Henry Geist was awakened by the sound of raindrops against the window of his second-floor office. He lifted his head from the blotter on his oaken desk, then sat up suddenly when he realized where he was. He could barely make out the clock on the façade of the Bellinger Savings and Trust building across the street. 8:13.
Henry put on his coat hurriedly, and pulled his hat down. Locking his door, he looked across the hallway to see if Don was working late and wanted to grab a bite to eat. The absence of the telltale light under the door indicated that he wasn't.
Henry's boots thumped loudly as he trudged down the stairs to the back exit on the first floor. The main entrance was locked after 5:00 p.m. As he turned the knob and pushed, the door flew open in the driving wind and slammed against the brick wall. With considerable effort he closed it.
He jaywalked across deserted Lancaster Avenue, avoiding the streams along either curb. The diner was open all night, and since the next train didn’t arrive ‘til 9:00, he decided to have a late dinner. Pausing at the entrance, Henry spotted the phone booth next door, and thought he should probably call Carol and let her know where he was. This wouldn’t save him from a reprimand when he got home, but at least she wouldn’t worry. He should have called from his office, but he didn’t feel like walking back across the flooded street and back up the stairs.
Stepping into the phone booth, Henry tugged on the sliding glass door several times without result. He looked up and down, checking that the rollers were inside the track. Unwilling to abide the wind and rain, Henry seized the knob with both hands and grunting, yanked as hard as he could. The door slammed shut.
He watched mesmerized as the angry rain pelted the outside of the phone booth, forming inchoate sheets of liquid crystal as the drops splattered and slid to their demise.
He felt safe and at peace within the confines of this small, transparent room, although no more than a half inch of glass separated him from the deluge. He knew that at any moment a ferocious gust of wind might topple his tiny haven, a bolt of lightning might annihilate him, a car might swerve off the road. . .
Henry fumbled in his pocket for a nickel. He waited. Then came his wife’s voice, distant and choked with static.
“Carol?” he began. “Listen, I’m running a little late.”
“Henry?” she replied. “Is everything all right?’
A short flash of static.
"Yeah, honey, I'm just. . .just late."
"Where are you?" she asked.
"I'm in front of the diner across the street. I'll be home in an hour."
"Henry, I can barely hear you. . ." Her voice crackled into incoherence.
"Carol? Carol!"
The response was a dial tone. Cursing, Henry slammed the receiver down and pulled on the door. Stuck again.
He yanked the handle, muttering expletives. With a snap, the door came flying inwards, whacking the inside of the phone booth. A loud crash which Henry mistook for thunder followed as the lower panel shattered. Glittering shards stared up at him from the wet concrete.
Grumbling, he entered the dinner. He was standing next to the counter in front of a sign which read “Hostess will seat you” when he saw him sitting in a booth in the far corner. He was sipping a cup of coffee and reading the newspaper. A half-finished meatloaf, smothered in ketchup, sat in front of him. Henry strained to see. His coat was exactly the same, as was his hat, which he had removed and placed on the seat. And the face. At this distance, he could have been mistaken for Henry.
He looked up at Henry, and their eyes locked. Henry jumped. The stranger merely nodded, the faintest hint of a smile on his lips, then calmly sipped his coffee and returned to his newspaper.
Not heeding the sign to wait for the hostess, Henry slid into a booth facing the cash register so he could get a clear look at the stranger when he paid his tab. But the man left two dollar bills -weighed down with a glass of ice water- on the table and donning his hat, shuffled out the door before Henry could study his face.
“Oh, cut it out,” Henry said aloud to himself. So he had the same type of hat and coat. So he looked a little like Henry. This was what came of being under a tremendous stress. You fell asleep at your desk. You became paranoid. You saw things.
With a soft “Excuse me,” he raised his hand as a middle-aged woman in a pink and white apron walked by him, but failed to catch her attention. She strolled languidly past with the unmistakable apathy of a career waitress, plopped a check down on a young couple's table, and disappeared through the double doors behind the counter.
Henry checked his watch. 8:20. Walking to the train station from here was a matter of five minutes. He drummed his fingers on the table, then picked up the salt shaker and began turning it over idly, wondering if his 21-year legal career would come to an inglorious end. He had never admitted to anything. The $10,000 was for services rendered, he insisted. He could hear D.A. Mueller's smug, condescending voice.
I'll make a deal with you, Henry. You come clean, pay the ten grand, plus a fine for misconduct, and you don't serve a single day.
And I'm disbarred?
The agonizing hesitation. Yes.
No.
The salt shaker slipped out of his fingers, the perforated aluminum top popping off as the rectangular glass vial hit the table. A small white pile lay in front of him. Seizing a pinch with his thumb and index finger, Henry looked around furtively, then tossed the grains over his shoulder.
Henry wasn't hungry any more. He stood up, adjusted his hat, and walked back outside into the waiting rain. He sloshed through puddles and over drowned weeds sprouting from cracks in the concrete, oblivious to the pelting water which permeated his hat and coat. After two blocks he was at the train station. Seeking what shelter they could, a dozen other people were huddled under the glass and steel pavilion. And there he was.
He was sitting on one of the cold metal benches, squinting to read The Wall Street Journal from the light of a street lamp on the other side of the glass partition. MCCARTHY VOWS TO NAME RED SYMPATHIZERS, the headlines proclaimed.
Henry cautiously edged closer, not making a sound. The man didn’t move an inch, his face buried in the financial markets section. Henry wanted to shout “Who are you?” He raised a trembling hand to lower the newspaper, when suddenly the front page was jerked down and Henry stared into a skeletal face with two red pinpoints set in cavernous sockets.
Henry gave a short yelp. He was still standing where he had been when he first walked into the pavilion, and the stranger was still sitting about 12 feet away on his cold metal bench. The man casually turned the page. Henry looked around, mortified.
Then the man set the newspaper on his lap, and tilted his head back in a great, yawning stretch.
The face.
Henry started trembling- slightly at first- the kind of mild shaking that accompanies a severe hangover. The tremors increased in intensity until his whole body was a jackhammer. Henry clenched his fists. Using every last reserve of self-control, he stopped shaking. The man had his back to Henry now as he made a call from the telephone under the pavilion. Henry watched him. He was unable to make out the words, but the sound of his voice, his mannerisms, even the way he dialed. . .
He didn't have a twin brother. There was only Henry and a younger sister, who had died of pneumonia when she was six months old. Susan Geist was his mother, Harold Geist was his father.
Maybe there was a twin brother. Henry had been adopted when he was a few days old. His biological mother had left him on the doorstep of Susan and Harold Geist, on a cold December day forty-five years ago. Of course they had never told him. What should they have said? We never chose to have a son; you were dumped on our doorstep. Henry wondered where they had dumped his twin brother.
There was no twin brother. Henry's watch said 8:43. Walking briskly, he ventured out into the deluge, taking rapid strides as he hurried back the way he had come minutes before. He could still make it there and back.
He broke into a run along Lancaster Avenue, ignoring the dormant puddles awakened by his stomping boots. Stopping across from the staunch, white-brick office building, Henry looked to either side briefly.
As he stepped off the curb and into the road, he heard a sloshing as his foot was immersed in a frigid stream of rainwater flowing relentlessly towards the sewer grate thirty feet away. Then the black and white Packard swerved around the corner. Henry saw the grill, the hood, the headlights, the oblivious idiot behind the wheel. He froze- waiting to be obliterated.
A seven-foot wave leapt up from beneath the car and crashed on top of him mockingly. He was already so drenched this hardly mattered. His chest pounding, Henry watched the vehicle proceed calmly down the road.
"Idiot!" Henry shouted as the car disappeared into the night. Not waiting for another brush with death, he dashed across the road and stood exhausted in front of his building.
He peered into the lobby at the two leather chairs flanking the reception desk. An orange and turquoise Oriental rug covered most of the linoleum floor. Henry pulled on the door frantically, then started pounding. He jammed his keys into the lock. They didn't fit.
Naturally they didn't fit. The front doors were locked after 5:00 p.m., and the tenants only had keys to the back. Henry raced to the rear of the building, unlocked the door, dashed up the stairs, and in fifteen seconds, was in his office.
His eyes scanned the bookshelf on the opposite wall. Second row, six books from the left, red cover. Henry snatched the dictionary from its tightly-wedged spot, nearly dropping it on his foot. Slamming the dictionary onto his desk, he turned the pages maddeningly. A. . .B. . .C . . . D. . .doll – domineer. . . dominion – donkey. . .doom – dormant. . .
doppelganger. dóppel-ganger. noun. From the German "double-goer."
The ghostly double of a living person. According to superstition, an
omen of impending death.
Henry snapped the book shut. "No!" He exited his office, locking the door after him. "No," he repeated, as he descended the stairs and stepped out into the rain, which had been reduced to a drizzle. He marched down Lancaster Avenue, striding calmly and confidently. He would confront that man, that thing, whatever it was. He would look him right in the face and demand to know who he was. He had sat with men accused of butchering their entire families. This would be no more frightening than looking into a mirror.
He arrived at the station just as the last passengers were boarding. The conductor stood by stoically. Henry climbed aboard, pulling himself up with the steel rail.
Henry walked the length of the first car, looking left and right. He did the same with the second, still not finding his quarry. He took a seat at the rear of the third, exhausted and relieved. He had imagined the entire episode. He laughed in nervous relief. He'd call the doctor tomorrow morning, get something for his nerves.
Maybe the man was in the fourth car. Or the fifth one.
"Stop it!" Henry shouted, then shrank back into his seat, realizing that there were five other people in the same car. But they probably thought that he was just another nutcase.
"Merion Station next!" the conductor shouted.
Henry staggered to his feet. He walked down the aisle towards the front of the car, gripping the vinyl seats to offset the wobbling of the train. The train came to a stop with a soft hiss, and as the doors opened, Henry saw him again.
Henry rushed towards the exit, just as the man was descending the ramp.
"Wait!" Henry shouted. Henry was a few feet behind him as he stepped off the train and began walking towards the street. Quickening his pace, Henry called after him again.
"Hey, buddy! Hold on a second!"
The man began crossing the street hurriedly. He stepped onto the black asphalt, which shimmered from the streetlights reflecting on the thin sheen of rainwater.
Henry saw the car before he did, if he saw it at all. The Packard turned the corner sharply, making a large splash as the front wheel plowed through a stagnant puddle. Henry had seen the car only a short time earlier. The driver showed no sign of slowing down as the hideous steel grill closed the gap between metal and flesh.
"Look out!" Henry shouted, his voice making no sound.
In an instant, he turned and looked straight at Henry. This time with a wide-eyed, gaping-mouth stare.
There was a brief, horrible thud, followed by a deafening screech. Henry watched in horror as the body was tossed into the air, spun around in slow motion, and seemed to linger in suspense for a brief eternity. The Packard skidded on the wet road and smashed into a lamp post. Car doors opened and slammed, followed by the frantic patter of feet. A man and a woman were on the scene, standing over a prostrate figure in a trench coat. Their voices were high and animated.
"My God," Henry said. He felt a tingling sensation rise from his stomach and continue to the top of his head. A sickening feeling flooded him. "My God," he repeated, staring in disbelief. Sirens wailed in the background. His vision faded in and out, like a light bulb flickering in its final radiance.
Henry gazed down at his hands to see if they were shaking. But he couldn't see his hands. Nor his feet. In the few seconds before his mind plunged into oblivion, he knew that he had not been the one looking at a doppelganger.
