House of Skin (9 page)

“No,” he said, “not really. Nothing specific, I mean. They just treated the subject like it was taboo. We weren’t to mention it, so we didn’t.”

“Why do you think that is?” Barlow asked, leading him.

Feeling the branches snicking against his flannel shirt, Paul stuffed his hands in his jeans pockets. “I wouldn’t know that. That’s how my family is. They don’t talk about certain things and they don’t talk about why they don’t talk about them.”

“If he were in my family, I wouldn’t claim him either.”

“Are you going to tell me why, or are we going to talk in code all night?”
 

The sheriff stopped and turned his back to him. Thinking they were setting off from the path, Paul moved to follow him when he heard the sound of Barlow’s zipper. Urine patted the ground, steam rising up from the muddied soil. Paul stood there, hands in pockets, and wished he had to pee as well, share in the moment. Instead, he moved down the path a couple of paces to give the sheriff room to do his thing. He heard Barlow finish, zip up.

The sheriff said, “Your uncle was the most despicable man I’ve ever met.”
 

Paul laughed, a forced sound in the quiet forest. “Isn’t that a bit extreme?”

“If anything, it’s an understatement.”
 

“What did he do that was so terrible?”

“You name it.”

Paul stopped. “Why didn’t you arrest him then?”
 

“I wasn’t sheriff until Myles Carver was in his late sixties. By that time most of what he’d done was in the past.”

“You haven’t even told me what he did.”

Barlow appeared to think. Then, he said, “I’ll tell you one story I heard. One of many. Then you can decide for yourself. Some of the things I know are true because I witnessed them. Other things I only heard about, but the people who told them to me, for the most part, are people I trust. Ralph Trask, the old doctor who’s down at the nursing home now, he’s the one who told me this story. He was a couple of years younger than Myles, so he’d know.” He glanced at Paul. “And before you doubt Trask’s credibility, write him off as a crazy old coot, keep in mind he was fifteen years younger when he told me this, and he’s still perfectly lucid.”
 

It was full night now. The April chill lay hard on the forest.

The sheriff got moving and continued: “This was a long time ago, years and years before I was born. Back then, as you’re probably aware, some schools had different grades grouped together, so that the older ones sat in the same room with the younger ones. Your uncle was young, twelve or thirteen. Samantha Hargrove was four or five years his senior, but for some reason, she liked him.”
 

Paul thought he heard bitterness in the sheriff’s voice as he went on: “Even in his older years, women thought Myles was a good-looking man. He wasn’t the kind of guy other guys liked. I always thought he was too pretty, like a mannequin. But the women around here, they couldn’t get enough of him. Samantha Hargrove was only the first in a long line of them.”

Paul looked up at Barlow, but the sheriff was gazing down the trail, lost in his thoughts. The bunched shadows that hovered over the trail reminded Paul of a dead man’s gaping eye socket, the eye itself having long ago been ravaged by worms and microbes. He shivered, made himself focus on the sheriff’s tale.

“It started with her helping Myles with his studies. As smart as he was, he couldn’t do bookwork to save his life. Or he feigned ignorance because he was lazy. Either way, he got himself a tutor, and that tutor was Samantha, the preacher’s daughter.

“According to Trask, Samantha was a real looker. A raven-haired beauty. Before long she was disappearing from her house for hours at a time. Your uncle was, too, but according to Doc Trask, that was normal. It seems his parents—your great-grandparents—didn’t like having Myles in or even near the house most of the time. Trask told me stories about why, but I’ll save those for another time.

“Anyway, you can probably guess what’s coming. Within a few months of their meeting, Samantha shows up at school in tears. She cries every day but won’t say why. Then she starts to get sick, misses school. Even misses church. Finally, her mother gets wise to what’s happening and confronts Samantha with it. The two were in the kitchen at the time.

“The next part of this story is third-hand, but I still believe it. Doc Trask was best friends with Samantha Hargrove’s little brother Billy, and Billy heard the argument from where he sat on the back porch.”

The sheriff halted and reached into his coat pocket. He produced a bag of chewing tobacco, scooped some out and stuffed it in his cheek. In the gloom of the forest, the wad looked to Paul like a leafy turd. Despite its foul appearance, the tobacco scent reminded Paul of harvest apples and hayrides.

Chewing a little, Barlow went on, “According to Trask, Mrs. Hargrove—Samantha and Billy’s mother—was a fierce woman. She wore the pants in the family despite her husband’s position as the only Methodist minister in town. She must have suspected it for a while because when she did bring it up, she really let her daughter have it. Samantha was already distraught, and having her mom screaming at her probably didn’t do much to calm her down. The more Mrs. Hargrove yelled, the more Samantha cried. Doc Trask said that Billy wanted to help his sister except he was afraid of their mother too.

“Billy Hargrove said he heard the faucet turn on and then he heard Samantha screaming. Afraid his mom was killing his sister, he got up to look through the window.

“She wasn’t killing her daughter, but she was dragging her by the hair toward the sink. The water was splashing up out of the basin, and in trying to get her under the pouring water—to cleanse her of sin, I guess—Mrs. Hargrove kept ramming Samantha’s head into the steel faucet. Billy could see that his sister was bleeding a little from the cuts she’d gotten from the faucet, but she was otherwise okay. Mrs. Hargrove had at least left the drain open so the water that wasn’t splashing out onto the floor was pouring down the drain.”
 

The sheriff regarded him. “She wasn’t trying to drown Samantha anyway.”
 

He waited, watching Barlow work the tobacco around his mouth. The sheriff spat, a trifle too close to Paul’s sneakers, he thought.

Barlow went on, “Mrs. Hargrove was a big, robust woman, and she finally got Samantha’s head under the running water. Her daughter’s hair got caught in the drain and clogged it so the water level was rising. Through his sister’s screaming, Billy could hear his mother asking Samantha who the father was. At first, the girl could only cry. Then she could only choke and splutter because the cold water was splashing all around her and into her open mouth.

“At this point, Billy walks over and pleads with his mother to stop. Samantha was trying to answer her mom’s questions but she couldn’t catch her breath long enough to say anything. Mrs. Hargrove pushed her daughter’s head under a couple more times, and Billy said these were the worst because each time his mother dunked his sister’s head, she’d bear down with all her weight and Samantha’s head would thud against the steel basin. Without letting go of her daughter’s hair, Mrs. Hargrove pushed the faucet to the side so that instead of pouring down the drain it poured onto the counter and onto the floor.

“Dazed, hurting, Samantha finally came to enough to tell her mom the only lie she could think of. That the baby was Lucas Bramer’s, a boy she’d dated earlier that year.”
 

Barlow spat and wiped his lips with his coat sleeve. “Samantha figured this would buy her some time because Lucas Bramer was a few years older than her, which would make her look the victim rather than the seducer of a twelve-year old boy.

“But her mother flew into a rage. Trask knew old lady Hargrove and said that Samantha was doomed whether she said Lucas Bramer, Myles Carver, or Immaculate Conception. No father was good enough for Mrs. Hargrove because it was impossible to her that her only daughter, not even out of school yet, had gotten herself pregnant, had let some boy put his thing in her. Her mother started slapping her and boxing her ears, and that was when Billy intervened. He stepped between them and Samantha saw her chance to escape. She only took a couple of steps before her mother reached out, snagged a handful of her long black hair and yanked back hard.”

Barlow fell silent. Paul walked beside him, waiting. He wished he had a flashlight. The woods had grown dark very fast, the sky above the path now an indigo snake winding its way through a tenebrous black sea.

“Samantha fell. Billy said her feet swept out from under her and up in the air like she’d slipped on ice. When the back of her head smacked the floor, he said it sounded like someone had stomped on an egg. Billy stumbled away and leaned on the kitchen table, and as he watched his sister’s motionless body lying there, the water pouring off the counter and flooding the floor around her, he felt like he was watching a dead body floating down a river. He and his mom stood and stared as the blood trickled from Samantha’s mouth, the back of her head. From between her legs. All of it leaking out and swirling and joining together, and pretty soon the whole floor around her was stained bright red.”

“Samantha died?” Paul asked.

The sheriff shook his head. “No. Though that would have been better. She lost the baby, of course. She was only three months from carrying it to term, so Doc Trask’s father, the original Doctor Trask, had to deliver it stillborn.”

They walked then without speaking, the trail taking them gradually eastward. Paul wondered if they’d end up back at the house. The sheriff had flicked on a flashlight. That, at least, was something.

Barlow continued, “Samantha spent a good while in the hospital and even more time in bed. Lots of people came to see her. In a few weeks, she began to recover. Billy Hargrove had achieved something like celebrity status because of the scandal, and he loved telling people the gory details. He was a good boy, but according to Trask he couldn’t shut up to save his life.” Barlow stopped and spat. “Of course, you could say the same thing about Doctor Trask.”
 

He regarded Paul grimly and after a moment, went on. “With Billy talking like that and the town being so small, word was bound to get around to Myles Carver about what had happened.

“Now…” Barlow’s voice grew quieter. “This is where the story gets strange. Not to be cold-hearted or anything, but I would think that a boy of twelve would be relieved to have a burden like that lifted from his shoulders. That sounds cynical, I know, but hell, what kid that age wants to be a dad?

“But apparently, Myles did. He was incensed. What little time he’d spent at home before was now spent stealing into the forest. He stopped showing up at school altogether.”

“Then, one night Billy saw him standing in the Hargroves’ back yard, staring up at the house.”

They moved down a hill, and Paul just avoided tripping on a root that grew like a varicose vein across the trail. Though he’d never seen Myles before, he imagined his uncle as a boy, face livid and watchful in the moonlight.

“This frightened Billy, as you can imagine. Carver was rotten to the core, so there was that to worry about. But what scared him even more was that Myles wasn’t watching Samantha’s window. He was watching his mother’s, Mrs. Hargrove’s.”

He could smell the tobacco on Barlow’s breath. It smelled like apple cider. Paul put his hands in his pockets to warm them, listened.

“Reverend Hargrove and his wife were the kind of couple that had different rooms, for who knows what reasons. That was why one night Reverend Hargrove wasn’t with his wife when he heard a bloodcurdling scream.”
 

Barlow went on, quicker now. “Billy and his father stumbled out of bed, disoriented, scared, and rushed down the hall to Mrs. Hargrove’s room. When they opened the door, the light from within flooded over them, and they discovered Mrs. Hargrove standing there in her nightdress clawing at her throat and shrieking at the top of her lungs. They went to her and fought with her to get her to stop scratching her throat, which was torn to ribbons, but the woman was hysterical. As Reverend Hargrove wrestled with his wife, Billy swiveled his head to see what she was staring at, and he told Trask that he puked before he even realized what it was.”

Barlow’s voice had softened now to scarcely a whisper. Not for effect, Paul thought, but because the words he was uttering were so terrible.

“The Reverend got a strong enough grip on his wife to turn and look at what it was that had so shaken her. When he saw it his face went ashen. He stood staring, and let go of his wife, who backed out of the room and bumped into Samantha, who had finally made her way down the hall. Her father was blocking the bed, so Billy said his sister had to push by him to see.

“The sight of her dead baby, dug up from the cemetery, bloated and purple and muddy, lying there in the middle of those white sheets, was too much for her.

“Samantha started to laugh, and then she clapped her hands. Then she was moving over and lying on the bed beside the dead baby. She gathered up the corpse, tucked up her knees and laughed.
 

“Billy said it was awhile before his father told him to go find his mom, who’d disappeared down the hallway. The Reverend, sitting quiet as a ghost beside his laughing daughter on the bed, cursed his son and told him to go and, damn it, tend to his mother right now, which Billy did, or tried to do. The last he’d seen of her she was backing out of the room toward the stairs. He had the terrible feeling that she’d fallen, but when he got to the staircase he could see that the landing below was empty.