Infinite(83)

Then I saw his hand disappear into his leather jacket for the knife.

He was just like my father, reaching for the gun.

I should have been able to stop it!

I summoned everything I had left in my body. I threw myself across the last few steps and launched into the air, colliding hard with his back and knocking him to the ground. Pain exploded in my gut, tearing open my wound, unleashing a sea of blood. I took Dylan’s head into both of my hands and slammed his skull against the concrete. Then I did it again, and again, hearing the bone crack. When his eyes finally closed, I wrapped my hands tightly around his throat and pushed my thumbs into his windpipe. I cut off every atom of air that would keep him alive.

Above me, Karly screamed.

Of course she did. She couldn’t see my face. I was a stranger attacking her husband. She grabbed my shoulders to pull me off, and when I hung on, she kicked and scratched and got on the ground and clamped her teeth around my forearm. I couldn’t take it. Finally, I let go, and she dragged me backward into the grass.

We were still in the dark. She couldn’t see my face.

“Karly, stop!” I screamed.

But all her primal instincts had taken over. She hammered my body with her fists. Her knee sank into the bloody mess of my abdomen, causing waves of agony that left me struggling to breathe. I put up my arms to fend her off and shouted again.

“Karly, it’s me!”

My familiar voice, my words, slowly seeped into her mind. She began to perceive that something impossible was happening here, but it was already too late.

Rising above her like a ghost under the park light, I saw my doppelg?nger. He was on his feet again, the knife in his hand. Blood from his fractured skull ran in ribbons down his face. He jumped toward my wife. With a surge of adrenaline, I shoved Karly away, but Dylan kept coming. He landed on top of me, and we rolled together, battling for control of the knife. My strength was waning, but so was his. Both of us were dizzy, drained, desperate. The park became a whirling gyroscope inside our heads, and I could feel our minds coming together. I saw his face and my face through my own eyes. As we rolled, as our bodies intertwined, we were becoming one person. We’d always been one person, trapped inside endless worlds.

There was only one way to stop him. I had to sacrifice myself. I let go of the knife and took hold of his throat again, choking him. With his hands free, he thrust the knife into my back, and pulled it out, and thrust it in again. I held on through every lightning bolt of agony. I ignored the pain and weakness and blood and kept my fingers wrapped around his windpipe. Below me, his face turned purple. His eyes bulged. His tongue swelled from his mouth. He stabbed me over and over, but the shock waves rippling through my back belonged to someone else, not me. My mind shunted them aside. I had no wounds, no feeling, no body at all. I was nothing but two hands locked around a killer’s neck.

He reared back to stab me one more time.

This time, the blow never came. His arm stiffened in midair. The knife slid away from his fingers and dropped to the grass. His stare grew fixed, the whites of his eyes ruby red with exploded blood vessels. His body went limp.

It was done.

Dylan Moran was dead.

It took time for me to unclench my knuckles and peel my fingers away from his neck. When I was finally able to let go, I rolled off him. We lay in the park next to each other, two twins. One dead, one dying. I turned my head, watching him, still not able to believe I’d killed him. Exhausted, I let my eyes blink shut—not for long, only for a few seconds. When I opened them again, he was gone. The ground was empty, as if his body had never been there at all. He was an intruder who didn’t belong in this world.

Neither did I.

I had to go, too.

Every breath had become torture. I dragged in air and tasted blood as I exhaled. It wouldn’t be long. And yet I felt free.

Karly knelt by my side. Her blue eyes were full of confusion and fear. “Dylan. Oh, my God, Dylan, what’s going on? That other man, he was you. He had your face. Where is he? Where did he go?”

I whispered to her as my brain floated. “Go home, Karly.”

“No, you need help. An ambulance.”

She took her phone in her hand, but I found enough strength to hold her wrist down. “Don’t.”

She put her hand softly on my cheek. “I can’t lose you. Ellie can’t lose you.”

“You won’t lose me. Go home. I’m there.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m not your Dylan. I’m not him. Your Dylan is safe. I promise you.”

“I don’t understand!”

I felt black clouds encroaching. I didn’t want her to see the end. “Please, Karly. Go.”

“How can I leave? How can you say that?”

She bent down, and her hair swished across my face. Her lips found mine. I could barely feel them, but the barest sensation of softness was enough to take away some of the pain. She held on to me, our faces pressed together. I smelled her perfume, but my five senses had begun to shut down, and only the sixth was left.

“Do you love me?” I asked her.

“You know I do.”

“Then trust me. Go home.”

She pushed herself up on her hands, her face over mine, only inches away. “Are you really there?”

“Yes.”

“How can I possibly believe that?”