at Eastman. They think it's Joe who's—"
"But this is different," you yell again. Maybe if you keep screaming it, that will make it different.
"The point is," you say after Carson has lapsed into an angry silence. "The point is that Joe was pretending today that he was me—"
"Like he's been doing for a week now."
"—and now we've got him red-handed acting like himself."
"Great. So what?"
"So, it means when we catch up to him, he can't pull that dumb act again like he did with Bredon."
"Oh, believe me, Prescott, if he's pretending to be you, he'll have no trouble acting dumb."
"We'll just catch him, and you'll see. Oh God, they're not, are they? They're not heading out to—"
"I think they are. Fuck!" Carson laughs. "Wouldn't it be hilarious if he lost your virginity for you?"
Sure enough, the truck ahead turns off the old highway and prowls down the side road to the river's edge. The river. Where people go to get laid. The bank is already crowded with vehicles, and couples walking along hand in hand. You grasp at the faint hope that your double and Lisa are just going to socialize with some of them.
But the truck ahead prowls further and further down, passing other access roads, and leaving the other cars and couples behind, until it comes to a lonely spot cut off from all other vehicles. You pass it as it parks, and move around a bend until you're out of sight before turning off the engine. "What are you doing," Carson hisses as you turn off the motor. "Let's just go find Frank and—"
"No, I gotta stop this," you say as you hop from the cab.
"Prescott! Will!" Carson calls you, but you're already sprint back toward your truck. Footsteps chase you, but with a burst you close on your quarry and yank the driver's side door open. Dim figures inside wheel and gasp.
"Hey there, Joe, remember me?" you cry, and yank the driver out. You've just time to see Lisa's face—white and staring, her mouth a perfect "O"—before you slam the door shut and throw your prey to the ground. Will Prescott looks up at you with a bewildered and very frightened look on his face.
"Will, stop it!" Carson yells, and grabs at you.
You shake him loose and lay hands again on Prescott. "What do you think you're doing, Joe?" you yell at him. "What were you going to do with her? Huh? What were you doing, asshole?" You grab him by the belt and the shoulders and hustle him back toward his own truck.
"What are you? Who the fuck are you?" he cries.
Behind you, Lisa yells at you to let her friend go. Carson grabs and wrenches your hands from your replacement. You wheel and punch him in the side of the head, and he falls into the dirt. Prescott tries running, but you grab him again and force him to back along toward the truck. He howls all the way.
Carson catches up just as you've slammed Prescott against the side of the truck. "Will, stop this bullshit! This isn't—!"
"This isn't what? We came out to talk to him, right?" you yell back. "Well, now we're gonna talk to him."
"We're gonna have the cops on us! Lisa's calling them now!"
"So get and drive! Here's the—! Key's in the ignition! You drive, I'll talk to this double-crossing fuckface in the back." You force Prescott into the bed of the truck and hold him down. Carson, his face white under the moon, gets in the truck and starts it up.
"Okay, Durras. Talk!" You crouch over your double, pinning him to cold, hard, metal bed of the truck. "What the fuck are you up to?"
"Who are you? What do you want?"
"I want you to talk! Who's that Rick Bredon guy, and why did you pretend like you didn't know me this afternoon?"
"Because I don't know you!"
You seize him by the hair at the top of his head, and he screams as you pull it. You clamp a hand over his mouth. "Listen, fucker, Carson's going to take us someplace really quiet, where you can scream your head off because no one will be able to hear you. But if you don't want to scream, just tell me what I want to know. Do you understand?"
He doesn't respond. He just clenches up his eyes and cries.
* * * * *
It's a long, tiresome, and (on your side) fairly brutal interrogation before Carson finally pulls to a stop out in the country and joins you in the back. After you get tired of Prescott's repeated pleas of ignorance, you force him to tell you about his talk with Bredon this afternoon. "We just talked," he says. "He asked me about this book that I found at Arnholm's."
"What did you tell him?"
What follows, to your consternation, is a recital of the story that you've been telling other people: Of finding a strange book and trying to hide it; and of being haunted and harried by a sense that doppelgangers are closing around. But this story ends much more abruptly than your own. It ends with this Will Prescott finding a mask in Nurse Shaffer's office on a Friday afternoon, and running away ... And then finding himself back at home with a weekend missing from his life.
"I don't know what happened," he insists. "I've been scared! There's just this big blank spot. Carson's got one too. We're running away, and then we don't know what happened. Only that we're home, and it's Monday night, and everyone is acting normal. But I can't shake the feeling that there's—" He looks around nervously. "That there's doppelgangers around." His eyes twist up with misery.
"Monday," Carson says reflectively. "That was the day that Frank and Joe went out to Jonathan Straussler's place, to see Patterson."
"You think the doppelgangers got them," you ask. "Gave 'em magical amnesia or something?"
Carson tugs at his lip. "But I talked to Joe afterward. After they left Jonathan's."
"Unless it wasn't Joe." You point to your face. "Unless it was someone in a mask."
You both shudder.
You take Prescott back to his truck, and you tell him that you're actually friends and that you're trying to help him and Carson fight the doppelgangers. Naturally, he looks unconvinced. Lisa has apparently gotten a ride back, for she's not at his truck, and you and Carson watch with a sense of disquiet as he drives away.
Only afterwards do you realize that you forgot to ask what he was doing out here at the river with Lisa. It seems really out of character for a Will Prescott who's suffering from amnesia and worried about doppelgangers.
* * * * *
You have vivid nightmares that night. In one, you are chased by a vast, lumbering, implacable monster that seems wrapped all about with burlap. It finally catches you and presses you to the ground and pushes its face—a burlap face that smells of damp earth—into yours to smother you. You wake with a groan and a shiver.
But waking is pleasant in another regard: A smell of frying bacon and eggs filters through your door. You stretch and dress and go out to say nice things to Carson about fixing breakfast.
Imagine your shock when you find it's Rick Bredon in the kitchen fixing breakfast.
And Gordon Black and Steve Patterson are sitting at the dining room table. You have the following choice: 1. Continue |
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