Chapter 3 - The Ghost in the Mirror
Hook: She looked into the rearview mirror and saw her own face staring back. But she wasn't the one driving.The scream died in Corrine’s throat.
The face in the rearview mirror was identical to hers. The same high cheekbones, the same dark circles of exhaustion under the eyes, the same slight crook in the nose. But there was a fundamental difference. The woman driving her car wore a dark, calculated smile—a expression of cold triumph that Corrine had never made in her entire life.
Before Corrine could throw off the blanket, the driver slammed her foot onto the gas pedal.
The car roared backward out of the garage, tires screeching against the asphalt of the driveway. The sudden g-force threw Corrine violently against the back of the front seats, the tire iron clattering out of her hand and slipping under the passenger seat.
"Stop the car!" Corrine shrieked, scrambling to her knees. "Who are you? Stop the car!"
The driver didn't flinch. She didn't look back. She shifted the car into drive and slammed the accelerator down. The sedan rocketed down Birchfield Lane, the engine roaring in protest as the transmission shifted gears.
"Let me out! Help!" Corrine lunged forward, reaching over the console to grab the steering wheel, but the driver violently elbowed her back. The blow caught Corrine squarely in the jaw, sending a blinding flash of pain through her skull.
"Sit down, Corrine," the driver said.
The voice was an exact match of her own, but deeper, smoother, stripped of the ragged grief that had defined Corrine's speech for months. It was the voice of a woman entirely in control.
"Who are you?" Corrine cried, pressing her back against the rear door, her hand frantically feeling for the door handle. She pulled it, but the child locks were engaged. She was trapped. "Why are you doing this to me?"
"I'm not doing anything to you," the woman said, turning a sharp corner onto the dark, winding highway that led out of town. "I'm doing this for you. You were drowning. You were fading away into nothing. Someone had to take the wheel."
The car was flying now, clearing 70 miles per hour on a road hugging the steep cliffs above the river. The headlights cut through the thick fog, illuminating the dark trunks of pine trees whipping past.
"You're crazy," Corrine gasped, her mind fracturing. Is this a twin? Did my mother have a secret? Am I having a psychotic break? "Are you... are you my sister? Elena?"
The driver let out a sharp, mocking laugh. "Elena? Your sister who moved to France ten years ago and barely called when Mom was dying? No, Corrine. Look closer."
The driver tilted the rearview mirror downward so Corrine could see her face fully in the dashboard light.
There was a tiny, faint scar just below the driver's left eyebrow—the exact scar Corrine had gotten when she fell off her bicycle at seven years old. There was the mole on the right side of the neck. It wasn't a lookalike. It wasn't a long-lost twin.
It was her.
"This isn't real," Corrine whispered, covering her ears, shutting her eyes. "I'm asleep. I'm in my bed. I'm having a nightmare."
"If you're asleep, then who is driving the car?" the other Corrine asked smoothly. "Who filled the gas tank last week? Who left the lilies? You want to believe it's a ghost, don't you? It's easier to believe in ghosts than to admit what you're capable of when the lights go out."
The sedan violently swerved, the tires kissing the gravel edge of the cliffside road before correcting. Corrine was thrown from side to side, her hands frantically grasping for a handhold.
"Where are we going?" Corrine demanded, terror threatening to swallow her whole.
"To finish it," the alter-Corrine replied, her smile fading into a grim, determined line. "To take care of the man who left us when we were broken. The man who thought he could walk away from ten years of our life without paying the price."
Corrine’s stomach dropped. Daniel.
They were heading toward the city. Toward Daniel’s new apartment.
"No," Corrine pleaded, tears streaming down her face. "Daniel didn't do anything wrong. We just broke. Please, stop the car!"
"He abandoned Mom, Corrine! He stopped showing up at the hospital because it was 'too depressing.' He packed his bags while you were wiping her brow! He deserves to understand what real pain feels like."
The alternative Corrine reached into her trench coat pocket and pulled out a long, heavy object that gleamed in the dashboard light.
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It was a surgical scalpel—one of the sterile blades Corrine had accidentally kept in her purse from the home-hospice kit during her mother's final days.
"Tonight," the driver whispered, her eyes wide and manic as she stared at the highway ahead, "we become the monster they all think we are."
