Hyde and Seek

Sarah came through the door as quietly as she could, swiping at the tears on her face with the back of her hand. She needed to get in the shower before Mum saw her, because if Mum saw the state she was in, that would be it. Letters to the school, letters to his parents, letters to the police. The cycle would start all over again. It never did anything. Sure, he left her alone for a while, but it was never permanent.

There. The door shut without a sound. Now, if she could just get in the shower, wash the dogshit out of her hair, the ink off her face. Damnation! There was ink all over her books as well - she’d have to buy new ones when she got her wages at work. Up the stairs, and no-one the wiser.
“Sarah? That you?” Bugger.
“Just having a shower, Mum!”
Pause.
“Well, don’t be long. Dinner will be on the table in about half an hour.”
“Right.”
She ran upstairs, undressing as she went. She grabbed the shampoo and conditioner and dashed into the bathroom, barely avoiding her little brother as he came out of his room.

Once out of the shower (and after checking dinner wasn’t ready), Sarah sat on her bed and stared into the mirror. Her reflection stared back at her.
So how long are you going to put up with this? Came a voice in her head. She didn’t answer, but waited. A girl walked into the view on the mirror, and sat beside Sarah’s reflection, gazing out through the glass. Sarah shuddered slightly. Those eyes. Look at you. You’re so pretty, and clever. You are an amazing girl with a great family and a great future ahead of you, and yet every day he manages to reduce you to tears. Why, Sarah? Why does he make you cry when the death of your Father didn’t? Sarah growled angrily.
“That’s not fair. You know damn well why I didn’t cry for Dad - John needed taking care of. Besides, you wouldn’t have approved. ‘Crying is a sign of weakness’, that’s what you say all the time.” The mirror-girl sighed in frustration, but didn’t answer. She knew the words were true.
For a while they just sat, looking at their reflection. Totally different, but there was no mistaking the kinship of these two girls. The same shape to their faces, same height, same general build, same pale skin. But while Sarah’s hair was dark blonde, the other’s was jet black. They were also dressed differently; Sarah in  jeans, shirt and tie; the other in tight black leather.
“Go away, Liza. I don’t want to look at you.” Sarah snapped irritably
Why not? I am what you made me, Sarah. You can’t change me now.
“I know, but your eyes scare me.”
Did it ever occur to you that they might scare Brendan as well? Even more than they scare you, because they all think that I’m not real. We know better, don’t we?
“I can’t let you do that. You’d kill him!”
And he’d deserve it! He was never supposed to be born anyway - if I disposed of him all I’d be doing is righting a wrong, correcting a mistake. That’s all he is; an accident.
“Yes, but it still doesn’t make it right.” Sarah chewed her lip for a moment, then nodded. “Ok, you can go in tomorrow, but only if you don’t kill him or hurt him badly. I’ve got exams soon - the last thing I need is the police knocking on the door.”
Agreed.
At that moment, a call came from downstairs.
“Sarah, dinner’s ready! It’s lamb!” Sarah slid of the bed, and looked in the mirror. Liza was also standing.
Do you want me to handle it?
Sarah shook her head, and answered in kind.
No, Mum doesn’t like it. I’ll be fine. For now, I just want to forget about Brendan and get on with some revision.
Fine by me.
In the mirror Liza turned, and stepped into Sarah’s reflection. For a brief moment the image was distorted, as if someone had drawn two pictures, one on top of the other. Then the reflection was back to normal, and only Sarah stood there.
Are we going to go? I’m starving.
Sarah smiled. Just because you couldn’t see her didn’t mean she wasn’t there.

*    *    *

“Who the bloody hell are you?”
Liza stopped when she reached the circle of friends Sarah usually stood with at the bus stop. She smiled at the person who had voiced this question.
“I am Elizabeth, Liza to those I consider friends. I consider you all friends. Sarah and I are sisters, in a sense. I’m here to scare the holy shit out of Brendan, and make him sorry he ever decided Sarah was an easy target. Is that alright?” Dumbly, they nodded. Then another girl spoke up.
“Why have you got sunglasses on? Its cloudy.” Liza smiled.
“If I took them off, I’d scare you. Even Sarah doesn’t like them, and she knows what to expect.”
The girls smiled, and they were all relaxed and chatting by the time the bus arrived. Brendan wasn’t on the bus that morning, but that was alright. He’d be on that night.

*    *    *

“Who the bloody hell are you?”
It was the journey home, and Brendan had just discovered there was someone new on the bus. From his seat at the back it had looked like Sarah, but when he had plonked himself in the seat in front of her he discovered that he’d made a mistake. No matter. Fresh meat was always fun. Curiously enough, she was wearing sunglasses, even though it was raining hard outside. The girl smiled at him.
“My name is Elizabeth, Liza to my friends.” She didn’t stop smiling, but he wished she would. There was something slightly sinister about her smile.
“So, Liza, how come you’re wearing sunglasses? You blind?” Her smile grew wider. He noticed that her canines were prominently pointed. One of his friends had teeth like that. Vamp-teeth, he called them.
“I said I was Liza to my friends.” She replied matter-of-factly. “I don’t include you in that list. And no, I’m not blind. I have clinically perfect vision, unlike my sister, who is short-sighted. But even she can see well enough to know that you are one ugly son of a bitch.”

Brendan’s face darkened. This one was far too lippy for her own good. Maybe he’d smash her glasses, and rub the shards in her hair. With hair her colour it would be really difficult to find the pieces, too. He smirked.
“Something funny?” She asked calmly. That only infuriated him even more. How dare she be so uppity? How dare she?
“Take off your specs, Queen Elizabeth, so high-and-mighty. Your majesty does not wear sunglasses!” He taunted viciously, and snatched them off her. She made no move to stop him, only hung her head so a curtain of hair concealed her face. He sat there, playing with the glasses, watching to see how she would react.
“Please can I have them back?” She asked, still in that infuriatingly calm, matter-of-fact way. “You’ll only make things worse for yourself if you don’t give them to me.” He stopped fiddling with the glasses, amazed. She was threatening him? She was threatening him? Unbelievable! Well, he would make her pay. He reached out and grabbed her chin, forcing her head up so he could see her face.
She had her eyes clamped firmly shut.
“Open your eyes.” She didn’t reply. He slapped her hard across the face. “Open them up, bitch! Look at me!” Another slap. “Look at me!”
“Are you sure? Do you really want me to do that?” Why, for God’s sake, isn’t there any emotion in her voice? He’d get her crying if it was the last thing he did. He slapped her again. By now the whole of the top deck of the bus was silent, watching the scene in front of them. Another slap.
“Open.” Slap. “Your.” Slap. “Eyes!”

Her eyes flew open. Brendan gasped and recoiled, hitting his hand against the chair as he snatched it back. She smiled, and now that he could see her eyes that smile looked even more malicious. She looked evil. Brendan scrambled out of the chair and fled to the back of the bus, sat down, and watched her. She took her blazer off, and stood up. Looking down, Brendan realised he still had her sunglasses. Still facing the front of the bus, she spoke.
“When you review today’s events, you will be so sorry you didn’t listen to me. At least you can’t say I didn’t warn you. But do you want to know the funny side? You are going to have the crap beaten out of you by something you don’t think is real. You think I am a figment of my sister’s imagination. You think she’s delusional. Do you know who my sister is, Brendan?”

Brendan sat there, frantically trying to think where he’d heard the name Liza, where he’d laughed at it. Surely not someone he knew, otherwise he would have steered clear of them. Damn sensible too, with a sister like her. Wait - delusional? Suddenly it came to him. Why shouldn’t it? He’d only been making the girl’s life a misery for the last five years. Only yesterday she’d gone home with dog dirt in her hair and her school books trashed.

Sarah.

Brendan groaned, and looked for someone to hide behind, but everyone was already backing away, leaving a clear path between him and Liza.

And Liza was between him and the stairs.

She turned slowly, pinning him to the chair with those demonic eyes. Stormy grey, the pupils were vertical slashes with an angry tracing of red around them. The image burned itself into his mind. He couldn’t escape that gaze, even when he closed his eyes. Liza started down the isle slowly, not once blinking, or taking her eyes off him. She carried on talking as she inexorably made her way towards him.
“Don’t worry, Brendan. According to you, I’m not real. Therefore, using your logic, I won’t be able to hurt you. Pass me off as an illusion, a trick of the mind. You’re probably so doped up you think I’m a side-effect, a hallucination. Hold on to that thought, Brendan.” She had nearly reached him now. Those eyes. Oh, God, those eyes. She bent down, until their faces were inches apart, their eyes still locked. “In the years to come, you can tell yourself this was a bad dream,” she whispered. “But we know better, don’t we?”

Brendan screamed.

*    *    *

I want to go for a walk.
“No.”
It was a week later, and Brendan had been hospitalised the whole time. So far, the police hadn’t come knocking on her door but Sarah was still nervous. Liza was keeping the details of that day to herself, which only worried Sarah even more. Liza didn’t usually keep secrets, so she must have done something horrific. Since then, Sarah hadn’t left the house for fear of finding Brendan out of hospital, and out for revenge.
Please?
“NO! How many bloody times do I have to tell you? No!”
He wouldn’t look for you anyway; he’s too scared he’ll find me and not you.
“Yeah, well, he’s not the only one.”
Liza fell silent. Sarah stabbed at her laptop keyboard and glared at the screen. Slowly, an idea came to her. She hurriedly blocked Liza’s access to it and thought it through carefully. She smiled.
“Ok, you win. Let’s go for a walk.”
What?
“I’ve been hiding. You’re right, I really shouldn’t worry. None of his mates would know what happened to him; he’s too proud to tell them.”
Ok…

Sarah hurried downstairs and grabbed her coat while pushing her feet into her shoes.
“Just going for a walk, Mum.” She called.
“Got your phone?” Came the reply. She checked.
“Yep.”
“Alarm?”
“Yep.”
“Coat?” Sarah rolled her eyes.
“Bye, Mum!”

So where are we going today? Round the block? Or through the fields?
“You’ll see.”

*    *    *

What are we doing here? Liza asked suspiciously.
Clearing my conscience. Sarah replied.

They were at the hospital, which was a few minutes down the road. Sarah had come here to find out the sort of damage Liza had done to Brendan. She walked up to the reception desk.
“Hi there, I wonder if you could help me? I’m looking for Brendan Murphy.”
The receptionist looked at her.
“Do you have an appointment?”
“I’m afraid not. I heard something had happened to him and came to see how he was. It’s not too serious, is it?” Sarah didn’t have to pretend to sound worried; she was scared shitless.
“I’m afraid I don’t know the details. If you’ll follow me, I’ll take you to him.”

Sarah followed the receptionist down a maze of blank corridors, twisting and turning all over the place. Finally they stopped outside a blue door. Sarah looked at the notice hanging there.
“‘Temporarily mentally unstable’?” She read incredulously. The nurse shrugged and opened the door.
“There’s a visitor here for you, Brendan.” She looked back at Sarah.  “Make sure you tell me when you’re leaving.” Then left.
Sarah entered the room, expecting to see Brendan in a strait jacket. Instead, he was sitting up in his bed, reading. She raised her eyebrows.
Don’t talk to him… seriously, you’ll regret it, he’s gone crazy…
Sarah frowned and blocked out the sudden mental babble. She looked at Brendan again.
“You sure as Hell don’t look ‘mentally unstable’,” she said dryly, “apart from your sudden interest in reading.”

Brendan flinched at the sound of her voice. He looked over to where she was standing and screamed… or rather, tried to. All that came out of his mouth was a faint whisper. He scrabbled desperately out of bed and bolted towards the far wall, where he huddled, whimpering.

Sarah stood there, slack-jawed in astonishment. She shook herself as she realised that she was frightening the boy, and tried to calm him down.
“Hey! Hey, its alright, it’s only me, Sarah. I’m not gonna hurt you, don’t worry…” she carried on this way for a couple of minutes until his whimpering subsided and his breathing became less strained. Then she moved very carefully towards him, murmuring deep in her throat. He allowed her to help him up and back onto his bed, where he fell back against the pillows. Sarah looked over at the windows, where the curtains were tightly drawn.

He jerked into action and she tensed, ready to catch him if he tried to run. But he was only reaching for a notepad. He scribbled for a moment, then thrust it at her.
‘Thought you were her,’ she read. She looked at him and smiled gently.
“You wouldn’t make mistakes like that if you kept them open.” She said, indicating the curtains.

*    *    *

When he saw the figure at the door, Brendan’s first panicked thought was that she had come back for him. She was going to kill him for the Hell he had put her sister through. He tried to run, and felt enormous relief as the girl identified herself as Sarah and not her vicious alter-ego. He went numb with thanks that the gentle girl had decided to visit him. He knew she wouldn’t gloat, she was too nice. She’d help anyone (and right now, if anyone knows that, he does) no matter who they were. As she sat down and made some smart-arse comment about the curtains
(stop that you said you’d stop)
he felt an almost overwhelming urge to talk to her. Her, because only she really knew about Liza
(no Elizabeth you’re not her friend)
and he knew she’d listen. She listened really well, according to one of his mates who had gone to her to ask how best to get a girl’s attention. Yes, he needed to talk, but when you’ve screamed yourself hoarse, talking is a bit of a problem. Luckily the nurses had solved that problem and given him a notebook and several pens.

When he reached across for the notebook he noticed her tense up, and felt a pang of regret that she was scared to be here. He picked up the notebook and scribbled on it before shoving it in her direction. She read it, then smiled reassuringly at him. She looked nice when she smiled. Made a change from the slightly challenging expression he always saw her wearing.
“Like I said, you wouldn’t have made that mistake if your curtains were open.”

He scribbled on the notepad again, longer this time, then passed it across to her.
‘If  I’d kept them open there’s a chance she would have gone past and seen me and then come back to finish the job.’

Sarah read with a slight frown creasing her forehead. She looked at him with a gentle expression on her face.
“What did she do? She wouldn’t let me see what she did, so I came here.”

Brendan lay back on his pillows and thought for a while. He wasn’t quite sure how she did it, but it scared him badly - so bad he screamed his throat raw from the nightmares afterwards. He grabbed the notebook and started to write.

*    *    *

While he was writing, Sarah retrieved the book he had been reading from the corner where he had thrown it in his panic. She gently straightened out the bent pages before flipping it over to look at the cover.
“Jekyll and Hyde? I don’t have to ask what prompted this.”
Brendan glanced up from his scribbling and grinned shakily at her before continuing to write. Sarah put the book on the bedside table and sat at the end of the bed to wait for him to finish. He stopped, and motioned with his hand for her to come closer. She complied, inching forward until she was close enough to see the freckles on his face. He smiled reassuringly, and gave her the book.

‘It was my fault, I provoked her. She was wearing sunglasses and it was chucking it down with rain. So I snatched the glasses off her face. She kept her eyes closed, which only made me angrier, so I slapped her until she opened them. I wish she hadn’t. Those eyes… she followed me to the back of the bus and wouldn’t take her eyes off me. I don’t know what she did but she came up really close so all I could see were her eyes, and then we weren’t on the bus anymore. We were in a black place with a white ceiling, and you were standing in front of me, only it wasn’t you because you had her eyes. You told me we were in a labyrinth, and that there were seven doors out of it, and seven rooms. Six of the exit doors had one of her eyes on it. I had to find the plain one. All the doors on the rooms had eyes on as well. So there were thirteen doors with an eye, and one plain. You told me that if I went through the plain one then everything would be alright again. If I went through a different one I’d either go insane or be trapped.
‘I tried!!! I couldn’t find the plain door! So I went through one of the eyes, and I woke up in my bed screaming. I screamed so much I lost my voice, which is why I’m writing. I must be going insane; every time someone comes through that door I see her. I haven’t stopped dreaming about it either.’

Sarah put the pad down slowly.
“Listen to me, Brendan, you are not going to go insane. She punished you for being an asshole, and she made sure you weren’t going to revert. She couldn’t make you go insane. Only one person can do that, Brendan, and that’s you.” Sarah smiled wryly. “Call it a stab in the dark, but I think you’re a changed person.” Brendan nodded vigorously. Sarah got up.
“Well, I’ll sort her out, because what she did was despicable. She broke one of the rules we made for each other, and that can’t go unpunished. I’m glad she didn’t break any bones. Nice talking to you.”    And she turned to leave.

Brendan grabbed her wrist as she started to move away. Startled, she turned back. He was shaking his head fearfully.
“What, you don’t want me to go?” Again, he shook his head, not releasing his grip on her wrist. “Well, I’ll be go-to-hell. My worst enemy wants to spend some time with me!” He looked down, embarrassed. “Ok, I’ll stay, but it’s only because I have this urge to help people. Not because I enjoy your company or anything.” She smiled at him, and sat back down on the bed. Once she was seated, he grabbed his writing pad again.
‘Do you think I’m ugly?’ She looked up, surprised.
“Did Liza say you were?” He nodded. She smiled again. “That’s her way of weakening the mind’s natural defences. If there’s any doubt at all, that provides a sort of doorway… it’s too complicated. But, to answer your question, no. It always made me wonder how someone so attractive could be so vicious.” Her smile slipped, and for a moment Brendan saw the way she must be at home; drawn, scared, and depressed. He felt sorry for her, and immediately regretted hurting her so badly. Suddenly eager to make amends, he fumbled for his pad once more.
‘I’m sorry,’ he wrote. ‘You should smile more often, its nice.’

Sarah read it slowly - and blushed.

*    *    *

She was in a maze, that much was obvious. White walls and floor, black ceiling. Opposite to hers - the significance was not lost on her.
“So how do I get out?” She called. No answer. She turned a corner, and came face-to-face with herself. Only the one she was looking at had beautiful bright blue eyes. Her image grinned mockingly at her.
“There are fourteen doors in here. Six lead to a way out - and insanity. Seven lead to chambers that contain traps. One leads to the outside, where everything will be alright. If that’s what you want, look for the door with an eye on it. Shouldn’t be too hard.” With a malicious giggle, her twin turned and raced around another corner, out of sight.
She looked, searching on, but she couldn’t find a door at all. Not one. She should have found at least one by now, but no. What are the odds of that?

She stopped, and forced herself to calm down. Closing her eyes, she reached for Sarah - and found nothing. Puzzled, she tried again -
- and again, nothing. Alarmed now, she started calling out.
“Sarah! Saz! Saz!”
“Sarah… Sarah… Saz… Saz… Saz… ” The walls bounced her cries back at her, twisting them, mocking her.

For the first time in all of her existence, she discovered what it was like to be all on your own.

She started to run, turning corners at random, not caring where she was going, hoping that luck would show her a door, any door…
She stopped when she became exhausted. She felt wetness on her cheeks, and realised she was crying. The one sign of weakness she despised… and now she couldn’t stop. She put her back against a wall and slid down it until she was sitting on the floor. Head in her hands, she cried until she couldn’t cry any more.

She raised her head and peered through her tears at her surroundings. White walls, stretching on and on and on and… it was too much.

She screamed.

*    *    *

“I had every reason to do that. What you did was inexcusable.”
That’s a lousy excuse.  He couldn’t find the door - that’s his problem. No reason to abandon me in a nightmare.
“Yes, but we both know there wasn’t a plain door. There were only eyes. At least now you know that playing hide-and-seek in someone’s mind is NOT fun. Next time, just beat the crap out of them, ok? Then nobody gets nightmares, and we‘re all happy.”
There was no answer. Sarah smiled. She picked up the book Brendan had lent her, and began to read.