The Second Figure at the Doorway

In the autumn of 2016, I was living in a small flat in Coimbra, Portugal, with my boyfriend, Rafael. The flat was old, with creaky floorboards and a persistent draft that made the curtains sway even on windless nights. Rafael had found a battered laptop in his mother’s attic, a relic from his teenage years, and had become obsessed with resurrecting it. He spent evenings hunched over the kitchen table, soldering and cursing in Portuguese, while I lounged in the bedroom, scrolling through my phone.

That particular night, the rain tapped against the window like impatient fingers. I lay on the bed, facing the wall, my phone’s glow painting the ceiling in pale blue. Rafael was in the living room, his back to the doorway, but he could see me from the corner of his eye. He had just managed to get the ancient machine to boot up, the screen flickering with a familiar desktop, when something moved in his peripheral vision.

He glanced up. There, in the doorway, stood me. Or rather, a perfect copy of me: the same messy bun, the same worn, faded t-shirt with a faded band logo, the same grey sweatpants. It stood very still, staring at him with an expression he couldn’t quite read—not hostile, not friendly, just… patient. A phantom chill ran down his spine. The copy held his gaze for a few heartbeats, then turned and walked into the bedroom, silent as a ghost.

Rafael’s blood ran cold. He had just seen me enter, but I was already in the bedroom. He called out my name, his voice cracking. ‘Mariana?’ I rolled over, startled by his tone. ‘What’s wrong?’ He was pale, his hands trembling as he gestured at the doorway. ‘I just saw you. Walking in there.’ I sat up, a knot forming in my stomach. ‘I’ve been here the whole time. Maybe you imagined it.’ But his eyes were wide, earnest. ‘I know what I saw, Mariana. It was you, but it wasn’t you.’

We both looked towards the doorway, now empty. The flat felt suddenly colder. I got up, my bare feet silent on the wood floor, and peeked into the living room. Nothing. The laptop screen cast a pale glow, and the rain continued its steady rhythm. ‘There’s nothing here,’ I said, but my voice betrayed my unease. Rafael didn’t look convinced. He spent the rest of the night with the lights on, and I couldn’t sleep either, my mind replaying his words.

Over the next few days, the incidents grew more frequent. I would catch glimpses of movement from the corner of my eye—a flash of my own face in a mirror that wasn’t mine, a figure standing at the end of the hallway that vanished when I turned. Rafael became skittish, jumping at every creak. He confessed that the laptop, now fully repaired, contained old files—photos, videos—from his teenage years. He had been browsing them, nostalgic, when the first sighting occurred. ‘Maybe it’s the laptop,’ he said, half-joking, but we both felt a cold dread.

One evening, as I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth, I saw it. In the mirror, behind my own reflection, stood another woman—my exact twin, but her eyes were dark hollows, and her smile was wrong, too wide. I spun around, but the bathroom was empty. My heart hammered. I ran to the living room, where Rafael was hunched over the laptop. ‘I saw it,’ I gasped. ‘It was there, in the mirror.’ He looked at me, his face drawn. ‘I think I know what it is,’ he said slowly. ‘It’s this laptop. There’s a file, an old video from a party I went to when I was sixteen. There’s a girl in the background, she looks exactly like you. But she died that night. Drowned in the pool.’

He turned the screen towards me. The video was grainy, shot in the low light of a back garden. Teenagers milled around a pool, laughing. And there, in the corner, a girl with my face stood perfectly still, staring directly into the camera. Rafael paused the frame. ‘I didn’t even remember her until I saw this file. I think she’s attached to this laptop, somehow. And when I turned it on, she… woke up.’

We shut the laptop and stored it in a drawer, but it was too late. That night, I woke to find Rafael standing over the bed, staring at me with a blank expression. I called his name, but he didn’t respond. Instead, he walked out of the bedroom, his footsteps echoing in the hall. I followed, my heart pounding. He stopped at the bathroom door, pointing at the mirror. I looked, and there was the other me, and beside her, another Rafael. They were both smiling that too-wide smile. ‘She’s been copying us,’ Rafael’s voice came from beside me, but he was still in the bedroom. The Rafael in the mirror smiled, and then he was gone.

The nightmare spiraled. We fled the flat, leaving the laptop behind, but the doppelgangers followed. We saw them in store windows, in the reflections of car windows, always watching. We stopped looking at reflective surfaces altogether. I began to lose sleep, my sanity fraying. One day, I woke up, and Rafael was gone. In his place, a note: ‘She took me. She’s out there, wearing my face. Be careful who you trust.’ I looked in the mirror, and my own reflection winked at me. I smashed the mirror, but it didn’t help. In every shard, I saw her face, my face, smiling.

I’ve been running ever since, always looking over my shoulder, never sure if the people around me are who they appear to be. The rain still falls, and I can’t help but wonder if the copy is out there, walking the streets, wearing my life. And somewhere, in some forgotten drawer, an old laptop is still running, its screen flickering with a video of a party, and in the background, a girl stands still, her smile widening, waiting for her next move.