Novelist needs assistance!

[Antisocial_Worker]

Maybe it's because I'm closing down an overnight shift at work here, but I'm too tired to make any sense of what I'm trying to accomplish in this chapter. Thus, I figure I'll ask you all for help and you can put your heads together while mine is lying on my pillow today.

The scenario:

The main character has located a mysterious, and mysteriously forgotten, friend who has been referred to a few times over the course of the book. He is shocked to discover that the forgotten friend appears instead to be someone he has been promised to meet in the future.

The friend has died a horrible death, but knowing his murderer was unlikely to come back, the friend took the chance of scrawling a phone number in blood on the wall. The main character calls the number and has learned something quite shocking about himself.

He is also about to learn the location of a weapon that could get him out of the entire situation in which he as found himself. The weapon is very special indeed, especially considering it is the only thing that can be used to harm the main enemy -- who, as it turns out, is the main character's doppelganger. The doppelganger is the one who killed the friend.

Considering all of that, should the friend have left a message just coming out and telling the main character where to find the weapon and what to look for? Or should the friend, on the slim chance the doppelganger might come back and call the number himself, be cagey about it? If the latter, how do you tell one person where to find a weapon and what to look for without telling the doppelganger, who would know and have access to every scrap of knowledge the main character possesses?

In other words how do you tell someone where to find something without telling their evil twin where to find it?

Does this make sense? If not, I apologize but I'm tired.

[AnaKhouri]

Does the doppelganger still have access to every inch of Main Character's brain? Because at this point it seems like he could have been slowly pushing him out a little, after all this time and with everything that's happened. Maybe he's reclaiming some corners of his own mind where the doppelganger can't penetrate (like symbolically he's not letting the ugly, angry part of himself inhabit his entire mind anymore and letting himself have a place that is purely hope and can't be tainted any longer).

I think just telling him where to find The Weapon would be out of character with the rest of the revelations, which have been cryptic and slow in coming. Unless you want this friend to be the one person who is honest and straight-up with the main character?

[MoonCat]

I thought a doppelganger was a person who looks exactly like you, but is a separate person (has his/her own body)...?

Hmm. I Googled it, and the definition is that it's a ghost or apparition that looks exactly like a specific person. There's no mention of it having the same knowledge as the original person. You could, of course, write that in...it's your story. But in that case you might as well have the information be given straight out and then it becomes a race to get there before the bad guy does.

Otherwise I would suggest there should be some experience once shared by the MC and the friend that the doppelganger doesn't know about. Then the friend could refer to something (a place probably) that would give a clue to where the weapon is hidden. The MC would have to figure out the meaning of the clue.