The Mistletoe Bride and Other Haunting Tales
Author’s Note
When I started ‘Duet’, I had in my mind to write a doppelg?nger story.
Literally meaning ‘double walker’ in German, a doppelg?nger is a shadow self – a living ghost – supposed to be someone’s double.
In traditional ghost stories, it is only the owner of the doppelg?nger who can see this phantom self and is often – usually – a harbinger of death.
In stories of bilocation, a person can either spontaneously or willingly project his or her double, known as a ‘wraith’, to a remote location.
This double is indistinguishable from the real person and can interact with others just as the real person would.
However, during the writing process, things went their own way and it became a story about conscience.
Like Lady Macbeth being unable to wash her hands clean of Duncan’s blood or the murderer in Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ – who imagines he can hear the heart of the old man he’s killed beating under the floor and so gives himself away – guilt exacts a heavy price.