The Third Twin: A Dark Psychological Thriller Read online

  It seemed my leg took an eon to lift from the snow and land again. When it had, and my angle of sight almost afforded me the view I sought, I was interrupted by movement in my periphery. I turned to find the man had risen and stood to my left. But he wasn’t the same man now. Where the burning wounds had been, a stuffed trunk protruded. Completing the costume, as I took in his whole presence, was not the butler outfit, but an SS uniform, crisp and shiny with insignia and medals. He looked at me for a moment out of his hood, then turned in the direction of the hollow above which we stood, easing cautiously forward, his absurdly long arm gesturing at a point below.

  I leaned, peeking over the edge. Against a backdrop that was strangely familiar in my dream, a wolf dragged a child by the back of the neck through the snow. Though both beast and burden left an impression in the snow, the wolf struggled to keep the body in its jaws, as though the flesh was too insubstantial, only partly existing in the material world. A moment after my eyes spotted the wolf, the wolf’s eyes found me. Dropping the child, it stopped to stare at the visitor in its realm. While I could not see the hue of its eyes over the distance, I knew they were copper, a subdued metallic gold with the hint of simmering fire in them.

  Beside me, the elephant head let a low, secretive chuckle, then the man extended his arm to what would have seemed its fullest extent had the limb not kept stretching and stretching without pause in its elongation until it reached the child, who lay prone and motionless in the snow. The child’s gender was not detectable, though its size suggested an age of perhaps two. As the elephant soldier’s hand lifted the child by the fabric of its shirt, the body seemed both less and more substantial than it had in the wolf’s jaws, floating off the ground, putting no more strain on the arm that lifted it than the arm did on it, and yet obeying the clutch as readily as a rag doll, slumping in appropriate response.

  The wolf, whose gaze had never left me, seemed to realize that its prize was being taken from under its nose. With a motion that reminded me of a lizard snatching a gnat from the air, it seized the child’s lower body in its jaws, throwing its head from side to side in an effort to wrest it from the thief. The child proved all too solid now as the tug of war reached its stress point mere seconds in, the body tearing in half, its upper part rushing toward me on the retracting arm of the elephant man, the other disappearing by stages into the heaving, ludicrously expansive maw of the wolf.

  As the child’s face came crashing toward my own, I saw it was Kathy’s. Her eyes wide open, the simmering coppery fire of their irises washing over and swallowing me before the cry inside me could even gather momentum.

  ***

  I woke up early the next morning. There was something I needed to know before I paid a second visit to the costume maker. It was a question I couldn’t believe I was asking myself, much less following through on, but the world I lived in had become a place of black miracles.

  The question in question? Was the body still accounted for? It seemed insane, thinking it, and that’s what the police were no doubt going to think of me—that I’d tumbled off the edge in the aftermath of the attack. That the trauma had been too much and I’d gone over to superstition and necromancy, vampires and Lazaruses, in my need for answers. I knew I had to approach them delicately but had no idea how to go about it. The uncertainty didn’t delay me, though. I caught the bus right on time, telling myself I’d work it out on the way.

  By the time I reached Rio Tago, the best I had come up with was honesty, which didn’t taste good at all, and yet I had no choice but to try something or lose my mind wondering. It would have been nice to know where the body was supposed to be. The morgue still? The crematorium? Had the woman identified the body before marking its symbolic grave behind her house? Did the police have any idea she existed? Was it a sane world where a person even conceived of such questions? I was going to have to play it by ear. I prayed they didn’t call the white coats on me.

  It wasn’t until I was passing the square that it hit me. Maybe it was the distraction of being there again and experiencing afresh that weird familiarity at whose core rested the image of my daughter in conversation with the elephant man, a tableau now burned permanently into the setting. Perhaps the haunting acted as a purging agent to my mind’s clutter. Whatever the means, I realized I had been thinking in the wrong direction. I would know where the body was when I looked at the body, assuming it hadn’t been cremated yet. What reason would I have to do such a thing? I’d remembered something. I might well have run into the man the day before in Rio de Janeiro. But I couldn’t be sure . . . Could I view the body again? It could be significant, this previous meeting, as it might give a clue as to his identity. If identity had already been established, well, we’d deal with that when the time came.

  It didn’t work out that way, but it worked out.

  ***

  Investigator Pinto, of the civil division of the state police and attached to Rio Tago, was not overly pleased to see me. In the wake of the attack I’d found him much more friendly than the official from Rio de Janeiro, but today I was a revenant to him. While he remained sympathetic to my situation, being aware that I had lost a separate daughter in the past, I’m quite sure he thought I dragged bad things around with me. I didn’t let his poorly concealed expression perturb me, however, as I shook his hand and asked if the body had been identified or there had been any other leads. When he confessed that no, things were pretty much the same as when I spoke with him last, I got to the other business, which surprisingly did not take too much care on my part. The heart of my position was truthful: I needed to see the body. The rest came almost naturally from my conviction as to that necessity. He seemed uncertain, pausing for some time before deciding to escort me to the morgue. There was really no argument to it. I stated my case, and he deliberated and complied. I had the feeling as we walked to his car, though, that his uncertainty was as much to do with him as with me.

  This was confirmed when we got to the hospital, and the body was not where it was supposed to be. I felt those cold, cousinly tendrils reaching around inside me as he and another gentleman, talking in Portuguese, opened the drawer and I sensed from the spot where I’d been asked to wait that it was empty. The two exchanged a few more words, Pinto’s voice rising a little, then the investigator returned, the apology written on his face.

  “I had hoped, Mr. Ocason, the body was still here, though I knew it was to be moved soon. We can keep bodies only so long before they become a health hazard because refrigeration does not completely stop decay. The reality is, it is now being prepared for cremation.”

  I think I surprised him by not demanding to know how their investigation was going to continue without a body, but even if I hadn’t been preoccupied with more immediate matters, I would not have had that reaction. He’d already suggested in one of our phone conversations that we had a limited window, though he had not specified how limited. Aside from that, I had little faith in the ability of the police to sort this matter out. I had learned more in the space of a half hour at a computer than they had in four weeks. Nor was I interested in sharing the knowledge I’d learned. Not just yet anyway. I didn’t need them polluting the scene.

  I said, “When you say, ‘being prepared for’, what does that mean exactly? Has the body actually left here yet?”

  He frowned. “Mr. Ocason . . . ”

  “Sir, I must see the body before it is cremated.” I gazed at him directly, fixing all of my will on him.

  He shook his head. “Very well, sir. It may not have been loaded yet. Please follow me.” He gestured for the other gentleman to lead.

  As we walked down a corridor, I found myself wondering where the chill that had paid its obligatory call had gone. Was I so resigned to the notion of black miracles that voids in morgue drawers only caused temporary disturbances now? Was it that we were talking about a tangible, flesh-and-bone body that was being moved around, as opposed to moving itself around? Of course it really wasn’t accounted for yet
. For all I knew they were giving me the runaround tour, or were covering for their ignorance. At least there weren’t alarms going off in the building: We’ve got resurrection! We’ve got resurrection!

  My timing was exquisite. The box was on a small loading dock, awaiting transport to the crematorium. As the gentleman approached it, my heart rate increased, but only negligibly so as I’d decided the moment I saw the box that the body was there. As we stood aside watching him open it, the deeper, stranger fears became less rational ones to my mind. As I looked down at the face, the shadow of slow decomposition upon it, I was rethinking everything I had thought before. Bodies did not rise from their morgue drawers to wreak terror. They did not die and live again and die again. They just died and hoped to hell there was a god at the other end; or in the child-slaying elephant man’s case, perhaps not. They died, and if they were not identified, they were cremated. And it was a seriously deluded individual who went chasing them through the whole morbid process.

  “Is this the man you think you might have seen in Rio de Janeiro?” the investigator asked.

  It took me a moment to absorb the question as I continued to look at the beshadowed face, running through the revelations of madwomen, the dreams of the traumatized, the spatter of cornered boys . . .

  “I don’t think so. I think I made a significant error.”

  He scanned my face for a moment before speaking. “No harm done, Mr. Ocason. Mr. Ocason, may I ask you something, sir?”

  “Yes?”

  “Why have you come back to Brazil? Is there something perhaps that you would like to share with me?”

  I extended my hand. “Thank you for your assistance, sir. I know you went out of your way to hold the body for as long as you did. If you discover anything, you will of course call me . . . ?”

  “Of course,” he said, not releasing me from the handshake.

  “I must be on my way, investigator.”

  “Yes, I’m sure you must. One does not make such a long trip to dawdle, I imagine. Do inform me if you come up with anything, will you, my American friend? Sometimes we police get caught up in the larger picture—similar attacks, patterns, MOs, possible copycats, the threat to other individuals, you know—and we miss the little details.”

  We held each other’s gaze, each other’s fist, for a second longer, then the van was arriving to haul the elephant man away to be incinerated.

  8

  This time I took a taxi. Not because I didn’t want to walk, but because I didn’t want to be seen in advance. I’d no idea if she would be there, but if I was so lucky, I wanted to surprise her. I didn’t want her waiting on me, not again, flourishing that regal nonchalance as she spoke of her unnatural world and its black miracles. I wanted command, and the morning’s experience in Rio Tago—not least Investigator Pinto’s parting words, which had smacked of mortal psychopaths and investigable, mentally tractable serial offenses—hopefully would contribute to that. But I was to have more ammunition than this by the time I got there. They say cabbies can get you anything you want. Mine did that and then some, and I didn’t even have to ask.

  It started when I got in the taxi and didn’t quit until we were pulling up at the house.

  “How do you do, sir?” I said, lamenting as always my inability to speak the native tongue—with the exception of a Bom dia for the regals—but knowing it was best simply to speak in English rather than ask the other party if they knew English, which often resulted in a pretense. “Evolução Handmade Costumes. It’s outside town. The name of the road . . . give me a sec, can’t think of it suddenly . . . ”

  “Pinheiro.”

  “You know the place?”

  “Of course, sir. Everyone knows that house. That name . . . ”

  “Evolução, you mean?” We were driving now, the taxi driver taking his sweet time, which was perfectly fine with me for this once.

  “Cunhedo. The triplets. Only one of them left. The one who runs the costume shop.”

  Left? If his English had lacked, I might have thought something was being lost in translation. But wasn’t there something there, in the inflection? Risking any sort of implication being only in mind, I said, “What happened?”

  “Ah, sir. It is too tragic. Are you acquainted with Senhora Uiara, the surviving sister? Maybe it is best not to speak of it . . . ”

  It struck me that he was as ready to gossip as I was to hear it, so I gave him the excuse. “I’m only a customer. The first time I spoke to the lady was yesterday. Please go on.”

  “How long has it been? Thirty years? I was barely an adult at the time. We were a much smaller village then, before tourism caught up with us. Everyone knew everyone. I remember how shocked the town was when the two women were found. ‘Not here,’ people said. ‘Rio de Janeiro, yes, but not here in Portavora.’ The most shocking part was the nature of the crime. Both of the sister’s throats had been cut, but one of them had been pregnant—late in her pregnancy. Her babies, identical triplet sisters like their mother—two rare medical occurrences wrapped in one astronomically unlikely one, the experts said—had been cut out of her body. One of them had been murdered, in the same manner as the women. The other two were left on the floor of the cursed abandoned chapel where it all happened. It was the crying of the one that survived that drew the attention of the person who found them, a hiker passing through the area. An American, as a matter of fact. Hippie sort.”

  A seeker, I thought, without basis. A seeker of answers, following his blood-red star to distant lands.

  “At first the police suspected him, because they had no other evidence, but the U.S. consulate became involved and eventually he was freed.”

  The design wasn’t finished with him.

  “They never found the murderer. People whispered of dark goings on. They had never trusted the women, who were friendly but quiet, attractive and yet had never married—though one of them had succeeded in getting pregnant. But this attitude was older than the triplets. It involved their father, a scientist of some kind who worked in the home when he wasn’t abroad.”

  Abroad inGermany. Bavaria, Germany.

  “But that was before I was born,” he said, almost mournfully.

  There are monsters in this world. Then there are monsters in this world. I didn’t know what to say, nor what to think beyond the spontaneities, though I could feel the man watching me for my reaction under his corduroy cap. The road wound around the hill, tracing the same path I’d walked yesterday, meeting the same tee-section and leaning inexorably left, the direction of the sea and madness. The houses thinned, the timber grew denser. All according to form. As with my next words:

  “The shopkeeper spoke of a brother. You haven’t mentioned a brother.”

  “Brother?” His brow furrowed. “No, I know of no brother, sir. As close to a brother as they had was Father Lima, who hanged himself in his jail cell after it was discovered he had been molesting the members of a choral group he sponsored. The group was made up of three sets of twins, all boys, from Portavora and two nearby villages. Raquel . . . no, it was Bruna, the sister who was pregnant when she was murdered . . . she was involved as a vocal instructor. She had a beautiful voice, people said, though I never heard her sing. Apparently she sometimes joined in when the choral group performed at a small outdoor theater located near the abandoned chapel where the murders happened. Yes, senhor, strangely enough, the chapel was connected in this case, too. It is why I’ve called it a cursed place. The chapel is where the priest took the boys to molest them, one at a time, committing them to secrecy, the usual pattern. But this was in the late seventies, sir, before the world became hardened to such things. Of course it had been going on. Here. In America. In reform schools in Ireland. Everywhere. The boys didn’t come forward until they were older. After the murders. Needless to say, the place developed a reputation for being cursed. I wouldn’t wander back in that area. Not for the world.” His gesture seemed to indicate it was just beyond the next turn.

 
I looked out the window. For every answer my search garnered, multiple new questions surfaced, and yet, a picture that had once been amorphous had now developed a shape. An unrecognizable one, to be sure, but a configuration nonetheless. The trick, to use a frivolous term for grave business, was to expend one’s mental energies wisely. Here was a path worth treading. Now five throats touched by a knife. Was there any doubt that in each case the hilt had been clutched by the same hand?

  “Does Senhora . . . what did you say her name was? Yara?”

  “Close enough. U-i-a-r-a. Uiara Cunhedo.”

  “Does she have no male friends now?”

  He was about to answer when his expression changed. Before he could act on his suspicions, I said, “Don’t worry. My interest is purely a passing one.”

  He shrugged. “Sometimes she is seen in the company of a man. Often a different one than the last. People always considered the triplets promiscuous women, but no one ever recognized the men, if they saw them at all. Father Lima was the one exception, and Bruna was even rumored to have been sleeping with him. Uiara seems unconcerned with what people think. If she wishes to walk the beach with a gentleman, she does so. I admire that. The assumption is that these gentlemen are customers, like yourself, from other places.”

  No brother? Gentlemen from other places? It seemed I should be making the connections, that the answer was within reach and I wasn’t seeing it. I’d no time to give it now, though, as we were passing the opening in the foliage through which I had first viewed the house. Maybe the lady herself could elaborate. I was equipped with more than I’d had on my previous visit; enough, one could hope, to disarm her.