Mr. Murder

you?"
        With none of the eerie fluidity and ghostly shimmer of either a psychological or supernatural apparition, neither transparent nor radiant, the double took another step into the room. When he moved, shadows and light played over him in the same manner as they would have caressed any three-dimensional object. He seemed as solid as a real man.
        Marty noticed the pistol in the intruder's right hand. Held against his thigh. Muzzle pointed at the floor.
        The double advanced one more step, stopping no more than eight feet from the other side of the desk. With a half-smile that was more unnerving than any glower could have been, the gunman said, "How does this happen?
        What now? Do we somehow become one person, fade into each other, like in some crazy science-fiction movie " Terror had sharpened Marty's senses. As if looking at his doppelganger through a magnifying glass, he could see every contour, line, and pore of its face. In spite of the dim light, the furniture and books in the shadowed areas were as clearly detailed as those items on which the glow of lamps fell. Yet with all his heightened powers of observation, he did not recognize the make of the other's pistol.
        "-or do I just kill you and take your place?" the stranger continued.
        "And if I kill you-" It seemed that any hallucination he conjured would be carrying a weapon with which he was familiar.
        "-do the memories you've stolen from me become mine again when you're dead? If I kill you-" After all, if this figure was merely a symbolic threat spewed up by a diseased psyche, then everything-the phantom, his clothes, his armament-had to come from Marty's experience and imagination.
        "-am I made whole? When you're dead, will I be restored to my family?
        And will I know how to write again?"
        Conversely, if the gun was real, the double was real.
        Cocking his head, leaning forward slightly, as if intensely interested in Marty's response, the intruder said, "I need to write if I'm going to be what I'm meant to be, but the words won't come."
        The one-sided conversation repeatedly surprised Marty with its twists and turns, which didn't support the notion that his troubled psyche had fabricated the intruder.
        Anger entered the double's voice for the first time, bitterness rather than hot fury but rapidly growing fiery, "You've stolen that too, the words, the talent, and I need it back, need it now so bad I ache.
        A purpose, meaning. Do you know? You understand? Whatever you are, can you understand? The terrible emptiness, hollowness, God, such a deep, dark hollowness." He was spitting out the words now, and his eyes were fierce. "I want what's mine, mine, damn it, my life, mine, I want my life, my destiny, my Paige, she's mine, my Charlotte, my Emily-" The width of the desk and eight feet beyond, eleven feet in all, point-blank range.
        Marty pulled the 9mm pistol from the desk drawer, grasping it in both hands, thumbing off the safety, squeezing the trigger even as he raised the muzzle. He didn't care if the target was real or some form of spirit. All he cared about was obliterating it before it killed him.
        The first shot tore a chunk out of the far edge of the desk, and wood splinters exploded like a swarm of angry wasps bursting into flight.
        The second and third rounds hit the other Marty in the chest.
        They neither passed through him as if he were ectoplasm nor shattered him as if he were a reflection in a mirror, but instead catapulted him backward, off his feet, taking him by surprise before he could raise his own gun, which flew out of his hand and hit the floor with a hard thud.
        He crashed against a bookcase, clawing at a shelf with one hand, pulling a dozen volumes to the floor, blood spreading across his chest-sweet Jesus, so much blood eyes wide with shock, no cry escaping him except for one hard low "uh" that was more a sound of surprise than pain.
        The bastard should have fallen like a rock down a well, but he stayed on his feet. In the same moment that he slammed into the bookcase, he pushed away from it, staggered-plunged through the open doorway, into the upstairs hall, out of sight.
        Stunned more by the fact that he'd actually pulled the trigger on someone than that the "someone" was the mirror image of himself, Marty sagged against the desk, gasping for breath as desperately as