House of Skin

by Jonathan Janz

  Once it was on level ground, Angela made to bump it through the grass with one white-soled shoe, but she could not feel the ball properly through her stupid shoe, so she stood trying to keep her balance as she took off one shoe and then the other. She was standing on her right foot, fumbling with her left shoe, when she heard the roar of the kids on the playground on the other side of the school. Carol Ledford had probably done something great, kicked the ball far or walloped someone running for home base.

  Angela lost her balance and fell. She winced and giggled at her own klutziness. She looked about her and was glad to see no one was around. Come to think of it, she had not even asked to get a drink from the pump. It had not occurred to her then, but now she was happy she had not told Mrs. England where she was going. With all those kids to keep control of, the teacher would never miss her. Why, she could stay here until recess was over, and that was at least another twenty minutes.

  She felt coldness against her leg and frowned. Springing up, she was horrified to see she had sat in a patch of grass down the hill from the pump and that the run-off had made a muddy puddle where she had fallen. Her fears were confirmed when she held out her white dress, felt the squishy fabric, saw the mud on the pretty lace. Her mother would be furious.

  Squeezing back tears, feeling doomed, she made for the corner of the school building, hoping against hope that Mrs. England could get the mud out at the basin in the girls’ bathroom.

  Angela halted and glanced back at the red kickball.

  She touched the soiled white fabric and knew there was no getting it clean. She was in for a good hiding, and that was that.

  She might as well enjoy the rest of recess.

  Fighting back tears but feeling a bit giddy, Angela ran barefoot through the empty strip of schoolyard. The grass felt tickly and soft against her bare feet. She giggled, toeing the half-deflated ball and nudging it out in front of her. She stopped, listening. The kickball game was growing from the sound of it. She guessed that all the kids had made their way over to the diamond. That was usually the way. The game began slow but grew in size and intensity and peaked just as Mrs. England blew her whistle for her pupils to go inside.

  Angela reared back and kicked.

  The lopsided ball smacked against the solid brick wall of the schoolhouse and bounced crookedly back to her.

  She listened, hoping no one had heard.

  The game continued, oblivious.

  She was amazed at herself. She had never done anything like this. She had never gone to the pump without asking, never hid behind the schoolhouse all by herself. This was something Carol Ledford would do.

  Booting the ball again, Angela reached up to untie her stupid yellow hair ribbon. It was caught, the knot hung on a tangle of her curls. Because she was absorbed with disentangling the ribbon, she did not see the kickball rolling toward the woods until it was too late. She gasped and made a dash for it but was too slow. The ball hopped over the lip of earth at the tree line and disappeared into the woods.

  She stood between the trees, panting. She cast a fearful glance over her shoulder. There was time, she knew, to retrieve the ball, but if she did, would she be able to climb back up the hill? It was very steep, and some of it looked like mud. Her dress would certainly be ruined then, and how her mother would yell.

  This did not even take into account it was against the rules to enter the forest. Especially after what had happened to the little boy in July.

  Shivering, Angela backed away from the woods. She was halfway to the corner of the schoolhouse when she heard Carol Ledford’s voice, loud and commanding, on the kickball diamond.

  Carol would not be afraid of going into the woods, so why should she be?

  Determined now, Angela walked past the tree line, reached out, braced an arm on a bent sapling and lowered herself down the ravine.

  It was difficult with her bare feet, and more than once she stumbled and landed on her rear end, but within minutes, she had made it to the base of the hill. Picking the dead leaves and twigs off her dress, she stared out at the forest. She saw a small clearing, a series of rises and dips. And of course, she saw trees.

  She did not see the ball.

  She shook her head. It did not make sense that the ball was not here. She’d watched for it on the way down, and it was nowhere on the hill, stuck on a tree trunk or hidden under a bush. She glanced up the hill but was no longer sure where she had come down. The slope of the ravine was too messy to tell for sure, any footprints she had made only blended in with the muddy streaks on the ground.

  Angela thought of working her way back up the hill, but she knew she would feel like a coward if she came up without the ball. Determined, she searched the forest for anything red.

  She walked to her left, the soles of her feet blackening. The ground sloped a bit. She supposed the ball might have continued to roll this way. The ravine was very steep. The decline got steeper. She followed it down, hoping to spot the ball, when her bare feet slipped out from under her. Her head snapped back hard against the ground, the earth pounding the breath out of her. Dazed, she felt her dress push up as she slid down the steepening hill and was alarmed to see the ground drop away from her. Her face swung forward over her feet. The earth rushed up to meet her. Palms out to cushion her fall, she landed face-first in the mud at the foot of the slope. She was crying, she knew, and there was no stopping it. She thought she had broken some ribs. Her chest was a hornet’s nest of sharp pains. Lying there on her stomach she tried to slow her breathing, and as she did so, she looked at the ground before her and saw the red lopsided ball sitting there in the dead leaves in front of her nose.

  Her breath caught, her tears warming. She had succeeded. She was about to reach forward and touch the round surface when her hand stopped and her throat began to burn.

  Beyond the red ball was a pair of boots.

  Mud was caked on them, on their faded rubber soles. She pushed up onto her elbows and saw that a pair of legs connected to the boots.

  She followed the legs up. They seemed to go on forever. Above them, around the waist of the navy blue work suit, was a belt. She pushed to her knees, eyes still traveling up the figure. She saw the wide chest, rising and falling, and when she saw the face, she felt urine scalding her thighs.

  The figure wore a mask, the face red with black eyebrows and yellow cat eyes and short black horns coming out of the forehead.

  As she gazed up into the devil’s face, one enormous hand reached back, disappearing behind the blue work suit, and reappeared grasping a long, shiny knife with a wooden handle.

  “Little monkey,” a deep voice said.

  As Angela sat paralyzed, the knife rose and the figure began to laugh.

  Horrified, Paul read the next three lines, turned away from the pile of pages and vomited.

  Book Two

  Paul

  Chapter Thirteen

  He would read for a while, get up and pace, sit down again to continue, his curiosity mastering him. But before he got far another jolt would strike him and he’d step away from the desk, heart racing. The pile of papers came to remind him of an especially cunning snapping turtle, its ancient shell bleached white by the sun. Every damn time he ventured near it, the fucker would lunge at his fingers and wound him anew.

  Maybe his drinking could account for the novel before him, but he couldn’t see how. He’d said things while drunk before and not remembered them later. Once in college he’d slept with a girl and had little recollection of it the next day.

  But writing an entire novel?

  It didn’t make sense. And if the words hadn’t come from his liberated subconscious, just where had they come from?

  Paul swallowed and stared at the pile of pages.

  The Monkey Killer was a true story, or at the very least held particles of the truth. Its primaries were Myles Carver, his brother David and Annabel Carver, the woman who, though married to David, slept with them both.

  The tale was spare
and sickening.

  Children were being murdered in Shadeland. The first child to die was the son of David Carver’s mistress. The next victim the daughter of a woman who’d insulted Annabel during a party at Watermere.

  After the second slaying, the police arrested a harmless old drunk who’d been seen in town the day before the girl was slain and didn’t have an alibi for the time of either murder. The drunk was released when another murder occurred while he was in custody.

  Two more kids were murdered.

  Seeing the names of his relatives—people he knew something about, as well as ones like Annabel, who were mysteries to him—was jarring enough for Paul. When he read the word Watermere, he wondered if he were dreaming it all.

  The final ten pages of the novel were the worst.

  The killer’s identity was found out when David Carver visited the tool shed for a sickle to clear a spot of underbrush. Frank McCabe, the Carvers’ gardener and handyman, had acted suspiciously throughout the novel and the author—whoever that was, Paul thought sickly—had made it clear that McCabe was a suspect. In one scene the handyman spied on Annabel through a hole in the wall while she bathed, reminding Paul of Norman Bates. More than once David had wondered aloud where McCabe had been on the night of the murders.

  So when David visited the tool shed where the handyman sometimes slept, and found a bloodstained pair of gardener’s gloves under McCabe’s personal effects, he told Myles they had to punish the man for his iniquitous deeds. Myles had no desire to apprehend McCabe, was weary of the whole business, so David pulled a gun on him, forced him into riding into town with him to gather up a posse to hunt McCabe down.

  David was well-respected in Shadeland and had no trouble inciting his own private mob. The caravan of half-drunk vigilantes made its way to the woods near the limestone quarry, where McCabe was known to have erected a tiny ramshackle house.

  Under a moon the color of oxblood, they moved through the woods, David in the lead.

  They held McCabe aloft, marched through the forest with him on their hands like a jungle kill. Their flashlight beams swirled and bobbed like fearful birds. Myles looked askance at his brother. His jaw still hurt where David had slugged him. Just because he refused to help with the lynching. Myles didn’t give two shits about McCabe, the idiot could hang for all he cared. He only wanted to get back to Watermere, to love on Annabel before David got to her first. Too many were the nights he had to play clean-up.

  He followed the group through the woods, going God knew where. David stepped beside him on the trail. Myles looked at the .38, wondered if he could take it away from his brother, use it on him. The crowd might charge him, rend him to pieces, but he could take a few with him. The key was getting the gun away from David.

  “Wait,” he heard David shout. The men stopped, a single body, and listened for further instruction.

  Jesus, Myles thought. They think he’s some kind of messiah.

  “Against the tree,” David commanded. Myles wondered how they could know what tree he was talking about—they were in the woods, for chrissakes—when he saw and understood.

  The great oak towered above the rest, its trunk a full ten feet around. There were no low-hanging branches, which confused Myles, for how could they lynch McCabe without a branch to string him from? He chalked it up to inexperience, waited for the men to discover their mistake.

  David turned to one of the group. “Your boy send for him?”

  The man grunted an affirmative. Myles wondered what they were talking about until he heard more voices, saw another traveling lightshow approach.

  The arriving flashlights further illuminated the bizarre scene: McCabe on the ground, his scorched face clamped between the trail and David’s large boot; David himself shirtless, his barrel chest sweaty from the closeness of the forest air, his square jaw set; men gathered around them in a loose semi-circle, drunken scarecrows in tee shirts and jeans, many of them holding bottles of cheap booze.

  “Someone want to tell me what you all are doing to that man?” Sheriff Ledford asked.

  “Isn’t it obvious?” David returned. “We’re taking care of this killer of children.”

  Ledford stepped forward, a stocky man with a sullen look. “I’m assuming you know it’s against the law to drag a man out of his home, beat the hell out of him.”

  “He’s gotten nothing he hasn’t earned,” David said. The men laughed, glanced sidewise at one another.

  “You got any proof?”

  “Ask him.” David hooked a thumb toward his brother.

  Sheriff Ledford glanced at Myles, his look going more sullen. Myles had bedded the man’s sister the year before, never called her again. He grinned at the sheriff.

  “Well, asshole?” Ledford said.

  Still grinning, Myles answered, “David here went snooping around McCabe’s stuff. Found some bloody gloves.”

  “Bloody gloves,” Ledford repeated.

  “Uh-huh.”

  The sheriff turned to David. “That’s it? That’s why you drug this poor bastard out here in the middle of the night, made his face look like that? For Pete’s sake, David,” Ledford said, moving toward McCabe. “What’d you do to him?”

  “He tripped and fell on the stove,” David said and shifted his weight. Myles heard the gardener’s cheekbones cracking as David leaned on his head.

  “Tripped and fell,” Ledford said.

  “That’s right.”

  “You better come with me,” the sheriff said to David.

  “He ain’t goin’ nowhere,” called a voice from the crowd.

  Ignoring it, Ledford said, “Come on, David. Let him go.”

  “Sure.” David grinned, but showed no sign of letting McCabe up. “But do me a favor,” he said and reached into the back pocket of his jeans. Ledford reached for his Colt revolver, but David was already holding out the crumpled sheet of paper.

  “Go on,” David said. “Take it.”

  Ledford did. He frowned.

  “You find this with his things?” the sheriff asked. His voice was different now, huskier. Myles stepped around behind him to read what was printed on the note, the hand child-like, messy:

  i like the sound the jafee girl makes. like a munkees wen she dies. eyes big lik that to. wen the nife go in her it feels so warm the blud. i got to stay out of town awile.

  Myles finished the note, watched the sheriff’s expressionless face. The man stood there reading it over, the only sound in the forest the whimpering from under David’s foot. Myles looked down, tried to see McCabe’s face, but the flashlights were all on Ledford now.

  After a time, he looked up from the note, peered at David.

  “You found this in his stuff?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You think this is referring to the fourth victim, the Jaffrey girl?”

  “I know it is.”

  “You’d testify to that in court?”

  “We don’t need a court.”

  The sheriff watched him, didn’t seem to breathe. Ledford looked hard at David, who didn’t look away. Then, the sheriff said, “Alright. But not here.”

  He gestured at the men behind him, deputies who often came to the parties at Watermere, drank and slept with women who were not their wives.

  “Bring him,” Ledford said.

  He set off through the woods, the whole party behind him. Myles glanced at his brother, who seemed not to mind being usurped. He walked beside the man who was a great-uncle of one of the murdered children. Neither of them seemed to care one way or the other about McCabe’s fate, were intent instead upon passing a bottle of gin back and forth.

  The shack glowed dim. Without a word Ledford led his deputies inside. McCabe stumbled along with them, handcuffed and in a daze. Myles was amazed the man could still walk after all he had been through.

  They went inside and the crowd grew silent.

  A shot rang out.

  The three lawmen left the shack, the sheriff holstering his handgun.
Through the open doorway Myles could see the walls flicker and dance, watched McCabe’s meager possessions shimmer as the flames spread. A fishing rod. A yellowing poster of Betty Grable.

  The sheriff addressed the crowd in McCabe’s front yard.

  “We all know what happened here tonight,” he said. “And we all know what might have happened had this thing gone to trial. We know from the note David Carver found that McCabe killed five kids, that he had to pay for it. Well, he’s paid in this life and he’ll pay in the next as well.

  “Anyone asks you what went on out here, you tell them you were at the bars, drinking.” Ledford laughed sourly. “That shouldn’t be hard for anyone to believe.”

  He scowled at the men, who nodded at him, faces earnest. “You hear me? You had nothing to do with this and neither did we.” Gesturing at his deputies. “We all wanted justice done. It’s done. Let’s not dwell on it. Main thing is, this stupid son of a bitch got what he deserved.”

  With no more fanfare the group broke up. Myles watched them go, lawmen back toward the house, no doubt to make sure it burned enough to destroy any evidence, most of the men toward the limestone quarry where their cars were parked. He did not see David among either group.

  He knew he’d been caught dozing. David would take the car back to Watermere, celebrate his moment in the sun with Annabel, while he, Myles, would hold his pillow over his head and wish the walls were thicker. Annabel never moaned louder than she did with David.

  His hands balled into fists.

  An idea came. He took off through the forest, left the path the drunken men stumbled down. Leaping over deadfalls and rocks he headed for the quarry, knowing if he beat everyone there he would have a chance.

  The distant sounds of their laughter told him he would make it. The woods thinned. He broke from the forest and made for Sheriff Ledford’s patrol car.

  The keys were in the ignition.

  Knowing to dwell upon his good fortune was to risk it, he fired the engine, floored the cruiser. Not bothering with the lights, he relied on familiarity. He had lived in Shadeland all his life, knew every twist and turn by heart. Ahead, he spied a pair of taillights blinking like red eyes in the forest. David’s Mercury was moving fast, but he had clearly not spotted Myles. Figured he was still back at the barbecue.