Under My Skin (26 page)

Boris stepped forward, but Sally was quicker. Her hand ducked into the pocket of the leather jacket and pulled out Kyle's lighter. With her thumb she flicked the lid open and found the spark wheel. She pressed it hard and a healthy flame leaped from it. ‘Stay back.'

The flame danced in their inhuman eyes. Sally looked to her feet and saw she was still standing in a thin puddle. ‘The floor is covered in alcohol. You know what'll happen . . .' For good measure she tipped over another trolley. More antiseptic spilled over the floor, the alcohol stench burning in the back of her throat.

‘How do you even know it would work?' Rosita said. ‘Down here the rules are meaningless.'

It was a bluff worth calling. ‘Because I can see how scared you are.' The flame burned her fingers. ‘This has to stop. I don't know exactly who or what you are, but it's evil. Old-school evil.' Sally knew Molly Sue now and she was unquestionably evil. There wasn't a more appropriate word. Selfish, immoral, wicked, yes, but something worse than just those things. Sally could understand it now; this was how people did unspeakable things . . . they had
this
, even an essence of this, within them.

‘There is no such thing as evil, darlin',' said Molly Sue.

‘There is,' Sally said, remembering Sister Bernadette's sermon. ‘And it lives in the hearts of men. But so does good. If I can do a good thing, I probably should. I can end all this. I can stop you from doing this to more people, and set these ones free. Even if it means . . .' She smiled wryly. ‘Standing back and letting evil happen is its own kind of evil.'

‘You don't want to die, Sally Feather,' Rosita purred, reaching out for the lighter.

‘I don't. But it's the right thing to do . . .'

Molly Sue hollered over her. ‘Quit wastin' time, Feather! We both know you don't got the balls!'

Sally closed her eyes. ‘Who needs them?'

She let the lighter fall to the ground.

Let there be light.

Sally first became aware of light.

White splodges, nothing more, but there was indeed
something
.

She was tired. She slept.

Gradually, there was more light. Darker shapes moved within the light like clouds. People . . . there were people moving over her. She was still very tired, though. This sleep squashed her down, like she was caught in a riptide, being sucked under time after time. She couldn't break the surface. She slept.

The light grew brighter and clearer. It was a ceiling. She could see a ceiling with a strip light and those polystyrene tiles. But she was still so tired. This time she could feel her hands – they were where they had always been, but she couldn't really move them. They felt wrong.

She was more lucid this time.
I am not dead. I survived. How?
If I survived . . .
Sally looked for Molly Sue inside, but was just too weak. Her head . . . it felt . . . quiet.

That's good enough.

She slept.

Sally heard a voice. At first she panicked, thinking that Molly Sue was back in her head, but after a moment, she recognised it as her mother's. She felt warm breath on her ear. ‘Heavenly Father,' her mother whispered. ‘I've only ever asked you for one thing. I asked to be blessed with a child and you sent this gift to me. You wouldn't be so cruel as to take her away. It's too soon. It's too soon for my little girl to go. Please, God, I'll do anything, I'll do anything you ask, just please return her to us. Whatever I've done, punish me, not her.'

I'm here, Mum!
Sally tried to speak but she could not; there was something in her mouth, something plastic. Instead, she did all she could: with what little strength she had left in her hand, she squeezed her mother's. She was wearing some sort of glove.

‘Sally?' She heard her mother's chair screech across linoleum. ‘Sally, can you hear me?'

Sally again tried to speak, managing to gurgle.

‘Nurse! Nurse! I think she's coming around! Nurse! Please!'

Sally heard footsteps scurrying around her bed and fell back to sleep.

‘Sally? Can you hear me? My name is Dr McCulloch. No . . . no, don't try to move or talk, just lie still. You're in the hospital, my dear. Can you look into this light for me? Just follow my little light. Good girl. You're on a lot of pain medication, that's what's making you so sleepy, but you're going to be fine. You're going to be just fine . . .'

She had to live. She had to get better. She started to feel the pain and, oh man, did it hurt. All of her back, her arms, her legs. As soon as she was able to sit up independently, Dr McCulloch explained she'd sustained fifty-two per cent burns. Sally hadn't seen herself yet, but she wasn't so drugged up that she couldn't understand that more of her body was burned than not.

Her movement was limited, her skin felt impossibly tight, like latex around her bones. Even the slightest change in position was agony and her legs had to be suspended from the bed. While she'd been sleeping – for almost a week she'd been sinking in that quicksand sleep, according to the doctor – they'd already performed skin grafts on her back and legs, tackling the worst of her burns.

Dr McCulloch sombrely explained that, even with plastic surgery it was likely she would be scarred for life. Sally could learn to live with that. ‘Doctor, can I ask one thing?'

‘Of course.'

‘What happened to my tattoo?' Sally whispered. Her mother and father were out getting a sandwich and would return at any moment.

Dr McCulloch smiled sadly, tucking a stray black lock behind her ear. ‘Sally, dear, your skin was very badly burned. They were third-degree burns. I didn't even realise you'd had a tattoo.' She gave her unburned right shoulder a gentle punch. ‘Years from now, you'll still be able to get tattoos, I promise. It's not the end of the world!'

Sally only just held back a tear of relief. ‘Oh, no. I won't be getting another. Believe me.'

OK, so Sally was alive, but it wasn't going to be a walk in the park. That was fine. She'd known for a long time that she wasn't getting out of this unscathed. The only worry now was how long she was going to be stuck in the hospital. Boredom had fully set in, alongside the pain, and she'd only been conscious for five days.

Her father stayed at her bedside, not even mentioning his job or the bank. Not once did he or her mother ask what she'd been doing in the derelict building. Instead, he read to her – the
Satanville
companion novels – and he even attempted different voices for the characters.

On the sixth day, her parents and Dr McCulloch agreed she was well enough to receive visitors and Stan and Jennie barrelled in. She'd been warned that Stan had been burned while pulling her out of the ‘squat', but aside from some bandages around his hands, he didn't look too bad.

‘Hey, how are you feeling?' Jennie held it together for about three seconds before bursting into full-on ugly crying.

‘Oh, don't cry! I'm not too bad.' That was a lie. She was so, so sore. Sore everywhere. With smoke inhalation, her voice sounded like she'd had a fifty-a-day smoking habit for ten years.

‘You liar! You almost died!' she sniffed. ‘I've never been so worried in my life.'

‘I'm sorry. I thought it was the only way.'

Stan looked over his shoulder to check no one was listening. She was in a private room on the intensive care ward so he pushed the door closed. ‘And? Did it work?'

‘It worked,' Sally said as triumphantly as she could. ‘She's gone.'

‘Thank God,' said Stan, letting out a dramatic breath. Jennie also visibly relaxed. ‘It wasn't for nothing.'

‘And the House of Skin is gone. I hope. I saw Rosita and Boris burn . . . they couldn't have survived. None of them could,' she added, thinking of their many victims. Hopefully now they were free to go wherever it is dead things went. She looked at Stan's wounds. ‘How are you?'

‘Oh, that? It's nothing. Less than nothing. What's a little second-degree agonising burn between friends?' He smiled, wearing casual heroism well.

Sally considered him. He wasn't the same Stan any more. The whole encounter had aged all of them. This new version was . . . intriguing. She wasn't the same Sally and he wasn't necessarily the mayor of the Friend Zone any more. ‘Well, thank you. I can't believe you went back into a burning building to get me . . . I told you to go!'

‘You're not the boss of me,' he grinned. ‘I wasn't going home without you.'

‘Do you guys wanna be alone?' Jennie asked, backing towards the door.

‘No.' Sally gave Stan a meaningful glance. ‘I want both of you. Stan and I will talk later.'

He wrapped his bandaged hand in her gloved one. ‘Sure. We have all the time in the world. I'm not going anywhere.'

Sally gestured at her bandaged body. ‘Neither am I, clearly.' For the first time in a long time, everything felt right. She was with Jennie and Stan and her heart was light with love. As long as they were all together, everything would be OK. Instead of fretting about what might happen with Stan, she was excited. There was so much to explore, but that was something to cling to as time passed in this place. ‘Hey, I have a question. Stan . . . what tattoo were you going to get?'

Stan blushed. ‘I couldn't really think of anything so . . . '

‘Oh God!' Jennie gasped. ‘Don't say you were going to get Sally's name on a heart or something?'

‘No! Sorry, Feather! OK, don't laugh, but I was going to get Dante's tattoo – The Order of the First numeral with the wreath of ivy.'

Sally felt toasty inside and it felt nice. ‘Speaking of, did you record
Satanville
? Don't you dare watch it without me . . .'

‘Jennie Gong . . . do you want to tell her or shall I?'

Jennie grimaced. ‘Sorry, I already watched it. I couldn't wait!'

‘Oh my God, you are so dead to me!' Sally gasped. ‘Ex-friend!' They talked and laughed and teased and laughed until Sally could keep her eyes open no longer.

Later that night, Sally woke. She heard voices. ‘Mum?' Some nights her mum fell asleep in the chair next to her bed. But tonight, the voice was a solemn whisper, someone murmuring. With a pained groan, Sally sat up and saw the guest chair was empty.

It was dark outside the open blinds. Rivulets of rain careered down the windowpane. Her parents must have left ages ago. It felt late – really late. Instead, Sally looked out of the open door onto the corridor. That was dark too and she couldn't see any of the nurses going about their rounds.

It was nothing so very unusual, though. It was a busy hospital and someone on the ward outside her room always needed something – her sleep had been disturbed every night. With a great effort, Sally swung her legs off the bed and got to her feet. With all her dressings she felt like a mummy of ancient Egypt, but her feet were fine to walk on and so she shuffled over to the door and closed it.

But the whispers continued. They were getting louder. Whispers became words in her head.

‘No . . .' Sally said to herself, feeling that lift-going-down-too-quickly sensation. Sally limped to her poky shower room and switched the light on. The bulb was pretty feeble and only ever gave a thin, blueish, flickering light.

She had to know.

Her mother had covered the mirror in her bathroom, not wanting her to get upset by her burns. Sally had let her, not wanting to cause an argument, but now she needed to see. She pulled the cheap hospital towel out from around the edges and let it drop into the sink.

Sally cried out in shock. A monster lurched at her. It took her a whole second to realise that the deformed creature was her reflection. Her hair was gone. They'd cut most of it off, but there were bald pink patches of burned flesh on her scalp. There was a nasty burn on her cheek too. Around the edges of her hospital gown and dressings she could see bright red scar tissue creeping up her neck. It was bad.

But while Sally whimpered, her reflection just stared back at her, a stone-cold look of pure hatred on her face. And then her lips moved.

‘Now don't tell me you thought it was going to be that easy,' said Molly Sue's voice.

She didn't sound happy.