The Doppelgänger’s Funeral: How a Small-Town Land Appraiser Uncovered His Own Staged Death and Business Partner’s $4.2 Million Scheme
Part 1
When Arthur steps into the dimly lit chapel of Saint Jude’s Funeral Home and looks into the open mahogany casket, his heart stops.
Lying inside is not Julian, but a hyper-realistic corpse featuring Arthur’s exact physical facial structure, identical jawline, and the sharp chin scar he received in boyhood, wrapped in the exact winter trench coat Arthur noticed missing from his own closet three days prior.
Before Arthur can comprehend the sight, heavy footfalls echo from the hallway behind him, accompanied by the metallic click of a deadbolt sliding shut.
Arthur Pendelton had lived in Gideon Crest, Ohio, for all of his forty-two years. The town of 4,200 residents knew him as quiet, methodical, and dependable. This anonymous black envelope, however, had introduced an anomaly that rattled his carefully ordered world.
He stood on the polished linoleum floor of Saint Jude’s Funeral Home, the scent of lilies and old wood filling his nostrils. The invitation had been unexpected, alarming even. Julian Kildare, vanished five years ago without a trace, now supposedly receiving a memorial viewing? It felt wrong.
Arthur hesitated for a moment, his hand still on the brass handle of the chapel door. The silence beyond was heavy, almost suffocating. He pushed the door inward, the hinges groaning softly in the dim light.
The chapel was empty. Long, narrow stained-glass windows cast muted, colorful patterns onto the beige walls. Rows of vacant pews stretched forward, guiding his gaze to the front where a single mahogany casket rested on a draped platform. A small spray of white roses lay upon its closed lid.
His breath hitched. The casket was open.
A strange prickle ran down Arthur’s spine. He had expected a closed casket, perhaps a simple urn. Julian had been missing, not found. This was a viewing for a body that hadn’t existed until now.
He took a slow, deliberate step forward. Then another. The sound of his sensible work shoes echoed unnaturally loud in the solemn space. With each step, the details of the figure in the casket became horrifyingly clear.
The suit was unfamiliar, a dark charcoal, but the face… The face was unmistakable.
Arthur stopped dead, a cold shock seizing his limbs. His heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic drumbeat in the sudden, terrifying silence.
His own face stared back at him from the satin-lined coffin.
It was his jawline, strong and square, softened only slightly by the natural slackness of death. His nose, a touch too long for perfect symmetry, just like his own. He raised a trembling hand to his own chin, feeling the small, ragged scar just beneath his lower lip. A faint white line, souvenir of a childhood bike accident.
The body in the casket had that same scar. Exactly.
A choked sound escaped Arthur’s throat, half-gasp, half-denial. His mind reeled, grasping for any logical explanation. A grotesque joke? A macabre work of art?
But the detail was too perfect. The angle of the eyebrows, the slight asymmetry in the ears, even the way the hairline receded ever so slightly at the temples – every minute particular was Arthur Pendelton’s.
His eyes darted over the figure. It wasn’t just the face. The body was wrapped in a familiar heavy tweed trench coat. A deep olive green, with broad lapels and dark horn buttons. A unique coat, one he had bought on a rare splurge during a business trip.
He had noticed it missing from his closet three days ago. He’d searched everywhere, assuming he’d misplaced it or sent it to the dry cleaners. Now, it was draped over his doppelgänger.
No, not his doppelgänger. It was him. Or a terrifying, precise replica.
A wave of nausea washed over him, threatening to buckle his knees. His gaze was locked on the unseeing eyes of his own likeness, a chilling reflection of his mortality. He instinctively wanted to back away, to flee this impossible horror.
But his feet felt rooted to the spot, concrete blocks in the cold chapel. His mind raced, desperate to process the information, to make sense of the impossible tableau before him. Julian Kildare? This was not Julian. This was *him*.
A sudden, sharp sound tore through the silence of the chapel. A series of heavy, deliberate footfalls. *Thump. Thump. Thump.*
They were coming from the hallway behind him. Not a hurried pace, but slow, intentional. Each step vibrated through the floor.
Arthur’s head snapped around, his heart leaping into his throat. His eyes fixed on the heavy oak door he had just entered. He saw the dark shadow of a hand reach for the doorknob.
Then, with a sickeningly metallic *click*, the heavy deadbolt slid home.
Part 2
The sickeningly metallic *click* of the deadbolt echoed in the small chapel, a sound that sealed more than just a door. It sealed me inside. Panic flared, but I forced my gaze back to the mahogany casket. The face staring up at me, so eerily still, was my own. Every line, every subtle curve, down to the small, jagged scar beneath the chin that I’d gotten falling out of an oak tree when I was seven.
A chilling recognition ran through me, colder than the chill in the room. I felt a desperate urge to deny it, to dismiss it as a macabre joke. But then my eyes fell to the corpse’s wrist. Tucked beneath the cuff of the tweed coat—*my* tweed coat, I realized with a fresh jolt—was a hospital-style wrist tag.
My hand shook as I reached in, my fingers brushing against the cold, unyielding skin. I pulled the tag into view. Printed clearly, unmistakably, were the digits of my own Social Security number. Below it, in official-looking type, a draft death certificate. My full name: Arthur Pendelton. My date of birth. And a date of death stamped three days in the future. My breath caught, a painful gasp. This wasn’t a replica of Julian. This was a replica of *me*, being prepared for a death that hadn’t happened yet.
Heavy footsteps scraped on the tiled floor of the hallway outside, growing steadily closer. Each step boomed, resonating through the floorboards, straight into my chest. A tall, distorted shadow flickered across the frosted glass panel of the chapel door, then stopped, directly outside. I could feel the presence on the other side, a heavy, waiting silence. My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic, desperate rhythm.
Then, with agonizing slowness, the brass door handle began to turn.
You are Arthur Pendelton. Trapped inside the viewing chapel, facing your own impending death on paper, someone is trying to enter the room. What do you do?
A) Pretend to be calm, step into the hallway, and call county records to verify identities 👉 Read Chapter 2
B) Step closer to touch the silicone skin of the body to verify if it is real or a doll 👉 Read Chapter 3
More Stories
+ There are no comments
Add yours