House of Skin (33 page)

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.

You’re going to let your fear of ridicule keep you from saving Paul?
 

“Dammit,” she said. She flicked on her brights and turned toward Shadeland.

The gravel road was pitted and dark, the woods on either side dense and overflowing. Her heart stuttering ominously, Emily bit her lip. Had she made a mistake? If Paul had lived there safely all these months, why would he be in any danger now? It was her they wanted, not Paul.

Time to go home, Emily
.
Paul can take care of himself
.

She slowed, ready now to turn around and head back toward the state road, but there was little room to maneuver, and the last thing she needed was to get stuck in a rut and have to hike back to town. She thought again of Paul, of his obsession with horror movies and books, and remembered one of the novels he’d all but forced her to read. She forgot the name now, but it had scared the living crap out of her. The setting, she remembered, was very much like this. Deep in the woods, far from any living soul. The branches smacking the side of her car, her wheels jouncing on the primitive road all sounded like a tribe of demented cannibals. She resolved to never read another scary book again.

Emily gripped the wheel tighter, thinking of the creatures that had nearly raped her, nearly killed her. She thought of the tongue poking around in her mouth, the penis befouling her skin.
Damn you, Paul,
she thought.
Damn you for leading me to such a horrible place
.

The woods closed in on her bouncing car and she thought of the horror novel, the scene in which the main character had glanced at the rearview mirror and seen the killer staring at her from the backseat.

“Oh God,” Emily said. The hair on the nape of her neck tingled. She willed her eyes to stay on the road, but knew she had to look. She thought of the leering faces in the walls, the vile laughter surrounding her.

Emily glanced up at the mirror. In the gloom she could barely see the backseat.

It appeared to be empty.

Relaxing a little, Emily turned her attention back to driving and saw the woman in the white dress standing in the road, grinning at her.

Emily screamed and wrenched the wheel. All she could see was the woman’s leer, the hateful blue eyes, as the Camry left the road and soared over the lip of the ravine, the front end dipping and heading for a huge stone.

She opened her mouth to scream again, but the weight of the car crushed her on the rock. The car continued over, flipping and settling on its blown tires.

Emily lay limp in her seatbelt, her eyes seeping blood.
 

April 1990

Julia looked up from her reading. Someone had knocked on the screen door. Setting her book of poems on the floor beside the rocking chair, she moved through the silent house. She hoped her mother had come home. She opened the screen door.

And saw the bad woman in the hospital gown disappear into the woods.

Julia looked down.

Her mother lay in the grass below the porch, the skin around her face gone. She walked down the steps and stared at where her mother’s face had been.

She saw her mom’s white skirt had been raised, her underwear taken off. Sticking out of her, only the circular handles visible, was a pair of scissors.

Book Three

Annabel

Chapter Nineteen

Paul ran to get it out of his system, the polluted way he felt after the automatic writing, if that’s what it was. He caught a glimpse of himself afterward, a shadowy reflection in a picture frame in the den. He’d glanced at his reflection first, not liking what he saw. Then, he pulled focus and saw what was in the photograph.

In it were his uncle and a woman not his uncle’s wife. The lady looked an awful lot like Julia. Myles had an arm slung around the woman’s waist in a casual way, like he was used to doing it.

What really caught his attention, though, was his own face, transposed on top of his uncle’s. Myles was shorter, a bit more compact, but absent of that, the resemblance was unsettling. Rather than lingering on it, he went on a run.

Around him the shadows were marshaling over the forest. The droning whir of the cicadas swallowed the sound of his padding sneakers.

Emily was gone, had probably been gone for hours. The only guilt he felt was at not feeling guilty. He knew he should, they’d been together for a long time before breaking up. Yet stripped of his needfulness, the relationship crumbled. Since he was no longer her project, there was really no need for them to pretend. He’d not been surprised to see the red car gone from the driveway, was actually relieved she’d come to the same conclusion on her own.

What scratched at his thoughts was the new novel. It was a sequel of sorts to
The Monkey Killer
. He’d gotten a bit of the first notebook, the red one, down in type, read through it absently as he hunted and pecked. Annabel and Myles were again the main characters, though their relationship had begun to change in much the same way as Annabel’s relationship with David had.

Paul had a hard time believing it was all true. Though he didn’t like to linger on the identity of the author behind the work, he couldn’t help but wonder if it was Myles, Annabel, or his own subconscious. Reason dictated the first two choices were outlandish. The notion of a literal ghost writer was the stuff of horror novels. Much more likely was the possibility of his cobbling together the elements he knew—Barlow’s story, the snatches of innuendo he’d overheard from his parents growing up, his own exploration of Watermere—and fashioning them into a coherent narrative with his own imagination.

Then why did he feel so helpless? And why did he remember so little of the writing?
 

He’d heard authors say they created the characters and let them do their thing. Was this how it felt? His characters were already created for him, their internal logic innate. Was it really that much of a stretch to suppose he was capable of recreating the past?
 

And who was to say the novels were really true? Julia recognized enough of her father in
The Monkey Killer
to be enraged. That meant there had to be a dark pearl of truth in the narrative. Yet she didn’t believe the tale completely. Just the opposite, she refuted it, insisted he was telling lies about the dead.

He thought of Julia as a child, how it must have been for her. No wonder she had trouble trusting people. The sight of her mother, brutally murdered, must have caused irreparable damage.

Maybe he could help. It had taken the unfortunate episode with Emily to show him how much Julia meant to him, but the point was, he realized it now. She was the best thing that had ever happened to him. Wasn’t it possible she could forgive him?
 

Feeling better, Paul chugged through the forest and wondered where the story would go.

Julia was sitting on her porch when he emerged from the forest. She watched him approach and did her best to keep her expression neutral.

He was looking at her now with an expression she couldn’t place. His face was thinner than when she’d seen him last, his body sturdier. His arms were fuller, roped with muscles that reminded her of the pictures she’d seen of her Uncle David.

“Julia,” he began. “I—”

But she cut him off. “I miss you,” she said.

It stopped him.

“I miss you too,” he replied. “I’m sorry about the things I wrote.”
 

She nodded, moved closer. He seemed taller than before, and that, too, reminded her of David Carver.

She said, “I’ve heard writers say that they have to write, they don’t really have a choice.”

The way he gaped at her, she’d caught him off guard.

“Is that true?” she asked.

“Well, yeah,” he said. “As a matter of fact, it
was
like that.”
 

“And I can’t fault you for wanting to make money.”

“I didn’t write it for money.”

She watched him for a moment. Then, she stepped onto the sidewalk. He stood up straighter now, and that too made him seem larger than before.

“I’m glad you came,” she said. She laced her fingers behind his neck, liking the sweaty feel of his skin on her wrists.

“Yeah?”

“Very much.”

She almost kissed him then, but waited, wanting him to do it. She felt him growing hard against her, felt herself go a little dizzy from wanting him. Their argument seemed very distant, her anger disproportionate to the situation. Standing here with him, the late summer air close and humid, all she wanted was to go inside, to give herself up to him, her windows open and the heat drowsing over them as they lay in bed.

His frown stopped her.

“What is it?” she asked.

He wouldn’t meet her eyes as he said, “I think I’ve messed things up again.”

She waited.

“Remember me talking about an ex-girlfriend? The one I wasn’t very good to?”

“Yes,” she said, pretending to think. “It was Emily, wasn’t it?”

“That’s right.” He grew shamefaced. “The thing is, I don’t know how to say this to you without ruining the moment.”
 

“Then just say it.”

“After you and I stopped seeing one another, a lot of time went by—at least, it felt like a lot of time.”