House of Skin (16 page)

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.

Annabel fell against the base of the window, the splintered glass bloodying her arms. David stepped forward just as a brittle thump sounded from the ground below. The sound of voices came, the sounds of people gathering around the dead woman, children screaming, thudding footsteps on the stairs behind them. Ignoring his bleeding wife, David dashed to the window and leaned out. Myles felt the door swing open behind him and men were rushing by, jostling him as he stared at Annabel sitting on the floor. He felt absolutely nothing, nothing for Maria as he heard the voices below confirm she was dead, nothing for his brother who leaned now on the broken stained glass, the shards piercing his palms, his broad shoulders wracked with sobs. Nothing for himself.

But looking at the slender woman sitting bloodied against the windowsill, whose terrible laughter now rose above the shrieking of the guests, he finally felt something, and what he felt was fear. Fear of her, and fear of what they’d let into their home.

Chapter Twelve

By six o’clock he’d killed a pint of whiskey, ridden the riding mower around the yard for an hour in no particular pattern before running out of gas and taking a nap under an elm tree. Then, he ate half a bag of pretzels by way of supper and read eighty more pages of
Ghost Story
. Once, a robin lighted on the grass a few feet from where he sat, but when he tossed a pretzel in its direction, it uttered a snobbish chirp and fluttered away.

The novel cheered him. That, at least, was a pursuit worthy of his time. While he killed brain cells with drink he could keep the ones that remained entertained. Switching over to beer, he carried the book and a small red cooler he’d filled with ice and a six-pack of Budweiser to the back porch for an evening of cheap entertainment. Studying the author’s picture inside the back cover, the bald dome and intelligent eyes, Paul wondered how a guy learned to write that well. voice inside his head answered.
Not by pickling his brain with alcohol and stewing in self-pity,
a

“Piss off,” he said aloud.

May was a good month to read outdoors, he thought. The lilac bushes near the veranda breathed their sweet breath, which mixed together amiably with the aroma of freshly cut grass. Inhaling deeply, he reached inside the screen door and flipped on the back porch light. The weather was just cool enough to keep the bugs from flitting and buzzing about his ears, and just warm enough to make a long-sleeved shirt unnecessary. Settling himself in the yellow lawn chair, he cracked open a beer, sipped it and read.

A bit later, he refilled the cooler.

The beer lasted until ten thirty. He was good and drunk, but he still had wits enough about him to move about the house. As he always did when he drank a lot, he entertained crazy notions. Calling Emily up and asking her to marry him. Driving back to Memphis to tell his father what he really thought of him. Jogging into town to raise hell at a local honkytonk. It was early yet—the idea wasn’t all that bad. He could walk there, or better yet, hop on the riding mower and get there by eleven or eleven-thirty. There’d still be time to shoot a game of pool or sweet talk some local gal. The latter was probably out of the question though. He could smell his own breath—a rank mixture of cream cheese and beer—and in his stained tee shirt and tattered blue jeans he looked like he should be sleeping at the train yard.

What to do then? He wasn’t particularly hungry, and he knew if he slept now he’d awaken too early. Mornings were best slept through.

He caught a glimpse of the woods through the parlor window.

Lovely, dark and
deep
, he thought, remembering a poem he’d read in high school. The forest was a mystery, a dark lady yearning to be explored.

Just one stop before he embarked.

The ballroom flared into brilliance, the twin chandeliers showering their lunar glow over the black and white tiles. Paul made a revolution around the large room, just avoiding the rich vermilion sofas, the brocade chairs, which sat around the dance floor like torpid spectators.

Stopping at the bar—marveling again that he owned it, as well as the sprawling ballroom reflected in its long strip of mirror—he fished out another pint of whiskey and crammed it into his pocket. Pushing away from the bar, he executed a spin and a leap and was proud when he stuck the landing. His shoes squeaked as he leaned and stumbled through the ballroom and the sounds of his crazy dance grew louder until their feverishness brought him to a listing stop, palms planted on knees, mouth dry and panting.

The sounds continued around him. Scraping, insistent.

It was the rats, of course. The place was acrawl with the verminous fiends though he’d yet to spot a single one. A deep, body-rocking shudder gripped him. The little bastards. If their aim was to chase him from the house, they were going to succeed. His skin throbbing and cold, he shivered as he heel-toed it down the hallway and out the front door.

The night air was a welcome warmth in contrast to the chill of the house. His jeans were a necessary evil, for how else could he carry the pint? His shirt, however, was dead skin to be shed. He left it lying in the gravel as he set off through the grass, carrying him to the forest’s edge, to the inky mouth of the trail. Passing through, he thought again of Robert Frost, how Paul had it better than the guy in the poem. He had no promises to keep, no horse to water, no obligations to fulfill. He was free to haunt this hollow, to extend his naked arms and feel the cool new leaves kiss his fingertips, nuzzle his palms. He loved it all, the towering sycamores, the underbrush that hid what lived in the forest, though he could neither see nor hear any life save what was green and silent. An idea came to him then and branching off in a direction he and the sheriff had not taken, Paul clamped the neck of the bottle sticking out of his jeans and lifted it out, relishing the warm way the glass slithered up his thigh.

He was amused to find he was sexually aroused, both emotionally—as he always was when he drank—and physically, as he could almost never be when the alcohol had taken the verve from his loins.

He grasped the bottle like a baton and took off running down the trail. He was heading for a fall, he knew. Not only was he chronically inactive and apt to faint from exertion, but the forest was dark as hell. At any moment a root could upend him, snare his foot and give his ankle a savage twist. As he ran, chest burning, he pictured himself tripping and diving headlong into a tree trunk, or toppling end over end and snapping his backbone at the bottom of some rocky gorge.

Perhaps that’s what happened to Ted Brand
, he thought. The lawyer had gotten into Uncle Myles’s stash and gone for a jog in the woods. Why, he could happen upon the corpse at any minute. Bloated and rotting, squirrels or rabbits nesting in his hollowed out gut. Rats feasting on his eyes.

That made him stop and rest against a tree. He hated the rats, hated the way they’d chased him from his home.

However, if it weren’t for them, for their alien rustling, he’d never have discovered this new path in the woods. He leaned against a sycamore tree, its smooth curvy length filling the space between his shoulder blades, and sliding down, he unscrewed the cap and sipped. Seated on the forest floor, he rested his forearms on his knees, closed his eyes and felt the back of his head thump against the tree. His breathing slowed, his chest rising and falling softly.

He awoke to the sound of something scurrying behind him. Sucking in breath, he shoved away from the tree and peered beyond it, straining his eyes in the darkness to find what had awakened him.

How long had he been out?

Backpedaling, he craned his head to look at the sky.

There were no stars, no moon to orient him. He wondered vaguely if he’d lost the pint before he realized he still grasped it.

The scuttling came again, sending him farther from the tree. He threw skittish glances over his shoulder at the unseen menace. When he’d gone what he hoped was a safe distance from the source of the noises, he pivoted and faced the place where he’d rested. Nothing but the lone tree stood out on the black tapestry.

A breeze rustled through the hollow, chilling his skin, making him glance over his shoulder. He turned back to the sycamore tree and stopped, breath catching in his throat.

He turned again and couldn’t believe what he saw.

The graveyard filled the large oval clearing before him, its stone markers aged and standing at tired angles.