Chapter 32
alice was staring at herself, a trick reflection in the evening dim, at nothing or everything, she didn’t know.
She stared at the grey skin, the skin of someone who had gone swimming in a glacial lake and returned barely alive, with the grit and slime of the lake floor filmed all over their body.
She touched her own face and her mirror self did the same, running her fingers with the long jagged nails across her cheek.
“Alice? What are you doing? Are you okay?” Pinky. She stood behind the demon, a look of confusion on her face. But where was Luna? How long did it take to pour a glass of water?
Pinky stepped toward her, her hands out as if she was going to lift Alice to a standing position.
She didn’t see— couldn’t see—the long-tongued version of Alice squatting in the grass, now smiling so that all of her pointy yellowed teeth were showing.
Was this creature even there? Alice wanted to cry with frustration.
If she couldn’t believe what she was seeing, how was she supposed to do the right thing? Where the fuck was Luna?
She needed time to think. She closed her eyes for a second. And then she knew what to do.
“I know who you are,” she said. “I would know you anywhere.”
For a moment, everything was still. Alice blinked.
Her other self blinked in tandem. But then an airplane flew overheard, its engine a deep roar through the quiet night.
The creature, startled, looked at the sky and then threw her head back and laughed, her mouth open in silence, but her body shuddering as if this was the funniest thing she had ever heard.
Alice could hear a rough, raw voice in her head.
As if your platitudes could make it all better. It was never going to be that easy.
“Alice? Say something. I’m worried.” Pinky had reached her and was bent over, her forehead wrinkled with concern. “Come. I’ll help you up.” Then Pinky straightened and looked around, as if she had felt a shift in the air, the energy of something malevolent.
Quickly, the twin stood up and faced Pinky. Alice heard the voice in her head again. Like a razor blade scraping and scraping at the vestiges of meat on bone. She doesn’t see me.
Alice slowly stood up too. As she reached forward to grab Pinky’s sleeve, her twin lashed out, her knife-sharp nails splayed out like a cat’s, swinging for Pinky’s face.
Alice had never fought before and closed her eyes, blindly propelling herself forward, hands out to grab anything, any deathly cold body part, anything at all.
They were falling, all of them, onto the grass. Alice’s teeth rattled and she tasted blood, hers or someone else’s, she couldn’t tell. She thought she was screaming, or maybe it was only inside her head.
She felt herself roll away, and when she came to a stop, she opened her eyes.
There on the grass lay Pinky, absolutely still, blood covering her face.
“Oh no, oh no,” Alice whispered. She tried to crawl toward her, but her limbs felt loose and jointless, her chest empty of air; it was as if she wasn’t moving at all.
Who had hurt Pinky? Was it the ghost twin that no one else could see?
Or was it Alice herself? What had she done?
What was she capable of? She crawled forward another inch and stopped, breathing jagged and fast.
Suddenly, Alice’s head jerked back. Someone was pulling her back by the hair, and she screamed in pain. Pulling and pulling until Alice was standing. Who could pull with so much strength? Whoever it was let go, and Alice turned around.
It was her. For the first time, Alice could see her whole body clearly as they stood in the circle of light from the street lamp in the alley.
Her painfully thin frame covered in an old maternity dress that Alice was sure she had thrown out when Luca was a baby.
It had once been green printed with ivy, but now it was grey, almost black at the hems, the leaves floating like garbage on the surface of a dirty ocean.
Thick, viscous liquid fell in drops onto her house slippers, the kind with the plastic soles and fabric uppers.
Chinatown slippers, Judy used to call them with derision, whenever she saw them in a store or on an old woman’s feet.
Her knees looked sharp, as if they could cut glass.
“Are you even real?” Alice said, but there was no response, only a smile. She willed herself not to move. She would not show fear.
For a minute they both stood there, face to face, one version of Alice and then another.
Alice blinked back tears, but her twin didn’t move.
A black drip—old blood, or maybe brackish water—oozed from the hole in the middle of her face.
She opened her mouth, just a little, and her tongue curled outward, as if testing the air for any trace of Alice, of how she might taste.
Someone growled and Alice was surprised that it came from deep inside her belly, like an internal fire.
Alice pulled the screwdriver from the pocket of her jeans and thrust it as hard as she could into the demon’s face, into that wet, pulsing hole where her nose should have been.
The twin screamed, a wail that was sharp and spiralling, rising and falling and rising again into the air.
As Alice pushed the screwdriver in deeper, she could feel the snap of cartilage and the fleshy give of muscle, the edges of bones.
She didn’t let go until only the plastic hilt of the screwdriver was visible outside the rotting grey-tinged flesh.
Alice’s head pounded with pain and fear, with the echoes of her twin’s shrieks of pain, but she was ready.
For the first time in her life, she knew exactly what to do next.