Under My Skin
To the man. I love you. Forever and ever. Amen.
Also Available from Resplendence Publishing
www.resplendencepublishing.com
Under My Skin
By Sommer Marsden
Resplendence Publishing, LLC
http://www.resplendencepublishing.com
Under My Skin
Copyright © 2013 Sommer Marsden
Edited by Darlena Cunha and Simone Anderson
Cover art by Kendra Egert
Published by Resplendence Publishing, LLC
2665 N Atlantic Avenue, #349
Daytona Beach, FL 32118
Electronic format ISBN: 978-1-60735-620-2
Warning: All rights reserved. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.
Electronic Release: January 2013
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and occurrences are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, places or occurrences, is purely coincidental.
To the man. I love you. Forever and ever. Amen.
Prologue
“I’m telling you, Minnie, it feels off.” I tucked the phone under my chin and tried not to trip on the damn thing. My brand new kitchen had a way-old phone. It actually had a cord, for goodness’ sake.
“Off how? Off is relative when it comes to you, twin sister, dear.”
I snorted, and Minnie made a high-pitched sound that said she was laughing at me. “Har har.”
I slipped my silverware—triple wrapped in plastic—into my freshly washed and tidied drawer. I had just spent three hours wiping down the room and cleaning everything. I wanted it as spic and span as possible for me and my own energy. Most people don’t realize when you move in a new home, along with other people’s dirt, you get other people’s emotions.
“I mean,
what
is off, Juliet? Is the paint too bright or the window too small or…what?” My sister was mocking me.
“The energy,” I said, pushing a stack of brightly colored cake plates into a small side cabinet. “Don’t play dumb, Min. You haven’t just met me. You know, your
sister
…the sensitive. Resident
psychic medium
,” I chuckled, making a joke at my own expense.
I swore I heard her smile over the phone line. I could picture my sister in my mind. Same long unruly dirty blond hair as mine. Same startling blue eyes that could turn gray with mood, weather or depending on what color we wore. But we weren’t identical, we were fraternal. She was shorter and curvier than me, her nose just a bit sharper. And her tongue.
“Juliet, let’s face it, any place is going to be off to you, right? Any place you go is going to be steeped in someone else’s emotions and past, yes?”
“Yes,” I agreed, wiping my hands on my shirttails and leaning against the giant butcher block island in the center of the room. “True story.”
“Well, then, just deal with it. There is no clean space for you, really. Unless you build a brand new home from scratch and not a single worker has a bad day or an illness or any of that.”
I nodded even though she couldn’t see me. She was right.
“So take this new home and treat it as your own. Smear your own energy all over the place.”
I snorted, eyeing my shirt. It had been Justin’s. My heart crimped up at seeing it. Three years had not dulled my loss, and despite being psychically sensitive and talking to spirits more often than not, I had yet to see or talk to him. I wondered if it were somehow taboo for us to speak or if he thought it would be too painful for me to see him.
“Hello?” my sister sighed.
“Sorry, I hear you. You’re right. Though I don’t know about
smearing
my energy all over the place. Kind of makes me sound like a monkey—”
“Juliet!” she snapped, knowing where I was going with that analogy. “Onto other things. How are you doing? I mean…how are you
doing
?”
She meant moving out of the former home that Justin and I had shared before he died. She meant on my own. She meant finally embracing the fact that I was single and maybe moving on with my new life. Montgomery House was that chance. I mean, how often do you get to buy a house with a name? And I’d gotten it for a song. Which worried me, but…
“I’m fine,” I lied. “No worries.”
“I’m coming to see you soon,” she threatened, and I smiled.
“You’d better.”
* * * *
He was big—big and looming. But he was also thin. The kind of build that made the mind pull up images of a praying mantis or some ungodly sea creature trapped in the darkness near the ocean floor. Just seeing him turn his muddy eyes to me made my heart thunder.
“You’re here,” he said and smiled.
The smile was the most frightening aspect of his appearance. It twisted his face in such a way that it reminded me of a molded rubber mask that had gone askew. Almost as if his skin didn’t quite fit on his bones the right way.
I turned to run, and when I did, his long arm shot out to plant a big, strong hand on my shoulder. Being touched by him was like experiencing the most sudden and all-consuming emptiness imaginable. A sob ripped out of me.
“I thought three was my lucky number,” he said, his voice gravel turned under a tire. Sand scraped across stainless steel. It made my head hurt, and my heart followed suit.
I pulled against his strength, knowing I’d never break free until I awoke. I knew by the energy I was trapped in a dream. Knew he couldn’t
really
hurt me…not yet. But I also knew that as long as I slept, I was his. This was the secret my new house held. This energy. And this was where I’d be until I could drag myself back up to my conscious mind.
“Three what?” I managed, stalling.
“Three girls before you came.” The cadence of his words stirred goose bumps along my skin. The fine hairs of my scalp prickled with dread.
“You killed them?”
“I consumed them,” he said. “Their essence.”
The urge to scream was overpowering. The urge to weep even stronger. Instead, I did the only thing I could do. I turned
into
his grip to face him. He looked surprised for a moment, his long rubbery face and his sick brown eyes showing shock. But then he smiled, and that hole seemed to open in my stomach again. I studied the face. The old-fashioned brown suit. The proper white buttoned-down shirt. Cufflinks, a tie clip, wingtip shoes and close-cropped hair.
Then I bit my tongue as hard as I possibly could and tasted blood. His face lit up when the coppery taste flooded my mouth. Maybe he could smell it. But then he realized what I’d done and frowned at me.
“You’ll be back,” he said. “I’m here all the time.”
I woke up.
Chapter One
It’s always in the attic, isn’t it? The Nancy Drew books taught me that. Various other old mystery movies and books and shows, too. I wasn’t sure if it was too much Murder She Wrote or just common sense, but in the morning, when my heart had stopped fibrillating from my late night visit with the man I could only assume to be the former owner of Montgomery House, I went into the attic.
His attic…
“My attic, thank you very much!” I called out in case his energy had put that thought into my head. “I live here now. This is my home.”
Another twist of dark fear worked through me because it felt like the house was laughing at me. Mocking me.
Three girls…
“I’ve dealt with too many spirits—good, bad and ugly—for you to scare me,” I whispered, spotting an old trunk in the corner. “But trust me,” I sighed. “You take the prize for ugly.”
I snickered at my own joke, but then a lamp crashed to the unfinished wood plank floor, and I almost peed myself. I refused to acknowledge it, though. I just kept on course and stood before the trunk, blowing off about six inches of dust.
I found it amazing no one had opened the trunk while showing the house. No one had ever been tempted to—then I touched it, and my body recoiled. I felt sick and clammy and like I might throw up or die…maybe both. So this was why no one had disturbed it. It was like touching death and despair and chaos all at once. Even a layman, someone not sensitive to energy at all, could feel that. They might not recognize it for what it was, but they’d feel it and react.
“This must have been yours, then,” I said. I shut my eyes, took a few deep breaths and made myself go still inside. I pictured blazing white light all around me like I was wrapped in it, then I opened the trunk. My hands were still shaking, but I felt more in control.
Another murder mystery moment—the trunk was full. Stuffed to the gills with a man’s items. An old-fashioned shaving cup with the boar’s hairbrush, a straight razor. That made me shiver. A neatly folded pile of dark-colored trousers filled one corner. A pair of suspenders, a Bible, piles of papers that appeared to be about the house then what I’d been hoping for.
“Aha,” I sighed.
A book stuffed with newspaper clippings.
Loose women…whores…every last one.
I heard the terrible thought in my head and shut my eyes to surround myself with white light again. This guy was oily and evil and disgusting even after death. What the hell had he been like alive?
“Are you why this house has been empty and abandoned for over fifty years? Your residue is like oil smoke. Dark, dirty and intrusive.” I said it in my boldest voice but had to admit this particular sprit unnerved me.
I flipped open the book and rifled a bunch of news clippings from the fifties. The first one that caught my attention was from nineteen fifty nine. MAID OF RICH FAMILY SLAIN. POLICE HAVE NO LEADS. The pictured estate was my current home. It had happened here.
No leads, that was laughable. You only had to look as far as the owner of the house—
my
new house, Montgomery House—to spot the culprit.
“But you were either too tricky or threw enough money at the investigating detectives to avoid being fingered as the killer. You killed her. Because you thought she was a loose woman?” I asked aloud. More to myself than to him, but another lamp fell, and I grunted.
I had to stop talking to him; it was giving him power.
I scanned the article and finally spotted it. Chadwick Montgomery. That was his name. His father made his fortune in property, and he’d made more by investing it wisely. He looked stern and mean and just as startling in the picture as he had in my dream. Next to him stood a homely mousey woman quoted as being mistress of the house, Penelope Montgomery. Sad looking creature.
Below the brief article about the maid found dead in the garden “strangled and possibly assaulted”—their way of saying raped—was a picture of the victim. Annabel Smith. Tall, willowy, so pretty she appeared ethereal. It was a black and white picture, but in my mind I saw her with sharp blue eyes and dark auburn hair. Pretty girl. Nice girl. My internal image of her glowed showing me a good soul.
“Poor thing,” I sighed.
I heard a deep bonging and took a moment to place it—doorbell. “Saved by the bell.” I scurried out of the attic, escaping its cloying energy and hurried down to the foyer, still clutching the book.
I opened the door and something in me—something foreign to my own energy—twisted with sadness and leapt with joy, simultaneously. “Oh, hi…I wasn’t…I mean, I’m sorry, who are you?”