The Diary of Ella Moreson
A Tale of Doppelgängers and Secrets
March 27th
4:37 am
Rain lashes against the attic windows, a constant drumming rhythm that mirrors the frantic beat of my heart. Or perhaps it’s just the echo of the phone call. Mama’s voice, thin and brittle, even across the miles. “He’s gone, Ella. Your father… he asked for you. He wanted — oh, Ella…” The rest was a choked sob, a sound I haven’t heard in years, not since I left. Since I built this fortress of solitude in this drafty, ancient house in Normandy, far from the sun-drenched coastline of California.
Nearly a month, he’s been gone. Over a month since my 30th birthday.
A milestone I celebrated alone, with a bottle of local cider and the company of the creaking floorboards. I’m sure there was a mouse somewhere in here.
They couldn’t find me. They knew I was here, somewhere, but the old phone number, the old email, all discarded. Like the shed skin of a snake. I wanted… nothing but the peace and quiet.
And now, this.
She never said how the hell they were able to still track me down despite the cold trail. It irritated me that after evertyhing I’ve been through, the only thing she cared about was him and her grief. Never once did she ask how I was, where I’d been, or what I’ve been up to all these years. Just him and my ‘normal’ sister.
The golden child that was not me.
I felt nothing at first. A strange hollow numbness. A void. Then, a flicker of something else. Relief? It felt like a knot loosening, a tension that had been coiled tight for years finally unraveling. And then, guilt. A sharp, icy stab that twisted in my gut. It knawed for a few hours.
The it slowly faded. My jaw felt tight.
I decided that guilt was pointless now.
I was chased out for seeing things other could not. They made it very clear that I was some kind of aberration. So why feel guilty for not being there in his last moments, just to make him feel better about himself? For all the nasty and hurtful things he said and did because my very existence made him uncomfortable?
No. I never asked for this.
Let him die with his own burdens, as I will have to die with mine alone in this house.
11:51 pm
I wandered the house closed in by old stone walls. I could feel the early Spring chill pressing in against my skin through my thin robe. The silence was heavier now. I went to the kitchen, poured myself a glass of Calvados, the fiery liquid a poor substitute for warmth. As I turned, I saw it.
Again.
I haven’t seen it nearly a year.
In the hallway, by the foot of the stairs. The same figure, pale and indistinct, but undeniably… me. My double. My twin.
No, not a twin, just another version? A spectral echo. It stood there, unmoving, its eyes dark and hollow. And then, it was gone. Just a shadow, a trick of the light. Or was it?
I’ve seen it before. It’s the reason I’m here.
Of course, it’s back now.
March 28th
6:14 pm
Slept like absolute shit.
The wind howled all night. I don;t remember seeing a storm in the forecast, yet it sounded as if a typhoon was screaming along the coast. The house seemed to breathe around me. A strangely living, sentient thing. I woke with a jolt around 3 am, the image of the figure in the hallway still burned into my brain. I tried to convince myself it was a hallucination, a product of grief or the cortisol spike after talking to family again.
But the feeling… the feeling and the memory was just too damn real.
I went to the library again this morning to distract myself. A huge room filled with dusty tomes and the scent of old paper and centuries-old mahogany. I tried to lose myself in a book on 16th century folklore, but the words blurred before my eyes. I kept glancing over my shoulder, expecting to see it again.
It’s rare to see it in a public space, but it has happened a few times.
That possibility had me on edge all day. Or maybe its the side effct of the five hours of crappy sleep.
Later, I decided to take a walk in the garden around the house, hoping the fresh air would clear my head. The rain had finally stopped in late afternoon, but the sky remained overcast. The clouds a heavy gray blanket looming over the trees and rooftops. As I walked, I noticed a strange stillness, an unnatural quiet. The birds were silent and the wind had died down.
It was pretty unnerving.
I turned to go inside, and there it was again. This time, in the reflection of the large, antique mirror that hangs at the end of the hall. It stood behind me, the reflection perfectly aligned with mine, yet… different. Those eyes were darker, the expression more… vacant. It looked like a ghost, a hollow shell. I moved forward and reached out to touch the mirror, and it vanished, leaving only my own reflection staring back at me.
My heart was pounding in my chest.
I felt a wave of dizziness and nausea. It had only appeared mere feet from me in the hall.
So surreal.
Am I losing my mind?
March 29th
3:34 am
I’ve been trying to piece together the fragments of my past. I’ve written down all the moments when I’ve seen it before. It always happened during times of intense stress or emotional turmoil. Other times it came like a harbringer of doom.
I remember the first time, when I was 7, I woke up in the middle of the night. And it was standing at the foot of my bed. I was terrified, but I couldn’t scream. It blinked once, slowly. I just stared at it until it faded away. It didn’t realize it then, that it was me. It always looks the same. Me, as I am now at 30.
When I was a teenager, it appeared moments before my sister’s accident during holiday vacation in 11th grade. A fleeting glimpse in the bathroom mirror, just before the car crash. Then again, during my university exams, a pale form in the corner of my eye, just before I received the news about my grandfather’s heart attack.
And then, there was the time I told my sister about this thing. She looked at me with a mix of fear and pity, with eyes that were the oppsite of mine.
“Elara, you’re imagining things,” she said. “You need help.”
It felt so condescending. Why would I lie? Why would I imagine this for so long? Why would I make this up?
Why bother to confide in her at all? I should have known better.
That wasn’t the beginning of the rift, the unspoken tension that eventually drove me away. It was the death knoll. The beginning of the end.
My family… they never understood. They thought I was… unstable. Or just seeking attention. Trying to compete with the precious & fragile savant Camille.
Let them think that.
But why am I the only one? Why am I different?
April 3rd
7:35 pm
I’ve been researching again. I spent so long and so much energy trying to escape this, and that hasn’t worked. Time for a new strategy. Now I need to understand it.
Why was this happening at all? What was the catalyst?
Did I something without realizing it to attract this thing? Or was there just something inherent about me, something I can’t control?
Or could I?
I’ve been reading everything I can get my hands on, or access on my laptop. Old folklore, ancient mythologies, ghost stories, tales of doppelgängers, even research into ESP and other psychic phenomena from the 1980sand 1990s. Some say they are omens of death, others say they are manifestations of our own inner selves, our darker sides. Others claim doppelgängers may even be parallel lives bleeding through some kind of thin veil.
Maybe its a warning of some kind.
Or a curse.
None of those possibilities make me feel any better about this whole experience. I just want to bang my head on this stack of books. Or the hardwood of my desk.
I don’t know what this entity is, but I know it’s connected to me somehow. To my past. Maybe to some distant part of my family. To the things that have been long buried.
I can’t shake a sense of dread brewing inside me. Impending doom. Something inevitable. Maybe it’s just the grief or anxiety.
Or is intuition?
April 5th
2:46 pm
It’s been a hot minute, and it’s been wild.
I know the truth.
I know exactly why I’ve always been the oddball now.
I signed up for DNA testing on an ancestry website last month. I got the idea from an ad on a paranormal blog I had been reading for a few days. It was either curiosity or desperation. I almost forgot about the whole thing with this entity reappearing in my life and my research.
The email came in the early morning hours of the 4th. The results were ready.
I logged into my account to see my origins and other DNA matches in the system with a dry mouth. Couldn’t even swallow, my throat was even drier.
I sat at my desk staring at my bright laptop screen for a long time. It’s taken hours to digest the results.
I keep thinking about my father’s dying wish. He wanted to see me. Is this what he wanted to tell me?
The truth?
I was never a Cavanaugh.
I’m a Moreson. Elara Moreson.
For some reason, it fits. It feels real, like that’s how my name should have always been.
A part of me wasn’t as surprised as I felt I should have been with news like this. Maybe some part of me always wondered, given that my features didn’t quite look like everyone else’s. Its not totally unheard of exactly, but it was remarked on a few times as I grew up. Surrounded by soft blonds and sandy browns with eyes of green and blue. Yet here I am with dark curly hair and stormy grey eyes. I stick out a bit.
The contrast is obvious to most.
I scrolled through 26 pages of genetic relations that had also tested their DNA origins on this site.
All my closest DNA matches are Moresons, Byrnes and Keanes, mostly from the Leinster & Ulster regions of Ireland and the Bute & Argyle regions of southwest Scotland. The Cavanaughs are mostly English, Welsh, and German. None of them register anywhere in my matches. I know Camille is on there. It was the first thing I looked for in the matches. No wonder she treated me the way she did. She must have known we weren’t actually related. Or maybe she guessed?
Why didn’t they ever tell me?
I was startled out of my own stupor at this revelation by the sound of shattering glass.
I didn’t even realized my fingers went slack until the loud impact of my cup exploding on the wood floor reached my ears and the liquid had spread toward my bare toes. It was like a gun had gone off in the room.
But it was the wake up call I needed.
Tomorrow I plan to start searching for my family. I want to reach out on the Family Tree website to some of the closest matches, but I’m so nervous. What if they’re no better than the Cavanaughs?
April 7th
1:24 pm
The air is charged with a strange energy today. The atmpsphere is noticably different. There’s an odd sense of anticipation, like the world is holding it’s breath.
I can feel its presence now, even when I can’t see it. An invisible mist that hangs in the house, lingering from room to room as I move about my day.
When I do see it, its not as hazy and undefined as it was before. The change has me wondering if the turth has somehow made the connection stronger? Has it given this thing more power?
What role does awareness play in this siutation?
This isn’t helping me process this information bomb any better.
6:38 pm
I’ve been going through old photographs that I have from living with the Cavanaugh. I don’t have many with me. I keep trying to find a connection, a clue. I think this doppelgänger has to do with my real family and nothing to do with the Cavanaughs. There’s one picture in particular that stuck out, taken when I was about ten. I was standing with Camille in front of a cabana. In the background, just barely visible, there’s a faint shadow, that ghostly figure that looks like me.
An adult version of me.
I remember that day. We were at the beach, and I felt a sense of unease. A feeling that something or someone was watching me for most of the day. Later that day, Camille fell and fractured her arm on the pavement at the concession stand. I don;t even know how she fell as we were all standing in line, ordering ice cream.
I had gotten the last ChocoTaco before Camille could order hers.
I just remember vividly Camille pouting and mumbling something — and then she was on the ground, crying in pain or shock. I couldn’t tell which at the time, probably both. Looking back, I now wonder if it had pushed her. Did it always have the ability to touch the physical world?
Get Atalanta Pendragon’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Why has it never tried to touched me in all this time?
April 13rd
4:03 pm
I’ve finally had the courage to reach out to three people who are the closest relations on the Family Tree site. I won’t lie. I honestly didn’t think anyone would reply. That’s kind of a thing on the internet these days: everything is a mixed bag. Some are open and curious, others are aloof and secluded.
I suppose I’m somewhere in between as an digital citizen of the internet.
For the past week, I’ve messaged three family members. When I got over my fear of rejection.
The one closest to my mother still lives in the States. Áine, a great aunt from my maternal line. That’s not a name I see outside of Europe, specifically Ireland, and certainly not in my generation. I’m even more surpised that someone her age is even on the internet at all.
I learned that my Mother was half Irish, half American. My grandmother was born in county Wicklow and migrated to the States for work in her 20s after schooling in the UK, and met my grandfather through work as teachers at a local boarding school that has since shut down by the time they had both retired in the late 80s.
Kind of romantic in a way.
Married for 40 years before grandfather passed in his sleep in late winter. I would have been 9 years old at the time. I wish I could have met them.
The second family member to respond lives in northern Ireland, Tiernan. He’s a first cousin to my father who was from Cork, and now living in county Donegal. He grew up visiting the main branch of the family that father was born to in Cork. He had so much to say about my father. Adventures from childhood and misadventures from their college days. He shared stories from the small town and times they stayed in Galway, or when they went touring the rest of Europe after college. He even shared how my parents met ata festival in Boston.
The last one lives in Spain. My cousin, Meagan, who grew up near Tiernan and told me of the current generation, our generation, my cousins. She relocated to sunny Spain for college nearly a decade ago. She’d needed a break from the wetter Irish weather, then decided to stay. She still visits home a few times a year.
I’ve heard so much about Ireland in the past week. More than I’ve ever heard in passing through out my whole life.
There’s one thing that feels a little out of place: I haven’t see the doppelgänger for almost a week now.
I’m confused.
Where the heck did it go?
April 20th
2:18 pm
I touched down in the Shannon Airport a few days ago. It was a short flight from mainland Europe.
It was an invitation and last minute decision. I followed my gut instinct here.
I just wanted to take it all in and be present here. I wanted to talk in the sights and sounds, the feeling of being in Ireland. It’s hard to describe. It feels like stepping into a house you’ve never been in yet the walls and the furniture somehow feel familiar. It’s like suddenly remembering the words to a half-forgotten lullaby you haven’t heard in decades.
I have a gorgeous tradtional cottage all to myself here on the coast of Galway.
I’ve always loved being by the sea.
I’ve come to Ireland to find father’s family by Tiernan’s invite. I learned that he passed a few years ago and was buried in his hometown. My mother had passed years prior in the States on the east coast, in a small town south of Boston.
I learned more about my father from my time with Tiernan.
My father was a good man, but my mother’s death seemed to break his spirit. He was never the same again. In a way, I get it. I don’t blame him for hurting and grieving, probably in the only way he knew how. I feel for him. I just wish he hadn’t given me to the Cavanaughs. The Cavanaughs had been a distant family friend on my grandfather’s side who had been struggling to concieve. My father had given in after Mrs. Cavanaugh had spent nearly a month pleading with him. They had all moved to west coast within months of the finalized adoption and my famther traveled up and down the east coast before moving back to Europe.
For the life of me, I still can’t figure out why she was so damn adamant about adopting me. Had she waited patiently another few years, Camille would have come along. I wouldn’t have been shunted to the side like a passing thought. Or tossed aside like an old doll after a child gets a new teddy bear.
It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
I need to go for a long walk around the city.
April 24th
5:23 pm
I went into the village my father was born in today. It’s a few kilometers outside Cork.
There’s a small cemetery surrounded by crumbling, moss-ladened stone walls covered in creeping vines.
I found my father’s grave, a simple stone marker with a celtic cross carved into the top. I stood there for a long time, staring at his name.
Glen Moreson. I like it.
I felt a strange sense of longing again. For what could have been, if this man had been my father, instead of the man I ended up being raised by for the first 20-something years of my life.
Would I have grown up loved? More confident? Happier in some way?
Or would other trials have taken the place of the ones I experienced?
Wallowing in what could have been, should have been was only making me spiral. I wasn’t in the mood for another existential crisis this month.
As I turned to leave, I saw it. Standing by the gate, watching me. It was more clear now, more defined. It’s eyes were filled with a strange sadness. Did doppelgängers feel? Do they have their own consciousness?
I wanted to speak to her, to ask her who she was, what she wanted. But I couldn’t. I just stood there, frozen, like an idiot until she faded away. She left me alone with the sound of the wind whistling through the tombstones.
I don’t know what the future holds. I don’t know if I’ll ever understand what she is. But I know she’s a part of me, a shadow that I can’t escape. And perhaps, that is the most terrifying thing of all. Perhaps, she is not some evil harbinger of doom, but a reflection of the fractured pieces of myself.
April 30th
8:12 pm
Tiernan is taking me on a tour of western Ireland. Up the Wild Atlantic Way toward the northern reaches and over to Belfast. So many towns with brightly painted homes and buskers camped out on corner with various instruments. Villages with traditional plastered cottages and thatched rooves, a mix of winding dirt and cobbled roads. Everyone has a smile and laugh and a joke.
I’ve seen her twice since that day in the graveyard. We just watch each other now from across a space of a few feet.
I don’t feel anxious anymore, though.
A rising sense of determination to confront this thing and make peace with it.
May 1st
4:22 pm
Staying with Tiernan in northern Ireland now. Today was quite the advanture along the coast again.
We’ve just return from a jaunt over the Giant’s Causeway and a long lunch at the Causeway Hotel Bar & Restaurant nearby. The Irish Stew was amazing, and felt like a good choice after an afternoon with the ocean breeze whipping my face.
It was a long day with a lot of activity and I was exhausted when we got back.
This is my favorite space in all the places I’ve ever lived.
But I wasn’t alone when I got back upstairs.
There she was, standing boldly in the middle of my bedroom in the attic, facing away toward the window overlooking the pastures to the west.
I stepped into the room and she turned toward me the moment I closed the old wooden door behind me, never taking my eyes off her.
She held out her hand toward me, waiting expectantly.
I instinctive took her hand. I don’t know why I’m not scared of her as I was only a few weeks ago.
The room around me fell away in a surge of shadow and light. I was standing in a hospital room, surrounded by stark white, cold steel and the sting of alcohol in my nose. I quielty watched a woman with curly dark hair just like mine in this hopsital room surrounded by doctors, pale as Death itself.
There was a husky man with broad shoulders and deep chestnut hair by the only window in the room. He held a newborn swaddled in a blanket with pink and white stripes. A soft tufts of dark hair peeped out from the the top of the bundle.
I looked from the pale, still woman in the hospital bed to the man quietly weeping at the window with the infant cradled in his arms like it was made of glass.
I looked around the room at the doctors and nurses speaking in hushed tones next to the woman.
It took a few moments to figure out what was going on.
The woman was gone.
The pale, almost ethereal woman on the hospital bed was idendical to the woman holding my hand beside me. Right down to the tiny beauty mark just under her left eye that I had never noticed until now.
I looked at the man by the window. I’m not angry at him. I look back to the woman beside me. Truly look at her as I’m seeing her for the first time.
She squeezes my hand and the hospital room fades away. I blink slowly as the colors and shapes wobble and bend until they resemble my attic bedroom again.
All I can do is cry like a newborn babe.
May 2nd
1:47 am
Mom died during a difficult childbirth. The cord had wrapped around my neck in a breeched birth. A hot mess of ugly circumstances that felt unfair. Emergency surgery was required to save at least one of us, if not both. They truly wanted to save both of us. Despite their best efforts the whole affair caused her to hemorrhage badly, she lost too much blood.
She passed an hour after I was removed from the womb.
It was 30 years ago this year.
One life cames in and one life went out.
All this time. It was never a doppelgänger. It was my own mother watching over me. I’m the spitting image of my mother. No wonder father couldn’t raise me. I must have had an inkling I would be her double when I grew older.
I have no words to express the grief and the guilt at being the cause of my mother’s death.
I can still feel her hand in mine in that hospital room.
June 1st
9:27 pm
Touched down in Boston Logal Airport an our ago.
It was the seond longest flight of my life.
I’m sitting at the Flour Bakery & Cafe on Farnsworth drinking a matcha latte. I guess it’s been trending pretty hard in the States in my absence. It goes pretty well with a slice of the Basque cheesecake. Yes, cheesecake and green tea at 9 pm. Sue me.
Never thought I’d set foot back in the States, to be honest.
Spoke to “Mom” for the last time. I merely stated that I knew the truth, and that was the end of it. I’m moving on and it was best for everyone if they did the same. I don’t feel like I owe my adoptive parents or Camille anything else than that bit of closure. They may have put a roof over my head, but they never gave me the love they showered Camille with all those years.
Mrs. Cavanaugh and her precious miracle daughter. Good for them. Camille can have the spotlight all to herself now. Count me the hell out of that twisted charade and web of lies.
That woman selfishly took advantage of a grieving man who just lost the love of his life when he gained a daughter that looked just like her. They don’t seem to understand the lasting impact of their actions and words, especially Camille.
It’s not my job to educate them.
At least, great aunt Áine certainly feels that way and didn’t mince her words when making it known. I love how blunt she is in her old age. No effs to give anymore. Why bother sugar coating something like that?
Aunt Áine had been against my adoption from the start and held firm over the years. I can’t help but agree with the senitment now.
Regardless of the time lost, my ties with my bioligical family has already grown deeper. I was welcomed so warmly I cried quite a bit in my weeks in the homeland. More than I ever remember. I’ve been searching for this for so long. I never had the words to express this longing.
The deep longing for family and connections that I have. There’s no chance in hell I’ll ever let go now.
September 22nd
12:34 pm
It’s been one of the best summers I’ve had yet.
I work at the local library in the historical archives. I’m living in Dover. Mom’s hometown. I visit Áine in Walpole every week. She knows about Mom’s decade long visits. How her presence eventually led me to the truth. She didn’t even seem chocked or try to brush it off as wishful thinking or insanity. Áine was quiet for a few minutes and then just smiled, the cracks and lines in her weathered face deeper than ever. It feels like she’s soften a little after learning about Mom’s spectral visits.
Apparently, the women on my mom’s side are rumored to be sensitive. Intutive.
The decades long connection across the veil between mom and I are enough proof of that.
I start a new job at the Boston Public Library next week. A literal marble palace of knowledge. It’s freaking gorgeous. Áine’s great niece had connections there who happened to be hiring, and I could start immediately. I can’t believe this incredible stroke of luck.
I guess my history degree was worth it. In more ways than one.
Oh! Tiernan and Meagan both plan to visit in October. We’re heading up to Salem around Halloween weekend this year. I’ve always wanted to see the city of witches since I read about it as a teenager.
This summer I’ve met more cousins and a few uncles and aunts on my mother’s side. In a matter of months, my life has changed drastically. I barely recgonize it. Barely recognize myself. I’ve enver laughed so much as I have here. I’ve found my family and I’ve never felt more connected to a group of people. Good people.
Mom, my real mom, still visits sometimes. Not as much as she once did. I think, now that I know the truth and I’ve found my family again, she doesn’t feel the need to check up as often. I’m grown now.
There may even come a time when the next vist may be the last.
