House of Skin

by Jonathan Janz

  This, he decided, would be his writing room.

  The next door was some distance away, and as his hands found the switch inside the door, a multitude of lamps flared into brilliance.

  As impressive as the ballroom had been, the library was the copestone of Watermere. The walls of the rectangular room were a deep crimson, the built-in shelves a pristine white. As copious as the bookcases were, no space on them was left unfilled. Paul had no idea how many books were here, but judged they numbered in the tens of thousands. The books imbued the room with a faintly musty smell that Paul found pleasing. In the center of the library were two segmented islands of furniture, each set containing a pair of chairs and a pair of couches, multiple end tables and reading lamps. Dual chandeliers hung illuminated over the reading islands. Tall floor lamps blended into the walls and spilled light on the ceiling. On and around the three walls of bookcases were paintings and sculptures, most of which were unfamiliar to Paul. One painting he recognized as a Bosch. As he glanced about, he realized that all the artwork depicted demons and gargoyles and other malign creatures. In one painting a woman was being ravished by a grinning, simian-looking demon and a white-eyed horse.

  The outer wall faced the expansive back yard. Multiple windows, now shuttered, promised another fabulous view. He was, he judged, in the middle of the house. From here, he would be able to gaze out on the maple trees as their leaves changed to red and yellow and fell to earth. Savoring the feel of the room and the thought that every single volume in this library belonged to him, he imagined how the place would feel in the winter. The fireplace that bisected the outer wall was covered with large stones of many colors. Come December he’d sit before this hearth with a book in hand, his eyes occasionally taking in the snow falling on the treetops fringing the yard.

  He frowned. The bare space above the fireplace was strange, incongruous with the rest of the room, which was covered from floor to ceiling with books and art.

  He stood before the fireplace. He saw now that there had once been a painting or a mirror hung here. The red paint in the empty rectangle of wall was sharper than the paint around it. It seemed to leer at him, daring him to venture closer. Paul stared back at it, musing.

  A knock sounded downstairs. Loud, insistent.

  He left the library and wondered what could be this urgent at—he checked his watch—eight-thirty in the morning.

  He turned the corner, moving down the stairs, and the pounding accelerated. Whoever was hammering on the door was double-fisting it, as if he were trying to bust out of somewhere rather than get in.

  Maybe, he thought as he puffed around another turn, he’d invest in an elevator. How the hell had a man in his eighties gotten around in a place with all these stairs?

  Wondering if someone was hurt out on the road, Paul crossed the foyer, opened the door.

  A policeman stared back at him.

  Though the pale morning light was just beginning to filter over the eastern forest, Paul could see the cop fairly clearly. The man was large, powerfully-built. Though his face was kindly, the cop wore a neutral expression. He took off his hat and said, “I’m Sheriff Barlow. You rather talk inside or out here?”

  Paul’s throat went dry. “Out here, I guess.”

  Paul followed the sheriff onto the porch. Staring out at the yard, Barlow said, “Is Ted Brand still here?”

  The name rang a bell, but for a moment, it eluded him.

  Barlow glanced at him, impatient.

  Paul started. “The lawyer, right. I haven’t seen him.”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  “What I mean is I never saw him. We talked on the phone, and he dropped off the key to the house, but we never actually met.”

  “Can you explain why his car is on your property?”

  Paul glanced down the lane.

  “You can’t see it from here. It’s about halfway to the road.”

  Paul opened his mouth, closed it.

  “You’re telling me you didn’t see it on the way in?” The set of Barlow’s mouth said You gotta be kidding me, but his eyes were deadly serious.

  “It couldn’t have been,” Paul said. “I would have seen it.”

  “That’s what I’d have thought.”

  Paul stared at Barlow. Was the sheriff mocking him?

  “Has something happened?” Paul asked.

  “I don’t know,” Barlow answered. “Has it?”

  And with that the sheriff turned, went back to his car and drove away.

  Julia finished up in the basement, smashed as many of the ants as she could while Ted was still under. It was hell getting the hypo in again, but once she did, he went down fast.

  His face had been covered in bites, so much so that she hardly knew where to start when cleaning him up. She’d never noticed the ants before. If she had she certainly never would have put him on the basement floor. There never would have been so many had she not added so much sugar to his drink, which she’d only done because he’d asked her to. My God, she’d been trying to be nice to him.

  But he didn’t believe that, and if she tried to convince him of it he’d only shout cruel things at her.

  She thought of how he’d feel when he awoke, his murderous eyes as he glared through the angry red bites at her. To get her mind off it, she set about getting ready for work.

  After she’d driven Ted’s car over to Watermere, sleep hadn’t come at all. Neither had a solution to her problem. By tying Ted down, she’d bought herself a day or two at most, and that was only if Sheriff Barlow didn’t come knocking. If he did she’d just have to tell him the truth, about Brand and the way he’d treated her. She’d go to jail then, she knew, but perhaps the jury or the judge would go easy on her.

  No they wouldn’t.

  They’d bury her in a maximum-security ward, throw away the key. Ted would laugh at her as they took her from the courtroom in handcuffs, her face lowered in shame and the knowledge that she’d wasted her life, thrown away her freedom with one flurry of terrible decisions. There was no avoiding it. As long as Ted Brand was alive.

  Julia started at her reflection. Seeing herself in the mirror, she couldn’t believe it. It was like another woman had taken her place, another woman thinking like a criminal. She took deep breaths, waited for her fear to bleed away, for rational thought to return.

  When she looked at herself again, she was glad to see that nothing had changed. No, she wasn’t a psycho. She still had options, ways out of this mess.

  Killing him was out of the question. For now.

  Unaccountably, she found herself back in Watermere last night, and though Brand had been right beside her at the time, the sound of his voice was now a muffled echo, his figure a faded shadow.

  What wasn’t vague—what came to her now more clearly than her mirrored face, the sound of the dripping faucet—was the way the floor had creaked under her tennis shoes in Watermere. She remembered the clammy sheen of sweat coating the back of her neck, the exaggerated smells of the old house, moldering drapes and stale air. She reached the basement door before she realized it was the source of her sudden dread, and without thinking she drew closer to Brand, his tall, athletic frame reassuring at the time.

  She heard his words through a muffling wad of gauze, the words she somehow knew he’d say, on some level recognizing even then what a vacuous schemer the man was. His arm around her, his face almost kind: “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  That’s when she’d pushed away from him, her extended hands seeking support on the first thing they touched, the old rose-patterned wallpaper, the steadying wall beneath.

  “Hey,” he said, going to her. A hand on her shoulder, his voice a distorted baritone. “Hey, are you okay?”

  She couldn’t even pretend, could only wait for equilibrium to scatter the malignant stare of the basement door.

  “Julia?” he asked.

  “Give me a second,” she said, and as she leaned against the wall some of her composure h
ad begun to return.

  And then it had happened, the sensation that had to have been spawned by her fear, her irrational terror, a cruel trick of her imagination that got her moving, compelled her into the ballroom where a new set of associations took hold of her.

  Beneath her right hand…the wallpaper under the pads of her middle and index fingers…

  No, she thought, and stared fiercely into her bathroom mirror. A thousand times no. You go down that road and you’re done for sure. What gossamer-thin strands of sanity you have left after what you’ve done to Brand will snap like overstretched guitar strings if you let yourself believe that something actually—

  A howl of pain from below made her teeth clench, her hands grasp the sides of the sink.

  The anesthetic had worn off.

  Paul couldn’t return to the house. Not after what the sheriff had said.

  He had no idea how far down Brand’s car was parked—the house was about a mile from the road—so instead of jogging down the lane, he took the Civic.

  He rounded a curve and beheld a black BMW sitting in the tall grass beside the lane. It sat next to the woods on his right, its back end facing him, as if it had tried but couldn’t bring itself to leave after its errand was over. Had Brand’s car broken down after he delivered the manila envelope? It certainly appeared so, but if it did, why hadn’t he gone back to the house to use the phone?

  Because there is no phone, his reason answered.

  But did Brand know that?

  He parked, walked around the side of the car. The forest was unnaturally quiet, the only sound the crunching of his sneakers on gravel. He stopped and looked at the car’s bright black exterior, tried to explain its presence here.

  Brand broke down, knew there was no phone back at Watermere and didn’t feel like waiting for Paul to show up to drive him into town. He probably had a cell phone, but it might not have worked way out here.

  So he walked. He left the car here and headed into town. What was so far-fetched about that?

  Nothing, other than the fact he’d never made it into town, had disappeared somewhere along the way. Or been picked up. Otherwise, none of this would be happening.

  Remembering the stories his parents used to tell him and his brother about people who picked up hitchhikers, he tried the driver’s side door. It was locked. What if this time the scary tales were true? What if Brand really had hitched a ride and met some grisly fate?

  It was as plausible as anything else he could think of.

  He froze.

  He’d touched the door handle, left his fingerprints. What was he thinking? He wrapped his hand in his tee shirt and wiped off the handle, sure that at any moment the police would roar down the lane and catch him in the act. That done, he straightened and stared down at the Beamer.

  He heard a car approach.

  When Paul spied the cruiser coming down the lane, he felt his cheeks flush, as though his presence here in the near-darkness of the forest was reprehensible.

  Wait a minute, he thought. Why shouldn’t he be looking? The black car was on his property. Didn’t he have the right to investigate an abandoned vehicle on his own land?

  The cruiser pulled up cattycornered to the BMW and halted. Barlow killed the engine, the sounds of the cruiser door opening and shutting amplified in the stillness of the woods.

  Barlow wasn’t wearing a hat this time, and Paul was afforded a better look at the sheriff. He had large features, but they were only in proportion with his frame. Standing next to him, Paul could see how big he was. He looked like he was in good shape too. He wore regular cop clothes, though they were wrinkled.

  Barlow’s expression was hard to read.

  “Morning,” the big man finally said.

  “Morning,” Paul answered and stared at the gold badge that said SHERIFF.

  Barlow paused beside the black car. Hands on knees, he squinted into the window and asked, “You still don’t remember passing this car on the way in?”

  “Why do you think I’m out here?”

  The sheriff stepped back from the Beamer, examined the ground beside it. Then, his eyes scanned the empty lane.

  “You ever kill anyone?” he asked.

  Paul’s heart thumped. “No. Of course not. ”

  The cop stared down the lane a moment longer, then walked around to the passenger door and peered in. Paul could only watch him, his heart stampeding.

  Stepping to his left, Barlow bent and inspected the back seat. “When’s the last time you saw Ted Brand?” he asked.

  “I’ve never seen Ted Brand. Like I said, we only talked over the phone.”

  Without looking at him the cop answered, “Uh-huh.”

  “You don’t believe me?”

  For a moment, the sheriff seemed about to say something. Then, he put a large hand on Paul’s shoulder.

  “Let’s walk.”

  Through his swollen eyes he could see the basement growing brighter. If Linda hadn’t started checking around about him yet, she soon would. That would lead them to Shadeland, to the Carver House.

  Whether that would lead them here was another story.

  If the police in this godforsaken little burg weren’t halfwits—a proposition in which Ted had little confidence —they’d be going door to door before nightfall, which meant he only need stay alive until someone came knocking. Julia had evidently gone to work, which said a lot about her mental state. By leaving him here she was doing all she could to avoid the problem.

  To avoid the man tied up in her basement.

  Fucking whore.

  If she worked normal hours she’d return home at about five o’clock, which was the same time Ted would be declared missing. If she worked late, an officer might come by before she got home.

  Ted’s breath caught as he remembered her lack of transportation. She worked at the library, he remembered. She had to walk home. Hell, last night she hadn’t gotten halfway home before he met her, and that was six-thirty. It was entirely possible that she wouldn’t even get back before seven, which gave the cops a full two hours to search for him.

  He wondered if his car were still here.

  Surely not. Surely she wouldn’t have been that stupid.

  She was stupid enough to leave you down here in a swarm of ants, wasn’t she? Or maybe that had been intentional.

  Damn right it had been intentional. Her little act upon finding him had been convincing enough, but hadn’t she been acting since the very first? Pretending she had no idea what he wanted from her. Acting like a coy little schoolgirl as they toured the Carver House. Feigning shock when he made his move.

  The slut. She knew exactly what she was doing all along. The pick-up, the assault. She lured him here and knocked him out and tethered him and let those bastard ants crawl all over his face.

  Ted’s fists clenched. If he got his hands on her. If he got a sliver of an opening he’d take it. He’d tie her up. He’d take what she damn well should have given him last night.

  Then he’d make her regret ever fucking with him.

  Alone in the silent basement, Ted Brand began to laugh.

  Chapter Six

  As they walked along the lane Sam sized him up. Paul Carver was taller than his Uncle Myles, but softer, less sure of himself. The guy didn’t look like a murderer, but not all murderers did.

  Too much of this didn’t make sense. If Carver had nothing to do with it, how was it he never spotted Brand’s car on the way to the house? Grogginess was one thing. Passing by a shiny new BMW, the only car parked beside a narrow forest lane, without noticing it was just too improbable.

  But that was how Carver had told it as they moved down the lane, and that was more than Sam thought he’d get out of him. He rarely had a suspect go this long without asking for a lawyer. He had to keep him talking.

  “So you left for Shadeland when?”

  “Five thirty yesterday afternoon.”

  “Memphis on the same time as us?”

  “Yes.”r />
  “Then what?”

  Carver sighed. “As I said, I stopped at a gas station—”

  “But you don’t remember which one?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  Sam led them farther down the lane, half a mile now from their vehicles.

  “Aren’t we going back?” Carver asked.

  “Soon. For now I’d like to walk.”

  Pretty soon, the guy caught up. They walked to County Road 500 and back, Sam’s shoes scuffing dust and the occasional stone. He could hear Carver’s breathing as they moved around the final turn toward the cars, the guy puffing like a bellows in the cool morning air. Carver had no wind at all. Sam knew it was petty, but he couldn’t help taking satisfaction from seeing this guy fifteen years his junior struggling to keep up.

  “You a smoker?” Sam asked.

  Carver shook his head.

  “Oughta get more exercise.”

  Carver said nothing.

  “Course, it’s probably too hot down in Memphis to do much of anything.”

  “That and I’m too lazy to get in shape.”

  “So you drove straight through from the gas station without stopping again.”

  “No,” Carver said, an edge to his voice. They’d gone over all of it already, and he’d asked Carver everything there was to ask. Now, he was going through it a second time and the guy knew it, knew Sam was probing for inconsistencies.

  “Like I said,” Carver went on, “I stopped for gas again—the Civic’s tank doesn’t hold much—but it was a pay-at-the-pump and I didn’t get a receipt.”

  Sam asked, “Why’s there blood on your bumper?”

  He could tell he’d rattled the kid. Then Carver laughed but not as though he thought anything was funny.

  “I hit a possum last night. A family of them actually.”

  “You saw them before you ran them over?”

  “Of course not. I didn’t even know what I’d hit until I drove back to make sure it wasn’t a hitchhiker.”

  “Were you drinking?”

  Carver watched him, sweat bleeding steadily out of his face. “I didn’t drink a drop last night.”