In This Skin (9 page)

    

    

    ”Thirty-one… you owe me dinner, Leon.”Her eyes were fixed on the door with the busted panel as she spoke. ”Thirty-two.”He promised he'd be back by the time I counted to thirty. You're slowing down, Leon.

    ”Thirty-three.”You're turning from a hare into a tortoise. She kept the jokey thoughts running through her head to keep the other thoughts at bay; that Leon might be in trouble in there. He might have fallen. Or that thing with the devastated face had… ”Thirty-four, thirty-five, thirty-six.” She was counting faster now, almost in the hope it would make Leon's return all the speedier.

    A clatter followed by a bang made her squeal. Gunshots? No. She steadied her breath. The plywood that had been used to board the door had simply slipped back down to cover the hole, that's all. She took another deep, steadying breath, but her heart thumped painfully against her ribs.

    ”Thirty-seven…”

    

    

    ”Thirty-eight.”Leon reached down to grab the tube with that all-too-valuable poster. Hmm… He could almost smell the money He paused. Shit. What's that? The floor looked different. Maybe an effect of the flashlight, only it looked as if there were fallen leaves scattered across the stage. What's more, just a stride or two from the card tube there was a branch. He shone the light fully on the hunk of wood. It was covered in moss. A bright green frog sat in the branch's fork, watching him with bulbous black eyes.

    Hell, what kind of trick was that freak playing here? The cold breeze that surged over him chilled his blood. Straightening sharply, he looked up. A sudden understanding that he was no longer alone crackled through his nerves. That guy's back…

    But it was no single individual. A dozen figures stood in a line in front of him. When he saw their faces he cried out in shock and disbelief. When they lunged forward and brutally hauled him into the shadows, that's when Leon began to scream.

    

    

    ”Seventy-six. Seventy-seven… seventy-eight…”He's not coming back… something's happened to Leon. Kay's heart beat hard. She couldn't take her eyes from the board that covered the entranceway to the Luxor.

    She'd anticipated that any second she'd see it slide back and there would be Leon. There'd be a huge grin slapped across his face and he'd crack a joke about her being a fraidy cat.

    But he's not coming back. He's never gonna come out of there. She'd counted in a whisper, listening hard, trying to catch some sound of him from the ghostly building… nothing. The place had swallowed him down into its guts. He's not coming back… He's not coming back…

    Now, Kay counted slowly ”Seventy-nine… eighty… eighty-one…”If she didn't rack up the numbers so fast then it might not seem so bad.

    ”Eighty-two…”

    She thought: Don't be stupid. Counting slow or counting fast isn't going to make a shred of difference as to how quickly Leon comes back. Go in there. Find him!

    Gripping the flashlight tight in her right fist, with the light blazing hard and bright on the loose hunk of board, she lunged at it with desperate energy. She had to find him. He might be lying hurt. He'd need her to be brave now. Gripping the splintered edge of the board, she swung it aside and shone the light inside.

    A face lunged forward, framed by the hole in the panel. Two monstrous eyes stared at her. She recoiled, screaming at the misshapen head. Veins stood proud of the skin at its temples. Hair stood in short dark spines, more like thorns than real hair. The mouth pulsed-a sight that sickened her; it looked like a red rose that had been dipped in mucus. Silver strands of goo dripped down to the ground. Eyes blazed as the head lunged forward, pushing itself through the hole toward her, at the same time, a savage hiss escaped from the pulsating mouth.

    Screaming, she flung the flashlight. It missed the monster's face and smashed against the wall, killing the light and scattering plastic shards and batteries onto the ground. The world blurred as she ran through near darkness. Ahead sat the car, alone in the lot. Beyond that were distant streetlights and diamond glitter of skyscrapers downtown.

    Something coiled around her bare wrist. For a second she thought a hand had grabbed her, but she saw it was long and wet and gray and tapered to a point. Something like an impossibly long cow's tongue or… she fought to identify the glittering limb… or a tentacle. Screaming, she jerked her hand free.

    Then she ran harder, her feet sounding like pistol shots as they slammed against the blacktop. Any moment she expected that gray glistening thing to loop around her throat. Without stopping, she fumbled the keys that Leon had given her from her pocket. Keyed the button to unlock the doors. Work… work! Please work! Lights flashed. A mechanism clicked, unlocked, thank God. Without looking back, she flung open the door, rammed herself into the driver's seat, winding herself on the steering column. She started the engine.

    Within seconds she was fishtailing that Honda across the lot toward the exit. When her eyes were repeatedly drawn to the rearview mirror to see if that thing followed, she slashed the mirror from the windshield with her fist.

    Dear God, I don't want to ever see that face again. Her stomach churned at the thought of those eyes looking at her. Huge, glass ball eyes. They were so knowing. They recognized something in her face.

    Kay barreled onto the highway, floored the pedal, pointed the car's nose in the direction of home. When at last she pulled up outside the apartment, not only was she trembling and breathless, she realized she was still playing their old counting game. ”Four hundred and five, four hundred and six.”She wanted to stop counting but couldn't. What's more, she knew right then that she'd be counting a long time before she accepted the one true fact: Leon was never coming back.

    

    

    Sunday couldn't have been much gloomier if there'd been a death in the house. Robyn took her book to read out on the patio because she couldn't bear to hear Emerson's endless telephone calls to former associates.

    ”You heard what the bastards plan to do to my company?”Emerson's voice rumbled from his den like thunder. ”They're asset-stripping the fucking factory then moving the whole operation to Mexico, where they'll hire kids your daughter's age to pump molten plastic into the molds. They don't know what they're doing… if the inside of the mold is wet they'll explode and rip the kids' heads off. The fucking shareholders haven't a clue…”

    Robyn tried to return to the book. Reading was the only thing that distracted her from a whole swarm of worries. On top of her mother's husband being sacked from his own company (Robyn couldn't think of him as ”Dad”or even ”Stepdad”) and the bank foreclosing on the house, her body was still behaving so weirdly. Her stomach fluttered like there were butterflies trapped inside. At night she flooded the pillow with perspiration; what's more, she had such weird dreams about people with deformed faces. And she worried about Noel. What made him so physically repulsive to her now? She loved him. She truly did. But on Saturday when he'd come close to making love to her she'd wanted to puke. Now she tried to lose herself in this novel. It would give her a break from all this chaos erupting in her life. Only it wasn't going to be so easy.

    ”Robyn?”Her mother sashayed out of the house in a black and gold silk kimono. She wore a kind of gypsy scarf on her head that Robyn always thought peculiar in the least, but Emerson liked it. 'Nuff said. ”Lovely morning. I can't remember the last time it was as warm as this in April.

    Good book?”

    ”Hmm.”

    This kind of opening gambit of her mother's always tweaked the suspicion chain in Robyn's head. ”Are you and Emerson still going to dinner at the Braithwaites' tonight?”

    ”That pair? I wouldn't go there if you paid me. They held a ten percent share in the company. They couldn't vote Emerson off the board fast enough. They're nothing less than traitors.”The color rose in her mother's cheeks. She took a steadying breath. ”Emerson's determined not to be beaten. He went to see one of his old friends. He owns a truck repair shop over on Goodison Avenue.”

    ”Oh?” Robyn wondered why she was being told Emerson's plans in such detail.

    ”Well, it seems this friend of Emerson's has a workshop he doesn't use and he's prepared to rent it to Emerson for two hundred a week.”

    ”What does Emerson want a truck repair shop for?”

    ”Ah, that's the clever part. It's big enough to house the plastic injection molding unit Emerson used in his factory”

    Robyn shook her head, puzzled. ”But I thought the manufacturing equipment was the property of Emerson Holdings, and that's now owned by the shareholders.”

    ”Emerson's going to start over. Buy new machines. He calculated he only needs a workforce of ten to get up and running again. It'll mean that he has to handle some of the driving jobs as well as managerial responsibility, and I'm going to help out in admin, so we can-”

    ”But Emerson doesn't have any money, does he? You had to re-mortgage the house to bail him out last year”

    ”Not bail him out, dear”Her mother looked hurt by the implication. ”He had cash flow problems caused by his distributor going into liquidation.

    All that stock of his was tied up in their warehouse.”

    ”You think a bank will give him credit?”

    ”No, that's out of the question, unfortunately. She looked Robyn in the eye, then her gaze slid away as she wrestled with some difficult line of conversation. ”Robyn. Emerson needs to regain control of his life again.

    It's more than losing his business; it's as if he's lost a limb.”

    ”I'm sorry Mom. I hope he gets back on his feet again. Only I-”

    ”Your father left you a trust fund, Robyn.”

    ”I know. But what's that got to do with Emerson starting a new company?”

    ”Oh, Robyn. Do I have to spell it out?”

    ”Mom, I'm nineteen. I don't have access to the trust until I reach twenty-one.”

    ”I've been reading the terms of the trust. It stipulates that if there's a financial crisis, you can apply to dissolve the trust and liquidate the bonds.”

    Robyn stared. ”Mom, that's the money that Dad left for me.”

    ”Emerson and I have run the trust figures. Its value stands at just over one hundred thousand dollars. Emerson calculates he can get a new factory up and running for sixty-five thousand.”

    Robyn rose to her feet. Her stomach spasmed hard enough for her to totter. Whatever was happening to her body was frightening her more than she dared put into words.

    Now this. ”No, Mom. Dad put that money in trust for me.”

    ”Emerson will make you a shareholder. He'll see that-”

    ”No, no, no! I'm not giving him Dad's money!”Gripping the book so hard her knuckles turned white, Robyn walked back to the house.

    

    

    That Sunday morning, Benedict West planned to take a drive along the shores of Lake Michigan to a beach of pure white sand. With a warm breeze rolling up from the south, it would be a pleasant foretaste of summer. He'd pulled his sandals from the back of the closet where they'd hibernated for the winter, then changed his sweater for a Hawaiian shirt blazing with impossible sunsets that looked more like the product of a delirious acid trip than calculated fabric design.

    I need this, he told himself. A few hours break on a beach, soaking some sun, getting sand between my toes. Breathing that zinging fresh air. I can enjoy lunch at a diner. Crisp salad with salmon steaks. Just the thought of it made his stomach rumble hungrily First, sunscreen. He had fair skin and those first hot days of spring would charbroil his nose if he didn't slap on a palmful of SPF 20. He remembered that there'd still be a tube of lotion in his suitcase. And that would be… where? He thought for a moment. Yep, in the spare room, under the guest bed. Whistling, he went into the room he used as a general dump slash guest room. He flicked open the blind, admitting a dazzling blast of that unseasonably intense sunlight, then went onto his hands and knees to drag out the suitcase. As always there was a pile of other crud in the way. A block of music 'zines, tied with hairy string.

    An electric sandwich toaster. He hated toasted sandwiches. He'd once snapped a tooth on concrete hard-baked crust. But it was a birthday gift from his mom and… yeah, he'd get that old twist of guilt dumping it.

    ”OK, suitcase,”he muttered into the darkness beneath the bed. ”Where ya hiding?”

    The thing must have sneaked farther under the bed all by itself. ”Now, I've heard of cases on wheels… never one sprouting dinky little legs and scurrying away to hide. Ugh, dust bunnies… lots of dust bunnies… Benedict, you live like a pig, my man. You should exercise that Hoover more.” He kept up the prattle. It had gotten to be a deeply entrenched habit after living alone all these years. ”Now, you old suitcase, come to Poppa… ah, there you are…”

    He caught sight of the suitcase that must have been pushed right back to the wall. Before he could reach it he had to slide out a trio of bright blue plastic storage boxes. He'd been feeling upbeat. The warm spring day provided him with a candy coating of optimism. The moment he dragged out the boxes it was as if a dark cloud had suddenly suffocated the sun.

    A shiver trickled down his spine to coil its cold presence around his intestines. Damn…

    I should have avoided these.

    Through the transparent lid he saw the wad of photographs of Mariah he'd had printed up when she went missing. They say that your first real love always lays claim to a special part of your heart. Seeing her smiling up through the mist of dust on the plastic cover found that hidden corner of his heart and gave it a painful twist. He hadn't seen the photograph in months. Her beauty caught him by surprise. Somehow the memory of the way she smiled and the way her blond hair shone had faded.