The If Game Read Online Free

he’d been sitting on. Stephen had a moment’s fear that he was really hurt, but he wasn’t going to risk being caught again. He turned back towards the house and he ran. Before him, he saw the other side of the house, as flat and unreal as its front had been. But there was the door through which he’d come to this strange place. He still had the big key in his hand. He forced it into the keyhole, turned it and the door opened. He almost fell through.

4
    He looked at the road below him and was grateful for its ordinariness. He also saw Alex, apparently waiting for him. He was not pleased. He did not feel ready to talk to anyone about the disturbing experience he had just had.
    â€˜Well?’ Alex said.
    â€˜Well what?’
    â€˜What is it like in there? Is there any house?’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜Just a drop down to the railway line?’
    â€˜Not exactly. There’s a sort of path.’ He wasn’t going to explain how long and unlikely that path had been.
    â€˜You don’t sound as if you liked it.’
    Stephen said, ‘I didn’t.’
    â€˜What’s wrong with it?’
    â€˜I don’t know. It’s ... funny.’
    â€˜Funny ha-ha? Or just peculiar?’
    â€˜Peculiar,’ Stephen said. He had no words to describe how peculiar it had seemed. First, there being a long straight path were there should only have been the falling ground above the railway line, and second, the old man who had mistaken him for someone else.
    He had turned to walk home and found that Alex was walking beside him. He wasn’t best pleased by this, but as the boy was there, he thought he might as well try to get some reassurance from him. He said, ‘Do people often have doubles?’
    â€˜Doubles how? What do you mean by doubles?’
    â€˜Other people who look exactly like them.’
    â€˜When they’re not twins, you mean? Twins can look exactly like each other.’
    â€˜When they’re not twins.’ But a horrible thought now struck Stephen. Suppose, without knowing it, he had a twin? Since you can’t remember being born, how would you know, if your parents didn’t tell you? He had read somewhere a story which he’d always found upsetting, about a man who thought he was seeing himself in a mirror, but had really seen a twin brother he’d never heard of, on the other side of a glass door. It was a spooky story which had haunted him for weeks after reading it.
    â€˜I’ve no idea,’ Alex was saying. It took Stephen a moment to realize that this was an answer to his question. Alex went on, ‘I know we’re all supposed to have a double somewhere else in the world. But it would have to be around where we live, wouldn’t it? I mean, we couldn’t have a double in China. Or Africa. Or anywhere where people don’t look anything like us.’
    Was that comforting? Or not? Stephen didn’t know.
    â€˜Why do you want to know? Did you meet your double the other side of that door?’ Alex asked, and Stephen, taken by surprise, cried out, ‘No!’ so loudly that people passing them in the street turned to look at him.
    â€˜It’s all right. You don’t need to shout. I didn’t say you did,’ Alex said.
    â€˜I didn’t, anyway.’
    â€˜Something happened, though. Didn’t it?’ Alex asked.
    â€˜Why?’
    â€˜You’re upset. As if you didn’t like whatever it was.’
    Stephen was not going to tell him anything. He wanted to get rid of Alex. He said, ‘Why don’t you go home?’
    â€˜You mean you don’t want me with you?’ Alex asked, and Stephen, who wasn’t usually as rude as this, said, ‘No, I don’t.’
    Alex turned red. He said, ‘I don’t want to be with you, either,’ and turned away. Stephen, feeling bad, said, ‘I didn’t mean . . .’ but Alex was out of hearing, or pretending that he