Regina's Song

The beloved Eddings writing team, coauthors of the bestselling Belgariad and Malloreon fantasy series, now turn their creative storytelling skills to one of real life’s most mysterious occurrences: the shared biology of twins and the uncanny bonds that arise from it. Part murder mystery, ghost story, and psychological thriller, Regina’s Song masterfully fuses together elements that elicit our deepest, darkest fears. . . .Twins Regina and Renata are so identical that even their mother can’t tell them apart. Eerily attuned to one another, they often speak together in a secret language no one else can understand. Then tragedy strikes when one of the twins is viciously murdered. The remaining twin is so traumatized, she reverts to the cryptic language she once shared with her sister. What’s more, since identical twins share identical DNA, there is no way to tell which girl was the victim. The parents believe the surviving twin is Renata and have no choice but to commit her to an institution. There she lives, incomprehensible to the rest of the world. Until the day Mark, a family friend, comes to visit and the young girl utters her first intelligible word.From that day forward Mark spends hours with Renata at the hospital. When she finally begins to communicate again in English, she reveals virtually no memory of the past. Mark remains a strong link between Renata and her former life–a fact that drives him to a resolute sense of responsibility for the fragile girl. Brilliant and beautiful, Renata gradually reacclimates herself to the outside world. But she is far from recovered. Her nightmares grow steadily more frightful, followed by wild fits of hysteria and dark mood swings. Meanwhile, as Seattle is plagued by a grisly serial killer, Mark has a terrifying realization: the murders coincide with Renata’s strange outbursts. Could she be the killer? Determined to dispel his suspicion, he stakes out Renata’s home. But his nocturnal vigils do nothing to ease his fears. For the unholy sight he witnesses on one of Seattle’s most bone-chilling winter nights will haunt his soul for the rest of his life. . . .

Amazon.com Review

Regina and Renata are truly identical twins. They are so strikingly alike, even their mother can't tell them apart. Since their DNA is identical and their infant footprint records were lost by the hospital, no one can be sure which is which. This doesn't bother the twins. In fact, they're inseparable--until one of the young women is murdered. The other has no memory of the event, no idea who she is. In her near-total amnesia, she can remember only family friend Mark, who has always been a surrogate big brother to the twins. And Mark finds himself fearing that the effects of the trauma don't end with amnesia, for now a series of vicious murders terrorizes Seattle, accompanied by the howl of wolves.... A perhaps-supernatural thriller, Regina's Song is also a novella-length idea padded to 400 pages of novel. It may please young-adult readers, but it won't satisfy many experienced thriller fans. The plot twists aren't all that numerous or complex, and the cutesy dialogue in this turn-of-the-millennium novel seems more suited to the 1950s. --Cynthia Ward

From Publishers Weekly

In a radical departure from their previous books (bestselling fantasies like The Belgariad and The Mallorean), the Eddings focus on the mysterious bonds between identical twins in this fast-paced psychological thriller that's part ghost story. The authors skillfully weave together the threads of twins Regina and Renata's life as seen through the eyes of Mark, a family friend and the twins' surrogate big brother. With identical DNA and so similar that even their mother can't tell them apart, the twins have developed their own language. When one is viciously murdered, the other regresses into this language and is committed to an institution. No one is sure which of the twins has survived, but they come to believe it is Renata. When Mark visits, she recognizes him, starts to recover but has no memory of the past. Mark, a graduate student, helps her return to the real world through campus life in Seattle and the aid of his housemates. When Renata recovers enough to lodge with her aunt, a police officer on the graveyard shift, she suffers terrible mood swings. Meanwhile, Seattle is plagued by a series of grisly homicides suggesting a serial killer. Mark, heavily troubled, comes to the chilling realization that the killings may be connected to Renata's frenzied outbursts and resolves to watch her closely. In a climactic nocturnal vigil, he discovers that there could be a disturbing supernatural explanation and that he and his housemates must use all their skills to protect the fragile girl they have come to care for.Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

The Eddingses, prolific fantasists, revisit the thriller field with a story of murder and revenge sporting supernatural overtones. Identical twins Regina and Renata Greenleaf grow up in the Pacific Northwest, and they look so much alike even their mother can't tell them apart. Their best friend is the narrator, Mark Austin, a scholarly young man from a blue-collar background and the son of the girls' father's closest friend. One of the twins is brutally raped and murdered, and the other, seemingly Renata, is thoroughly traumatized. Then a series of gruesome murders of sex offenders really turns the area into a scared and scary place. Mark, who has been doing his best to care for Renata, is sucked into a nightmare when she is suspected of being the killer and avenging her sister's demise. What is really going on is considerably more complicated than that, however, and justifies the time the Eddingses take to reveal it and put the twins beyond any further harm. Outstandingly well paced and tightly plotted, the novel also stands out in its handling of various psychological themes that are all too often witlessly exploited. Moreover, young Mark is a classic amateur sleuth, missing classes and spending his own money with the best of them, but possessed of a compassion that makes him much more sympathetic than most. Roland GreenCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

From the Inside Flap

The beloved Eddings writing team, coauthors of the bestselling Belgariad and Malloreon fantasy series, now turn their creative storytelling skills to one of real life s most mysterious occurrences: the shared biology of twins and the uncanny bonds that arise from it. Part murder mystery, ghost story, and psychological thriller, Regina s Song masterfully fuses together elements that elicit our deepest, darkest fears. . . .Twins Regina and Renata are so identical that even their mother can t tell them apart. Eerily attuned to one another, they often speak together in a secret language no one else can understand. Then tragedy strikes when one of the twins is viciously murdered. The remaining twin is so traumatized, she reverts to the cryptic language she once shared with her sister. What s more, since identical twins share identical DNA, there is no way to tell which girl was the victim. The parents believe the surviving twin is Renata and have no choice but to commit her to an institution. There she lives, incomprehensible to the rest of the world. Until the day Mark, a family friend, comes to visit and the young girl utters her first intelligible word.From that day forward Mark spends hours with Renata at the hospital. When she finally begins to communicate again in English, she reveals virtually no memory of the past. Mark remains a strong link between Renata and her former life a fact that drives him to a resolute sense of responsibility for the fragile girl. Brilliant and beautiful, Renata gradually reacclimates herself to the outside world. But she is far from recovered. Her nightmares grow steadily more frightful, followed by wild fits of hysteria and dark mood swings. Meanwhile, as Seattle is plagued by a grisly serial killer, Mark has a terrifying realization: the murders coincide with Renata s strange outbursts. Could she be the killer? Determined to dispel his suspicion, he stakes out Renata s home. But his nocturnal vigils do nothing to ease his fears. For the unholy sight he witnesses on one of Seattle s most bone-chilling winter nights will haunt his soul for the rest of his life. . . .

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

“What’s happening here?” Les Greenleaf demanded, after Renata had been sedated into a peaceful slumber and we’d returned to Fallon’s office. “I thought you told us that she has total amnesia.”“Evidently, it’s not quite as total as we thought,” Fallon replied, grinning broadly. “I think this might be a major breakthrough.”“Why does she recognize Mark and not us?” Inga sounded offended.“I haven’t got the faintest idea,” Fallon confessed, “but the fact that she recognizes somebody is very significant. It means that her past isn’t a total blank.”“Then she’ll get her memory back?” Inga asked.“Some of it, at least. It’s too early to tell how much.” Fallon looked at me then. “Would it be possible for you to stay here for the next few days, Mark?” he asked. “For some reason, you seem to be the key to Renata’s memory, so I’d like to have you available.”“No problem, Doc,” I replied. “If the boss can drop me off at my place, I’ll grab a few things and come right back up the hill.”“Good. I’ll want you right there when Renata wakes up. We’ve made a connection, and we don’t want to lose it.”Les and Inga took me back to my place when we left the sanitarium. I tossed some clothes and stuff into a suitcase, grabbed some books, and drove my old Dodge back to Lake Stevens. I was as baffled as everybody else had been by Renata’s recognition of me, and it’d caught me completely off guard. There’d been a kind of desperation about the way she’d clung to me—almost like somebody hanging on to a life raft.“We don’t necessarily have to mention this to her parents, Mark,” Fallon told me when I reported in, “but I think you’d better be right there in the room when Renata wakes up. Let’s not take any chances and lose this. All the rooms here have surveillance cameras, so I’ll be watching and listening. Don’t push her or say anything about why she’s here. Just be there.”“I think I see where you’re going, Doc,” I told him.The shot Dr. Fallon had given her kept Twink totally out of it until the next morning, and that gave me time to think my way through the situation. I was still working through my grief at losing my parents, but it was time to put my problems aside and concentrate, here and now, on Twink. If she needed me, I sure as hell wasn’t going to let her down.I pushed the reclining chair over beside her bed, pulled the blanket up around my ears, and tapped out.When I woke the next morning, Renata was still sound asleep, but she was holding my hand. Either she’d come about halfway out of her drug-induced slumber and found something to hold on to, or she’d just groped around for it in her sleep. Then again, it might have been me who’d been looking. It was sort of hard to say.One of the orderlies brought our breakfast about seven, and I tugged on Twink’s hand a couple of times. “Hey, sack-rat,” I said, “rise and shine. It’s daylight in the swamp.”She woke up smiling, for God’s sake! That’s sick! Nobody smiles that early in the morning!“I need a hug,” she said.“Not ’til you get up.”“Grouch,” she accused me, her face still radiant.That first day was a little strange. Twink watched me all the time, and she had a vapid look on her face every minute. I tried to read, but it’s awfully hard to concentrate when you can feel somebody watching you.There was also a fair amount of spontaneous hugging.I checked in with Dr. Fallon late that afternoon, and he suggested that I should probably let Twink know that I wasn’t going to be a permanent fixture. “Tell her that you’ll have to go back to work before too much longer. Let her know that you’ll visit her often, but you have to earn a living.”“That’s not entirely true, Doc,” I told him. “I’ve got a few bucks stashed away.”“You don’t need to mention that, Mark. We don’t want her to become totally dependent on your presence here. I think the best course might be to gradually wean her away. Stay here for a few more days, and then find some reason to run back to Everett for an afternoon. We’ll play it by ear and see how she reacts. Sooner or later, she’s going to have to learn how to stand alone.”“You’re the expert, Doc. I won’t do anything to hurt her, though.”“I think she might surprise you, Mark.”There was another bout of hugging when I got back to Twink’s room. That seemed just a bit odd. There hadn’t been much physical contact between the twins and me in the past, but now it seemed that every time I turned around, she had her arms wrapped around me. “Renata,” I said finally, “you do know that we aren’t alone, don’t you?” I pointed at the surveillance camera.“These aren’t those kinds of hugs, Markie.” She shrugged it off. “There are hugs and then there are hugs. We don’t do the other kinds of hugs, do we? And I wish you wouldn’t call me ‘Renata.’ I don’t like that name.”“Oh?”“I’m Twinkie, remember? Only people who don’t know me call me ‘Renata.’ I knew that I was Twinkie the moment I saw you. It was such a relief to find out who I really am. All the ‘Ren-blah-blah’ stuff made me want to throw up.”“We don’t get to pick our names, kid. That’s in the mommy and daddy department.”“Tough cookies. I’m Twinkie, and I’m so cute and sweet that nobody can stand me.”“Steady on, Twink,” I told her.“Don’t you think I’m cute and sweet, Markie?” she said with obviously put-on childishness, fluttering her eyelashes at me.I laughed. I couldn’t help myself.“Gotcha!” she crowed with delight. Then she threw a sly glance at the surveillance camera. “And I got you too, didn’t I, Dockie-poo?” she said, obviously addressing Dr. Fallon, who was almost certainly watching.“Dockie-poo?” I asked mildly.“All of us cute and sweet nutcases make up pet names for the people and things around us. I have long conversations with Moppie and Broomie all the time. They aren’t too interesting, but a girl needs somebody to talk to, doesn’t she?”“I think your load’s shifting, Twink.”“I know. That’s why I’m in the nuthouse. This is the walnut ward. They keep the filberts and pecans in the other wing. We aren’t supposed to talk with them, because their shells are awfully brittle, and they crack up if you look at them too hard. I was kind of brittle when I first got here, but now that I know who I really am, everything’s all right again.”She was sharp; she was clever; and she could be absolutely adorable when she wanted to be. I definitely hoped that Doc Fallon was watching. I was certain that her distaste for her name was very significant. Now she had “Twinkie” to hold on to, so she could push “Renata”—and “Regina”—into the background. Maybe “Twinkie” was going to be her passport back to the world of people who call themselves “normal.” ••• I stayed for a couple more days, and then I used the “gotta go to work” ploy Fallon had suggested to ease my way out—well, sort of. I didn’t really stay away very much. As soon as I got off work at the door factory, I’d bag it on up to Lake Stevens to spend the evening with Twink.Once she’d made the name-change and put “Renata” on the back burner, Twink’s recovery to at least partial sanity seemed to surprise even Dr. Fallon. Evidently, her switchover to “Twink” was something on the order of an escape hatch. She left “Regina” behind, along with “Renata,” and she seemed to grow more stable with each passing day.Dr. Fallon decided that she was doing well enough that it’d probably be all right if she took a short furlough for Christmas.It was a subdued sort of holiday—1995 hadn’t been a very good year for any of us. Twink’s aunt Mary, her dad’s sister, was about the only bright spot during the whole long holiday weekend, which might seem a bit strange, in view of the fact that Mary was a Seattle police officer. But she’d always been fond of the twins, and now she refused to treat Twink as if she were damaged merchandise—the way Les and Inga did. She smoothly stepped over the blank spots in Twink’s memory and more or less ignored her niece’s status as a mental patient on furlough. That seemed to help Twink, and the two of them grew very close during that long weekend. That in turn helped me raise a subject that had worried me more than a little.It was on Christmas Day that I braced myself and finally broke the news to Twink that our schedule was about to change. “I’ll still be living at home, Twink,” I reassured her, “but I’ll be going to classes at the university instead of working at the door factory. I’ll have to study quite a bit, though, so my visits might be a little shorter.”“I’ll be fine, Markie,” she said. Then she gave me one of those wide-eyed, vapid looks. “Have you heard the news? Some terribly clever fellow name...

About the Author

David Eddings published his first novel, High Hunt, in 1973, before turning to the field of fantasy and The Belgariad, soon followed by The Malloreon. Born in Spokane, Washington, in 1931, and raised in the Puget Sound area north of Seattle, he received his bachelor of arts degree from Reed College in Portland, Oregon, in 1954 and a master of arts degree from the University of Washington in 1961. He has served in the United States Army, has worked as a buyer for the Boeing Company, and has been a grocery clerk and a college English teacher. Leigh Eddings has collaborated with her husband for more than a dozen years.David and Leigh Eddings live in the Southwest.

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