House of Skin

by Jonathan Janz

Outside the open garage door, he heard the trees rustling as little breezes adumbrated the storm. A squirrel bolted across the driveway, paused on its haunches to throw a glassy-eyed glance at Paul, then chattered belligerently and disappeared into the forest. Moments later, the rain drops began to tap the roof with wet, accelerating fingers. Soon the entire estate was awash with the shower.

  Paul drank to the storm and wondered how late it was. With the sky so dark and oily, it could be early evening. As often happened, the alcohol seemed to expand time around him. It felt like he’d been drinking for hours, but experience told him he’d been at it for less than thirty minutes.

  Grasping the Jim Beam bottle like a pistoleer, he went over and stood under the open garage door.

  The large lawn was sodden with rain. The brick house, too, was painted gunmetal gray by the deluge. Inches from his nose fell steaming drips of rainwater that splashed into puddles at his feet and doused his sneakers. The warm metallic scent of the rain made a nice counterpoint to the cool pine fragrance breathing out of the forest.

  The mist rising from the ground felt good on his face. Toasting it, he tilted the bottle once more. The brown liquid gurgled. He wiped his mouth, stuck out his hand to wash off the whiskey and was surprised at how warm the runoff from the roof felt on his skin. Inspired, Paul took a step forward and planted himself under the overhang’s edge, letting the rain and the runoff sluice over his shut eyes. The giddiness he felt made him toss back another guzzle of whiskey, and while his skin felt cool, the alcohol burned off the chill from the inside out. Metallic rainwater flooded his throat. Coughing and sputtering, he weaved back inside the garage and cast about for something to dry himself with. All he found was a rag soiled with suspicious looking brown streaks. He set aside the bottle and scooped up the rag. Hoping the substance on the faded blue fabric was motor oil and not something worse, he scrubbed the moisture off his face. Feeling clammy and drunk, he peeled his tee shirt off and slapped it onto a paint-spattered sawhorse. The motion disturbed his balance. In trying to right himself, he knocked over an ancient coffee can and sent a rusty assortment of bolts and screws clattering. Just as he was about to topple over into the spray of junk, he caught himself on another sawhorse and waited out the carouseling garage.

  He was drunker than he’d thought.

  Carefully this time, he stepped out of the mess on the floor, picked up the whiskey bottle and moved to the workbench, his sneakers squishing uncomfortably. Pressing his backside against the coarse surface of the bench, he managed to pull off his sneakers and socks without falling.

  Outside, the sky grew darker.

  For a time he tried to occupy himself by puttering around with his uncle’s tools and lawn equipment. He got some amusement from the old newspapers Myles had put under the sawhorses to catch paint. He drank as he read about Imelda Marcos and Dexy’s Midnight Runners.

  When Paul finished reading about Reagan’s first term it was full dark outside and he’d finished all but a thin line of whiskey. He knocked it back.

  The garage canted sideways. He staggered toward the receding wall to his right. He let his momentum take him that way, thinking to flip on the garage light when he got there.

  His foot caught on something and before he had a chance to throw out his arms he was diving head first into the wall. The side of his head smashed into a supporting beam, his body crumpling below him in a heap. Before he could raise his hand to touch the golf ball lump forming on his brow, the murky garage pixilated and dimmed. Soon, he was resting facedown in a corner, the rain only a drizzle now in the driveway five feet away.

  He awoke to a barbwire drill shredding the base of his skull. He opened his eyes and stared into darkness. Bad one, he thought. It was still nighttime and the hangover had already begun. The raw sizzle in his gorge meant he’d soon puke, and though there were few sensations as unpleasant, he knew he’d feel better afterward.

  As terrible as the thought of vomiting was, he was more concerned about his churning intestines. He didn’t know if he was capable of defecating in the woods, especially in a storm, but he couldn’t go inside the house until the fumes settled, and he couldn’t void his bowels in the garage. He thought for a moment of propping his ass cheeks on a sawhorse, of aiming for the rusty coffee can, but dismissed the idea as too ambitious.

  At least he wasn’t disoriented. He remembered clearly the argument with the exterminator, the way he’d guzzled the fifth of Jim Beam. He could not but remember the rain, for it had swum into the garage entrance, surrounding his head in a shallow lake. The water lapping against his shoulders smelled like withered grass and old dirt. Pushing himself up, Paul glanced out the open door and into the rainy night.

  He’d no idea what time it was, but he was sure it was late. His eyes were bleary, which had to be the reason he saw a woman standing in his yard.

  Blinking, he got to his feet and peered through the gloom into the large back yard. There, just visible around the corner of the house, stood a woman in a white dress, staring up at the third floor.

  Alcohol had caused him to imagine things before, but never to this degree. Nevertheless, his soaked body and roiling stomach told him he wasn’t dreaming. His pounding head made it tough to see clearly in the stygian darkness, but he knew what he saw: a woman in a short white dress.

  When he stepped out of the garage into the driveway, he hardly felt the limestone gravel biting his bare feet. The sight of the woman mesmerized him. He was forty yards away, yet he was already nervous he’d frighten her into flight. A deer hunter must feel this way before the kill, he thought.

  Lightning flashed and he distinguished her outline more clearly. The garment was a negligee rather than a dress. The drizzle made it cling to her body.

  And what a body it was.

  He wondered if her face, currently obscured by the distance, would be as striking as her large breasts and slim waist.

  He moved closer.

  If the lightning flashed again, she’d be sure to see him, near as he now was. Paranoia surged through him. Would she think him a rapist? A rain-drenched sexual predator? He supposed he looked like one, with only a pair of wet cargo shorts on. And, he realized, a raging erection.

  For the woman was astonishing. This was surely a fantasy his lonely brain had conjured. There couldn’t be a gorgeous girl, long black hair tossed back over her shoulders, breasts large and visible through her white nightie, standing soaked and half-naked in his backyard.

  When he got within ten yards of her, lightning flashed again. As it strobed it cast the yard into brilliant clarity. She discovered him with widening eyes and before he could open his mouth she darted away, doe-like, through the yard. Her speed shocked him. Even in the negligee she moved with a swiftness he couldn’t believe, and by the time he’d found his voice, she was disappearing nimbly into the woods.

  Chapter Eleven

  April, 1951

  He felt good tonight. He looked good too. The way Annabel watched him across the room, she wanted to get him alone, away from the party.

  That was fine with Myles.

  It was Maria that worried him. She was being more than usually flirtatious, going so far as to hang on David’s shoulder as he stood next to Annabel. Myles watched his brother shift uncomfortably as the women eyed one another across his broad shoulders.

  The band they’d hired was a good one. They even had a female drummer, a tasty little dish whose work on the brushes helped him forget about the drama being played out across the room.

  Hoping Annabel would follow, Myles took his drink down the front hallway, past the smoking couples in the foyer, and outside into the cool spring air. On the front porch wrestled a group of kids whose moms and dads didn’t dare leave them at home. Myles couldn’t blame them. Four kids slaughtered in just under three years was an unsettling number for a parent. Especially in such a small town.

  A red rubber ball skittered by Myles’s shoes. A blond boy followed it, bumped him in the shin as he passe
d by. Prick, Myles thought.

  “Watch where you’re going Aaron,” a little girl said to the boy as he came back with the ball.

  “You watch it,” Aaron said to the girl and stopped next to where Myles stood holding his drink. The blond boy dribbled the ball next to Myles’s shoes to show the girl he wasn’t scared of adults. Myles winked at the little girl. He held the glass of bourbon over the boy’s head, let it trickle out over him, his blond hair going dark and sticky. “Hey,” the boy said, tears welling up.

  “Hah-hah, that’s what you get,” the girl said, pointing.

  Myles descended the porch steps, threw a glance over his shoulder expecting to see Annabel coming down after him, but saw only the kids taunting one another.

  He had a bad feeling about tonight, about the way Maria was goading her. He’d never seen Annabel angry, but he’d always known it was there, the potential, under that serene face.

  Myles walked to the edge of the forest and listened. This time of year, it was quiet. A couple months, the hollow would be humming with life. For now, though, it was somber. He shook a cigarette out of his case, lit it.

  A hand fell on his shoulder.

  He pivoted expecting to find Annabel but discovered the lady drummer instead. She was a tiny little thing, mousy brown hair trimmed short like a little boy’s. Smallish tits damn near poking out of her low cut dress.

  “You want another drink?” She was holding out the glass.

  He took it, sipped. Bourbon.

  “How’d you know what I was drinking?” Eyeing her over the cigarette smoke.

  “I know all about you, Myles.”

  “Is that so?” he asked, leading her toward the woods.

  It was near midnight when he returned, the band long since having ceased playing, unable to do much without their drummer to keep time. He’d left the girl lying on a bed of bluegrass, dozing with his jacket covering her naked little body.

  She’d been satisfying, and he wondered if he’d have anything left for Annabel if she was in the mood. But when he found her he knew sex was the last thing on her mind, that something had changed while he was outside with the drummer. He approached her cautiously.

  “Party’s winding down,” he said.

  “Where’s David?” she asked. Coming right to it.

  He noted the ferocious set of her eyes, the sharp edge the drinks had given her.

  “I haven’t seen him,” Myles answered, careful to keep anything insinuating out of his voice.

  “That’s not good enough.”

  He stepped back, really saw her then. She was livid. It was the first time he’d seen her that way, without her composure. Even during sex, her eyes wild and her body atremble, there was something in control that wouldn’t let her surrender completely.

  “I’ve checked outside,” she said. “In their place by the brook.”

  Myles could only stare. If she knew about David and Maria, their spot in the woods…

  But she beat him to it. “Yes I saw you and that girl, Myles. There’s no need to be coy about it.”

  He could only grin and marvel at her.

  Her expression darkened. “But my husband wasn’t there. He’s not in any of the guest rooms either.”

  “His car outside?”

  “Yes,” she answered, impatient. “And the whore doesn’t drive.”

  A thought came to him and it was out before he knew what he was saying. “Have you checked your bedroom?”

  Annabel froze. He felt his balls shrink. He knew he’d started something then, wished he’d never said it, but knew it was too late and there was no stopping her, no reigning her in, and whatever would happen now couldn’t be prevented.

  She moved past him toward the stairs. Behind him Myles could feel the partygoers watching. He could only follow, and as he did he sensed them following, too, drinks in hand, ambling up the stairs behind him, eyes glassy and wolfish. They’d been waiting for this for going on two years, waiting for Annabel to show her teeth. They rose up and up, creeping toward the third floor, hoping and dreading they’d find David and Maria rutting on the floor like animals.

  When Myles came through the bedroom door after Annabel he knew it was true, that David and Maria had screwed in the bed where the married couple slept. He knew this even though the pair was fully dressed, David in his black trousers and white tux shirt unbuttoned to show the cleft of his hairless chest, Maria in her black dress with the different colored flowers on it, unzipped in back so that all who were crowding into the bedroom could see there were no panties under the dress.

  When the partygoers came through the door they’d sigh at first because there were no naked people, their disappointment transforming into fascination when they noticed the way Maria sat on the bed smoking. David stood by the stained glass window rolling the ice around his empty glass. Both wore expressions at once intense and bland as if they dared Annabel to say something about their being there together.

  Maria sat with her legs crossed on the bed facing David, only he mattering to her and Annabel insignificant, a nuisance she’d already dealt with, bested. Myles thought of saying something, of asking Maria if she were crazy, but if the death of her boy had unhinged her mind so utterly that she presumed to humiliate Annabel in her own house, in her own bedroom, she truly was beyond help. Myles leaned forward on his toes and waited for the explosion.

  Annabel asked David, “Why?”

  “That’s some question coming from you,” he said, still swirling his drink. “You’re the one who can’t keep your hands off my brother.”

  “Our bed,” Annabel said in a voice barely audible.

  From where she sat on the foot of the bed, Maria blew smoke toward her rival, a satisfied grin on her face.

  “You deserve worse than that,” Maria said.

  The buxom girl moved to the window and stood next to David. “You don’t deserve to sleep under the same roof with him. You should be outside with the animals.” She wrapped a hand around David’s waist right there in front of his wife. The crowd watched, stone silent, waiting for Annabel to retaliate. But it was Maria who went on.

  “Why is it that all the kids who’ve been killed have been the sons and daughters of your enemies?” she asked, slurring her words. The crowd leaned forward, knowing the stakes had been raised. They murmured, wondering at this new accusation.

  Sensing what might happen if things were allowed to continue, David stepped forward, silencing Maria. He stood up straight, his huge chest thrown out. Myles felt the men behind him in the doorway, all of them shorter and weaker than David, shrink.

  “Okay, folks. Party’s over. Get out of here,” David said and turned his back to Annabel as if that decided it. Setting down his glass he gestured to Maria and made to leave. Maria took his hand and walked with him around Annabel, and as the Spanish girl moved around the tall blonde her dusky shoulder nudged Annabel’s out of the way, knocking her off balance. Myles observed it as he ushered the remaining partygoers out the door, the sounds of laughter echoing down the hallway, deriding Annabel, the cuckolded wife.

  Maria and David were already beyond her when the change started, but from where Myles stood holding the door he noticed Annabel’s body tense, the slim muscles in her back ripple. When she turned Myles saw and understood she still had control, she’d never not been in control. Her blue eyes smoldered beneath hooded lashes. Her face was down, her pointed chin lowered near her chest, her legs set wide like a man’s.

  Myles felt a chill whisper down his spine.

  David and Maria were almost to the door, neither of them bothering to look at Myles.

  “David,” Annabel said in a low voice.

  “What?” he asked without stopping.

  “Look at me, David.”

  Turning, he obeyed.

  “Fine, Annabel. I’m looking at you.”

  “Is she what you want?” Nodding toward Maria, who stood between the two brothers, glowering at Annabel in triumph.

  But
David said, “Is he what you want?” Cocking a thumb at Myles.

  If Annabel was surprised, she didn’t show it. David, though, was suddenly livid, his pent-up jealousy finally giving vent.

  “My own brother? I knew you were cheap, but I didn’t know you were that desperate. Jesus, you might as well have sex with the dog.”

  Myles couldn’t stand it, the women fighting over David. He said to his brother in a low voice, “You’re the one who strayed. She never did until you took this whore to the woods.”

  Maria whirled and hissed something at Myles but before she could finish David lunged past her and struck. His fist connected with his younger brother’s temple and gashed him near the eye, but Myles surprised him by coming back with an uppercut. It stunned David, who staggered and stared angrily at the group of partygoers that had stuck around in the hallway hoping there would yet be fireworks.

  “Get out!” David shouted at them and slammed the door in their faces.

  Maria moaned, brought a hand to her mouth. It came away bloody. She stared at the blood uncomprehendingly, astonished she’d gotten hit in the scuffle.

  Long fingers touched her shoulder.

  “Are you alright, dear?”

  She turned and discovered Annabel smiling sadly at her, looking for all the world the sympathetic host. As Annabel led her away from him and David, she seemed grateful for the help. Annabel wrapping her arm around her shoulders, saying, “There, there. It will be alright, dear.”

  Myles watched the taller blonde woman mothering the curvy Spanish one, their footsteps picking up speed as they crossed the room. Annabel’s arm tightened behind Maria’s back. Their pace accelerated until he could hear Maria beginning to shout questions, the questions melting into one long scream as Annabel propelled her toward the window, both hands now on Maria’s back, and before David could break forward to stop it Maria was hurtling toward the stained glass windowpane. She crashed through face first, and before she disappeared into the night Myles watched a pink object hover in the air behind her, a severed ear, before it, too, disappeared through the jagged opening.