House of Skin (13 page)

As she continued on she thought about the Carver House, about Watermere. When she first heard someone was moving in she was disappointed. She’d pictured the place uninhabited, herself the lady of the house by default.

The more she thought about it, though, the more she wondered what kind of man Myles’s nephew would be. She was thinking about this man she’d never met as the clearing came up on her left.

She risked a glance that way, at the break in the trees and the large oval space within, and despite the warmth of the woods, what was buried there made her shiver.

He was sitting under a sycamore tree near the edge of the woods, thinking, when he heard a car roll up the lane. It was Barlow, in plain clothes this time, looking like a regular guy. Larger than average maybe, but otherwise normal. His black tee shirt was tight around his thick biceps, his jeans old and faded. As Barlow approached, Paul tried to reconcile this new man with the sheriff he’d walked the forest with last week, the man who was all business.

Paul got up and approached Barlow.

“Howdy,” the sheriff said, meeting him at the edge of the lawn.

“Afternoon,” Paul said.

“How are you adjusting to your new surroundings?”

“Pretty well, I think.” Paul glanced about the yard, wishing he’d done more to it. It was strewn with weeds, and he hadn’t mowed yet.

Barlow nodded at the house. “Looks like you’ve got a shutter missing.”

“That one and two on the other side,” Paul answered without looking. He’d thought of doing something about the state of disrepair the house was in but had no idea where to begin. The thought of paying someone to fix the place up seemed wasteful, but he couldn’t rouse himself to do the work.

“You’ve got some holes in your screens too.”

“Uh-huh.”

The sheriff stared at the house. “Lotta work keeping up a place like this.”

Paul glanced at him. “I’m getting around to it.”

Barlow grunted and knelt on the grass, forearms resting on one knee. “I wanted you to know your story checked out.”

Paul spoke to the crown of the sheriff’s head. “That’s good to hear.”
 

“So unless something new comes up, you’re in the clear.”
 

“That’s why you came?”

“It’s been awhile since I talked to you last,” Barlow said. “I just wanted to check in.”

“I see.”
 

Barlow remained kneeling. His fingers spread out and caressed the tips of the grass. Paul watched the thick, strong hand whisper gently over the lawn, saw the man’s blue eyes follow his hand as it moved.

When the sheriff spoke his voice was softer. “You’ve heard of women’s intuition, I’m sure, but I believe men can have intuition too. Especially cops who’ve been at it a long time ”

Paul watched the hand, waited.

“I don’t like it,” Barlow went on, “but I believe something bad happened to Ted Brand. What’s worse, I believe it’s just the start of more badness to come.”
 

Paul watched the sheriff guardedly. “Like what?”

“Who knows? The last murder I had to deal with was a long time ago. Things have been good in Shadeland since then, but things never stay good forever.”

Against his better judgment, Paul said what had been on his mind since the first time he’d met Barlow. “My coming here is what started it. That’s what you think.”

The sheriff’s silence was all the confirmation he needed. Barlow rose and strode toward his car.

“I’m not my uncle, you know,” Paul said to the man’s broad back.

The sheriff turned slowly and regarded him, the deep cobalt eyes penetrating Paul’s.

“No, you’re not,” Barlow replied. “But you do favor him.”
 

The sheriff was right. In the pictures Paul pulled from the office shelves, his uncle appeared to be a better-groomed, healthier version of himself. Of course, if the stories were true, that couldn’t be right. Myles Carver had been a debauched ghoul who drank to excess and indulged in every sin imaginable.

So why were the man’s features sharper than his?

Looking at his uncle, whose face exuded confidence and virility, was depressing. The man’s suave appearance made Paul feel inept. There were pictures of Myles everywhere in the albums, yet none of his wife, whatever her name was.

Paul thought of Barlow, of how he’d omitted all mention of the woman, the same way she’d been omitted from the albums. Flipping back through the browning pictures, Paul was amazed to see many of them had been doctored, cut in half. In one photo, taken at some beach when Myles was in his thirties, the effect of her excision was dramatic. His uncle lay on the sand, propped up on an elbow and mooning for the camera. She’d been lying behind him, pushing herself up so as to be included in the shot, but all around his uncle’s shoulder and face, the picture had been trimmed, and the arm she’d let dangle over his stomach was replaced by a white stripe where the pale background of the photo album showed through.

Was the pain of her death so bad as to make the sight of her unbearable? Paul thought of his ex-girlfriend, of the regret he felt when thinking of Emily, and could imagine throwing out her letters, her pictures. But he couldn’t envision going so far as to cut around his own image to rid himself of her. It bespoke of narcissism. If not, why not toss out the entire picture? Wasn’t the white stripe across his uncle’s stomach a reminder of her as surely as her picture had been? Paul couldn’t imagine sorrow driving a man to do that. Now hatred…hatred was another matter entirely.

Pushing the albums back inside the roll top desk, Paul strode to the bathroom. The sight of his full jowls made him flip off the light switch. He leaned over the pot, one hand bracing himself on the wall, and voided his bladder. When he finished he found the effort to push away from the wall had worn him out.
Jesus Christ
, he thought.
I get winded taking a leak
.

To cheer himself up he ambled down to the library and cast about for something diverting. The rain pelting the windows soothed his jangled nerves. As he moved through the library and breathed the fragrance of aged paper, he searched for something scary, something as creepy as this house often felt.

Titles like
A History of Hell
,
The Book of Werewolves
,
Astral
Projection
, and
Secret Voices: A Guide to Automatic Writing
jumped out at him. He shook his head. His uncle had been into some weird stuff.

He came to a novel that looked good—Peter Straub’s
Ghost Story
—and began reading.

He’d read a hundred pages before he realized his stomach was rumbling. There was no working clock in the library so he’d no way to tell, but he was sure it was close to noon. Rising, his knees and back popping, Paul carried the book with him down to the kitchen.

He read more as he ate his bologna sandwich.

The horror story, he was finding, was doing something to him, stirring some long-dormant part of him. Reading it reminded him of why he’d wanted to write in the first place. He wanted to do to people what this book was doing to him.

Determined now, he retrieved a paper grocery sack from under the sink and marched grimly into the ballroom. The bottles of whiskey clanking inside the sack, he made his way out to the garage and deposited the sack in a cubbyhole next to the large rubber trash container. That done, he mounted the porch steps, trotted up the stairs, made for the library. On his way by the office he traded the novel in his back pocket for a spiral-bound notebook and a pen.
Holy crap
, he thought,
I’m actually going to do it
.

Thinking this, he sat in the red silk armchair and wrote down the first words that came to him:
 

He missed her lovely sapphire eyes.

The sound of his own snoring woke him up.

Wiping the drool off his cheek he sat up in the silk armchair and looked at the page. Seeing the one sentence written there was little consolation, like finding one unbroken egg in a new carton.

He felt like shouting, rending the notebook to shreds and stomping on the remains. He had everything he needed—solitude, atmosphere, financial security. The one thing he lacked was talent.

Check that, he thought. He also needed discipline, and that had never been his strong suit either. He’d been in this place for a week now and it looked no better than when he’d first arrived. He’d resolved to quit drinking, had even taken the alcohol out to the garage.
But it isn’t gone yet, is it?
a voice asked.

Back off
, he thought. Trash collection wasn’t until Monday. What was he supposed to do? Smash the bottles to shards just to prove he was serious about beating his drinking habit? That was juvenile. He had more than enough will power to abstain from the sauce for a few more days. He need only channel his thirst into his writing.

He read the line he’d scrawled: “He missed her lovely sapphire eyes.”

Now what the hell did that mean? He tore out that page, crumpled it and tossed it aside. He stared at the notebook, waiting for another, better first line to come.

Twenty minutes passed.

The first time he heard the noise, he was staring at the blank sheet of paper. Grateful for the diversion, he forgot for a moment his enormous writer’s block and regarded the wall before him.

He heard it again, a flurry of scrapes and taps, faint but very real. For one wild moment, he imagined a woman trapped inside the wall with barely strength to scratch for help.

Shaking off the thought, he sat forward and listened.

It came again, fingernails on tin.

Then the sounds swelled and quickened, expanding throughout the room like spiderwebbing glass. Paul stood, alarmed.

The clatter ceased.

He held his breath and waited.

The tapping sounded once more, accelerating, urgent. He edged toward the wall and tried to account for what he was hearing. Bugs were out because the taps were too thick for creatures so small, and though he shuddered at the idea, the scrapes and slithers he heard as he pressed an ear to the wall could only be made by rats. Large ones.

God help me
, he thought as he backed away from the shivery sounds,
I’ve stepped into a Lovecraft story
.

Half relieved to be shut of the burden of writing for the day, Paul dropped the notebook and put ear to wall again, careful to keep an eye on the fireplace, lest a flood of squirming black rodents come gushing out of the aperture.

On cue, the sounds in the wall increased. He felt his skin crawl as he imagined the size of the things, the finger-thick rubbery tails. Amidst the weird swish and rustle, he thought he could make out the minute clicking of tiny claws. The image of them scurrying around behind the wall bare inches from his face made him jerk away, sucking in air. Not only was the notion of a rat problem revolting, he now needed to hire someone to rid his house of them.

Paul’s cell phone contract was done, so he had to use a pay phone in town to call the exterminator. By mid-afternoon, a white van crunched to a stop in the driveway and a fat man with a red beard and a white work suit climbed out.

“Thanks for coming on such short notice,” Paul said as he descended the porch steps.

“Not a problem,” replied the man. Through his beard he grinned up at the house, removed his plain white ball cap, and ran a sweaty hand through his thick red hair, which was curly and matted by the cap. The guy smelled bad. Awful, in fact. Like a package of bologna left out in the sun for a few days.

Breathing through his mouth, Paul introduced himself.

The exterminator offered a sweaty hand. “Another Carver, huh?”

“Myles was my uncle,” Paul said, then added, “though I never knew him.”

“And he left you this place.”

“That’s right.”

The exterminator waited a beat, sizing him up, before grunting noncommittally. Turning, the fat man lumbered around to the rear of the van and produced a short, fat silver canister from which sprouted a black hose and nozzle.

Following him, Paul nodded at the canister. “Pretty potent stuff?”

“It’ll knock you on your ass.”

Setting down the container, the man made for something inside the driver’s side door.

“I didn’t get your name,” Paul said to the man’s wide back. He could see dark wet circles spreading from the stained armpits. When there was no answer Paul said, “The ad in the phonebook only said Triple-A Exterminators.”

“Name’s Snowburger,” came the reply.

“Good to meet you.”

Snowburger produced a clipboard, and Paul caught another whiff of rancid bologna.

Paul said, “We didn’t talk price over the phone.”

Without looking up, Snowburger said, “Shouldn’t be much. No more than a thousand.”

“A thousand dollars,” he said, appalled.

“That’s a lot of house,” the exterminator said and gestured toward Watermere. “I usually just charge a flat rate of a hundred-fifty an hour, but for a job this big I’ll be using extra poison.”