Doppelgänger by Sean Munger

fitting-out of the house while they were in Newport, departed for good at about five. He left behind a cook named Mrs. Hennessy and a ladies’ maid, hired just that afternoon. She was a big, raw-boned Irishwoman called Mrs. O’Haney. The cook commuted but Mrs. O’Haney planned to live in the servants’ quarters in the garret. Right after Beasley introduced Anine to her Mrs. O’Haney said, “If you don’t mind, I’d like to move in right away, ma’am. It’ll save me a night’s rent at the boarding house.” Anine nearly swooned in relief. The maid was gone for two or three hours but returned just prior to suppertime, all of her worldly belongings contained in a flimsy cardboard suitcase and a dusty burlap sack. As evening fell she’d gone about lighting the gas lamps in the bedroom and the parlors and laying out Anine’s dress for tomorrow. She barely knew Mrs. O’Haney but she’d already come to rely upon her. She was the bulwark against the most awful thing Anine could imagine about the house: being alone within its walls.
    She was relieved that Julian had not wanted to make love tonight. They hadn’t been physical since the end of their honeymoon. It hadn’t seemed appropriate to engage in conjugal relations either in Lucretia’s house or Cornelius’s place in Newport; Anine was at first expecting that Julian would be eager to resume having sex with her now that they were home, but both tonight and the night before he hadn’t seemed interested. She was glad of it. Being constantly nervous and on-edge—about the nightmares, about the memory of discovering Bradbury—sapped her of any hint of desire.
    Julian fell asleep quickly, as he nearly always did. Within minutes his breaths were very even and hollow-sounding, almost a snore but not quite. Anine willed herself to relax. She was surprised how much tension she’d been unconsciously holding in her joints.
    Except for the ticking of the clock and Julian’s breathing the room was deathly silent. The house’s walls were so thick that they blocked out all sound from the streets around them. The bedroom’s beautiful furnishings were all so new and alien to Anine that she still didn’t feel like it was home. She hoped she would get used to it.
    What’s that? With a sudden jerk she raised her head off the pillow. It felt like some time had passed and she thought she had been asleep, but there was no telling how long. Something had awakened her, but as she listened in the darkness she could hear only Julian’s breaths and the relentless ticking of the mantel clock. Her muscles were tense again. She relaxed them. “Ingenting där,” she whispered. Nothing there .
    But a moment later she heard it again. It was the creak of floorboards, moving in the hallway outside the bedroom door. It moved from right to left.
    Anine was at once startled and annoyed. She knew it had to be Mrs. O’Haney, but why would she be moving around in the middle of the night, especially around their bedroom?
    As she turned over, fluffing the pillow, Anine heard the creak of footsteps on floorboards again, this time moving right to left. She heard something else too: soft giggling. From behind the thick oaken door of the bedroom it was barely audible, not something one could have heard without listening intently, but Anine definitely heard it.
    All right. Enough. Anine swung out of bed, reaching for the dressing-gown she’d left on one of the posts. “She ought to respect our sleeping hours,” she whispered. Mrs. O’Haney was not starting out her term of employment well. Her references were glowing; she’d been a ladies’ maid for twenty-seven years, or so Beasley had told her. He was the one who had hired her.
    She grasped the doorknob tightly but pulled the door open very gently, hoping not to wake Julian. Out in the hallway there was only slightly more