Dreadful Skin (14 page)

VII.

Melissa, July 5, 1881

Yesterday was Independence Day. Jack told me all about it, while lying beside me smug and chipper—despite the early evening heat. He likes to talk, just to hear himself, or just to bother me—I don’t know which. He’s a thing in love with the sound of his own words. He loves himself at least as much as I hate him.

It’s just now the middle of moon’s cycle, so he isn’t as wild or bloodthirsty as the fuller moon makes him. This doesn’t make him any gentler a companion, but it means that tomorrow, I will look less like I’ve been tied in a gunny sack and beaten with a cane.

I hate the smell of him. I hate the way his body changes, and the way it snaps and shifts with the sound of splitting bone under leather—it makes me ill.
He
makes me ill.

I hate the look of him. I hate his warm-orange eyes that still look cold, somehow; and I hate the way he swells into a knotted mannequin of lumps, hair, and sharp-ended angles when the moon hits him hard.

I hate the sound of him. He makes my ears ring when he is overcome with the moment, or with his bestial attentions, and he pulls all the air in the tent into his chest and he howls, brays, roars—like some bizarre amalgam of creatures never meant to mate or cross.

But most of all, I simply hate
him
.

Look what he has done to us. Look what has become of the reverend’s wonderful holy dream—
look
at how Jack has perverted it. We began as a band of disciples, following Christ’s footsteps through the wilderness. We were poor in funds, but rich in mercy and love. We never wanted for any of the necessities, and as our company grew, our family grew. It was a fellowship of like-minded followers.

And what is it now? A charade of evil. A band of devils.

I am the only one left intact. I alone walk with human footsteps when the night falls and the moon rolls up in the sky.

By my best count, which is not a good count—but is only the roughest estimation, there are twenty of them. All men, who fight amongst themselves constantly. All the women have been used up, worn out, thrown away or devoured except for myself. And me? I think they keep me because they mean to punish me.

Jack says that it’s because I’m so pretty and proud, and he likes things that are pretty.
I
think it’s because he likes to defile things that are proud.

He is very proud himself. I wonder what terrible thing overcame him once, or do I already know? But no. It wouldn’t be the wolf. I believe he greeted the wolf with joy, and with welcoming arms. I do not think the wolf changed him; I think that it freed him to be as wicked as he wished.

I don’t know why I wonder about it. I don’t really care. Whatever was done to him in the past, it doesn’t excuse anything he does now. Maybe I just want a reason, even as I realize that there can’t possibly
be
one.

So Jack lies beside me still, if not every night—then so many nights as it makes no difference to say otherwise. At least when he’s on top of me, he doesn’t talk much. What an existence this is, where I split hairs of misery like this.

The more he talks, the more I understand how thoroughly insane he is.

Last night he gave me a secular sermon on Independence Day, and he explained how they would declare an Independence Day of their own—because really, there’s
nothing
he won’t try to corrupt.

“What about the rest of us?” he mused, kicking the edge of his heel against the bar on the cot. “Independence Day for whom? For men, for women, for good little citizens, to be sure. But if their laws—if their happy little government—will not protect and serve the interests of those who remain, shall its government apply to us as well? Should we follow their laws if they would kill us on sight?”

If I cared for him at all, I might have interjected an encouraging noise. But I don’t, and I didn’t.

“Oh, we are few enough now. Maybe that’s why they’ve excluded us. Maybe they don’t even know about us—but that’s going to change. Already we are growing this pack; already we are stronger than I could’ve imagined. It took me time—time to sort out the details and time to learn about the transition. It’s rather like an infection, but it’s not one that’s easy to spread.”

Then he rolled over, facing me, even though I was staring up towards the sky. But even the stars were denied me by the canvas of the tent.

“I could do it to you, if I wanted to. But I don’t, not yet. I like you like this. I like you soft, and easy to hold.” He ran one of his hands—normal-looking, now—up and down my arm.

I knew better than to jerk away.

“It’s as I said, an infection of sorts. To spread it the body must be badly damaged, but the blood must continue to circulate. If the blood doesn’t circulate, the infection doesn’t dig itself in deeply enough. Or at least,” he said with an airy flip of his wrist, “that’s my supposition. I’m no doctor, but I’ve been examined by many of them. You learn things. But you know, I don’t want to call it an infection. It’s no
disease
, obviously. It’s nothing that needs to be treated or cured—even if it were possible to treat or cure, and I’m confident that it isn’t. If you look at it this way, I’m a pioneer of science. I’m an explorer into uncharted realms of human experience—not because I’m human now, because I’m much more than that. But because I was human once, and I am pushing this thing to its limits—I want to see where the boundaries are.”

I couldn’t restrain a small cough, from the dust or from simple congestion. He took it as a prompt, and he continued.

“You live here with us, among us. You should be observing this. Do you have a journal, or some papers? I think you should write this down. Think of it! The future may remember you as a brave historian, instead of the captive you think yourself now.”

“I’m not a captive, then?” I shouldn’t have said it, but the implication that I was free galled me enough that I engaged him, though I didn’t look at him.

“Of course not. Think of it instead as being a…as being a spectator. Think of yourself as a scientist, watching the birth and evolution of a spectacular new creature, destined to change the course of history, the paths of nations, and the very nature of humanity itself! How can you consider these things and not find them thrilling?”

He sat up, clapped his hands together, and said, “That’s it. That’s what I’ll do. I’ll bring you paper—I’ll go to town, to the nearest one, whatever it is—and I’ll buy you a blank book if I can find one. I want you to write about us. I want you to chronicle this beginning of an era. I want you to record this for the future.”

“All right,” I told him. Yes, I was learning. Tell him what he wants. Give him what he wants. Treat him how he wants. Whatever it takes for him to leave as quickly as possible, in as good a mood as I can conjure for him. Whatever it takes to keep him away from me. “Get it. I’ll do it.”

“Excellent!” He climbed over me and off the cot—which was surely going to fail me one day soon. How the poor contraption has held together this long, I have no idea. “I’ll go into town myself. I’ll get it for you, and I’ll give it to you, and it will be a wondrous exchange of gifts.”

“Hm?” I said, not a question, really.

“Yes, an exchange. I’ll give you the supplies, and you give me a history of our people. And if I like what I read—and there’s no reason to think I won’t—perhaps we’ll lift you up into our ranks. Another three or four experimental volunteers, and I’ll have the process down pat. We can, we can—I know! It will be the first and holiest sacrament in our own church!”

He was dancing now, naked there in my tent. “Oh, there will be ritual and beauty—same as the churches now. The blood of the martyrs are the seeds of the church, oh yes. And my blood, or our blood, it will feed the priests and ministers! It will bind them all to us, to me.”

And then, he stopped. His feet settled into the dust and a pensive, almost fond mood overtook him. “Though we have no priestesses yet. No holy sisters. It isn’t that I haven’t tried, my dear. I don’t want this to become some dull old collection of monks, but I do suspect that it might become more of a hive, in some respects. One queen. One woman to rule and to serve. But as of yet, there have been no sisters strong enough in constitution to survive the infection—God, I want a better term for it. The sacrament, then. It frustrates me, honestly it does.”

“I believe you,” I said.

“As well you should. And it’s another reason, I must confess, that we’ve left you this long. I want to turn you, even as I want to preserve you forever, just like this! But nothing so mortal lasts, and if I cannot discover a way to pass this along to you, you’re worthless to us, my love.”

I tried not to cringe at the endearment. His
love
. He loved nothing, and no one, and not me. Nothing but himself.

“You’re tougher than they were—the other girls, and the older women who were here before. You’re stronger, you’ve survived more. You can….” The wheels in his brain were turning like the insides of a wound-up watch. I could almost see the gears clicking on the other side of his eyes.

He reached for his pants and idly pulled them on. “Would you like that?”

“What?” I didn’t believe for a second that he cared one way or the other what I would, or would not,
like
.

“Would you like that? To be the queen of our kind? Our mother and wife, empress. Maybe that’s the way it’s meant to be, after all. One woman. One muse, one divine feminine. Isn’t that the way the church already tells it? One woman in a story at a time. It seems to be all the public can bear.”

“You’re talking in circles.”

“And why not? It’s all circles, anyway.” He waved his hands like he was flicking flies away from himself.

If he’d been an ordinary man I would have called him crazed and dismissed him, but I could only shrug. Any enthusiasm for anything, even feigned, would be misinterpreted and used against me. “As you like, then. You’re going to do what you’re going to do.”

He wanted something else from me. His mood shifted, and grew instantly darker. “I’m offering you
greatness
. You might show something other than disdain.”

“It’s exhaustion,” I corrected him with a lie that was half true. I watched him consider this, and decide that it was possible. He’d believe anything that flattered him, in even the most round-about way. “I’m tired, Jack. That’s all.”

The absent stare he flashed over my head told me he was already thinking about something else. His addled brain went from one subject to the next like a skipping stone. It made him hard to follow, and tricky to read.

I was afraid, for a moment, that I’d invited some new assault or injustice with my protests, but his attention had left me and he followed it close behind—out the flap and into the early night. I sighed with relief and remained on the cot, too tired and miserable to move. Who would wish for such royalty? Who would ask to be queen of all she surveyed, if
this
was all she could see?

I didn’t think he’d try it, anyway. Or if he did, I did not think I’d survive it. I’d noticed before what he’d complained about—that women were difficult to come by with their condition. He gave me too much credit. God willing I’d bleed to death first, or else become so strong and wicked that I could slay them all. Anyway, isn’t that what a queen does? Doesn’t she hold power of life or death over her subjects?

It’s a thought, isn’t it—something to sustain me, or entertain me if it all comes down to the worst. Change me then, you bastard, if you can. Give me that power, and I’ll use it against you. I’ll be your Madonna. I’ll be your queen.

And I’ll have your head if it’s the last thing I ever do.

VIII.

Leonard, July 7, 1881

Mescalero.

A freak rainstorm washed me into town last night. There was lightning to stretch across the sky, and water falling in curtains. This is what people mean when they talk about gully-washers. Now, come morning, the land is scarred. The water has cut trails through the dirt, small canyons worn into the packed earth.

I didn’t see much of the town when I arrived. The rain fell down with animosity, as if it wanted to strike and harm everyone and everything beneath it. I ran from it, like everyone else. Everything was boarded, and the street was empty.

The stage driver was a soaked mass without eyes or a face. He hollered, lifting a sopping arm and pointing towards a hulking shadow that must have been a building, there on the other side of the angry rain.

“The Primrose,” he said.

I nodded, but he wasn’t looking at me anymore, and I was standing there getting wet. I ducked my head and dashed for the shadow, which had a porch for me to stumble up, and a door for me to fumble with. I pushed it and it gave, and I staggered inside.

The manager at the desk was a small fellow. He was older than me by thirty years, and he wore round spectacles pushed up on his forehead—instead of over his eyes. “Come on in, son,” he told me.

I tried to dry myself off, there in the doorway, but the desk man shook his head. “Don’t do it. It’s worse with you leaving the door open. Just come on in and drip. Nobody here cares.”

I winced at the suggestion, but accepted his offer. This was his property—or so I assumed. I adjusted my grip on the wet carpet bag I carried, and approached the desk while he looked me up and down.

“I’d like to ask a room for the night,” I told him.

“Sure. We got plenty. You’re here for those meetings, aren’t you? The church folk camped outside town?”

“Yes,” I confessed, because it was as true as anything.

He reached behind the desk for a ledger and offered me a quill with a half-dry ink pot. “I’m not sure how I feel about it. The whole thing smells funny to me.”

“The meetings?” I tried to keep my voice disinterested, but polite.

“It’s a bunch of men, so far as I can see. And that one woman, who always looks so tired. And this rain—we don’t have rain like this here. Once every couple of years, maybe, it’ll fall so hard and so mean like this. It’s a bad sign.”

“You believe in such signs then, sir?”

“Maybe God’s trying to tell us something.”

“God is always speaking,” I agreed, though I don’t think he and I were talking about the same thing. I was deliberately being evasive, or deliberately misunderstanding. I didn’t like the way the conversation was turning. I didn’t like having company for my concern, although it should have relieved me.

“Number six,” the man said, handing me a key.

I thanked him, took the key, and said, “There is someone who will likely seek me out here. Could I leave a message here, at the desk?”

He produced some paper and I wrote quickly.

Sister C.—I’ve arrived, and I await you. I’ve been given room number 6. I’ll remain here in hopes that you’ll join me soon, but I won’t wait more than another day. I must see Melissa. I must bring her out of this.

I folded the note and addressed it simply, with a first name.

The desk man put it under the counter. “Number six is upstairs. First on the left.”

I thanked him yet again, lifted my drenched luggage, and stepped down the hall with a squish in my shoes.

My room was simply but comfortably furnished. The linens were clean, if not new; and the basin was filled with fresh water. Beside it was a bar of white soap and a gray towel. I disrobed and spent the next half hour hanging my things around the room, hoping that by morning they might dry.

By the time I finished, the rain had slowed to a trickle.

I thought of Melissa, alone at the camp—surrounded by the devils and the deep blue sea. I prayed for her, before I slept. I prayed myself to sleep, praying for her strength and praying for the protection of the Almighty.

***

I thought surely I would dream of her, but I did not. I dreamed instead of Eileen, small and self-possessed in her dark dress and modestly covered hair.

I saw her standing alone in the desert, arms outstretched. She was gazing up at the sky, and the sky was gazing back. Clouds were unrolling, unfurling, and flapping like a blanket snapped to fullness across a freshly made bed.

In one hand she held a chain of black beads that dangled a metal cross. In the other she held a sword—and in the sword I saw the reflection of a mighty army, each soldier dressed in gleaming white armor.

The dream comforted me, even as it confused me.

I awoke in the room, by myself. The rain had stopped, and the sun was hours from rising. I laid my head back down and tried to dream again, but failed.

***

Morning began with a knock on my door. It was the desk man’s wife, I believe. She was informing me that breakfast was served downstairs, but only for the next twenty minutes. I was hungry, and my belly churned with anticipation.

“I’ll be down shortly,” I said to her. “But could you tell me, has anyone come by to ask after me? I’m expecting company, after a fashion. I was hoping to meet with an old friend here.”

“Sorry.” She shook her head. “I haven’t seen any messages down at the desk, save what you left in case of your visitor. Twenty minutes,” she said again, and left.

I walked to the window and opened it. There was a muggy staleness about the room that made me uncomfortable, and when the daylight came inside, I understood. It wasn’t even eight yet, but the heat was coming up fast, steaming the places where the rain had been closed out.

My clothes weren’t completely dry, but the ones hung highest were fair to wear so I quickly donned them and went downstairs in time to find toast, grits, and eggs. I ate faster than I should have, but I wanted the day to begin—even if it meant hours of ‘hurry up and wait.’

I finished up, washed up, and went outside.

Nine o’clock, and the world was on fire. It wasn’t as if I’d forgotten how the heat of the desert feels. No, I think it was the way things were still shedding their moisture. I think it was the humidity, making the temperature feel sticky.

Cracks were opening in the ground. Where the water drained or evaporated, the dirt went dry and split beneath my feet.

I was wondering how to begin. Where to start? Where to enquire, and where to look? And behind me, I heard a woman’s voice with an accent that came from across an ocean.

“There you are, dear boy. And you only beat me by a day.”