The Twin

I’m still a little shaken up by everything that happened. My head is a mess and I’m probably going to have to change my job. Not probably, definitely. There’s no way I can go back to the Lullaby Ward ever again.

Some background first. My twin brother, Isaac, died when I was nine years old. Everyone talks about how special twins are, that they have this psychic link, this relationship that is closer than any other human being has to another. I never felt that way. We were identical, but in appearance only. He was outgoing, adventurous. I was introverted. It used to embarrass me how open he was with everyone. People would assume I was just the same. I must have lost count of the number of times someone would talk to me and expect the same response, only to have this confused look on their face when they found this complete opposite in the same shell.

Isaac died on a family holiday. My family took a trip to France every year, always staying at the same holiday park. The best part was the pool, with its slides and inflatables, we spent more time there than at the beach, which was just a few minutes’ walk away. The summer Isaac died, the pool was closed. Apparently there was an issue with the cleaning system. Whatever the reason, we were told that it was off limits. And besides, the sea was nearby. Who was going to miss the pool?

Isaac was devastated. He loved the pool, wouldn’t stop talking about it in the weeks before the holiday. When he saw it was closed, he sulked for most of the first day. But something must have switched in his head, as the next morning he woke me up at 5 a.m.

“Donnie, let’s go for a swim.”

Donnie is not my name, nor is it an alternative I’m using to hide my identity. Donnie was a nick name that Isaac gave me. We were both big ninja turtle fans. My favourite was Donatello, something that Isaac could never understand. So he used to call me Donnie. No one else did, and my parents and relatives all thought it was strange. He was desperate for me to call him Mikey, but I never did.

Anyway, he woke me up and, for some reason, I was happy to oblige. We snuck out of the chalet and made our way to the pool. Despite it being closed, it wasn’t fenced off or anything. Just taped off. I followed Isaac through the barrier to poolside.

“See? We can swim.”

I wasn’t quite sure what Isaac was on about. The water was filthy, a deep dark green colour that looked as bad as it smelt.

“I’m not swimming in that,” I said.

“Fine,” said Isaac, “Be a loser.”

He climbed up the ladder to the top of the plunge slide. It was our favourite. Probably about five metres tall, at least it felt that big when we were nine. It was a sheer drop with a little lip at the bottom that would send you up high before you came splashing back down in to the pool. Probably wouldn’t pass any health and safety regulations these days.

“Watch this,” said Isaac.

He launched himself headfirst down the slide. Something he had done many times before. This time was different. The bottom of the slide with the lip was covered with some of the green scum water. As Isaac hit that part, his body slid sideways. He flew up in a weird sort of spinning motion before landing with a horrible wet splat on the edge of the pool. Head first. He made a horrible sighing sound before falling limply into the water.

I screamed out in horror. Isaac disappeared beneath the green surface for a moment. I wish that moment had lasted longer, giving me a chance to turn away, or start running. But it was all too brief.

Isaac’s corpse – it was a corpse by then – surfaced. Isaac stared up blankly at the sky above. His head was at ninety degrees from his body. His neck had snapped, killing him instantly.

By the time help arrived, I was a wreck. Even though we weren’t close, he was still my brother. I loved him. And he was gone in an instant.

*

The months after were awful. The funeral was well attended, but all the focus was on me. Who needs an open casket when you have a carbon copy sitting nearby. People would cry just looking at me. I even found it difficult to look in a mirror for a while. Don’t think my mum ever looked at me the same way either.

It took time but I was able to move on. I went through high school and college okay, decided against university. I wanted to start work so I could get money and get my own place. Spare my mum from having to look at a ghost each and every day.

 I bounced between a few terrible jobs before I found work at the hospital. A friend of mine had said working in healthcare was great, even in a non-medical way. So when I saw the night cleaner role advertised at decent pay, I thought, “Fuck it. Why not?”

The job turned out to be at the special palliative care unit at the hospital. A place where very sick people at the end of their life go to die. My role was to clean things at night. Mostly the rooms where patients had expired. They don’t always go quietly, so it took a strong stomach to be able to deal with what you found.

 Despite the grim nature of the place, I had a great team to work with. The doctors and nurses were all pretty chilled. They had this mindset about end-of-life care. They were performing a service for the loved ones as much as the patients. “Let them pass with grace and dignity,” was how one doctor had explained it to me. Send them off to sleep one last time. Hence the nickname the ‘Lullaby Ward’.

There was a rotation of three other cleaners who I worked with. Mateusz was a polish guy with the best sense of humour. Jane was like a mother to us, and we had this feeling she would have much rather been a nurse than a cleaner. We never pushed to find out why she had never retrained. Finally, there was Gordon. He had been working there the longest and showed me the ropes. We ended up on a shift together the most.

“This place is sort of sacred,” said Gordon. “This is where humanity is best demonstrated. You see the doctors and nurses doing all that they can for those they can do nothing to save. Takes a certain strength.”

The first night, he showed me around the place. Where the cleaning supplies were kept, what standards were expected from us. It was at the end of the shift that he took me to one side.

“You must never go in a patient’s room,” said Gordon, “No matter what they say, you never go inside. Leave that to the doctors and the nurses.”

“Why?” I asked.

“This place is the threshold,” said Gordon, “Where life crosses over to death. But the door is open. Sometimes…it feels like something crosses back from the other side.”

I laughed but he was deadly serious. “Just take my word for it,” he said. “Don’t go in a room with a patient inside. Ever.”

How I wish I had listened to Gordon now.

*

It first happened two nights ago. I had been at the Lullaby Ward for about a year, so was feeling pretty confident. That shift, Gordon was unwell. Neither Jane or Mateusz could make it to cover, so I was on my own. Didn’t bother me. I could mop the corridors and clean the visiting rooms by myself. And if a patient passed away, I was happy to do the deep clean the room required to get it ready for the next unfortunate soul.

It had just passed 3 a.m. when it happened. I was outside one of the patient rooms when I realised the door was open. I moved to close it and noticed the light was on. Lying on the bed was an elderly woman, her face wrinkled and gaunt. She looked up and saw me at the door and smiled.

“Hello,” she said.

“Sorry miss,” I said, “Just cleaning the hallway. Hope I didn’t wake you.”

The woman laughed, a very weak, dry laugh. “I haven’t slept for days now. What’s a nice young man like you doing as a cleaner?”

It was my turn to laugh. “Just found what I’m good at I guess.”

She smiled again and raised a frail hand to gesture me inside. “Come talk to me. Just for a little while.”

I hesitated for a moment. Not because of what Gordon had said, those words weren’t on my mind at the time. I was just thinking about all the extra work I had to get done. In the end I thought, ‘You haven’t had a break yet. Why not stop here a while?’

I put my mop and bucket to one side and entered the room. It was the first time I had been inside a patient’s room while they were alive. I was surprised at how normal it felt. Just like any other hospital room. Of course she looked old and was close to the end, but she had a warmth to her that outshone the beeping of the machines keeping her alive.

“Yours is the first strange face I’ve seen in a while,” she said.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Everyone else is a relative or one of the doctors. I’m used to them all. It’s good to see someone new, even now. Wouldn’t you say?”

“I guess so,” I replied.

I sat down in a chair close to the bed and we talked for a while. She asked me about my life, what I was getting up to. Joked about my lack of a partner, scolded me for my lack of ambition in my job. All light-hearted and good-natured. It was refreshing. After all the doom and gloom that Gordon had warned me about, this felt like the opposite.

I realised I had spent a good twenty minutes chatting. “Have to get back to work. Sorry,” I said.

Her smile faded into a sadness I had not seen in a long time. “Hope it goes well.”

“I’ll come back tomorrow?” I said, cheerfully.

She shook her head. “I might not be here then.”

Her words hit me hard. I didn’t know what to do. Stay here or get back to work. What she said next made up my mind for me.

The woman suddenly shook violently in the bed before going suddenly stiff. Her arms and legs pushed out from her body. I was about to hit the big red emergency button that would send all the doctors running to her, when she spoke.

“D….D…..Donn…..”

At first I didn’t quite hear what she said. So she repeated. “Don….Donnie.”

My blood ran cold. No one had called me that for seventeen years. I backed away to the door. The woman’s eyes followed me.

“He’s coming.”

Her body relaxed suddenly, setting off alarms from the machines beside the bed. I ducked out the door and into the hallway. Seconds later, doctors and nurses were rushing towards the room. I made as if I had been cleaning the whole time. I waited around, mopping the same few tiles of linoleum until the doctors left. The woman had passed. But her words lingered in my mind. I told myself I was tired or had misheard. But I knew what had been said.

*

The next night, it was just me and Jane. I was glad that there was someone else there. Not that we would be working in the same place at the same time. Having her nearby meant that I couldn’t stop, I had to focus on work. If I wanted to have a break, I could chat with Jane.

Things didn’t work out that way.

I was cleaning the hallway and found myself outside the old woman’s room from the night before. It had already been occupied by a new patient. I looked at the name written in marker on the whiteboard sign.

Isaac.

My heart jolted in my chest. Surely it must have been some sort of coincidence. First what the woman said, now this. I had to take a look inside. What was I expecting? My twin brother to be lying in there waiting for me? No, of course not. But there had to be something behind the coincidence, some logic.

I opened the door slowly. My hand trembled slightly on the handle. I told myself I was being ridiculous. But then again, so was the situation.

Inside the room was dark, save for the screen of a heart monitor that showed the patient’s vital signs. I could make out someone lying in the bed. In the dark, they sort of looked familiar. Somehow recognisable despite having the faintest outline of a figure. I walked closer, moving as silently as I could. I didn’t want to wake whoever it was.

I reached the foot of the bed and breathed a sigh of relief. It was an old man, his bald head seemed to shine in the dark as my eyes adjusted to the lack of light. His breathing was laboured, battling for every lungful of air. His eyes were open but they had a blank expression. Staring into space.

I looked at the heart monitor and saw the name written on the screen. Edwin Isaacs. I almost laughed. His last name was Isaacs. Someone must have missed the ‘s’ on the whiteboard. Relieved and slightly ashamed at how jumpy I had been I turned and made my way back to the door.

That’s when he woke up.

“Who’s there? Who are you?”

The man sat up in the bed and stared into the dark. “I know you’re there. Show yourself.”

“I’m sorry sir,” I said, “I’m just a cleaner.”

“What are you doing in here? Leave me be.”

“I was just leaving.”

“No!” the old man shouted, “I won’t do it. I won’t help you.”

“I don’t need your help, I’ll leave you in peace.”

The old man turned his head. But he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking past me. I slowly turned around to see what he was looking at.

Nothing. Just the empty room.

I turned back in time to see the man throw himself at me. He was small and frail yet the impact sent me flying backwards.

“What are you doing?” I yelled.

The old man didn’t say anything, he was trying to get a grip on me. We spun around together in a twisted dance. I managed to push him back towards the bed, but he was up again, standing on the edge. There was something maniacal about him that radiated through his body. His frail, veiny arms stretched unnaturally. His neck stretched up too, I could hear bones breaking as it did.

“I’ve waited so long for this,” the old man said.

He sprung forward again. This time he caught me in the chest and sent me onto my back.

“Let go of me!” I shrieked, my voice becoming hoarse from the shock and the fear.

“Donnie...it’s my turn.”

The old man’s neck suddenly snapped to one side. Ninety degrees. A horrible angle that I instantly recognised.

 “Isaac?” I gasped.

The old man’s face contorted. “You’ve had seventeen years. Good, long years. Now it’s my turn.“

I somehow managed to push the man off me. He rolled back on the linoleum floor, his head hanging horribly on the end of his broken neck.

“Don’t be selfish. We can share. Let me share. We are the same. We can be the same. Two now one. If you let me come back.”

“You’re dead!” I yelled.

“But I’ve been waiting. On the other side of the door. You opened it. Let me come back through.”

The old man pushed his body off the ground and turned so his grotesquely hanging head was swaying towards me. His arms and legs seemed to grow again, being stretched by some unseen force. They suddenly swung towards me, clawing out at me like tentacles.

“Please,” he begged, “Please let me come back.”

He lunged suddenly towards me. I dodged one attack, only to feel his hand clamp around my ankle. The old man pulled me towards me. I could see his eyes were burning bright now. Like a light had been turned on behind them. A horrible light that hinted at something beyond my comprehension.

I managed to shake free and slide towards the door. But the old man lunged again, this time throwing his whole body at me. I had no choice but to lift my leg up in defence. I caught his head in a horrible kick, sending it snapping back. The old man twisted in mid-air – just like Isaac had done all those years ago – before landing flat on the floor. He became still. Deathly still.

I didn’t wait around to see what would happen next. I got up and ran, out of the room, out of the ward, towards the nearest emergency exit. I didn’t stop until I was far away from the hospital, my lungs burning in pain from the panicked escape. What the fuck had just happened?

*

I’ve managed to calm myself down now. I don’t know whether the old man is alive or dead. Whether I imagined it or not. It wasn’t until Gordon text me that I truly believed that it was all real. That I wasn’t a madman.

“Now you know about the threshold. I hope you closed the door.”

And now, as I sit in my apartment, with the lights switched on, I don’t know if I have. I’m tired, my body wants to sleep. But I’m scared of what waits for me. I’m away from the ward. I can find a new job. But…but my reflection. Something has changed about it. What if the door is open? And what if Isaac comes back? I don’t want to share. But I may not have a choice.