House of Skin

by Jonathan Janz

  He gasped when he saw where she’d led him.

  The graveyard was resplendent, its markers glittering like hideous gems.

  Paul staggered to his feet, but the blood drizzling from his multitudinous wounds sullied his vision. He tripped, fell to his knees and felt his face crash against something sharp.

  The air around him cooled, a breeze whispering over his supine form.

  Paul raised his head, read what was printed on the small white rectangular marker:

  ANNABEL SADLIER 1901-1928

  Paul crawled away from the gravestone and read the taller one beside it:

  ANNABEL LILITH WILSON 1850-1893

  “Jesus Christ,” he said.

  Paul rose and turned.

  And sank to his knees as Annabel extended her hand.

  “Please don’t hurt me,” he said. His wounds pulsed agonizingly, the blood pumping out of him onto the tall grass. “Please don’t kill me, Annabel.”

  Fingers touched his shoulder. Gently, he felt her helping him to his feet. He was aware of her smell, no longer sour. Now her scent was sweet and cool, lilacs and spring. Not wanting to see her face again, her awful, half-restored face, Paul read a cluster of markers: WILLIAM SADLIER 1896-1939, MARTHA SADLIER 1898-1922, JEREMIAH SADLIER 1909-1922, DESSA SADLIER 1920-1922.

  He felt himself growing faint, the arm locked with his supporting him.

  The grandfather clock gravestone loomed to his left, and in the brilliant light Paul read ANNABEL GENTRY 1786-1839. Through the waves of lightheadedness he read other names and dates, Gentreys and Wilsons, Singletons and Shadelands.

  A larger granite marker to his right read DAVID CARVER 1917-1950.

  Beside it, an open grave.

  “That’s meant for me,” he said.

  Tears rolling down his cheeks he forced himself to look at Annabel, to ask the question again. He opened his mouth to do so but was transfixed by her almost beautiful face. The words gradual resuscitation flashed through his mind, though this creature didn’t look resuscitated. She looked like what she was—a supernatural creature who wasn’t quite immortal. She had to die in order to live, and because of this necessity, her body had decomposed as any body would. Even now, despite the substantial restoration, the hair wasn’t quite rid of the graveyard dirt. One eye socket still gaped black, the long ago worms and centipedes that feasted there now surely dead too; ragged holes on her forearms and her jaw still in the process of regenerating.

  Yet despite these flaws Annabel was already obscenely breathtaking. Her cheeks, her breasts, her sex…the sleek, muscled legs that seemed to never end… God, even her bare toes made him ache.

  Then she swiveled her head slightly to see something beyond him, and the spell of her beauty was broken. He watched in aghast fascination at the membranous flap growing out of her head, a new ear where none had been. The nascent skin bulged a moment, then a maggot as wide as his middle finger wriggled out of the hole and tumbled into the grass.

  Bile rising in his throat, Paul turned to see what she was staring at, and when he saw it he clapped a hand over his mouth and dropped to his knees.

  Julia hung suspended, her naked body pinned with ropes against the enormous black gravestone. Paul followed the ropes to the giant oaks standing sentinel beside the gravestone, which now clearly read ANNABEL LILITH CARVER. No date was listed, but beneath the name the epitaph read LOVE ENDURES.

  On hands and knees Paul stared at Julia.

  She watched him wild-eyed, the rope around her throat stealing her voice. Her arms and legs were crushed against the marker by the thick rope. Dried blood traced black lines on her flesh. She mouthed something to him but he could not understand it. He felt himself blacking out.

  Steely fingers coiled around his neck.

  “Time,” the voice above him croaked.

  Paul whimpered, cowering in her grip.

  “Choose,” Annabel said.

  He opened his mouth to ask her what she meant. A hatchet landed on the grass before him.

  Paul looked at it, then at the empty grave beside David Carver’s.

  The hand on his neck squeezed. Paul felt the vertebrae there crunch, the cartilage giving way.

  “Choose!” she thundered.

  He lunged sideways, trying to rid himself of her, but the grip on his neck tightened, her muddy fingernails puncturing his skin.

  “Please don’t,” he said.

  Wordlessly, she dragged him toward the hole.

  He felt his feet sliding over the grass, his flaccid member dripping blood. His face moved over the lip of the grave, his shoulders.

  Paul felt himself going forward, falling into darkness.

  “Wait,” he cried.

  She held him there, suspended.

  “I’ll do what you ask.”

  She pulled him away from the lightless pit. Weeping, he crawled back to the huge gravestone and grasped the hatchet.

  Standing, he regarded Julia.

  She watched the hatchet, horror washing over her features. Squirming against the smooth black stone she fought against the ropes but they refused to budge, holding her as surely as an insect under glass.

  Paul shut his eyes. He felt acid sizzling in his throat. He gazed at the hatchet in his hand.

  “What will happen to me?” he asked.

  He felt Annabel’s grin. “You will take his place,” she said.

  He turned away from Julia and saw Annabel standing there, the starlight dyeing her blond hair silver, her limbs glowing ethereally. Within hours and perhaps even minutes, he knew, her new body would complete. Beneath the roiling nausea and paralyzing terror, he was appalled to feel another stirring of lust.

  Forcing himself to look away, he turned and studied Julia’s splayed arms, her pinned legs. He could see how the rope at her throat had made wounds there, the fresh blood shiny.

  She was dying. He peeled his eyes off Julia’s glistening body and met her eyes, which regarded his mournfully. Her gaze flickered back and forth from Paul to Annabel, the vengeful wraith at his shoulder.

  Paul saw Julia’s eyes widen.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  He raised the hatchet.

  Turned and brought it down on Annabel’s head.

  It felled her, yet even as she crumpled he knew something had gone wrong. He stepped back from her shuddering body, sensed Julia squirming behind him.

  He watched Annabel rip the blade out of her temple. She cast it aside. When she faced him he could see the wound closing, the angry ripped flesh knitting itself.

  She stepped toward him and fingernails like scythes swept his forehead. As he fell the flap of torn scalp folded over his eyes. He batted frantically at the loose flap of skin. Through the blood spewing out of his forehead he caught glimpses of Annabel leaping forward, teeth bared, her nails rending and tearing at Julia’s exposed flesh. He heard Julia’s strangled cries and watched in sick horror as Annabel set to work on her neck and her face. Annabel’s head twitched as she fed, the arterial spray soaking her white gown. Julia convulsed as Annabel’s snarling teeth ripped through tendons and cartilage.

  Paul held the loose flap of skin to his head and tried to look away as the spasms ceased, Julia’s body hanging limp against the gravestone.

  Her features painted red, Annabel turned and grinned at him.

  He tried to crawl away but she was already on him, digging at his exposed crotch. His hands moved to block her.

  She tore them apart too.

  He felt his consciousness dissolving in a blackening tide of agony. She stood and seized him by the hair. He felt himself dragged through the grass. Then his body was plummeting into the darkness of the open grave. He landed on his back, his eyes glazing.

  The last thing he saw as the dirt poured over him was Annabel’s grinning red mouth. She said something about the walls of the house, but he couldn’t quite make it out. Then, as he began to suffocate, he realized what she meant and why he’d seen Myles Carver’s face in the wal
l. It brought on one last scream, but the falling soil swallowed it up.

  After

  Watermere was alive.

  Even out here on the veranda, Tommy McLaughlin felt the carnal energy, the throbbing desire charging the air. The band playing inside had the couples worked into a frenzy, the guitarist going off on a chaotic riff, the drummer and bass player following wherever he went. The salacious odors of hard liquor and cigarette smoke wafted out of the open French doors.

  Tommy had seen Sheriff Timmons stealing up the stairs with a woman much younger than his wife. Mrs. Timmons, liplocking with a cute little redhead, didn’t seem to mind. McLaughlin had never pegged her as the bisexual type, but there she was, her long fingers massaging one of the redhead’s pert breasts through her dress. He never would have guessed the Timmonses were swingers, yet lately it was all the rage, the whole goddamn town intent on sleeping around until marital vows were punchlines.

  Maybe it was in the air, the hot thrum of lust driving them all crazy. Maybe it was the warmth of the summer night after the months of snow and rain and investigations and mourning. Maybe the booze had something to do with it, though Tommy suspected it was something far less obvious, some fundamental alteration in the collective psyche.

  Whatever it was, he had to steal out here into the moonlight to get his thoughts in order.

  He’d recovered from Sam’s disappearance, though he still wondered about him sometimes. It was assumed that the sheriff had gone the way of Ted Brand, the Memphis girl who used to date Carver, that poor old woman from the library, Julia Merrow and that dumb shit Daryl. Yet unlike the others, Sam’s body had never been recovered, and it wasn’t as if that maniac Paul Carver had bothered concealing all his victims. Despite the midnight shroud of sultry air baking him, Tommy shuddered at thought of the Henderson girl, dead in her car. The craziest part about it—even crazier than the fact that she’d made it all the way to Shadeland only to crash on a stretch of road about as safe as a city sidewalk—was the look on her face. Or what was left of her face. As if she’d gotten the world’s worst scare. Tommy took a big swig of whiskey and fought to put the image out of his mind.

  And speaking of scares… Jesus, he still couldn’t believe the number Paul Carver did on the Merrow girl. Her once terrific body—which, if he was absolutely honest, he’d lusted violently over and had often fantasized about until he was too sore to piss—looked like it’d been gotten at by a pack of machete-wielding werewolves. Add to the five dead bodies Sam Barlow and you had a bona fide serial killer, the first ever in this part of the state.

  Tommy shook out a cigarette—Annabel had gotten him started on the things—and lit up. He thought of Julia’s mutilated throat, the rope marks on her arms and legs…

  Yet Paul Carver was still on the loose. Thinking of Carver, Tommy sipped his whiskey, glared at the forest surrounding the yard. God, what he’d give for five minutes alone with the vicious son of a bitch. He’d make him scream for every rip in Julia’s flesh, every bite mark on her once-beautiful throat. And the librarian… What the hell had been her name? Merten, he thought, Bea Merten. Who the hell did something like that to a defenseless old lady? Her whole damn face torn clean off her head, the only thing left a pink tongue lolling from a red-stained skull.

  Thinking about Paul Carver, Tommy brought the cigarette to his lips, drew hard on it. He grunted, blew out a plume of smoke. Yep…Carver—Great name for a serial killer, Timmons had joked—was as dangerous and twisted as a person could get.

  Of course, there were other theories, but none of them made much sense. Some said Sam had been in on it from the beginning, that he and Carver were a killing team, that they’d escaped to Mexico and were trolling the beaches for fresh senoritas to screw and slay. Another scenario had Sam as a cannibal. Never mind that Julia Merrow was the only victim found with bite marks, the idea here was that the reason Carver had never been found was that Sam Barlow was the real killer and that Sam had eaten him. Tommy took another drink and almost smiled at the thought of Sam going all Jeffrey Dahmer on that bastard Carver.

  Tommy furrowed his brow, moved over to the veranda railing.

  If Sam wasn’t one of Carver’s victims, Tommy often wondered, how else could his disappearance be explained? If Sam had decided to jump ship in the middle of it all, how could Tommy reconcile that with what he knew of the man? The Sam he knew stuck things out until the bitter end. Had the events of the summer driven him mad?

  Regardless, he was gone. It was a blow to the town, a loss to him personally. The man had been like a father to him. He compressed his lips, stared sourly down at the lawn. When Tommy’s parents died a month after Sam disappeared, killed senselessly in their sleep by a house fire, he thought life couldn’t get any worse.

  He met her at the funeral.

  The tall blonde woman said she knew his mom from his mother’s time as an elementary school teacher. Annabel had been her pupil.

  They hit it off right away, Annabel holding him as he wept, her shedding some tears too. She was the first girl who really looked at him, really gave two shits about how he felt. She was the one who’d suggested he use his parents’ insurance money to bid on the old Carver house.

  The idea seemed absurd to him when she’d first suggested it. Why would he want to live in the house where the killer had lived? If any place was cursed, he reasoned, it was Watermere. And what if Carver decided on a homecoming? If Tommy saw him again, the guy’d wish he’d never stepped foot in Shadeland. If Tommy didn’t see him coming, however, and if Carver was canny enough to get the drop on Sam…

  He won’t bother us, Annabel had insisted.

  Tommy said no way, he wouldn’t bid on Watermere. The place was cursed.

  Annabel had laughed at that, the idea of a cursed house.

  The look in her eyes, as they sat there in her cramped little studio apartment near the library, told him that possessing Watermere meant possessing her too. He couldn’t say why he felt that way. It just was.

  He won the auction and had money to spare for renovations. They spent the spring working on the place, getting it ready for summer.

  They married.

  When they arrived back from their honeymoon two weeks later Annabel said, “It’s time.”

  She was right. It was time.

  Although he knew the town needed a diversion, something to get its mind off the tragedies of the previous year, he had no idea its need was this great. Nor did he know how brazen some men could be. Not even bothering to do it discreetly, to humor him at least, they watched Annabel like jackals salivating over a new kill. Tommy felt a weird kinship with the men’s wives, feeling as indignant as they did at the way their husbands eyed Annabel.

  One, though, was taking it too far. As a matter of fact, here she came…

  “Have you seen Doug?” Karen Timmons asked. She’d left her redhead inside.

  “I haven’t seen him,” Tommy answered without looking up.

  “Oh no?” Karen asked. She smiled a slow, lazy smile. “And what about your

  wife? Have you seen her?”

  Tommy tensed. “Are you implying something, Karen?” He dared her with his eyes to say more. Sheriff’s wife or not, he’d wipe that fucking smirk off her face.

  She returned his stare. “I don’t have to imply anything about that whore.”

  His arm was out before he knew it, his fist smashing her front teeth. She went down, holding her mouth. McLaughlin glanced about to see if anyone had witnessed it, but the veranda was deserted.

  “How dare you?” she mumbled, but he could tell by the cowed look on her face she’d backed down. For now.

  “Go find your redhead,” he said.

  Karen Timmons stood and straightened her dress.

  “Doug will hear about this.”

  “Doug’s too busy to care right now. And he’s not with my wife.”

  It hit her hard. Karen dabbed at her bloody lip, watched him to see if he was joking.

  “Go on,”
Tommy said. “He’s upstairs with that waitress from Redman’s if you want him.”

  Karen crossed the veranda and passed through the French doors.

  Across the yard, Annabel emerged from the forest. Her light blue dress hung low on her chest, her creamy skin luminous. She fixed him with her hypnotic eyes and held him there as she ascended the steps and stood next to him. He handed her his drink.

  Working to keep the suspicion out of his voice, he asked, “Out for a late stroll?”

  She looked toward the woods. “It’s lovely tonight.”

  “The trees or the house?” he asked. “Or the party?”

  “All of it,” she said, and he had to wrap her up, kiss her as deeply as he could. Even there with her he felt she might disappear at any moment, that her interest in him would soon flag. She wiggled against him, her perfect body naked beneath her dress. In her heels she was taller than he was. He was dizzy with his need for her, the cleft between her legs achingly close to him.

  “I love you,” he said.

  She stiffened and pulled away.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  She cast a glance toward the house. “I saw you talking to Karen Timmons.”

  McLaughlin grunted. “She thinks you’ve got eyes for her husband.”

  He waited for her to refute it, but she stared into the forest.

  “I punched her,” he said.

  She nodded.

  “Are you mad at me, hitting a woman? It’s not something I usually do.” His voice went lower. “In fact it’s the first time.”

  “It was necessary,” she said.

  “Necessary.”

  “But it won’t last.” Annabel’s voice had gone flat, lifeless.

  “It won’t?” he asked. He felt himself getting lost in her voice, as he did more and more often lately.

  “Something will have to be done about her.”