Peel Back the Skin

by Anthony Rivera

  I said some prayers to a God I knew was there but was pretty sure was insane. Or indifferent. Or both.

  My windows are painted black because I sleep during the day. Mostly, anyway. I had a playlist running. John Lee Hooker and Son House. Old blues like that. Some Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen in there, too. Grumpy, cynical stuff. Broken hearts and spent shell casings and bars on the wrong side of the tracks. Like that.

  Stuff I can sleep to.

  When I can sleep.

  Mostly, I can’t sleep.

  My room’s always too crowded.

  They are always there. It’s usually when I’m alone that I see them. Pale faces standing in silence. Or screaming. Some of them scream.

  I wear long sleeve shirts to bed because they scream the loudest when they see their own faces. It’s like that. It’s how it all works.

  When I’m at the edge of sleep, leaning over that big black drop, I can feel the faces on my skin move. I can feel their mouths open to scream, too. Sometimes the sheet gets soaked with tears that aren’t mine.

  But which are mine now.

  Olivia was there for the first time that night.

  Standing in the corner, pale as a candle, looking far too young to be out this late. Thank god she wasn’t one of the screamers. She was a silent one. She with her red necklace that went from ear to ear.

  My name is Gerald Addison. Most people call me Monk.

  I drink too much and I hardly ever sleep.

  And I do what I do.

  A New York Times bestselling author, multiple Bram Stoker Award® winner and freelancer for Marvel Comics, Jonathan Maberry knows his horror.

  Among Maberry’s body of work are the novels Predator One, The Nightsiders, Ghost Road Blues, Patient Zero, The Wolfman and many others. Maberry’s nonfiction books include Ultimate Jujutsu: Principles and Practices, The Cryptopedia, Zombie CSU, Wanted Undead or Alive and others. His award-winning teen novel, Rot & Ruin, is now in development for film, and two of his books, Extinction Machine and V-Wars are in development for TV.

  He edits a number of anthologies including a new series of The X-Files books, the V-Wars shared-world vampire apocalypse series, Scary Out There, an anthology of horror for teens, and the dark fantasy series Out of Tune. He was a featured expert on The History Channel special Zombies: A Living History and is a regular on the series True Monsters.

  Maberry writes comics for Marvel, Dark Horse and IDW and his work includes Marvel Zombies Return, Captain America: Hail Hydra, Punisher: Naked Kill, DoomWar, Black Panther, Marvel Universe vs The Avengers, Bad Blood, V-Wars and Rot & Ruin.

  Since 1978, Maberry has sold more than 1200 magazine feature articles, 3000 columns, two plays, greeting cards, song lyrics and poetry. Maberry co-founded the Liars Club and founded the Writers Coffeehouse. He is a frequent keynote speaker and guest of honor at writers’ conferences and genre conventions including San Diego Comic Con, The Writer’s Digest Conference, The World Horror Con, New York Comic Con, Birmingham Comics Festival and many others.

  He lives in Del Mar, California, with his wife, Sara Jo, and a fierce little dog named Rosie.

  Even when the words took me away, part of me always remained in the real world. I was desperate to be all the way there, beyond. On the tropical island with pirates and vagabonds, in the dusty West with grizzled cowboys and trackers, stomping through deep Arctic snow with icicled explorers, climbing cliffs above a rainforest, existing in places I had never been or seen but which I could imagine so well. And I tried.

  But I was alert to reality and all its terrible sounds, sights and promises.

  True escape was a dream, and it was only in dreams that I found any shred of freedom.

  * * *

  I heard the front door open and close, and immediately I was ready for the first signs of sadness. It was always like this. There were things to listen for, like mumbling under his breath, or doors and cupboards slamming. Closer, there would be something to smell, too; the tang of alcohol or, if he’d been in another fight, the warmth of blood. Merely looking for the possible confrontation, and the grief to come, had become too unreliable because he was good at hiding fury behind a smile.

  Mum knew, too. But I think she was too far gone. I had places I could escape to, at least partially. But Mum always remained behind.

  I'd once asked her if he'd always been like this. She'd smiled and said she couldn't really remember.

  I sat up in bed and glanced at the clock. It was almost midnight. I hadn't heard Mum come upstairs to bed yet, and I wished she wouldn't wait up for him. It was later than usual, so he'd had longer to keep drinking.

  I heard my father's first shout. Through my closed door and the old house's heavy walls and floors, it was an incoherent roar, rising and falling like the swell preceding a tidal wave. Mum's voice came next, high and soft and almost not there at all. He raged, she pleaded. In the five minutes before silence descended again, I did not make out one single word. It was as if they communicated in the language of hate and fear, a dialect still relatively unknown to me.

  But that could not last. Fear grew richer as the hate grew heavier.

  I tried to continue reading. I was a small, weak boy, short for my age and always the last chosen for team sports at school. I wasn't bullied or hated, and I had a few close friends. But when it came to kicking a ball around a field or proving myself physically, I was ignored. I sometimes wondered whether to be derided might be better. At least then they'd acknowledge that I was there.

  It had never crossed my mind to confront him, at least not while I was awake.

  I heard the stairs creaking. Behind and beneath them, a few heavy sniffs as my mother went about locking up the house.

  My door opened.

  "What shit you reading?"

  "It's called Wizard and Glass."

  "Wizards!” He almost spat the word, stumbling into my room and knocking the door wide. He stank of booze, sweat and cigarettes—the stench of mysterious adulthood. There was a small cut above his left eye and a graze on his chin. I'd learned long ago not to ask. He'd only say, You should see the other guy!, and his pride in violence made me feel sick. Sometimes I imagined him saying, You should see your mother!, and my growing hate for him fed on that image.

  "It's good, Dad. Part of a series. You should––"

  "I should what? Fucking crap.” He sat on the end of my bed, sighing heavily as the springs creaked. He was a big, strong man, gone to fat in his middle age but still so powerful. Probably no more than six feet tall, in my eyes he was a giant. "You should be out with mates. Football. That sort of stuff. Girls."

  "I've got friends, Dad."

  "Girls. Your age, I was fucking them behind the village disco. Janey Dickson, she gave me a blowjob, all my mates watching. I tell you that? About Janey Dickson?"

  "Yeah, Dad."

  "This…this…" He reached for the book and I held it protectively against my chest. He glared at me. His nostrils flared. He had never hit me. "Give," he said.

  I slowly lowered the book and slipped in the bookmark before closing it.

  He grabbed the book and threw it across the room. "Get yourself a life. A life! Not bloody reading. Sitting in bed reading when you should be…” He waved a hand at my door, the window.

  A ghost passed by the door, and I looked up to see Mum's nightdress passing out of sight.

  "I need to go to sleep," I said. "Got tests in school tomorrow."

  "Tests!" he said, scoffing. I was never quite sure what he wanted of me. To be more like him, big and brash, a man with rough hands and rougher thoughts or, more likely, to be nothing like him at all. I'm not even sure he knew himself.

  He staggered when he stood up, slammed my door, stomped into the bathroom. I heard him pissing. He always said a real man pisses into the middle of the water. I always peed on the side.

  Laughing to himself, he stumbled across the landing to the bedroom he shared with my mother.

  I buried my head beneath the pillo
w and tried to get to sleep before what came next.

  * * *

  I approach the top of the steep hill at last. It's been a hard climb, made harder still by the weapons I've carried with me—the sword, forged in the deep Northern Caves of Drandor; the spear, once owned by Helgarth the Spite; the heavy spiked club, used to kill the Granmoorian Giant. But I know that they are necessary. Coming up here unarmed would be the same as throwing myself off the mountain.

  Strange winged mammals rise and fall on the currents above me. They're as large as my head with heavily veined wings, colourful duck-like beaks and delicate, long-clawed paws. At a few places on the climb I scared them from their burrows, and I passed close enough to one to see the mewling, pink babies nestled inside. I wonder at a parent's instinct that allowed it to leave its young in the face of danger. Perhaps it's a way of seeing how fit they are to survive.

  A strong breeze drifts across the steep face of the hillside. The last two hundred feet are a scramble. Not quite a climb, but steep enough to cause me serious injury if I stumble or fall. I am being very careful. It's not only my life at stake.

  At last, summiting the hill and standing on the plateau, I see what no one else has ever witnessed and survived.

  There is a forest here, but it is not made of trees. Heavy timber spikes driven deep into the ground bear wretched fruit. Some are still recognisable as people, flesh rotting, hair still clinging onto scalps like the desperate might cling to life. Other spikes bear many remains, so old that the decayed victims have merged into a morass of bone, rotten clothing and shredded skin. The stink is awful. My stomach drops, and my heart cries out as I experience the terror and agony felt across this high, vast plain.

  The forest of death continues for as far as I can see. And not too far from me is a flash of pale skin.

  There she is. Tied to a spike and not yet impaled. Still dressed and moving, still alive. The Draze has not finished with her yet.

  As if summoned by my thinking its name, the Draze manifests from the endless fields of spikes. It might have been hiding in shadows, or perhaps it was so still that I could not make it out, but once it starts running at me, it becomes my whole world.

  I glance once at the woman and she catches my eye. I see no hope there. Only sadness at the prospect of another life lost.

  The fight is epic and heroic, and some time, down through the years, I suspect they will write songs about what happened on the top of that terrible hill.

  I lose a hand, the Draze loses an eye. It tears Helgarth the Spite's spear from my grip and snaps it in half, casting it aside. I lure it close and bury the Drandorian sword in its thigh. The Draze screams in agony and delight. I cry out in rage. The beast steps back and rips the sword from its bone and flesh, throwing it out across the hill and two thousand feet down into the valley below.

  I heft the spiked club. It has tasted giant's blood, but never something as large as the Draze, never a being so dripping with evil. And one so confident of success.

  The club strikes its abdomen and drives it up, back and down onto one of its own spike-trees. It cries out in shock and pain as the spike pierces its chest, bursting from its ribcage with a spew of vile blood and a gush of yellow, poisonous fluid. I climb the beast to finish it. It stares into my eyes.

  But it sees no mercy there.

  The woman is still alive. I go to set her free, wanting to tell her, They'll write songs about us. But before I can reach her—

  * * *

  It was snowing. I was too old to build snowmen and throw snowballs, but Mum and I went outside and did it anyway. The snow was so deep that no cars were coming through the village anymore. We played in the street with neighbours and children. The streetlights were on, casting spheres of light through which the flakes fell fat and heavy.

  "Got you!" Mum shouted. The ball had burst against my cheek and was sliding inside my collar, slick and cold against my skin. "Got you a good one then!"

  I ducked behind a car and formed a ball. My heart was pummelling and I was sweating inside my jumper and coat, but this was just the best time. The best.

  Dad wasn't there, of course. I had vague memories from my childhood of him building a snowman with me, but he'd marched from the house after work that day, having barely been in for fifteen minutes, saying, "I'm going to the pub. Dave's coming over. Don't wait up.” Then, looking at me, he'd said, "Why don't you go and play snowmen, fucking pussy?"

  I didn't know what I'd done to upset him. I was almost seventeen then, and some of my mates from school were regulars at my father's favourite pub. The idea of being there with him was horrific.

  Mum threw another ball, then leaned back against our garden wall. She looked up into the darkening sky and stuck out her tongue, catching snowflakes. I stood beside her and did the same.

  Why don't you leave him? I asked her almost a year before. Because he needs me, she'd replied, and I'd never asked again. When those bad times came, I only thought it.

  We went inside and changed, and Mum made some hot chocolate. I crashed out on my bed and started reading. It was a Ranulph Fiennes book. I loved reading about adventures, pushing extremes, lucky escapes. Dad still thought it was a pointless pastime, and sometimes he told me I should be learning a trade, getting an apprenticeship with a local builder or plumber instead of studying fucking A levels in order to move on and get a useless degree. He often sounded bemused at my choices. On occasion, he became angry with me.

  He'd never once laid a hand on me. It was Mum who bore the scars of his confusion.

  I heard him coming home from way along the street. He was laughing, his friend Dave laughing along with him. They were both drunk, but even though that state always thickened the atmosphere with trepidation, for once I could only hear his good humour. Eight inches of snow had changed the village landscape completely, and perhaps I was hearing the man he could have been, my dad from another existence.

  I threw down the book and turned off the light, opening my curtains and staring out at the glowing, otherworldly snowscape. It was beautiful. The sky had cleared and they were forecasting a heavy frost, meaning that the snow would freeze and stay around for some time. The moon was almost full, and I could have sat there and read in its reflected light.

  Dad was swaying along the middle of the street. Dave was with him. They were still laughing, their conversation a confusion of unheard words and jokes. Dave headed off down the footpath that led to his small housing estate, and Dad seemed to freeze. Then he bent over, staggered, nearly fell, stood up again and launched a snowball at Dave's head.

  He missed. Dave turned and called him a cheeky fucker, and then the two of them were throwing snowballs at each other, ducking behind cars and slipping on ice. They laughed. They laughed so much they snorted.

  I found myself smiling, but sadly. I could not for a second imagine him doing the same with me.

  Which was perhaps why I scooped snow from my windowsill and rolled a snowball, ready for when he walked in front of the house.

  My shot was perfect, a complete bullseye. Something he'd never praise me for.

  He started shouting and screaming at me even as he skidded along the driveway, hateful words that made me feel as if I'd swallowed a handful of ice.

  From the bathroom I heard my mum, and her small scream was all the more terrible because it wasn't fear. It was resignation.

  * * *

  The tree is under siege. I can see it in the distance as I cross the inimical landscape, sight enhanced by suit sensors, alerts sounding as dangers close in. Every circuit of my suit urges me to turn away, but every human instinct keeps me on course. I override tech and good sense and face the future.

  The tree is on a hilltop, alone and regal against the stormy red skies. Its branches are huge and lush, laden with fruit and dense with leaves. It's difficult to tell from such a distance how tall the tree might be—a dozen times my height or a mile into the sky. But however small or large, it's clear that the assaulting armies c
are nothing for its uniqueness. They surge at the hill's lower slopes, like a poisonous sea crashing against unknown shores. They fight the tree's defenders, whose cause is useless, and I rush across the landscape as their only beacon of hope.

  The attackers are small from this distance, difficult to make out. The defenders are saplings, hauled up from their planting points, tendril roots waving at the air. They are far too young to be entering into such a fight, but circumstance dictates the need.

  I leap ravines whose bottoms are way out of sight. My suit sends probing beams deep down, and they bounce back to tell me the rents in the planet are crawling with life, seething, pulsing with violence. I cross an area of open swamp, trusting the suit's sensors to guide me from one solid outcropping to another. The swamp's waters are sheened with an oily skin, beneath which lie isolated instances of quiet, contemplative intelligence.

  The closer I get to the fight on the hill, the more warnings my suit issues. At first they are standard protocols, easy to ignore or put aside, but then the suit's Self makes itself known.

  I advise against this course of action.

  "I can't just leave it," I say.

  The nature of the attackers is uncertain. The source of the tree even more hazy.

  "It's beautiful. It's unique. It might be the only one in the universe, and I can't stand by and let it die."

  Very well. But don't say I didn't warn you.

  "Thank you. Please bring all weapons online."

  By the time I leap eighty feet across the river at the foot of the hill, I can feel the potential power in my arms, my hands and nestled across my suit's faze circuits and nano vents.

  It seems the attackers can feel it, too. They turn as one and come my way.

  For an hour I fight. The attackers are slow but many, and their constant, unrelenting onslaught comes close to overcoming my defences.

  They are a strange conglomeration of plant and animal, with stocky bone legs, spindly bodies, and limbs tipped with sharp spikes to pierce and wedge, or saw-like appendages that buzz at the air as they rub them together. Their heads hang low and drip sap, teeth grinding and growling, eyes rolling backwards in their heads whenever they attack.