my brother's doppelganger
when i was fourteen and my younger brother was eight, we lived in an isolated desert town in southern New Mexico. my brother stood out in the largely Hispanic community because he had straight white hair and pale skin. it was Halloween. he was going as a vampire. he and my mother were in the bathroom where she was putting on his makeup. i stood watching in the doorway. we were chatting and laughing. someone knocks at the front door. i leave the bathroom, go approximately ten steps to the door. turn on the porch light and open the door, expecting a trick or treater. there is my brother, standing, not on the porch, but at the bottom of the steps, dressed in his black cape. nothing on his head. his white hair. he looks terrified. my mind is struggling with the impossible logistics of the situation. i ask how he got out there. I ask what's wrong? he runs beyond the circle of the porch light, into the dark. i return to the bathroom to tell my mom. there they both are, just as i left them.
this was a very small, one story house. probably less than 1,000 square feet. the bathroom was just a few paces from the front door. the bathroom had a window, but it was high, almost to the ceiling, and very small. if my mother had been able to stuff him through, he would have dropped six feet on the other side, then would have had to run around the house to get to the front door. logistically, it would have been impossible to pull off.
Over the years, I've asked my brother about this and he doesn't even remember it. He just gives me the same puzzled and confused look he and my mother gave me that night.
27 comments:
Weird, and spooky. The boy outside looked exactly like your brother without any make-up?? Weird. LOL! Sorry, such a trippy story.
Oooh, I hope he didn't get switched that night...(since we're pulling out old legends--a changeling). Maybe the scared boy was your real brother and the one you've know all these years since is an imposter!!
(and now back to our regularly scheduled programming)
kelly, the boy outside had some makeup on, but it didn't look quite the same as my brother's. just dark around the eyes. it was really bizarre. i really figured they would finally admit to a prank and tell me how they managed to pull it off, but nobody ever did. the only thing that i can figure is that there was a kid in town who looked kinda like my brother, and he came to our house dressed in similar clothes. but why would he run away?
Anne,
WOW! yeah, it gave me goosebumps.:)
Appeals to my fascination with the unexplained.
I love that story.
Course I do always wonder whether you had discovered some mushrooms out there in NM :)
allen, 100% real. it disturbed me for YEARS. actually more as time went by since my brother and mom continued to be completely baffled by my story. i thought about it every halloween while we lived in that house. i was actually afraid he might show up again, but he never did.
emom, believe it or not i've never done mushrooms. :D
i do remember going to a couple of parties where people were doing peyote. they would cook the peyote buttons in a huge pot on the stove, then drink the broth. then vomit. then trip. if i remember correctly. i never did peyote either. swear to god.
Anne,
okay, so I read it again.
And in so doing, I would like to take this opportunity to tell all of you how much I have enjoyed blogging with you and how much I'll miss you.
Because . . .
Thanks to Anne, I'm more than likely going to wake up sometime during the night and see that damn kid floating outside my bedroom window . . .and that will just about do it! agggggghhhhhhh
If by some miracle I survive the night, I'll see you all tomorrow. :)
okay, now i'm thinking about him. running one finger down the window glass. looking really sad.
nighty-night! :)
Omigod, anne, if you don't use this in one of your books you:
1. will be missing out on a chilling episode; and
2. will be haunted by it forever.
Write about it, and then it becomes fiction, no longer taunting you.
No charge for the psychiatric consultation. Jer
Damn you, terror-goddess. This huge wuss is now officially creeped out.
allen: whew. i think we all made it through the night! but the sun will set again!
forgottenmachine: thanks for stopping by!
dr. jer: hmmm. it would be tough to fit that into a novel, but it could be done. i wonder about a collection of halloween short stories -- with several writers contributing personal halloween tales....
mary louisa: your post made me laugh out loud. terror-goddess! :D
Ooh, good idea, anne. You could certainly swing that--a collection of Halloween short stories. I'm creeped out already, but I love it.
My wife and brother-in-law and I once pulled up to a Chinese restaurant fronted by a big bay window. You could see all the diners inside.
We all looked in at about the same time and saw a guy sitting at a booth near the middle of the restaurant. He looked exactly like me.
We all turned and stared at each other, our mouths hanging open. When we got inside the restaurant, he was gone.
You know this twin thing has really got me thinking that there's some alternate universe that coincides with ours, whether it be a time warp, or just where everything is opposite from this world.
And something happens at one given moment where the universes collide for a split second...and someone sees his/her twin...
LOL, I think I've watched and read a lot of sci-fi.
kelly, you've touched on another idea i've had about this event. maybe there was some kind of time warp. maybe the kid outside my house WAS my brother, but it hadn't happened yet. and maybe the guy in the restaurant WAS rob, but he wasn't inside yet.
Anne,
That's an intriguing idea. I was thinking that might explain cases of deja vu. (sp?)
i thought rob's story was interesting because more than one person saw his twin. that rules out an individual brain misfire or glitch (which is how some people explain deja vu.) it makes it external rather than internal.
We should all post weird supernatural stories on our blogs. I'll try and do one this weekend. I have one story from when I was younger.
allen, that is a spooky story! seems like a lot of scary stories have to do with phones.
oooh, kelly. great idea!!
blogger -- please unscrew yourself. most of my october posts are not showing up. :D
I like allen's spooky story. :)
I said this on his blog and I'll say it again here, "those damn telemarketer's are SO annoying."
i don't know, allen. i love the idea of guest bloggers, but this sounds like work! :D
jeff -- that's so funny. i swear our indumbent major's clan has called me 20 times in the past two days. and if you don't answer, they call about every five minutes until you do. oops. that was really a typo, but i must leave it up. incumbent. :D
I grew up in NM, and I think maybe the desert air is perfect for incubating strange phenomena.
The most frightening thing I remember is my father telling my mom about finding his aunt wrapped up in a feather mattress, being suffocated. When the mattress wouldn't let her go, he used a knife to cut her out. I remember his face when he told the story (I was an unseen observer, the way only 7 year olds can be).
To a little boy, nothing is scarier than knowing your father is afraid.
JEEZ, mark!!
now THAT'S trippy!!
and yes, NM does incubate strange stuff.
i lived in artesia, between roswell and carlsbad. that was before the whole roswell/ufo thing, but people were always talking about seeing ufos.
Okay, I've read everyone's and mine is the least spooky, dammit. LOL! That's okay, it was fun and reading the different stories was cool!! =D
I'm so damn boring. Nothing spooky.
I'm going to think--I know there have been some cool unexplained phenomena in my life, but nothing spooky. I'm rather disappointed in myself.
jer, i belong to a yahoo list called weird wisconsin. lots of weirdness going on in that state! especially in and around milwaukee!
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