14.5
The bedroom windows became a blizzard of flying glass. In a way it was almost a relief to not be staring at his twin’s taunting face anymore. Heavy blasts of wind blew the rain through the hole where the glass had once been.
Simon rushed him, a shard of glass in one hand, a knife in the other.
Wayne realised it was fight or die; flight was no longer an option.
He gritted his teeth and ran in too.
Both their blades found their homes in the others’ gut.
Simon’s blow was harder though and he gave the handle a savage twist.
He seemed to shrug off the blow, whereas Wayne felt it vibrate through his entire body.
Simon shoved him back, stripping the knife from his brother’s hand and throwing his own weapons aside.
He threw punches like a primate, his arms flailing wildly.
Wayne did his best to cover his head, but fell to his back under the relentless assault.
Wayne’s world did several somersaults.
He was dazed and knew he was fighting for his life.
Out of the flood of confusion and terror, he heard a familiar, piercing sound.
Sirens.
Simon seemed to realise the situation and went to get up, but Wayne wrapped his arms around his torso and squeezed with all of his might.
Simon burst up, hitting him again and again, but Wayne pulled him back down every time.
If they find me holding him they’ll know he was real.
More importantly, I’ll know he was real.
Simon’s senses seemed better than his, as his efforts to free himself doubled, but Wayne found solace a few seconds later when he heard voices and booted feet hitting the ground downstairs.
‘We’re up here,’ he called out.
Wayne thought he had a tight grip on his brother, but he was slick with blood.
He pulled away hard.
Wayne matched his effort, holding him steady.
But then Simon’s knee rammed into his groin.
The split-second lapse in Wayne’s concentration was all he needed; his head slid from the headlock and he was up.
A couple of stiff right hands to Wayne’s jaw robbed him of much of his fight.
Simon was up, head spinning crazily. His skin was sticky with blood.
His feet crunched on the broken glass.
His body was revolting against him, but he forced himself on towards the window.
He climbed out, glancing around below for traces of police.
They were in the grounds now, but there were only a couple of them.
He watched them enter the house and crawled up onto the roof.
From there, he managed to shimmy down onto the garage roof.
He ducked down as he saw a policeman lingering at the front entrance to the property.
By now he could hear Wayne telling the other cops his story.
He glanced back and saw one of them poke their head out of the window.
‘That’s him down there,’ Wayne said, pointing to the now-empty roof.
‘So tell us again what happened. Specifically the bit about the twin,’ the cop said, giving his colleague a cynical look.
*
The cops listened to Wayne’s story, nodding in all the right places.
It seemed clear to him that they thought he was making it up.
They searched the roof but found no trace of Simon. The heavy rain had washed away the blood from the roof.
Which of course, made Wayne’s life more difficult.
‘Mr Cross, you have the right to remain silent,’ one of the cops began.
*
Simon had managed to conceal himself inside the garage. There’d been a loose flap of felt on the roof and he’d been able to squeeze through, for once grateful of the malnutrition given to him by his foster mother.
He’d waited in there, hidden in among the junk at the back of the garage, until he heard the sound of footsteps on the gravel outside.
He resisted the urge to peer through the garage door to see what was going on, but he figured that, in the absence of the evil twin Wayne had been ranting and raving about, the cops would have assumed he was in the midst of a psychotic break and taken him down to the station.
*
This was in fact, pretty much exactly what was happening a few miles away.
Wayne was on his own in a twilit hospital room.
He was unconscious, handcuffed to the bed.
He’d had surgery on his stab wound.
The officers who’d picked him up were outside the door, waiting for him to wake up.
‘So why’d he do it?’ Officer Miranda Davies said.
‘Fuck knows. Why’s any kid do anything these days?’ Detective Inspector Karl Hobbs said, exhaling hard. ‘Kid’s fucking crazy. He didn’t like his stepdad and decided to butcher him and his mother for snubbing him. The twin thing’s either an attempt at getting an insanity plea – cos he seemed fucking convinced, mind, I do have to say – or he’s just fucked in the head. Maybe he’s schizo. Was talking to himself and claiming it was a twin doing everything.’
Davies nodded. ‘Sounds fair enough. I didn’t see any CCTV up there.’
‘Why the hell would we need CCTV?’
‘To see if his story checked out. If there was a twin.’
Hobbs laughed. ‘I don’t need to see any CCTV to know there was no damned twin there. Kid did this all by himself. I’m going out for a smoke. We’ll see what he says when he wakes up.’
*
When Wayne woke, he was face to face with Hobbs.
‘Your twin’s been in,’ he said.
‘Really?’ Wayne said.
Hobbs laughed hard, before abruptly cutting off. ‘No… cos there ain’t no goddamned twin, is there?’
Wayne began to get upset. ‘There was a twin. I didn’t kill my parents.’
‘Except they weren’t both your parents, were they? The man was your stepdad. What’s the matter? Didn’t like the fella your mam shacked up with?’
‘I loved him like he was my dad,’ Wayne insisted.
‘Then why the fuck did you kill him?’
‘I didn’t, I swear. It was my twin.’
‘Ok, ok. It was the twin,’ Hobbs rolled his eyes at Davies again. ‘So talk me through exactly what happened, starting with the first time you saw him.’
*
Ten minutes later, Hobbs nodded and he and Davies left the room.
‘He’s so full of shit,’ Hobbs said.
‘I’m not sure.’
‘Really? Fucking hell, you must be greener than you look, Miranda.’
*
Wayne was left in peace after a couple of hours of intense interrogation.
If he hadn’t been so sure of what he’d seen, even he would’ve doubted his story.
He couldn’t think of how the hell he was going to prove Simon’s existence.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Hank had talked about getting a CCTV system installed, but hadn’t gotten round to it yet.
He could’ve asked witnesses from the house party, but no one had actually seen him and Simon in the same place. And who the hell would trust a bunch of drunk and/or high teenagers?
‘Fuck,’ he muttered.
He Googled a few things on his phone.
It turned out that identical twins had pretty much identical DNA. Not that they were even going to search for that; they were convinced he was the killer.
‘Yep, looks like you’re fucked, Wayne, mate,’ he muttered.
Then an idea hit him; he shouldn’t be in here without a lawyer.
He Googled this and called up, his voice cracking.
*
A couple of hours later, the solicitor he’d spoken to, Niles Blundell, stormed into the ward, demanding to speak to the officer in charge.
‘My client is a minor who has been seriously injured,’ he bellowed. ‘And he has just found his parents murdered. There is no way he should have been interviewed without legal counsel.’
Hobbs gave as good as he got. The pair of them were inches from each other’s faces, shouting.
‘Listen,’ Blundell said. ‘What you are doing here is wrong. He’s just a kid. He’s obviously traumatised. And he’s been stabbed pretty badly, according to the doctor’s report.’
‘He’s traumatised cos he’s realised what he’s done. He’s invented this bullshit story about a twin to get himself off the hook.’
In spite of Blundell’s best efforts, Wayne was tried but declared mentally unfit.
*
Simon had watched his brother’s hardships from afar, picking up the story from the papers and the TV screens.
He was ecstatic to see Wayne finally getting the shitty end of the stick that he, himself, had clutched for so long.
Simon visited the facility where his brother was being kept. It was relatively low security; the majority of the patients there were off their faces on whatever drugs were being pumped into them on a twice-daily basis.
There were a few orderlies, but they seemed to be there in a carer role rather than for serious security.
It seemed to Simon, with his opportunistic eye, that the patients would be able to leave if they really wanted to leave.
He watched from the woods at the back of the facility, waiting to see his brother’s face.
Waiting to finally be the brother who was winning in life.
A few weeks into Wayne’s stay, he finally shuffled out into the sunlight.
Simon’s face lit up in a grin, then slowly faded.
Wayne’s face was pallid, already losing the layer of fat that his comfortable life had given him.
His eyes were sunken, all the joy gone from them.
He moved in a way that reminded Simon of an animal in a zoo; kinda sad, kinda pathetic, kind of… wrong.
Instead of the deluge of joy that he had anticipated feeling, he felt dread, shame and guilt.
‘Do unto others as they would do unto you,’ he muttered to himself.
It was as though Wayne’s soul had shrunk while he had been in the hospital. And rather than Simon’s soul growing in its place, his too had shrunk.
He vowed there and then to put it right for his brother.
*
Simon debated breaking his brother out of there; after all, it wasn’t particularly well-guarded.
But he knew that this would only partly solve the problem.
He had to get his brother out of the hellish situation, but he also had to be punished for his part in all of this.
He’d had a life full of punishment, true, but none of that was Wayne’s fault and to blame him for it was wrong.
Simon had learnt to put up walls to cope with the torment his everyday existence brought, so he’d be much better suited than Wayne, with his easy life, would be.
Yes, there was only one course of action available to Simon, he realised.
He spent the next day thinking it over, and he only further convinced himself that his plan was the best way to go.
He watched from the woods until Wayne was next out in the gardens.
Then he briskly walked out of the woods and approached him.
*
Wayne’s face was a picture of bemusement and terror.
‘It’s ok, my brother,’ Simon said. ‘I’m here to help you.’
He raised his hands in an attempt to calm Wayne, but he had his hands clutched to his temples, screaming at the top of his lungs.
His eyes were tightly closed, tight enough to wrinkle the corners of his eyes.
It was as though he had come to believe Simon was a dark side of his imagination and he didn’t want to see him again.
Like he didn’t want to believe he was there.
‘None of this is your fault, my brother,’ Simon said, making Wayne clamp his hands over his ears and pull an expression that made it seem he thought he’d lost what was left of his mind. ‘But don’t you worry, I will make this right.’
He clamped his hand on Wayne’s shoulder for a second and squeezed hard, ‘Switch clothes with me,’ Simon said.
Wayne reluctantly went along with it.
Simon hugged him hard then pushed a piece of paper into his hand. ‘Get in the red car on the edge of the woods. There are a few friends of mine waiting there. They’ll feed you and look after you till I get out of here.’
He shoved Wayne through the hole he’d made in the perimeter fence and set off walking towards the entrance to the hospital.
Wayne turned and watched as his brother shoved open the doors of the hospital and walked inside with his hands raised above his head.
*
Wayne thought about following him for a second then turned and began running through the woods.
*
Simon swaggered into the reception and began his confession. ‘I’m ready to confess,’ he told the baffled receptionist. ‘There was no twin. I made it up. It was me who murdered my mother and her husband.’
‘Give me a minute,’ said the young receptionist, who was in her first week of the job.
She picked up the phone and called for help.
The calm in the reception was replaced with chaos when orderlies and the nuns who ran the hospital emerged in droves.
‘Well, this is quite the welcoming committee,’ Simon beamed, spreading his arms to indicate the gathered crowd. ‘Which one of you delightful people is in charge?’
A mean-faced nun stepped forward. ‘That would be me,’ she said, scowling.
‘Well, I’m pleased to meet you. I fear I’ve got a lot of explaining to do.’ Simon was left on his own with the nun, Sister Wild, and half a dozen well-built orderlies.
It seemed his thoughts of it being poorly guarded were unfounded.
‘There’s no need for the entourage,’ Simon said. ‘I assure you I am here of my own free will. It’s time I accepted my penance for my sins.’
Simon’s assurances were in vain, the biggest security guard – who had the scarred eyebrows and crooked nose of a veteran boxer, and a name tag that read, Len Gorman – hit him in the gut with a blow that made it feel like his stomach had exited his body through his spine.
He fell to his knees, gasping for breath.
Len shoved his face hard to the floor.
The polished linoleum was cold against his face. The faint scent of bleach hit his nostrils.
His arm was bent hard up behind his back.
The other followed.
His arms and legs were secured with cuffs.
Len and one of the other orderlies grabbed him and hauled him back to his feet.
Len caught his eye.
Simon nodded his understanding.
They strong-armed him into a small room with a big photo of the hospital and its staff assembled on the lawn on its rear wall.
He was roughly shoved into a chair facing this wall.
‘Thanks, Len,’ the head nun said. ‘You can come in with me if you like. As I’m sure you’re aware, there are no secrets in here.’
Len and three other orderlies strolled in. They stood, one to each corner, their stares like lasers on Simon’s skin.
‘I’d best start at the beginning,’ Simon said with a charming grin.