Doppelgänger Read Online Free PDF Page B

phase of adolescent gawkiness. His hair was red, his eyes sea-green, his fingers long and spindly. His cheeks and the back of his hands were covered in light freckles. She didn’t know it then but he also had freckles across the back of his shoulders and on his calves. Julian the Awkward Boy had charmed her in a way that Julian the New York Gentleman could never quite do. The way he looked at her and smiled at her as they walked rekindled the forbidden passion she’d felt for him when they first met.
    â€œSuch a beautiful day,” she said, admiring the glinting blue waters shimmering gold in the sunlight. “I like to think God paints days like these, the way a painter creates a picture.” She was speaking Swedish; all of her dreams were in Swedish.
    â€œPerhaps He does. God loves beauty.” He winked at her. “After all, He created you.”
    As he spoke these words she noticed that the quality of the light was changing. Looking up through the leaves of the birch trees she could see gray clouds suddenly boiling into the crystal blue sky, much faster than was possible in real life. The disk of the sun became diffused and the forest and lake were plunged into a blank overcast grayness that obliterated shadows instantly. “God is painting, all right,” she sighed, closing her parasol. A cold wind blew brownish leaves in swirling eddies through the forest. It was as if autumn had come in seconds.
    Then there were noises around her, strange rustling sounds in the leaves and underbrush. It came from several places in front of her and behind, to each side, even above. “I’m frightened,” she said, clutching Julian’s hand. “Take me back to the cottage.”
    â€œWhat is there to be frightened of?” Julian looked about but seemed not to notice the change in their surroundings. “Who can be scared of anything on a day like today?”
    She did not see the place from where the dark shape came. It was a blur, a smudge of black and yellow and red that flew suddenly out of the woods and instantly was upon him. The blade of a knife glinted in the dull overcast light. Julian cried out, but the blade flashed against his throat. Arterial blood sprayed in a broad arc across Anine’s arm and her face. She screamed as Julian crumpled to his knees, gasping and clawing at his cleaved throat. The fear that seized her was like an iron glove closing suddenly around her, crushing the life and breath from her.
    The blade flashed again, the roaring assailant plunging it downward into the top of Julian’s back. Now the thing that had attacked him stood still enough for her to see. It was a man dressed in ragged clothes, torn and stained with dirt. The remains of a blue necktie hung in mud-smeared rags. A yellow silk waistcoat was marred with broad stains of dried blood. A jagged splinter of wood six inches long protruded from the monster’s mangled neck.
    The thing was a relic of the grave, but its pale blue eyes still looked very human. As it withdrew the knife—Julian’s body, still gushing fresh blood, slumped to the floor of the forest—the ghoul that had once been Ola Bergenhjelm stared directly at Anine, rotting lips pulling back from its blackened teeth. Oily sludge leaked from its mouth.
    â€œNo! No !” Anine fell backwards, tripping over the bustle of her dress. She tried to scramble away from the living corpse that was now approaching her. It was making noise, straining for words, but the piece of the carriage axle in its throat rendered them hoarse unintelligible groans. With his dead fingers now nearly skeletal Ola gripped the handle of the knife, still dripping Julian’s blood.
    â€œForgive me,” she gasped. “Please, Ola, forgive me! I’m sorry!”
    The thing lunged at her. She felt its cold oily hand grasping her neck, and a moment later the blade of the knife plunged into the lace of her bodice. The stench of death