14.4

It was him, but it wasn’t him.

He had the same face, the same frame (although much thinner), the same eyes, but of course it couldn’t be him.

They stared at each other for a moment that took an age to pass.

Then the intruder’s face cracked into a malignant grin. He tipped his chin to his chest and stared up at Wayne through the slivers of his rolled-back eyes.

He looks like you’d look if you went psycho, Wayne thought with a shudder.

‘Hello, Wayne,’ the intruder said. ‘It’s so nice to finally meet you. I’m Simon, and I’m your twin.’

Wayne felt his knees bend of their own accord. The world seemed to synchronise with his heartbeat as the corners of his eyes pulsated.

Before he knew it the ground was racing up to meet him.

*

When Wayne woke, Tom from his English class was throwing cold water on him.

He was gibbering about a twin, but Tom hadn’t seen anyone else in the bathroom and had no idea what he was talking about.

‘Can I have some of what you’ve been smoking?’ he smiled.

Wayne said nothing, but his eyes were on stalks. Searching for the mysterious twin who was now long gone.

*

Over the next few days Wayne began to wonder if he had imagined it all.

Did someone slip something in my drink? He pondered.

There had been talk of one of the lads bringing some LSD that he’d nicked from his older brother.

It was altogether possible.

He decided to go out walking to take his mind off it.

It was a lovely summer’s day.

Mam and Hank were in the garden, starting up the barbecue.

He would’ve joined in, but felt he had too much to think about.

They’d know something was up and get it out of him.

And of course he couldn’t tell them there’d been a house party, could he?

Especially after he’d cleaned the entire house from top to bottom on his own.

He’d been pissed at first but had eventually come to take a grim satisfaction from the job – except for when he’d had to fish a floater out of the hot tub. That had been a step too far, even at a house party.

In the end he was proud of his efforts.

The sun was warm on his face as he walked.

Birds tweeted in the trees.

He chose to walk along by the river, as he found that the babbling of the water over the stones always helped to ease his woes.

Still, he found it hard to forget the image of his twin’s face; eyes half-lidded, rolled back most of the way into his skull to reveal the whites, chin tipped down, face contorted in a grin that was best described as demonic.

A shiver ran down his spine.

He shook his head to shake the ominous thoughts free, but they clung like shit to a blanket.

Whoever he was, he’s bad fucking news, he thought.

*

Wayne arrived home feeling a little better, but not fully relaxed.

Still, he smiled when he saw that his mam and Hank were in the hot tub now, their backs to him.

He was a little disgusted to see how much skin his mam had on display, but was too preoccupied to really worry about it.

I just hope they don’t invite me in again, he thought. It was well awkward the last time.

He crept up the gravel drive, doing his best not to make a sound.

‘Don’t turn round. Don’t turn round,’ he muttered to himself.

It was a huge relief when he reached the front door without them shouting him over.

Smiling, he opened the front door and went up to his room.

*

After a few hours on his Xbox, he went down to the kitchen to make a sandwich.

His belly had been gurgling a while now but he’d wanted to get to a save point in his game before he ate.

He happened to glance up at the window while buttering his bread and noticed that his mam and Hank hadn’t moved from where they sat in the hot tub.

They’ll be like prunes by now, he thought with a smile. Serves them right for getting pissed and falling asleep in the hot tub.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

He chuckled to himself.

Waved sarcastically from the window.

They were both just sitting there.

‘Off their fucking faces,’ he laughed, shaking his head. ‘And they get on at me about my drinking.’

Then he remembered that they had said they were going to be firing up the barbecue earlier.

That would have been much better than the sorry-looking sandwich he had just prepared.

So he went to the French windows, shouted, ‘Where’s this fucking barbecue then?’

To his dismay, his mam and Hank didn’t even flicker in response. Usually a curse like that would have got his mam screeching like a banshee.

He felt a slight jolt of alarm.

They were still.

Eerily still.

Hadn’t, in fact, moved in over two hours.

His skin began to crawl as he began to suspect something was wrong.

*

He stepped up onto the edge of the hot tub and saw two things; firstly, the water was the colour of blood, bubbling and frothing.

The second thing was almost as confusing and arguably more frightening; his twin from the party was sitting in the seat opposite, staring up at him with that weird eyes rolled back face again, arms casually spread along the edges of the hot tub wall.

‘Well, hello, Wayne, we’ve been expecting you,’ he grinned.

*

Wayne wanted to scream, especially when he saw the gaping, oozing hole in his mam’s chest.

Hank’s bowels floated around his waist like a rubber ring.

Their eyes were glassy, staring down into the frothing, crimson waters.

He wanted to scream, but his throat wouldn’t make the necessary sounds.

‘Come, sit, the water’s lovely,’ Simon grinned.

*

Wayne wanted to run, but his legs wouldn’t obey him.

He wanted to fight, but his body seemed frozen to the spot.

Finally, his voice croaked like a dying frog. ‘What the hell have you done?’

Simon grinned. ‘I’ve returned to my birth mother to show her that I do matter. That I am not something she can just throw away like an unwanted bag or jacket. Unfortunately things got a little heated and I got… carried away.’

His grin was serpentine, his eyes like black marbles in their sockets.

‘She gave me away,’ Simon sobbed, his entire body shaking, making the crimson tides in the hot tub sway wildly. ‘She didn’t want me.’

‘I’m sure there was a good reason,’ Wayne said. ‘Maybe she didn’t want kids.’

‘She kept you,’ he hissed, again adding to the snake comparison. ‘I’ve been watching you for a few weeks now. She dotes on you. That’s the life I should have had. Instead I’ve been neglected and abused every day of my sorry life. And it’s all because of her.’

Wayne had no idea what to say to this.

Finally sense returned and he turned away towards the house.

‘I’m going inside now.’

‘You call the police and I’ll gut you like I did your heartless mother,’ he snapped. Hell was in his eyes.

Wayne froze on the spot.

There was no way he was letting him get away with this.

He ran for the house.

Simon was up out of the hot tub, moving with the speed of a figment from a living nightmare.

His bare feet slapped the patio floor.

Wayne reached the house and locked the door.

He darted for the phone.

When he got closer, he noticed that the cables had been slashed.

His twin’s grinning, gore-splattered face pressed against the French windows, smearing blood across the glass.

He looks like what you would look like if you went crazy, he again thought.

Before he could act, Simon had picked up one of the metal patio chairs and hurled it through the glass.

Glass skidded everywhere. The noise was horrendous.

Wayne looked for a weapon and grabbed a knife from the washing up bowl.

One look at his half-naked, blood-spattered twin convinced him that flight was the best option.

Simon had his head bowed and looked up at him through eyes that had rolled back into his skull. His grin was ominous in the extreme.

Wayne ran upstairs, heading for his mobile phone.

That was his only hope, he was convinced.

He barricaded himself in his room, crying out in dismay at the force his rail-thin twin brother was managing to exert on the door.

He dialled 999 and quickly blurted out a description of the situation.

The assault on the door continued, turning his thoughts to panicked gibberings.

Then, just as suddenly, it stopped.

He wondered did he go for the door, make a run for it?

Or did he wait, locked up tight?

The house was eerily silent. All he could hear was the rain lashing the roof as the downpour began.

Until he heard muffled banging and scraping from outside.

Simon came round the corner, crawling along the extension’s roof.

His demonic face stared through the glass at Wayne for what felt like an eternity.

Finally, his blood-smeared hands began to beat upon the window so hard that there was no hope of him not getting in.

Wayne readied himself for the onslaught, the knife in his trembling hand.