Rose Creek: A Collection of Short Horror Stories

II: The Doppelganger

Photo by LeandroDeCarvalho from Pixabay

II. "The Doppelganger"

The Farmhouse

Nicholas Hopkins – 2006.

We always fear the unknown, the "other" that we can't explain. It's just basic human psychology, we are afraid of things we don't understand. We are always trying to understand everything and when we discover something that doesn't quite make sense, we try our best to solve it. My name is Nicholas, and I'm a 20-year-old student studying robotic engineering in Toronto. Being a more scientific person, I've never believed in the unexplainable, I've always believed that there was a reason for everything, and everything always made sense; it was just a matter of understanding the problem. But I'm writing this right now because there is something I can't explain, something that I don't think anyone can explain, something that couldn't possibly make any sense at all, and I'm scared. I'm going to start from the beginning, when I was six years old, in my hometown of Rose Creek.

14 years ago was my first encounter with my doppelganger. I remember that day extremely well, and it stands out as being clearer than any of my other childhood memories. I lived on a farm in Rose Creek, and I had one older brother, Joshua, he was 2 years older than me. It was the evening, and I was playing hide-and-seek with Joshua. I thought it would be a good idea to climb up into the attic, Joshua was always afraid to go up there, so I knew that he'd never find me. Joshua was always more of a believer in the unknown than I was, even as a child, tales of ghosts and demons never scared me, they terrified Joshua. So I climbed into the attic and hid under an old, dusty china cabinet, then I waited for him to find me. It was almost difficult not to contain my laughter while I was hiding under there, I was laughing at my own superiority over Joshua, I've outsmarted him. However, I heard the attic hatch open and I stopped giggling to myself. I was impressed, I remember thinking Joshua actually had the nerve to come up there and look for me.

I heard light steps walk on the creaky attic floor, they were getting closer to my hiding spot. I then saw two little, bare feet stop right next to the cabinet. Joshua then knelt down and peeked his head underneath the cabinet to face me. My heart sank when I realized it wasn't my brother, it was another child. No, not just any other child, it was me. It looked just like me, but something was off about its face. To this day I still don't quite know what it is, but I think it's the fact that it never shows any expression; the doppelganger always has a straight face. I didn't scream when I saw it, I was too scared to scream, my mind was too occupied with trying to figure out what was going on.

"Joshua?" I lightly asked, already knowing the question was stupid.

The child didn't respond, it just kept staring at me, like it was expecting something of me. After what seemed like an eternity of staring at each other, the doppelganger stood back up and walked away. My voice then began to work again, and I started screaming and crying until seconds later the hatch flung open again and my dad came to rescue me.

I remember my dad carrying me out of the attic and back downstairs. I tried to explain to my parents what I saw up there, but they just chalked it up to me hurting myself under the china cabinet, and nothing more. While my parents never believed me, I knew Joshua did. He never once teased me for the incident, and he looked absolutely terrified when I told him what I saw up there. I think it's pretty self-explanatory to say I never stepped foot in the attic again. For the longest time, I was convinced it was just a ghost in the attic, and the attic was the problem, but a few years later I learned that the doppelganger had nothing to do with the attic, it was only up there because I was up there.

I had my second experience with the doppelganger when I was 9 years old. At that time, I was finally beginning to forget about my experience in the attic, but one afternoon when I was playing in the backyard with my dog, Jamie, I saw it again; not until Jamie started barking uncontrollably. I remember the scenery well, it was a bright and sunny summer day, I was throwing around a stick in the backyard and Jamie would bring it back to me every time. There were cornfields behind my yard that stretched for miles, the stalks seemed so tall at that age as they waved gently in the wind. I remember my father telling me not to go into the cornfields, since I was so small, I would get lost in them. That was always enough to scare me out of stepping foot in the fields. That day I was outside with Jamie, I had my back turned to the cornfield. After I threw the stick, Jamie started running back towards me with it, but then he stopped and dropped the stick a few feet away from me. He started staring at the cornfield behind me, then he started barking uncontrollably. I turned around to see the doppelganger, standing at the edge of the field, motioning for me to come with it. It had aged, just like I did when I last saw it. It now resembled a 9-year-old me. It was wearing the same clothes I was that day, but its face retained the same dead look. Jamie continued to bark at the doppelganger, but kept his distance, I just stood next to Jamie and stared at it. Whenever I saw it, I completely froze up. It finally stopped motioning for me to follow it, then ran off into the cornfield.