The front door was stuck again, no doubt because of the cold weather and sudden wet spell. Not to mention the stiff sea breeze, which carried with it the weighty stench of salt and seaweed. Meredith Saunders pressed a tweed-coated shoulder against the wood, sighed with exasperation before, finally, it gave in at the meagre pressure of her weight.
“Frank?” she called as she threw her handbag over the bannister. “That door’s being difficult again. You’ll need to phone Charles, see if he can come over and have a look.”
From the kitchen, she could make out her husband grunting something in response. A tinkle of metal against ceramic indicated that he’d just made himself a cup of tea.
It would be ever so nice if he actually spoke from time to time, she thought grumpily, peeling off her coat and scarf. Since his hip operation, her husband, who’d been fairly quiet to begin with, had become positively taciturn. Surly even. Still, she couldn’t grumble. Despite her age, she was in good shape, and the brisk walk down to the seafront, despite being cold, had done her no end of good.
“Saw David at the bakery,” she said while she wandered through to the kitchen. “He said to tell you that the next meeting is on Tuesday. Apparently, he’s got a guest speaker. Some ammonite expert or something.”
Frank grunted again, sipping his tea. Meredith rolled her eyes.
“Sally’s back at work,” she continued, trying hard not to be irritated by her husband, who was now tapping erratically at the countertop. “I told her it was far too soon after her treatment, but she said she couldn’t be away for long. What a trooper, eh?”
The tapping paused for a second or two before continuing. She sighed, then reached to the fridge for the orange juice, though in truth, a gin and tonic would have gone down far better. However, it was only five in the afternoon, which really was a bit too early to start drinking.
“Well,” she concluded finally as she poured herself a large glass. “I may go and have a bath. Warm up a little. You don’t want to eat yet, do you?”
Frank shook his head, then gave her a little smile. She smiled in return, feeling a little less hostile towards him.
“Fish and chips?” he suggested quietly.
Meredith chuckled, patting her stomach. “Goodness me, any more batter and I’ll start to look like a deep-fried haddock, I think. We really should eat a few more vegetables.” Noticing Frank’s face falling, she quickly nodded. “But yes, fish and chips would be good, wouldn’t it? And let’s get the fire going too, it’s ever so cold in here.”
“Peter Hopper called earlier,” her husband muttered as she went out into the hallway.
“Oh, did he? I haven’t heard from him in a while,” she replied. In fact, she thought, suddenly feeling rather depressed, I haven’t heard from any of my friends in a while, since all the deaths. Peter had taken it all particularly badly; she missed his dry, northern sense of humour, not to mention the fortnightly meetings in the town hall. “Did he want me to call him back?”
Her husband shrugged in response before returning to the kitchen.
Meredith took her orange juice upstairs and started to run the bath. Stripping off her sweater and skirt, she tried hard to avoid looking at her unclothed figure in the mirror. I don’t need any more reason to feel glum about my old age, she thought wryly, dipping a toe tentatively in the water. At least if I don’t look, I can still pretend I have the taut figure of a twenty-year-old.
Easing herself into the lavender-soaked water, she exhaled with pleasure. There was something so deeply satisfying about having a bath. She’d always been a water-lover, even from a young age, when her parents used to take her swimming at the local outdoor pool. It was hardly surprising she’d ended up living somewhere like Lyme Regis, surrounded by the sea. Closing her eyes, she leant back, relishing the moist steam against her face and the warmth as it penetrated her muscles.
What a nice way to unwind after a walk, she thought dreamily, allowing her thoughts to drift. She’d been finding it increasingly difficult to remain cheery recently, especially after the deaths of her friends. Earnest Sunningdale. Edna Berry. Jürgen Kleinmann. And now Deirdre Baxter. All within six months. It’s almost as if they were all cursed, she thought with a shudder, then tutted at her own superstitious thoughts. Come on now, Meredith, she scolded herself. They were accidental, or health-related. Don’t start getting silly about it all. It’s just a dreadful coincidence that they all happened so soon after one another.
She hadn’t been quite such good friends with Deirdre, though they’d known each other well enough as members of the same history club. Meredith had always found her rather flighty, not to mention a bit fanciful at times, with her strange ideas. Their neighbours, Mr and Mrs Biggins, had been great friends with Deirdre and Errol though and been terribly shaken up by her death. Mrs Biggins had even suggested, with a rather alarming gleam in her eye, that the recent spate of deaths had been supernatural, which had made Meredith chuckle a little. It was quite remarkable how often people liked to believe in such things, despite having no evidence whatsoever to support their beliefs. Still, it was a sad affair. Deirdre’s husband Errol hadn’t been out much, but on the rare occasion she’d spotted him, he’d looked very thin and tired.
A breeze ran through the room. Meredith opened an eye, checking the window. The panes were original, and it wasn’t uncommon for the wind to creep through from time to time. She sighed, closed her eyes again, and sunk back into the water.
Strange, she thought. The bath suddenly seems colder. Hastily, she turned on the tap again, allowing more hot water to fill the bath, and rested back against the cool ceramic surface, determined to relax. The water drifted warm tendrils around her thighs, then cooled again just as quickly.
Good heavens, whatever is going on? Meredith opened her eyes again, suddenly alert. Someone was watching her. She was sure of it. She had that disconcerting sense of being observed and of something being undeniably, unaccountably wrong. Awkwardly, she swivelled in the bath, then cursed as her neck cracked uncomfortably.
“Frank, is that you?” she called. Was her husband lurking outside the door? Why would he do such a thing? Only silence answered her, which seemed as deep and hostile as a tomb.
Meredith frowned. It’s because I was thinking about what that silly Mrs Biggins said about the deaths, she thought, laughing out loud. Oh dear, don’t tell me I’ve become superstitious in my old age!
She eased herself back down in the water, refusing to think on it anymore.
Hello.
Meredith’s eyes popped open, then widened. A scream rose in her throat, lodging itself like a stuck lozenge. There, perched at the other end of the roll-top bath, was herself. Or rather, a mirror image of herself, sitting in exactly the same position, completely nude, facing her.
I said I didn’t want to see myself naked, Meredith thought irrationally with a hysterical snort of laughter. She squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them again, expecting to see nothing but an empty bath.
I’m still here.
“Oh, my goodness,” Meredith squeaked, rigid with fear. “Oh, my dear lord.”
She looked at her other self with horror, examining every wrinkle, every damp wisp of grey hair, the same wry grin that she gave herself in the mirror every morning. This isn’t real, she thought, desperately trying to get a grasp of reality. Come on, Meredith, old girl. Pull yourself together. This is not real.
It is.
Meredith screamed—a pitiful, dry wail that sounded like a drowning kitten. “What are you?” she croaked as she scrambled to climb from the bath. She slipped and fell painfully back into the water.
I am you. Hello, Meredith.
“You’re not me . . . it’s . . . not possible,” Meredith wheezed, pressing herself against the porcelain in terror. “I must be going mad.”
Maybe you are. Or maybe not.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Meredith babbled, as she finally managed to get a good grasp on the side of the bath. “Frank! Frank, help me!”
IT’S TOO LATE FOR THAT.
“Frank!” she shrieked. Fighting to control her shaking limbs, she began to drag herself out of the bath. “Frank, please! There’s something in here; it’s pretending to be me!”
To her relief, she heard vague footsteps, which padded quickly along the hallway downstairs before echoing flatly on the stairs. Thank goodness, he heard me, she thought, shaking and dripping wetness onto the black and white tiles.
Turning, although every instinct told her not to, she faced her other self again. It grinned, an obscene gesture that contorted her mirror-features, making her twin look suddenly completely unlike her. Then, it began to shake. Initially, Meredith thought it was mimicking her own frightened quivering, and she edged slowly away from the bath, like a mouse trying to sneak unnoticed from a cat. Then, her other self began to shake harder, until it was positively vibrating.
What the heck is it doing? she thought as she watched with horrified fascination. By now, it was shaking harder than her old washing machine on full spin, a dreadful blur that made her eyes ache to see it.
“Stop it! Stop it now!” she shouted, biting her lip to hold back the tears.
“Meredith?”
Thank goodness, it’s Frank, she realised, and let out a pitiful sob. Oh, thank the lord, he’s come. I’m going to be okay. She didn’t think she’d ever loved the sound of her husband’s voice more than she did at that moment.
“Frank, help me,” she choked whilst the creature whirred on: a shimmering, uncontrollable whirl of form. “Oh please, you’ve got to help me. There’s something terrible in here with me.”
The door-handle rattled urgently.
“I can’t get in. You’ve locked the door. What’s in there with you? What is it?”
“It’s me,” Meredith said weakly, momentarily hypnotised into quiet. “My god, it really is me.”
The creature had stopped whirring. Instead, its mouth began to gape, impossibly wide, and something began to crawl out. Something dark. Something oily and smoky. Something from an unimaginable, frightening place. It advanced towards her like a spider scuttling across the floor.
I NEED TO GO BACK HOME.
“I don’t know where your home is!” she whispered, frozen in horror. The thing pulsed towards her, then enveloped the bathroom in darkness.
She scrambled backwards, heedless of Frank’s increasingly panicked shouting. The handle rattled harder, and she dimly heard the crunching sound of her husband’s slipper-clad foot, desperately kicking at the door.
YOU’RE MINE.
“No,” she whispered. “You can’t have me.”
The last thing Meredith remembered was her foot as it slid wildly on the slippery tiles. The bathroom pitched upside down, a crazed montage of floral wallpaper, art nouveau prints, and finally, the vast ceramic underside of the toilet. Her skull cracked against the floor, as weak and vulnerable as a free-range egg.
The glass of orange juice fell from the side of the bath, spilling over her body. Shards of glass mingled with the dark blood and the juice, creating a mosaic of red and amber. The room dimmed.
And Meredith knew no more. Was no more.
Finally, the bathroom door flew open, hitting the wooden towel rack with the force of a steam train. Frank stood motionless in the doorway, kitchen knife suspended quivering above his head, and surveyed the scene. Water, juice, blood, and glass over the floor. A picture, flung at a wonky angle. And finally, his wife, naked on the floor, eyes open, staring into nothingness.
He glanced around, waiting for his conscious mind to catch up with the sensory evidence.
There was no one else in the room, just his wife.
His dead wife.
Frank began to scream.