“Hey, Liz!”
I’m enthusiastically greeted by my best friends when I open the front door. Duffel bags in hand, the tops of their heads lightly sprinkled with snow. I’ve already prepared everything they’re gonna need to sleep over tonight.
“Hey, guys! Did you bring those movies, Ashe?” I say as I let them in.
“You know it!”
We’ve always loved watching mystery films together, coming up with theories on what’ll happen next and whoever’s right earning bragging rights for the rest of the day. The girls set down their bags and take off their coats as I look for my parents’ secret stash of candy in the kitchen. In the other room, I hear the click of the TV turning on, followed by speech I can’t quite make out.
“Are you sure we can eat those?” Avery asks. She’s always been the goodie-two-shoes of the group.
“Don’t worry about it! My parents left for a date night not too long ago, they won’t notice if we have a few.”
“Avery, Lizzie! Come see what they’re talking about on the news!” Ashe calls out. I hop down from the counter, bowl of candy in hand. We both make our way to the living room to see Ashe staring intently at the bigscreen. A lady in blue addresses the audience.
“A 13 year-old boy narrowly escaped death this afternoon, after calling the police suspecting he was being targeted by the Alternate loose in the county. He had nearly answered the door to what appeared to be his father before realising he had left a half-hour prior, and mentioned he wouldn’t be back until late in the evening. Neighbours agree that they never saw the boy’s father return. Police are advising citizens to lock their windows and under no circumstances answer the door; the Alternate is a master of disguise and is known to take the form of loved ones. Here’s Frank Campbell at the scene…”
“This whole Alternate thing is really starting to freak me out… That boy would’ve been the fourth one this week,” Ashe says timidly as the well-dressed man continues indistinctly on TV.
“Don’t be ridiculous, dude. This is probably some big government coverup. Wouldn’t be the first time,” I say sceptically. Ashe shoots me a look of disagreement.
“I’m telling you, it’s real!”
“Hey Liz, could you turn up the heat a little? It’s getting kinda cold in here,” Avery says, interrupting our argument.
Without noticing, I’d started shivering. Why am I shivering? I look around to see that, sure enough, the other two are as well. Did the heater break, or something?
“But it’s set to 23 degrees, last time I checked,” I reply through gritted teeth.
A moment later, the lights go out. We all yelp in surprise, Ashe a little louder than the rest of us.
“It’s the Alternate! I told you it was real!” she cries.
“Oh, quit it! The power probably just went out. They announced a blizzard earlier today, anyway,” I snap back, getting annoyed.
We say nothing for the next few moments…
Silence.
The lights come back on.
I hear a scream of horror. I whip my head around to find a corpse where Ashe once sat, Avery crying over her body.
“Ashe? Ashe?! This isn’t funny, man, wake up! She was right, Liz! And we were too stubborn to believe her! Ashe, please…!”
I said nothing, just stared. Eyes wide. The only thing I felt in that moment was shock. Fear. Avery watched with tear-soaked cheeks as I got up. I silently began locking all the windows in the house, and doubled checked that the front and back doors were locked as well.
Avery followed suit. She frantically called the police, barely managing to dial the number with how much she was shaking. It took a few moments for the dispatcher that answered to calm her down; they could barely understand her with how quickly she was talking.
The only we could do after she hung up was wait. Just wait.
What felt like an eternity passed, and I noticed Avery’s expression. Her lips were contorted into a disgusted frown.
“Don’t worry, Ave. We’re gonna get out of here and they’re gonna catch the thing that did this,” I say softly, in an attempt to comfort her. I put my hand on her shoulder. She was still shaking uncontrollably.
“No no, it’s not that. Well, it’s mostly that. But do you smell something weird?” she asks hesitantly, as if she thought she was imagining things.
I take a short moment to analyse to scent of the cold air, trying to find a trace of anything abnormal.
“No.”
“I think it’s coming from over there,” she says, vaguely pointing in the direction of the hallway. I watched as she rose to her feet and walked cautiously down the hall. She stopped at the door at the very end. The closet. I could see her shivering from the living room. The house was unnaturally cold, now.
I slowly approached her. She hesitated before turning the doorknob, her hands shaking even more than before. The door opened. Her anxious expression quickly switched to one of terror, her eyes slowly turning back to look at me.
I pushed her into the closet and closed the door, smiling at her horrified expression as I locked her in with the corpses of Elizabeth and her parents.
I’m not making the same mistake twice. This time, I’ll make sure the cops never show up.
Hopefully she’ll die of hypothermia before that happens anyway…
(inspired by The Mandela Catalog)