House of Skin

by Jonathan Janz

He waited, watching Barlow work the tobacco around his mouth. The sheriff spat, a trifle too close to Paul’s sneakers, he thought.

  Barlow went on, “Mrs. Hargrove was a big, robust woman, and she finally got Samantha’s head under the running water. Her daughter’s hair got caught in the drain and clogged it so the water level was rising. Through his sister’s screaming, Billy could hear his mother asking Samantha who the father was. At first, the girl could only cry. Then she could only choke and splutter because the cold water was splashing all around her and into her open mouth.

  “At this point, Billy walks over and pleads with his mother to stop. Samantha was trying to answer her mom’s questions but she couldn’t catch her breath long enough to say anything. Mrs. Hargrove pushed her daughter’s head under a couple more times, and Billy said these were the worst because each time his mother dunked his sister’s head, she’d bear down with all her weight and Samantha’s head would thud against the steel basin. Without letting go of her daughter’s hair, Mrs. Hargrove pushed the faucet to the side so that instead of pouring down the drain it poured onto the counter and onto the floor.

  “Dazed, hurting, Samantha finally came to enough to tell her mom the only lie she could think of. That the baby was Lucas Bramer’s, a boy she’d dated earlier that year.”

  Barlow spat and wiped his lips with his coat sleeve. “Samantha figured this would buy her some time because Lucas Bramer was a few years older than her, which would make her look the victim rather than the seducer of a twelve-year old boy.

  “But her mother flew into a rage. Trask knew old lady Hargrove and said that Samantha was doomed whether she said Lucas Bramer, Myles Carver, or Immaculate Conception. No father was good enough for Mrs. Hargrove because it was impossible to her that her only daughter, not even out of school yet, had gotten herself pregnant, had let some boy put his thing in her. Her mother started slapping her and boxing her ears, and that was when Billy intervened. He stepped between them and Samantha saw her chance to escape. She only took a couple of steps before her mother reached out, snagged a handful of her long black hair and yanked back hard.”

  Barlow fell silent. Paul walked beside him, waiting. He wished he had a flashlight. The woods had grown dark very fast, the sky above the path now an indigo snake winding its way through a tenebrous black sea.

  “Samantha fell. Billy said her feet swept out from under her and up in the air like she’d slipped on ice. When the back of her head smacked the floor, he said it sounded like someone had stomped on an egg. Billy stumbled away and leaned on the kitchen table, and as he watched his sister’s motionless body lying there, the water pouring off the counter and flooding the floor around her, he felt like he was watching a dead body floating down a river. He and his mom stood and stared as the blood trickled from Samantha’s mouth, the back of her head. From between her legs. All of it leaking out and swirling and joining together, and pretty soon the whole floor around her was stained bright red.”

  “Samantha died?” Paul asked.

  The sheriff shook his head. “No. Though that would have been better. She lost the baby, of course. She was only three months from carrying it to term, so Doc Trask’s father, the original Doctor Trask, had to deliver it stillborn.”

  They walked then without speaking, the trail taking them gradually eastward. Paul wondered if they’d end up back at the house. The sheriff had flicked on a flashlight. That, at least, was something.

  Barlow continued, “Samantha spent a good while in the hospital and even more time in bed. Lots of people came to see her. In a few weeks, she began to recover. Billy Hargrove had achieved something like celebrity status because of the scandal, and he loved telling people the gory details. He was a good boy, but according to Trask he couldn’t shut up to save his life.” Barlow stopped and spat. “Of course, you could say the same thing about Doctor Trask.”

  He regarded Paul grimly and after a moment, went on. “With Billy talking like that and the town being so small, word was bound to get around to Myles Carver about what had happened.

  “Now…” Barlow’s voice grew quieter. “This is where the story gets strange. Not to be cold-hearted or anything, but I would think that a boy of twelve would be relieved to have a burden like that lifted from his shoulders. That sounds cynical, I know, but hell, what kid that age wants to be a dad?

  “But apparently, Myles did. He was incensed. What little time he’d spent at home before was now spent stealing into the forest. He stopped showing up at school altogether.”

  “Then, one night Billy saw him standing in the Hargroves’ back yard, staring up at the house.”

  They moved down a hill, and Paul just avoided tripping on a root that grew like a varicose vein across the trail. Though he’d never seen Myles before, he imagined his uncle as a boy, face livid and watchful in the moonlight.

  “This frightened Billy, as you can imagine. Carver was rotten to the core, so there was that to worry about. But what scared him even more was that Myles wasn’t watching Samantha’s window. He was watching his mother’s, Mrs. Hargrove’s.”

  He could smell the tobacco on Barlow’s breath. It smelled like apple cider. Paul put his hands in his pockets to warm them, listened.

  “Reverend Hargrove and his wife were the kind of couple that had different rooms, for who knows what reasons. That was why one night Reverend Hargrove wasn’t with his wife when he heard a bloodcurdling scream.”

  Barlow went on, quicker now. “Billy and his father stumbled out of bed, disoriented, scared, and rushed down the hall to Mrs. Hargrove’s room. When they opened the door, the light from within flooded over them, and they discovered Mrs. Hargrove standing there in her nightdress clawing at her throat and shrieking at the top of her lungs. They went to her and fought with her to get her to stop scratching her throat, which was torn to ribbons, but the woman was hysterical. As Reverend Hargrove wrestled with his wife, Billy swiveled his head to see what she was staring at, and he told Trask that he puked before he even realized what it was.”

  Barlow’s voice had softened now to scarcely a whisper. Not for effect, Paul thought, but because the words he was uttering were so terrible.

  “The Reverend got a strong enough grip on his wife to turn and look at what it was that had so shaken her. When he saw it his face went ashen. He stood staring, and let go of his wife, who backed out of the room and bumped into Samantha, who had finally made her way down the hall. Her father was blocking the bed, so Billy said his sister had to push by him to see.

  “The sight of her dead baby, dug up from the cemetery, bloated and purple and muddy, lying there in the middle of those white sheets, was too much for her.

  “Samantha started to laugh, and then she clapped her hands. Then she was moving over and lying on the bed beside the dead baby. She gathered up the corpse, tucked up her knees and laughed.

  “Billy said it was awhile before his father told him to go find his mom, who’d disappeared down the hallway. The Reverend, sitting quiet as a ghost beside his laughing daughter on the bed, cursed his son and told him to go and, damn it, tend to his mother right now, which Billy did, or tried to do. The last he’d seen of her she was backing out of the room toward the stairs. He had the terrible feeling that she’d fallen, but when he got to the staircase he could see that the landing below was empty.

  “Billy moved down the stairs and through the house trying to find his mother. He even called her by her Christian name—Elizabeth—yet no one answered. She wasn’t in the kitchen, so he searched for her in the living room. She wasn’t there either.

  “Billy could see plainly that unless she’d taken refuge in a linen closet or the pantry, his mother had left the house. He opened the back door and stood on the stoop, listening. What he heard didn’t reassure him.

  “There came a succession of sounds. There weren’t any footsteps or voices, but what he could hear was coming from the direction of the woods. The first thing he recognized were the sounds of a struggle. As he crept to
ward the trees, he heard the struggling stop, and it was replaced by wet sloshing sounds that made his sour stomach feel even worse.

  “He couldn’t begin to guess at what it all meant, and the last thing he wanted to do was investigate. But he knew he’d have to. His sister had lost her mind, and she hadn’t been in very good condition to begin with. Who knew what the shock had done to her? His dad was too busy keeping things upstairs from getting any worse, so it fell to him to restore order and find his mom.

  “When he found Elizabeth Hargrove, she was lying in the grass, clearly limned by the moonglow. Someone had gotten to her.”

  Paul wished they’d go back to the house, get warm. He had no sense of family, really, but he didn’t like thinking about someone he was related to exhuming a dead fetus. He noticed with some unease how the trees bordering the trail leaned over them like ghouls trying to absorb all the story’s lurid details.

  “Billy was wailing so loud his dad found him and discovered what had become of his wife. The minister fell to his knees and wept.

  “Her entrails were spread out around her, her abdomen a bloody mess. Whoever had done it, he’d torn out her uterus.”

  Paul gaped at the sheriff. “Good Lord,” he said. “And you think Myles did that?”

  “I know Myles did it.”

  “How do you know? He was only a boy.”

  Barlow’s voice rose. “Because I knew him.”

  Taken aback at the sheriff’s tone, Paul was quiet for a moment before asking, “Did they find the murder weapon?”

  Barlow looked at him sourly. “Just another reason why there was no conviction.”

  “Myles was tried for it?”

  “There was no trial,” Barlow answered and spat black juice. “Things then weren’t like they are now, so there was no way to tell whose baby it was. It wasn’t like they could do a blood test on what was left of that fetus. There was no reason to suspect Myles, save for the whisperings of children. No one paid the kids much mind when they insinuated it could have been your uncle because the thought of a girl four years his senior being interested in him was incomprehensible.”

  “Didn’t Billy Hargrove tell the police about seeing Myles in the yard?”

  “Uh-uh. He was too scared of what Myles would do to him. Only person he told was Doc Trask, just before Billy and his dad left town for good.”

  “What about Samantha?”

  Barlow said, “I’m getting to that.”

  They were moving deeper into the woods now, and as the earthen trail grew darker, the odors became more distinct. The earth underfoot smelled of wet leaves and young buds. Lilac tinged the air, a smell he usually found pleasant. But now it seemed cloying, oppressive.

  “Standing there by his wife’s mutilated body, Reverend Hargrove and his son held each other and wept. The minister didn’t know what to do. Cover his wife, carry her back with him, or go get help. He dared not send Billy to do it because whoever butchered his wife might still be in the forest, waiting.

  “Though the sight of her was terrible, he couldn’t leave her lying there in the woods for the bugs and animals to get at her, so he gathered his dead wife into his arms and made for the house with Billy holding the tail of his night shirt.

  “They’d made it to the edge of the yard when they heard a shriek and a crashing sound. Then there was a sickening thump. When Reverend Hargrove saw what his daughter had done, he dropped to his knees and bellowed into his dead wife’s chest. Samantha had apparently leapt from the upstairs window and landed face-first on the ground. He didn’t have to go to where she lay. The way her neck was twisted, she was dead as winter.”

  Paul peered up at the moonless sky but found it had darkened to the same inky shade as the oak trees that rose like crooked spires around them. To their left he could see what looked like a break in the forest, though it was much too dark to be certain. He wished Barlow would let him hold the flashlight. He felt like a child whose father didn’t trust him with the remote control.

  The shrill warble of some unseen bird sent cold fingers down his back. Impatient to have the story ended, Paul said, “So the trauma of it all caused Samantha Hargrove to take her own life.”

  Barlow shook his head. “I don’t think so. The Reverend was bawling over his dead wife and daughter, but Billy was staring up at the window. He told Doc Trask it was the worst part of the night, the worst thing he’d ever seen.”

  “Let me guess,” Paul said. “It was Myles, grinning demonically at him through the jagged edges of the window.”

  “No. Myles was gone by then. What Billy saw was someone else.” Barlow’s voice grew thin. “A woman. A blonde woman in a white gown.”

  Paul imagined it, imagined her in the window. He thought about asking who it was, but before he could the sheriff added:

  “But you were right about one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The woman was grinning.”

  They fell silent, the only sounds in the forest their footfalls. Ahead of them, the trail broadened and Paul beheld a white farmhouse in the middle of a large, overgrown yard.

  “Who lives here?”

  “A girl,” Barlow answered.

  “Care to be more specific?”

  “No.”

  “Are you going to question her or something?” Paul asked.

  Barlow ignored him.

  Paul breathed in the honeysuckle reefing the backyard, but he couldn’t enjoy it. Finally, he said, “So why are we here?”

  Barlow nodded toward the house. “This is where Reverend Hargrove used to live.”

  Paul peered up at a second story window. “That the window Samantha jumped out of?”

  “Was pushed out of, you mean,” Barlow said.

  Paul waited and the sheriff shrugged. “Could be,” he answered.

  Paul stared at the dark windows. “And this is where Myles killed Mrs. Hargrove?”

  “Over there.” Barlow pointed back the way they’d come. “Beside the trail.”

  But Paul was staring at an upstairs window where a woman was watching him.

  “I see her,” he said.

  The sheriff looked, then stared at him. “There’s no one there,” Barlow said.

  Paul frowned. He could have sworn he saw a face, ghostly pale, watching him.

  As they moved away, he asked, “Who was it Billy saw in the window?”

  Barlow fell silent. He was silent for so long Paul thought he was going to ignore the question. When they were well away from the farmhouse, he said, “Someone I don’t care to discuss.”

  She watched them from the second floor window, thankful she had waited to go down to the cellar. It wouldn’t do for Ted to scream and rouse the sheriff’s suspicion.

  Their voices receded into the forest.

  She went through her checklist again. Everything she needed was packed in two suitcases. It was depressing, actually. She’d been alive for nearly three decades, and all she cared about could be crammed into two suitcases.

  Julia waited, counted slowly to fifty, before turning and leaving her bedroom. On the way to the cellar, she grabbed the fresh needle. The way she saw it, she couldn’t set him free without sedating him first. She couldn’t kill him. He was a lousy human being, but he didn’t deserve to die.

  The important thing was to give him enough morphine to knock him out for a good long while, but not to give him so much that he’d overdose. If she let him awake too quickly she’d be caught, and with his connections she’d get the maximum sentence, whatever that was. He had her on kidnapping, battery, incarceration against his will and whatever other charges he could think of. Mental anguish, maybe. Cruelty. Assault with a British playwright.

  It was decided then. She’d give him a double dose and hope he wouldn’t die.

  Ted must have heard her open the basement door because he was already yelling about what he would give her if she’d let him go. Cars, jewelry, a new house. He promised it all.

  Trembling a litt
le, she flipped on the light.

  She could see him blinking, his head turned awkwardly up at her.

  “I’ll give you anything you want, Julia. Just let me out of these ropes.”

  She strode down the steps. “Okay, Ted.”

  It stopped him. “What?”

  “I said okay. I’m letting you go.”

  His voice grew hoarse. “What is that needle for? Christ, I feel like a pincushion already.”

  “I have to sedate you to make sure you don’t kill me when I untie the ropes.”

  “Kill you? You’re my only way out of here.” He chuckled. Unconvincingly, she thought. “You die, I die, right?”

  “You’ll turn me in.” She crouched in front of him.

  “I won’t turn you in. People make mistakes. I just want to get back to my family.”

  “Just hold still.” She looked for a vein.

  “Whatever you say, Julia.”

  She paused, watching him. His tone was different. It worried her.

  “Don’t move, Ted.” She stuck the vein, flushed the morphine inside.

  “Sure enough,” he said, his voice going sleepy, “whatever you say.”

  His breathing was slow and deep. She set the needle on the ground.

  She waited.

  After thirty seconds had passed, she untied first his right hand, then his left. She was moving toward his feet when she felt the needle stab her Achilles tendon.

  Julia screamed and reached for the hypo, but Ted was already bear-hugging her legs, dragging her down like some animal in the wild. She saw his eyes then, his bared teeth. His body was twisted, his feet held down by the ropes, but his upper body was free. He should have been under by now, groggy at least, but his arms felt like steel, harder than she would have thought possible. He heaved and she felt herself hip tossed over his shoulder, the concrete knocking out her wind. She kicked at him. He punched her hard in the kidney. She tried to crawl away, get out from under him, but he seized her ankles, began reeling her back. Please God let the morphine work, she thought.

  He hauled her back under him, grabbed the hypo sticking out of her ankle, and began stabbing her in the calf. She screamed, feeling her pants begin to bunch in his grip, and she didn’t care, anything to get away from the stabbing needle. He dropped the needle and got ahold of her with both hands. His weight pressed down on her legs. He pinned her and yanked down her pants. She reached for something, anything to help her fend him off, but nothing was within reach, she’d made sure of that when she tied him up. He was biting her now, his incisors sinking into her thigh. The pain was excruciating.