Chapter 8 - The Double at the Window
Mark scrambled backward across the warping floorboards, his chest heaving as he stared out the window at the grotesque reflection of himself standing in the dead yard.
"That's not me. That's a trick, a psychological projection," Mark muttered frantically, shaking his head as the duplicate outside raised a hammer and struck the glass pane.
The glass didn't shatter; it rippled like water, sending concentric circles of distortion across the view while the sound of tearing metal echoed through the room.
"He's trying to get in, Mark. Or maybe he's trying to let something out," Elena whispered, keeping her hand pressed firmly against the scorching handle of the closet door.
Clara sat down cross-legged on the floor, humming a lullaby that Sarah used to sing in the college recordings, her voice carrying an eerie, hypnotic resonance through the space.
"Clara, stop humming that song!" Mark snapped, his nerves fraying past the breaking point as he reached out to pull his daughter away from the center of the room.
Before his fingers could touch her, the closet door swung open on its own with a deafening screech of stressed metal and burning timber, releasing a wave of dry heat.
No fire spilled out; instead, a vast, cavernous archive of filing cabinets stretched endlessly into the darkness, each drawer labeled with a name, a date, and a cause of death.
"Every door we open, every room we visit, it's a debt we accumulated by ignoring the signs," a cold, disembodied voice whispered directly into Mark's ear from the shadows.
Mark spun around, throwing a wild punch into the empty air, but connected with nothing save for the biting chill of a draft that smelled of ancient dust and copper.
"Mark, look at this drawer, it has your name on it," Elena called out from deep within the archive, her voice sounding small and distant amidst the towering metal shelves.
Mark forced his legs to move, stepping over the threshold of the closet into the cold, oppressive aisle where Elena stood frozen in front of a rusted steel drawer.
The label on the drawer read clearly in bold, typed letters: MARK ADAMS - INCIDENT 2012 - UNRESOLVED, with a blank space underneath for the date of final termination.
"What is this? I've never seen this office in my life," Mark said, reaching out a trembling hand to touch the cold metal handle of the designated filing cabinet.
"You haven't seen it yet because your file isn't closed," a low chuckle echoed from the end of the dark aisle, followed by the sound of heavy boots walking toward them.
From the shadows stepped a man wearing the exact same dark blue button-down shirt as Mark, his face bruised, bleeding, and bearing the exact scars Mark had received in car wrecks.
May you like
"Hello, Mark. It took you long enough to find your own records," the doppelgänger said, pulling a heavy iron key from his pocket and dangling it inches from Mark's face.
---
