Mirror Image
by Michele Pariza Wacek
Publication date: May 27th 2016
Genres: Adult, Psychological Thriller, Suspense
by Michele Pariza Wacek
Publication date: May 27th 2016
Genres: Adult, Psychological Thriller, Suspense
BLURB
Which would be worse, knowing
that your dead sister has come back to life and is now a serial killer or that
someone else is the killer….and that person is you?
Six months after Linda’s sister
Elizabeth killed herself, Linda has finally gotten her life back to some
semblance of normalcy. Until a killer appears who is stalking men … a killer
who resembles Elizabeth … a killer who seems somehow familiar to Linda.
And, to make matters worse,
Steve, her old high school crush and now a detective, is assigned to this case.
He’s asking Linda all sorts of questions, questions Linda couldn’t possibly
have an answer to.
There’s no reason for him to be
investigating Linda. She couldn’t possibly have anything to do with this.
Could she?
Buy Link: Amazon
Then
Elizabeth was born, her mother knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the
hospital had made a mistake.
It had
been a difficult pregnancy. Marie spent most of it in bed, nauseated,
uncomfortable, exhausted. She barely kept anything down, subsisting mostly on
tea and saltine crackers. When the time came to deliver, the doctors performed
an emergency Caesarean section, so she wasn’t able to actually watch the birth.
She
couldn’t explain it, but the first time the nurses presented her with
Elizabeth, she refused to even hold the baby. “There must be some mistake,” she
insisted.
“There’s
no mistake,” the nurses said, their approach firm and no-nonsense.
Blond and
pale, Elizabeth looked nothing like the other dark haired members of the
family. But it was more than that. Elizabeth felt wrong. Marie sensed it every
single time she looked at Elizabeth, touched Elizabeth, smelled Elizabeth. The
baby was alien to her. Elizabeth was not her baby.
But she
could do nothing about it. Her husband hadn’t seen the birth. He had refused to
attend any of his children’s births. The nurses kept assuring her that no one
had made, could possibly have made, a mistake. So Marie had little choice but
to bring her home.
Elizabeth
was different, always — strange. Marie hated to use that word about any of her
children, especially her youngest, but she could find no other word to describe
her. Elizabeth was strange. Period.
From
birth, the baby kept quiet. Rarely fussed. Hardly cried. She started talking at
six months, much earlier than the rest of her children, and started forming
full sentences at just over a year old.
She spent
most of her time alone or, once she learned how, reading. In fact, Elizabeth
remained such a quiet child, Marie could easily forget about her. It made her
nervous. Elizabeth was too quiet.
Even her
scent was all wrong. Babies smelled warm and sweet, of milk and talcum powder.
Elizabeth’s scent reminded her of meat just beginning to
spoil: thick and rotten.
spoil: thick and rotten.
But there
was something else wrong with Elizabeth, something more serious than her near
silence, her behavior, her scent. Even more serious than that alien feeling,
which Marie had tried to dismiss as simple post-partum depression, although it
never did go away entirely.
When
Marie was really being honest with herself, which didn’t happen often, she
could admit what really disturbed her most about her daughter.
Her eyes.
Elizabeth had silver eyes.
Not
always. Most of the time they looked gray. But sometimes, they changed to
silver. Occasionally, Marie even thought she could see them glowing, like a
cat’s. Especially at night. There Elizabeth would be, lying on her back,
perfectly quiet in her crib, her eyes strangely open, shining faintly in the
darkness. Marie would tell herself that Elizabeth’s eyes merely reflected the
nightlight in a bizarre fashion. After all, none of her other children’s eyes
ever glowed. But it still didn’t make her any easier to face, late at night, as
silver eyes stared at her from the darkness. They seemed so old, so ancient.
Eyes that had seen thousands of years and hundreds of lifetimes. Those eyes
peered out from her newborn’s face, watching her every move, strangely
calculating, full of adult understanding and knowledge. She felt afraid, if she
were being honest … all alone in the room with those peculiar silver eyes
watching, watching, always watching.
Nonsense,
she reassured herself. Surely, she could not be afraid of her own infant
daughter! What would her husband say? Plenty probably, and most of it with his
fists.
Still,
she found herself checking on Elizabeth less and less. She argued with herself:
Elizabeth didn’t fuss much anyway. Marie didn’t need to check on her so often —
not like she did with her other, noisy, “normal” babies.
Her other
children. Such a joy they were, her four boys and other girl — Peter, Mark,
Mike, Chad and Linda. All healthy, regular children, with coarse dark hair,
brown eyes and a little bit of baby fat on their bones. They looked the way
children should look, the way her children should look, like their parents. But
more importantly, they acted the way children should act — loud, boisterous,
rough, needy. Marie loved them for it, loved how she couldn’t get a moment’s
peace when they played together. Even when their play turned to fighting, she
still preferred it to Elizabeth’s silent, eerie presence.
But Marie
loved Elizabeth, too. Loved her fiercely, with the same passion she felt for
her other children. Marie knew she did. She told herself she did, time and time
again. The fact that she felt relief when Elizabeth wasn’t around meant
nothing. She just needed time away from her children, after all. Almost all
mothers welcomed the time they had away from their constant, children-related
responsibilities. It didn’t mean she loved them any less. It didn’t mean
anything at all.
Buy Link: Amazon
Author Info
When Michele was 3 years old, she
taught herself to read because she wanted to write stories so badly.
As you can imagine, writing has
been a driving passion throughout her life. She became a professional
copywriter (which is writing promotional materials for businesses), which led
to her founding a copywriting and marketing company that serves clients all
over the world.
Along with being a copywriter,
she also writes novels (in fact, she just published her first novel, a
psychological thriller/suspense/mystery called "The Stolen Twin" and
her second novel "Mirror Image'" is set to be published in May 2016)
plus, she is also the author of the "Love-Based Copy" books, which
are a part of the "Love-Based Business" series and cover both
business and personal development.
She holds a double major in
English and Communications from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Currently
she lives in the mountains of Prescott, Arizona with her husband Paul and her
border collie Nick and southern squirrel hunter Cassie.
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