House of Skin

by Jonathan Janz

  September, 1988

  The girl was excited to finally explore Watermere. Though she knew she shouldn’t have snuck away from her mom, the thrill of seeing the whole place for the first time more than made up for her guilt. She’d thought she’d be scared once alone in the vast house, but a velvety sense of calm fell over her as she stepped inside the library. The scents of old books and worn leather comforted her. The view of the forest made her feel like a princess in some enchanted castle. Even the large painting over the fireplace brought with it a peculiar reassurance. The woman in the light blue dress had to be Annabel, her mom’s patient. Her mom had said some bad things about the woman, but with a face like that how bad could she be?

  “What a nice surprise,” a voice croaked from behind her.

  Julia whirled, backpedaled away from the haggard woman limping through the doorway. The woman’s appearance was unpleasant enough, but after seeing how Annabel had once looked, the sight of the woman’s red eyes and cracked lips made Julia’s throat constrict.

  Annabel was saying something, but the only word Julia caught was “whore.”

  Julia watched Annabel with wide eyes. “What?” she asked.

  “I said, you should know your mother is a whore.”

  “What’s a whore?” the girl asked.

  “A creature who sleeps with other women’s husbands.”

  “Oh.”

  “Your mother is one, dear.”

  “Oh.”

  “You should also know I don’t treat whores kindly.” Annabel winked with one watery eye. “The last time one made a play for my husband—this was my second husband, dear, and many years ago—I made sure she never did it again, to anyone.”

  The girl’s face clouded. She cocked her head.

  “But my mom takes care of you.”

  “How old are you, dear?”

  “I’m six.”

  “As young as that?”

  Julia nodded, wished there were a way to escape the library without passing by this hideous creature.

  “Then I’ll give you some advice, darling. Appreciate your mommy now.” Annabel grinned. “While you still have her.”

  It felt good to get back inside the house. But the good feeling faded when, halfway up the third story stairs, she heard the clatter of the typewriter. She could volunteer to type for him, she knew, but that would be an endorsement of his new diversion, and what he needed was a swift kick in the rear end. He needed to reclaim his old job at the bank.

  She knew James, his older brother, would welcome him back. His father would be a tougher sell, but in the end she knew she could soften the man’s heart enough to smooth the way for Paul. She sighed, moving down the stairs. Paul still had to apologize to his father for leaving, and Paul was fantastic at screwing things up.

  Emily was thinking this when she heard the scratching sounds.

  They filled the ballroom, sent chills through her body. She realized she had to urinate, that the sounds weren’t helping her hold it in.

  What on earth?

  They increased, changing. It sounded like dying birds writhing in a field of skeletons, and my God, what else did she hear?

  Laughter, faint but undeniably real.

  Hands at her throat, Emily backed toward the bar, sure that at any moment a black throng of demons would swarm over her and pick her bones clean.

  “Stop it,” she shouted. “Stop laughing at me!”

  But the noise grew, doubling in intensity until she found herself scuttling around the edge of the bar, taking refuge in the shadows between the bottles and the wall. She sank to her knees, hands clamped over her ears, screaming now, entreating the voices to stop and wondering why the hell Paul wasn’t coming. Couldn’t he hear?

  On all fours now, Emily stiffened. My God, she thought, maybe that was it…maybe he didn’t hear.

  Maybe the sounds were all in her mind.

  Just like the face you imagined in the shower, the groping hands.

  No.

  You felt guilty for masturbating, so you created a leering white face to punish yourself.

  Absurd.

  How else to explain it, Emily? the voice cajoled. How else if not your overactive imagination and your weak heart?

  “Got to relax,” she told herself. Her forehead beaded with sweat, Emily lay on her belly and rested her right cheek on the cool wooden floor. There, that was what she needed. Something to moor her, to make her feel solid and in control again.

  She had lain that way for some time when she realized the noises had ceased. She raised her head, the skin of her cheek making a peeling sound that reminded her of removing a sticker from plastic. She listened hard but could hear nothing but the muted tick of a clock.

  Exhaling a long breath, she slumped to the floor and stared at the wall opposite the bar. She felt protected here, the liquor bottles behind her and the white wall under the mirror forming a pleasant enclosure, a talisman against the machinations of her fancy. Nothing could harm her, and what was there to fear anyway? Dust? The occasional rodent? This house was no more haunted than—

  Under her the floor moved.

  Emily’s eyes stretched wide, her body tensing into one hypersensitive knot. She was sure she’d felt something ripple just above her navel. Impossible, yes, but she knew what she’d felt, and regardless of what her mind told her—

  The wood beneath her palms squirmed.

  Emily stared in stunned dismay as wooden fingers laced with hers, the floor somehow malleable and very much alive. All around her the cool surface flowed and rippled, and though she tried to disengage her hands, the brown fingers clutched her, squeezed, pulled her toward a face materializing in the wood, deep eye sockets gaping, the hideous grin worse than before. It had lured her here, she realized, sent her scurrying back here for safety so it could have its way, and as she strained to lift her chin away from the open mouth, she felt something brush her thighs, something curved and hard.

  When Emily glimpsed the gigantic wooden phallus she screamed and thrashed, one hand slipping loose but the other one still gripped tight by the laughing, leering monster whose body was now farther out of the floor than it was a part of it, the muscular arms freed to the elbows, the hips actually thrusting upward in an effort to rupture her underwear, to impale her with its filth.

  In desperation she seized the first object her free hand touched. She lifted a large brown bottle and shattered it in the leering face, and the ballroom exploded in a fusillade of screams. The hand that bound her let go, and Emily lunged against the wall. The arms groped toward her, the face now contorted with horrible longing. Within the shadowy wooden maw she could see the tongue darting in idiot lust. She pressed her shoulder blades against the wall, sidled away from the male figure, which was now only connected to the floor by a few umbilical strands of writhing wood.

  Powerful white tentacles enveloped her. She slapped at them, shrieked with what strength remained, glimpsed pale knuckles, ghostly white fingernails.

  Something bit the middle of her back.

  Emily leaped forward, but the steely fingers caught her and jerked her back to the wall. She strained against them, whirled, and now she was staring at her own reflection, at the long strip of mirror above the bar.

  For a moment, she couldn’t even scream.

  In the mirror’s reflection she saw the walls of the great hall alive with male figures, their faces stamped with agony and lust and lunatic wrath. In the floors, the walls, the wainscoting, everywhere she looked, the surfaces of the ballroom were attenuated with flexing fingers, the striations of leg muscles, the obscene sickles of engorged penises.

  Emily closed her eyes against the hellish scene, and only then did she realize the hands grasping her arms, her skirt, were dragging her ever closer to the wall.

  Three inches from it she opened her eyes and beheld the silvery face forming in the mirror. She opened her mouth to cry out to Paul and then the mirrored lips closed over hers, Emily’s image swallowing hers
elf in a smothering kiss. A hard, slick tongue filled her mouth. A pulsing phallus thrust under the edge of her skirt, bumped feverishly against her, bruised the skin around her labia. Scrabbling fingers tore at her underwear, a sea of arms pinioning her legs against the wall, offering her up for the demons who dwelt there. The mirrored face was half out of the wall now, one of Emily’s legs already swallowed up, as if she were being absorbed by the creatures.

  Please God no.

  Weeping, Emily summoned what strength she still possessed and shoved against the mirror. A bright burst of pain stitched her fingers. She glanced at them and realized she still grasped the jagged neck of the bottle. Without thinking she thrust the gleaming brown shards into the side of the mirror creature’s face. She felt the creature scream, gagged as its hard wormy tongue slithered out of her mouth.

  A rush of heat swam away from her and she felt herself released, her body slumping in an enervated pile. Groaning, she crawled away from the wall and saw they were still coming out of the walls, their unholy births nearly complete. Their faces were enraged now, grimly resolute. As she rose unsteadily to her feet she saw, dear God, an ichorous black substance trickle slowly down her leg.

  Under her bare toes, the floor undulated.

  Hissing, Emily broke for the hallway, made it, plunged through the reaching arms that slapped and clawed at her shoulders, her face. She made it to the foyer and discovered a figure rising from the tile, the black and white squares stretching, adhering to the brawny shoulders, the enormous arms banded with ropes of muscle. She sidestepped the articulating figure, careful to avoid the walls, and stumbled out into the night.

  April, 1990

  Annabel threw the bedpan at her, cackled as hot black excrement spattered Barbara’s face. Gagging and spitting, Barbara ran for the door. The wraith rose from the bed, her gown a sheer curtain draping bony shoulders, and razored one walkingstick finger at her.

  “You’re a goddamned whore!” she shrieked.

  Weeping, Barbara stumbled into the hallway. The stink from Annabel’s shit wriggled into her sinuses, sullied her thoughts.

  The smell overwhelmed her. She dropped to her knees at the top of the stairs. Her gorge clenched. Her chest contracted and her breathing ceased. Then the burning chunks dragged agonizing claws up her throat and exploded through her mouth and nose. She retched and moaned and another wave seized her and now there was blood in the bile and digesting food.

  “No,” she pleaded. “No.”

  In moments the dry heaving stopped. Barbara looked at the vomit-stained carpet between her hands. This was it. Her attraction to Myles was as nothing next to her deathless loathing of the chortling invalid who now haunted her very dreams. The time to leave this place was years ago. She knew her life was misspent, her reputation ruined. That did not mean her daughter must also fall prey to the wickedness dwelling between these walls. And inside them.

  Barbara shut her eyes against the terrible memories of what she’d seen. To escape them, she thought of her daughter.

  She still had Julia.

  Julia, who had grown into such a beautiful little girl. Julia, who was only in the first grade, yet smart enough to read the classics. Julia, who could not understand why they almost never visited her father even though he lived so close.

  Thinking of her daughter, of how much fun they would have as she grew up, Barbara pushed herself onto her feet and felt a pair of bony hands shove her forward over the top stairstep. Crying out, she tried to brace herself with an outstretched foot. Her heel skipped off the edge of the step. She felt her leg folding under and a red pain ripping through her groin. The cackling laugh accompanied her tumble down the stairs. Each step found a new body part to punish. Her temple banged the edge of a stairstep, her sprained left ankle ricocheted off the banister. Her head twisted as her body toppled over her and just as she was certain her neck must snap, she felt the wooden floor beneath her.

  “You think you can have him once I’m gone but you’re wrong,” Annabel growled.

  Opening her eyes, Barbara stared up at the ballroom ceiling. Her neck screaming in protest, she leaned forward and glimpsed the figure in the dirty white garment limping her way down the stairs. How could an invalid, backside chancred with bedsores, move so swiftly?

  Unless she’d been feigning weakness, biding her time.

  Barbara pushed herself toward the front door. Annabel’s feet, made ghostly by the pale morning light, slapped the foyer tile. Something flashed at the crazy woman’s side, and Barbara spotted the scissors clutched in her left hand.

  Barbara chided herself. How could she have been so careless? One did not leave a lethal object on the bedstand of an insane person.

  Annabel was coming fast now, her yellow teeth bared. Chin glazed with spittle, she towered over Barbara and raised the scissors. Wincing at the grinding in her ankle, Barbara rolled away as the steel points thunked on the floor where her throat had been.

  Where was Myles?

  On her bad ankle she was not swift, but she was still able to drag herself across the foyer, gain her feet, and escape through the door. Feeling sure she led Annabel by twenty or thirty feet, she allowed herself a look over her shoulder and it was then that the demon burst through the door and threw her wasted body on top of her. Barbara screamed and felt her feet leave the porch. A moment later, the wind was knocked from her as they hit the ground in a tangled heap. They struggled there on the concrete, Annabel’s hand grasping the scissors, Barbara clutching Annabel’s wrist to keep the scissors from descending. Barbara forced a palm under Annabel’s chin and arched her back to rid herself of the woman’s weight. Annabel swatted her hand and lunged at her throat. Barbara howled as rotting incisors pierced the soft flesh under her chin. Desperate, she dug her nails into the skin of the woman’s shoulders. Annabel gasped and came away, mouth bloodied and covered with bits of Barbara’s flesh. In terror, Barbara swiped at Annabel’s exposed throat and laughed in satisfaction as the skin parted in crimson grooves. Gurgling, Annabel rolled off and clutched her throat. The two women regarded each other.

  Even now, blood seeping through her shriveled fingers, Annabel mocked her with her laughing blue eyes.

  Barbara whimpered and scrambled to her feet. The first step on her bad ankle sent pain lancing up her leg. She hopped on her good foot, using her bad ankle only as a crutch. As she neared the forest path she cast a glance back at the porch and was amazed to see Annabel rising to her feet. It was impossible. The woman was losing too much blood.

  Her white gown drenched red, Annabel bent low as she ran, her varicose legs carrying her through the yard toward her prey.

  Barbara wiped the tears from her eyes and disappeared into the woods.

  Behind her, she heard the woman follow.

  Barbara clenched her jaw. She knew these woods as well as Annabel. She concentrated on the path ahead and blocked out the sound of the crazy woman calling out to her.

  “Steal my husband will you? Get rid of me so your little whelp can have a daddy?”

  Barbara felt her ankle giving way. She tried to hop without landing on it but that only made it worse when she did. This was no sprain. She knew by the way it jiggled and swung loose that it was broken, busted and dangling, a useless appendage. If she survived this she would be in a wheelchair for a long time, and that was an ugly irony. Annabel had allowed her to believe she could not walk and now it was clear that all that time she’d been planning this, waiting to attack when Myles was away.

  It was no use. Barbara could not escape on one leg. She had to fight. Barbara knew it would be to the death. Stopping, she steeled herself for the final confrontation. She lifted her hand for a swipe at her enemy’s eyes.

  Her hand falling, Barbara stared in disbelief.

  Annabel was gone.

  Barbara’s eyes strained into the trees. To get off the trail, Annabel would have to have climbed up an embankment. To do that, she had to have considerable strength left.

  Barbara should
not have been surprised, she knew. Annabel’s strength, even as the disease ate away at her body, was uncanny. It was the only reason Barbara had not slain the woman in her sleep. Poison was out because Annabel made her taste everything before handing it to her. She could have used conventional means to murder her, but a superstitious dread always choked her courage. Knives could miss their mark. Guns could jam. The only sure way was to allow the disease to take her by degrees. If she had known it would take seven years to wring the life from her, she wouldn’t have waited.

  Keep moving, she reminded herself.

  She had just started running again when the shadow swept over her and the unspeakable pain ripped through her back.

  As she drove down the deserted country lane, she concentrated on keeping to the center of the road, to for god’s sake not end up in a ditch.

  Though she fought to keep her mind off it, Emily remembered the chalky feel of the white fingers scraping her flesh. God. She shivered, the little hairs on her hands bristling.

  Would those things…get Paul?

  Who cares? the voice of self-preservation answered. You’re out of there, and that’s all that matters.

  Are you really that callous? her conscience rejoined.

  Moaning, Emily punched the wheel.

  She still loved him, she realized now. He had his faults—and they were serious ones—but he also had many endearing traits.

  And now he was alone in that house of horrors.

  She had to do something.

  That’s right, the practical part of her shouted. You need to get the hell out of here and back to Memphis, where the walls aren’t full of monsters trying to rape you.

  Ahead and to her right she spotted the dim glow of Shadeland. Another country road was approaching. She could either keep going and eventually hit the state road that would lead her to the interstate, or she could turn right onto the gravel road, head into town and tell the police that Paul was in danger.

  Emily blew hair out of her eyes and thought of the police’s reaction. They’d think her crazy.