House of Skin (17 page)

His feet carried him into the clearing, his eyes adjusting now to the blackness of the night. He peered about the graveyard, calculating his distance from home. The documents estimated Watermere’s total acreage at well over a thousand. A territory that large surely encompassed this place, secluded as it was. No wonder he and the sheriff hadn’t happened upon it. Barlow might not even know of its existence.

He wondered if anyone did. For the cemetery was overgrown, abandoned. Its markers were haphazardly arranged, some broken or cracked, others lying in the grass, swallowed up by weeds and time. A plump rabbit bounded toward him before veering off toward the engulfing forest. Some large black bird, a crow probably, sat perched on a faded ivory cross but didn’t stir as he edged past.

Strange and varied were the gravestones. They ranged from puny rectangular slabs that lay flush with the weedy ground to elaborately carved sepulchers. Celtic crosses wrapped in marble ivy. A staring skull, its mouth full of teeth that themselves looked like tombstones. An open book with unreadable text adorned one cracked marker, the placement of the fissure injuring the carved book’s spine. Paul gasped with delight upon spotting a tall, cubic stone cut to resemble a grandfather clock, replete with pendulum and a moon clock face. The hour and minute hands were permanently fixed at twelve o’clock.

He moved toward the back of the clearing. From the darkness a large marker emerged, the shadow of its burnished granite surface seeming to creep across the forest floor toward him. As he edged closer, he became aware of the silence. No bird twittered, no unseen menace shambled.

Face twisting with disappointment, he realized he wasn’t the only living person who knew of the graveyard’s existence.

Because for one thing, this stone was newer than the rest. No more than fifteen or twenty years old, he estimated. Yet there were more reasons than this to guess that others knew of the stone, this place. Where there should have been a name and an epitaph, there were instead deep, ugly gouges. A hammer and chisel and God knew what other tools had ravaged the marker so that its entire face was a nightmare of scars and trenches. The words WHORE and DEVIL were spray-painted in red. Near the bottom of the tombstone, the blood red letters, dripped and smeared, delivered the coup de gras: BURN IN HELL.

Stunned at the disrespect, he wondered what the occupant of the grave had done to incur such enmity. Scrunch his eyes though he might, he couldn’t tell what the name was, nor what designs or sentiments had adorned the marker before the vandals had afflicted it. Sighing, Paul sat at the foot of the stone and nipped at the pint. Setting the bottle in his lap, he reclined on his palms and noted the strange feel of the ground. Unlike the surrounding area, the earth here was barren. No blade of grass grew, no weed sprouted. It was as though whoever had assaulted the tombstone had also sought to kill all the grass on the surface above the coffin. The charred-looking earth wasn’t precisely rectangular, but it was clearly confined to the area above where the body would have been planted.

Musing on this peculiarity, he drank.

The alcohol warmed him, electrified his flesh, and again he felt the hot tingle of sexual desire. His whole body thrummed with the heat, with visions of tongues and breasts and smooth open legs.

He frowned.

It was strange. He’d been sure the tombstone had been raped of all its carvings, but now that he observed it from this perspective, its imposing girth towering over him like some god or goddess, he saw there was indeed one design which had partially escaped the tip of the chisel and the insult of the spray paint. One florid wing, half of an angelic face, a tiny bare foot.

A cherub. A sweet, guileless creature of heaven.

Paul’s eyes widened.

He rose, caressed the cherub’s wing with the tip of his index finger, and inched away from the gravestone, eyes fixed on the childlike face. His breath quickening, he turned and moved with increasingly longer strides through the stones and weeds. As he reached the mouth of the trail his steps accelerated to a trot and then to a sprint. He moved as he hadn’t in years, his arms pumping, legs a blur, his sneakers pounding down the forest trail. His body maneuvered through darkness, through myriad twists and angles, over crests, through dales, and soon he exploded out of the forest mouth, his pumping limbs compelling him across the silent yard and through the front door. He flew through the ballroom and took the curved stairway in four leaping strides. Past the library, beyond the bedrooms, into the lightless den. Without bothering with the desk lamp his fingers began to fly over the typewriter keys and within moments his hand shot out and slid in another blank sheet and with hardly a pause his fingers drummed again, sweat pouring from his matted air.

His typing continued long into the night. Sated, the sounds from the walls ceased.

Paul awoke.

And wished he hadn’t.

The hangover was colossal. He felt like crawling across the room, opening the window and tumbling out. Problem was, he didn’t even know what room he was in. He didn’t dare open his eyes—if they hurt this badly when they were shut, how awful would the pain be if he exposed them to daylight? For a crazy moment, he wondered if he’d really gone through with his idea of the night before, driven the lawn mower into town and found some local dive. If so, he was probably in jail now. The air roiling in his mouth was close, dank, like the air of a jail cell. He ventured to open his eyes; what he saw did not reassure him.

Near his face was a wall. It seemed made of wood, like a coffin.

He realized he lay on a floor rather than a bed, and that the floor, too, was made of wood. His whole body screamed in protest as glacial chills passed through it, simultaneously chattering his teeth and broiling him with hot waves of nausea.
God, let me puke soon
, he thought.
If I don’t throw up I might die of alcohol poisoning or bubonic plague or some other wretched affliction
.

On his back as he was, he found he could turn his head with some effort. Straining, he lifted his head and stared down at his toes. It was lighter down there. He began to sit up but had to stop when his forehead knocked a glancing blow against a hard surface. Whimpering, rubbing his aching head, he rolled over onto his stomach and pushed backward toward the light. He rose to his knees and realized why he’d thought of a coffin. He’d passed out and slept under the large mahogany desk.

Letting out a queasy breath, he braced himself on the edge of the desk and pushed to his feet. The fetid slime coating his mouth tasted like spoiled milk. He was about to make a dash for the bathroom and the cool porcelain toilet when something on the desk drew his attention.

His fingertips brushed the stack of pages. At a glance he estimated there were two hundred or more, neatly stacked, sitting in the center of the desk next to the typewriter. Beside that, a small snatch of lined notebook paper. Paul lifted the handwritten pages, thumbed through the small pile. Written in florid cursive, words filled the notebook, and even in the dim light filtering through the blinds, he could see the writing was not his own.

Setting aside the handwritten pages for a moment, Paul spied the chair a few feet away and rolled it to the desk. Forgetting the sick way his stomach growled and bubbled, forgetting the nausea tickling at his gorge, he sat and read.

THE MONKEY KILLER
.

Under that,
A NOVEL BY PAUL CARVER
.

Pulse pounding, he lifted parts of the stack, amazed to see that the whole thing was full of typewritten words. He paused on a page about halfway through, expecting to find gibberish—“All work and no play makes Johnny a dull boy” perhaps—when he instead discovered that the writing was varied and formatted exactly as a story should be. He searched again and found passages of description, snatches of dialogue.

Paul chewed a thumbnail.

It couldn’t be.

Dumbfounded, he looked again at the title page, set it aside, and began to read.

The sun was hot on Angela’s shoulders, so she went to the pump for some water. Mrs. England was on the playground scolding a group of pupils who had crossed the lane to pick daisies. Angela heard her teacher now: “How dare you venture past the set boundaries? You should know better Carol Ledford, your father being the constable and all. You will all be in for a paddling if you do that again, and I mean it.”
 

And on and on and on.

Angela let her lips touch the cool surface of the pump, the water flowing down her chin, dripping onto her white shoes.

She hated her white shoes. And her white dress and her stupid yellow hair ribbon. Her mother insisted on dressing her like a doll. Maybe her mother had not been allowed to play with dolls as a little girl so she had to make her daughter look like one.

She was tired of being a doll. A little princess. It was dreadfully boring. She wanted to be like Carol Ledford, who was a year older. Carol would never allow her mother to dress her in this silly garb. Carol got to wear pants and never wore yellow hair ribbons.

She heard the sounds of a kickball game starting up. Mrs. England getting everyone organized, the kids laughing at her but still minding.

Angela sighed. How she longed to get dirty, to stand in line with the other kids and boot the rubber ball high into the air, sailing red and lovely in the shiny spring sunlight. She was about to round the corner to sit on the bench and watch the game, as she always did, when something caught her attention near the woods.

It was the old kickball, the one that had got punctured by a rock last month.

Angela approached it and bent to pick it up.

She stopped, smiled mischievously.

Straightening, she reached out with her right foot instead and dragged the red ball back toward her, away from the woods. She was careful about it because just beyond the tree line, the woods dropped off into a steep ravine, and if the ball went down there she would not be able to retrieve it.

Once it was on level ground, Angela made to bump it through the grass with one white-soled shoe, but she could not feel the ball properly through her stupid shoe, so she stood trying to keep her balance as she took off one shoe and then the other. She was standing on her right foot, fumbling with her left shoe, when she heard the roar of the kids on the playground on the other side of the school. Carol Ledford had probably done something great, kicked the ball far or walloped someone running for home base.

Angela lost her balance and fell. She winced and giggled at her own klutziness. She looked about her and was glad to see no one was around. Come to think of it, she had not even asked to get a drink from the pump. It had not occurred to her then, but now she was happy she had not told Mrs. England where she was going. With all those kids to keep control of, the teacher would never miss her. Why, she could stay here until recess was over, and that was at least another twenty minutes.

She felt coldness against her leg and frowned. Springing up, she was horrified to see she had sat in a patch of grass down the hill from the pump and that the run-off had made a muddy puddle where she had fallen. Her fears were confirmed when she held out her white dress, felt the squishy fabric, saw the mud on the pretty lace. Her mother would be furious.

Squeezing back tears, feeling doomed, she made for the corner of the school building, hoping against hope that Mrs. England could get the mud out at the basin in the girls’ bathroom.

Angela halted and glanced back at the red kickball.

She touched the soiled white fabric and knew there was no getting it clean. She was in for a good hiding, and that was that.

She might as well enjoy the rest of recess.

Fighting back tears but feeling a bit giddy, Angela ran barefoot through the empty strip of schoolyard. The grass felt tickly and soft against her bare feet. She giggled, toeing the half-deflated ball and nudging it out in front of her. She stopped, listening. The kickball game was growing from the sound of it. She guessed that all the kids had made their way over to the diamond. That was usually the way. The game began slow but grew in size and intensity and peaked just as Mrs. England blew her whistle for her pupils to go inside.

Angela reared back and kicked.

The lopsided ball smacked against the solid brick wall of the schoolhouse and bounced crookedly back to her.

She listened, hoping no one had heard.

The game continued, oblivious.

She was amazed at herself. She had never done anything like this. She had never gone to the pump without asking, never hid behind the schoolhouse all by herself. This was something Carol Ledford would do.

Booting the ball again, Angela reached up to untie her stupid yellow hair ribbon. It was caught, the knot hung on a tangle of her curls. Because she was absorbed with disentangling the ribbon, she did not see the kickball rolling toward the woods until it was too late. She gasped and made a dash for it but was too slow. The ball hopped over the lip of earth at the tree line and disappeared into the woods.

She stood between the trees, panting. She cast a fearful glance over her shoulder. There was time, she knew, to retrieve the ball, but if she did, would she be able to climb back up the hill? It was very steep, and some of it looked like mud. Her dress would certainly be ruined then, and how her mother would yell.