Dreadful Skin (9 page)

III.

She rose at dawn, having slept little. She was tired, growing more tired every hour—but such was the price of vigilance when the moon was filling itself up like a bowl of milk.

With the passing years she’d grown aware and wary of the process, and never accustomed to it. The key around her neck unlocked the shackle. She rolled it up and put it back in her bag, hiding it quickly. In case. Always in case.

And the bottle beside the bed, with its green glass spinning runny prisms in the morning light—she shook the bottle and frowned. She hadn’t needed it, but it was just as well. The contents were nearly spent.

The label on the side read,
oleum dulci vitrioli,
which was an old way of naming it. Americans called it
chloroform
if they called it anything at all.

Through trial and error she’d tried many palliatives before settling on the chloroform. Prayer, will power, and a profound personal composure could stave off early attacks, but a full moon called for stronger stuff.

Mandrake would suffice in a pinch, when it wasn’t hard to come by. Opiates like laudanum might work perfectly, or they might things much, much worse—and there was no way to predict the outcome.

But fortunately, the fussy little ladies of the American temperance movement skirted the use of alcohol by drugging themselves with cough medicine made of ether and ethanol, obeying the letter of their moral law if not the spirit. Therefore, ether was relatively easy to acquire
in lieu
of her preferred sedative. But it was difficult to stomach, and it left her nauseous for hours.

Regardless, Eileen vowed to seek a back-up supply as soon as possible, for surely the chloroform wouldn’t last another month.

As she gathered her clothes and pulled them on a piece at a time, she debated bringing the gun. It was a good gun, a Colt six-shooter she’d purchased to replace the one lost on a riverboat, a long time ago. But it wasn’t good enough. Nothing was good enough, yet—not even with the special silver bullets. She didn’t bother to have them made anymore, not since that night when the riverboat burned.

On second thought, better to have it and not need it, than need it and not have it.

A glance into the gravy-boat mirror almost made her smile, but not quite.

It wasn’t a fair trade off, not by far. The monster’s gift was not eternal youth but eternal slavery. It would keep her from aging only so it could continue to use her, so passing for forty was small consolation.

Besides, her true age found ways to show. It glared out from her eyes, and it spoke out with the uncanny measure and confidence of her voice. She was not growing older and weaker, but stronger and clearer in her resolves—though they were many.

I will control this thing. I will find some way to reign it in, and hold it back. I will cure this thing. I will banish it forever, in myself and in the others who may carry it. I will seek out the others. I know they exist, and I will learn from them, and I will kill them if I have to, if I can not help them—if we cannot help each other.

I will find him.

I will find Jack, for this began with him—or I believe it did, I believe it must have. I will find Jack and I will kill him, because I do not believe he wishes to be helped. The thing has eaten his soul already, and there is nothing else to be done for him except give him back to God.

She took breakfast with Annie in the madam’s dining room—where they ate fried eggs with toasted bread, and drank fresh milk from a frequent customer’s cow.

“He can’t afford to pay much, you must understand what it’s like around here—with most folks passing through, not stopping. The people who live here don’t earn much, so we try to make it easier for them.”

Eileen nodded and sipped at the milk. “Bartering is as old as—”

“Older than the oldest profession?” Annie grinned. She was a pretty, black-haired woman who’d slipped from appealingly curvy to somewhat fat from years of leisure. Eileen hadn’t asked, but Annie had been fast to admit that she almost never took customers anymore, and she hadn’t for nearly a decade. The real money was in management, after all.

“And I’d assume that’s why there’s butter, too?”

“Butter, milk—cheese when it’s available. I think dear old Martin is excessively sweet on Tabitha, but he’s a nice fellow. Wife died awhile back. No children, just the cows and some pigs, too.” She waved a hand at the table. “The eggs came from Mr. Hammonds, who keeps chickens; the preserves were generously contributed by Jim Tanner, and the bread, oh my—and this is true, I tell you—the bread was made by Doc Arnold’s wife, she’s so delighted to be rid of him.”

“From his own wife?”

“Oh yes—on the condition we don’t let him know she’s aware of what he’s up to. If he thought she knew, he’d be embarrassed to death and then stay home. She’d rather avoid that if she can help it, so she bakes extra loaves on Monday afternoons as a gesture of goodwill.”

Eileen cackled happily, as there was no sense in feigning shock. “And I suppose this fine establishment of yours is a veritable
repository
of local gossip.”

The madam lifted an eyebrow, a corner of her lip, and another bite of toast. “It’s a small place. We all know each other’s business, if that’s what you mean. Why?”

Eileen pressed her lips together, but she couldn’t prevent them from creeping up at the edges. “Oh, it’s not
gossip
I’m after, exactly. I’m interested in those camp meetings, the ones with the announcements everywhere.”

“The camp meetings? Are you going to see about catching some extra religion out here?”

“No, no. I’m content enough with the state of my soul,” she lied, and she thought hard about how best to phrase the rest.

“Then go on,” Annie prompted her. “You’ve got a willing sinner with loose lips at your ready disposal. What would you care to know?”

Eileen settled back into her chair and folded her hands. “I’ve heard rumors of problems—maybe problems with the Reverend Aarons, isn’t that his name?”

Annie made a small “mm” sound and bobbed her chin.

She continued. “This reverend has gathered an unusual reputation, as he travels from place to place, conducting his meetings. Starting with the very first one, in Cane Ridge—”

“That was the big one in Kentucky, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” Eileen said. “Several years ago. You heard about it?”

“Sure. He’s getting a name for himself, roaming from town to town, pushing Jesus for whole weekends at a time. And his is one of those shouting faiths, if you know what I speak of. Not Baptists or Methodists like folks around here—not like Catholics, that’s for damn sure.” She fell silent then, like there might be more to be said but she wasn’t sure how much of it was important.

Eileen cocked her head and tapped her thumbs against one another. “They call it a Holiness Movement, and as part of their doctrine, they participate in a baptism of the Holy Spirit—but I’ve heard it called ‘speaking in tongues.’ I’ve never seen it for myself but I’m interested in having a look.”

“You won’t participate?”

“No,” she said—and it came out more carefully than she would have liked. “I don’t care for the sound of it. But I’m intrigued by spirituality in all its forms, and I would like to know more.”

Annie took a long, fast swallow from her own glass of milk. She drained it and set it down on the round, wood table with a smack. “But that’s not why you want to visit the camp meeting, though. Speaking in tongues isn’t a problem, exactly. That’s not what you were talking about, was it?”

“No,” she admitted. “But I think it might be related to their problem.”

“How?”

She stalled, trying to organize the words in a way that wouldn’t say too much. “People have gone missing, and sometimes their families think they’ve left home to follow the meetings. But that doesn’t seem to be the situation.”

“They’re dead.” Annie said it matter-of-factly, as though she’d known all along.

“Er…yes. Not all of them, but some of them. I think there’s a good chance
some
of the missing people have joined the meetings. But a few of them were found in a terrible condition. You don’t want to use a nasty word like ‘murder,’ but it’s difficult not to; and it’s also difficult to ignore how the murders coincide with the meetings.”

“By which you mean to say, they coincide with the good reverend’s presence.”

“I wouldn’t single him out, except that when I hear about his fits, when he speaks in tongues—I wonder if there isn’t something horribly wrong with him. A medical condition, perhaps.”

The madam nodded, but didn’t offer anything further, so Eileen continued.

“A dear old friend of mine is a wonderful doctor who specializes in diseases of the mind,” she lied again—though this was more of a fib than an outright falsehood. “He’s seen patients with the most unusual disorders, things like you wouldn’t believe if you didn’t know they were true. One of the more interesting sicknesses—oh, there’s a name for it, but it escapes me now—afflicts people with terrible seizures. And these seizures, they predict a period of violent, uncontrollable delusion that might last for hours.”

A light went on in Annie’s eyes. “I see,” she said. “And you think, perhaps, that the reverend may be a victim of such a condition?”

“I hate to put it that way. But people have been known before to address their afflictions with religion, and at times in my own faith’s traditions the line between madness and sainthood has been perilously thin. Do you understand what I’m trying to say? I don’t wish to trod upon his customs or their worship, but there are reasons to be suspicious.”

“What a careful little woman you are!” Annie exclaimed with a laugh.

Eileen smiled back, still more cautious than her company. “It’s something of a learned trait, I admit. It’s this country, I think—not the citizens so much as the tremendous landscape of it, the uncommon size and incredible range of terrains. I admire people with such strength to come to a frontier so sparsely populated, and so far apart from more established civilization. Mind you, close living with other people comes with its own host of difficulties, but it must be harder out here. When people are isolated like this, they become so
insular
…I think they lose perspective when it comes to that which is ordinary, normal, or proper. After a while, when everyone is much the same, then anyone else becomes a threat, or a source of misgiving at any rate.”

She took a deliberate swallow of milk to stop herself from rambling any further.

Annie thought about this, and shook her head. “I can see what you’re getting at. I’ve witnessed it myself, in the travels I’ve made from here to there. People do make groups like that, from necessity and loneliness. They band together when the world is unfamiliar, and I guess it does limit one’s perspective, as you’re putting it. But there’s a bigger point I think you’re missing.”

“What would that be?”

“It’s as simple as pie—people are the same, everywhere. Even when they hide up together, and even when they set themselves apart on purpose, people are the same. They want the same things, need the same things, and lie about the same things, everywhere.”

Eileen’s glass was empty. She ran her thumb up and down its painted pattern and thought of what she’d said to Leonard, offering this precise sentiment just the day before. “Yes,” she said. “I’m sure you’re right. Perhaps I’ve been taking a narrow view, myself.”

But there was more she couldn’t say—didn’t
dare
say.

The sticking point was bigger than Annie could have imagined, because Annie assumed that everyone she knew was human. To the best of her knowledge, she was not acquainted with any deviant monsters, and there were no unpredictable, bestial impulses lurking beneath the skins of her neighbors.

Human nature might be a constant thing of reliable wickedness, but the nature of the unnatural was something altogether different.

Or at least Eileen had always believed as much.

Tabitha came in to clear the table, and she asked a word with Annie in private. The madam excused herself and left Eileen alone with her thoughts and her questions that could not be asked aloud.

Perhaps she’d been wrong, after all—and the difference was not a difference at all, but exaggeration. After all, the beast, the wolf, Jack—the creatures wished to feed, they wished for power and strength. They wished for indulgence when indulgence was immoral, inappropriate, and criminal. It would be hard to argue that humanity displayed no such traits when uncorrupted by the inhuman.

It unnerved her deeply to wonder, but wonder she must.

How much of myself rises with the beast when it cries out for blood?

IV.

Leonard Dwyer arrived at six to retrieve Eileen as he’d promised, even though the prospect of visiting Red Annie’s left him visibly troubled. He lingered in the lobby, torturing his brown hat in his hands until Eileen swept own the stairs. She was only a few minutes late—barely late at all, really—but the slight delay had caused him no end of embarrassment.

“I must beg your pardon,” she told him. “I was having the most fascinating conversation with Tabitha. The blonde girl, do you know her? I’m sorry—I meant, do you know who I mean?”

“I know who she is, yes,” he mumbled, ushering her out the door and down into the dirty, late-day heat. “I’ve seen her about town.”

“Yes, she’s an awfully nice girl, even considering…but she’s a clever girl, too. I was hoping to convince her to join us for the meeting, but she declined, alas.”

“Alas,” he echoed without much remorse, but then reconsidered. “I suppose it would be a good thing for her to visit the meetings. After all, didn’t Christ himself walk with the lepers and prostitutes?”

“He did indeed. He counted them among his best friends, and I knew you were too kind to turn her away if she was interested. But perhaps tomorrow. The meetings run through the weekend, don’t they?”

“Oh yes—until Monday morning. That’s when we’ll pack up and move on.”

“We,” she held onto that word, considering it.

The streets were filling with people. It wasn’t a tide, and it wasn’t a flood, but it was a definite trickle—all feet padding along in the same direction, north out of town. In the distance, beyond the hearing of the rest of the pilgrims, Eileen detected music. She detected voices, and percussion in the form of clapping hands.

She listened harder, and thought she heard a pipe organ, the kind that went with carnivals, and possibly a stringed instrument—a guitar or a banjo, possibly a fiddle or two.

“Yes?” Leonard nudged her gently, wobbling the navy blue parasol Eileen held up over her head.

“I’m sorry?”

“I thought for a moment you were going to ask me something else.”

Eileen shook her head to sharpen her thoughts. “How far is it to the camp?”

“Not a mile and a half. It’s down by the river that runs north of town.”

“A river?”

“More like a fat creek, if you’ve crossed the Mississippi—and I don’t imagine you arrived from Ireland across Asia, so you must have crossed it at some point. Am I right?”

She smiled and bobbed her head. “Right as rain, Leonard. I came through New York, and rode much of the way south and west along the rivers. But what about you? How long have you been traveling with the camp?”

“A few months now,” he confessed. “I must tell you, it has proved to be the great joy of my life. Reverend Aarons has changed me. He has
saved
me.”

There was that name again, and here was a willing disciple. Eileen said the rest with care. “I’m looking forward to meeting him myself, or seeing him, at least. I’ve heard so much about him. I imagine you must know him quite well. You must trust him a great deal, to have left your home to follow him.”

Leonard managed to nod vigorously and appear grave at the same time. “Oh yes, implicitly. He does great work—he’s very devout. Intensely devout, like no one I’ve ever known before.”

“Yes. His religious fervor is a thing to behold, or so I’ve heard.”

“Ah.” He slowed his pace a touch and watched the ground, as if he too were measuring out the caution he’d serve with his words. “You wish to ask me about the way he speaks in tongues.”

She adjusted her grip on the parasol. “I hear he’s prone to terrible fits, and that he appears almost to be possessed.”

“By the Holy Spirit, he
is
possessed. I know, I know,” he waved his hands in front of himself in a small gesture of helplessness. “I realize that it can appear strange to people accustomed to more sedate services, but it’s the passion that is so
compelling
. The first time I saw the throes of the Spirit upon him, I was almost frightened. But now I understand, and it moves me. It inspires me.”

“I see,” she said, and she did.

“There have been places before where people were concerned about the services, but more often than not we find that the worshippers are swept up in the ceremony, and after a while, they join in without hesitation. It seems to be particularly effective….” he trailed off as his ears caught the first soft slappings of hands at the camp up the road.

Eileen finished for him. “On women.”

“What?”

“It’s particularly effective on women, isn’t it? They most often find themselves the most moved, as you put it.”

He nodded slowly. “They’ve been known to throw propriety to the wind and make a terrific commotion, but it’s in the name of the Lord so of course their hearts and spirits are in the right place. But except for the reverend, it’s usually the younger women who are most taken up in the moment. I’m not sure why.”

Eileen could have hazarded a guess or two, but she didn’t offer any.

After another few minutes of walking along the dry, brown road, they began to see the first signs of encampment—smatterings of tents, small groups of people lounging with families on blankets, shielding their eyes from the sun. The population increased in density as the larger tent appeared on the horizon. It was an enormous thing that might have hosted a circus somewhere else in the land. There must have been room for hundreds beneath it, and hundreds were filtering fast, wandering a slow and curious path to what shade and salvation the tent had to offer.

The music was louder now, fiddles and pipes and dozens of voices, raised up, singing out—calling the service to disorder.

Ropes and stakes held the tent taut, and open. Eileen folded the parasol and released her polite grip on Leonard’s arm. “You have work to do, don’t you dear?” she asked.

At first he looked confused, but then he agreed. “I do, yes. I need to see to the service, and assist the reverend. Please excuse me,” he said. “And I hope you’ll participate with an open heart.”

“I’ll do my very best,” she assured him.

He looked over his shoulder once, then twice, before leaving her there.

She waved him on. She was fine—and she was far more worried for him than he needed to be for her.

In the back of the tent, around the edges, newcomers lurked. Many of the lurkers were families with small children, uncertain and anxious from the crowds and the noise. The people up front were singing and clapping together; an old standard about gathering at the river was coming to a close, and a faster tune was beginning.

Leading the service was a lovely young woman with caramel-colored hair tied in a modest bun. Her cheeks were dappled with freckles and her eyes were alight with the flush of exertion. The audience swayed with her, and sang with her, and watched her as charmed as any set of snakes.

Across the room, Eileen spied the back of Leonard’s head and she noticed without surprise that he was watching the girl too—as spellbound as the rest, if not more. Eileen wondered how much of Leonard’s own religious devotion was fueled by something more secular than the words of her song, her new song, faster. Her new song, the one that she used to lure the crowd closer to the hastily-constructed stage—she used it to call, siren-like, and her voice was a thing of beauty as it rose up over the crowd to fill the tent.

And Eileen listened too; she listened keenly and with better ears than those that surrounded her. She listened for an unnatural timbre, for coercion or command that didn’t come from God, or from the throat of a pretty young woman with a face like an angel and hands that swayed, clapped, folded in prayer.

She didn’t hear anything of the sort, save a hint of an accent that reminded her of Appalachia and the time she’d spent there. It was a softer thing, a different smoothing of the consonants than the sharper speech of the locals.

Leonard was working his way closer to the stage, and Eileen was satisfied that the girl up front was no more than she appeared to be—though she was certainly charismatic. And her song, the one she led after the river song, it was sung in rounds so that those who’d never heard it before could join as late as they liked and still make harmony.

By and by

When the morning comes

All the saints

Will be gathered as one

Trials dark

At every hand

We’ll understand it better

By and by

It was percussive and seductive, with a rhythm like African voices—and Eileen thought perhaps it was a slave song, passed along and down and over the mountains. Songs pass so easily across rivers, and deserts, and decades. This one stirred Eileen in a primitive way, all the hands beating together like drums.

At the back of the tent there was disapproval. There were shaking heads and children being pulled away, back outside, by one hand or both.

But more than the disapproval there was naked interest written on the faces that were coming to fill the tent. There was eagerness, and pleasure, and a gentle throb of bodies as they moved themselves forward, closer. Closer to the stage. Closer to the girl. Closer to God.

Eileen joined them.

She found her way close to the front, three or four rows of heads in front of hers. Up towards the wooden stage that echoed, smacked, reverberated with the gleeful stomp of fervent feet. On tip-toes she stood, straining to see.

Back against the far corner of the stage there was a piano, and standing beside that were two bearded men whose elbows were pumping madly at their bows and fiddles. There was no sign of Leonard anymore, but she could smell that he’d been nearby. A faint trail marked his body’s passing, weaving and bobbing between the worshippers where he earned his way forward—but it was a hard trail to hold, so cluttered with the stink and motion of other bodies.

Eileen was holding her head up, sniffing, listening with her nose. When she realized this, she dropped her chin and hoped she hadn’t been seen. It embarrassed her, though it was so wonderfully helpful. But it was not a human impulse at all—it was the beast inside, and she didn’t like it.

She didn’t like the way the beast was tapping its foot, either. She was displeased at the pulse within, a fiendish, repetitive tug on her soul that wanted to move, to dance, to crawl forward and howl.

No. Not yet.

Not here, not now.

It’s not even dark.

But dark was coming. And there was the pound of the music and the crushing sweat of anxious bodies, the toxic perfume of a tent filled with blood.

Eileen put her face in her hands and breathed through her fingers.

One, two. Count it—one, two.

Three, four. Five, six. Breathe.

In her garter holster the Colt offered a reassuring weight, and beside it—also strapped against her thigh, was the green glass bottle and its last precious drops. She didn’t want to use them tonight; she didn’t want to need them tonight, but tonight was looming up faster than she’d imagined and the crowd was….

…the crowd was…

“This is too much,” she said to her palms, knowing that even the people on either side of her, leaning against her shoulders, would not hear over the din.

If he’s half as cursed as I am, he can’t stand it. He couldn’t possibly. These meetings, this camp—they can’t hide his condition, they can only aggravate it. It’s not even time yet and I can feel myself losing my grip on my reason—I can feel my fingers slipping free of my sanity because it’s all too much.

The people, all of them smelling like salt and blood—they’re swollen with it, and they’re crying out for violence or music or God. And I…I want to give it to them.

No, the thing inside—it wants them. Not me.

Yes, I want to rise up. Yes, I want to climb out and crawl free and break them one at a time in my hands. I want to bite them until they stop screaming. I want to—

“No,” she said aloud, into her hands.

But the world swirled around her and the chanting voices made her nauseous. They assaulted her concentration and made her vision swim, as if she were watching the service through a fish bowl.

Would anyone notice if I lifted my skirt, just a little, and took the bottle? Just a few drops—just a little bit of that pretty chemical smell. Just a touch and a taste, to push the thing back down.

It might not matter. Any moment now, and it will be indecent and I will be embarrassed by it later—and Leonard might see and he might wish to know what I was doing—but if I do not take the reins back into my own hands, it will be much, much worse.

The thought of Leonard sharpened her sight a tad, so she chased that thought and caught it, held onto it. Leonard, a nice boy. Brought her here because he believed. Brought her here to see the Reverend Aarons, as she’d wished.

“Aarons,” the name came past her lips and was spoken up on stage as well.

The girl’s song was over, the crowd was primed, and the girl was stepping down. She stepped away on a short flight of stairs. She took Leonard’s hand—yes, there he was—and she tripped lightly down to the desert floor that comprised the tent bottom.

Leonard said something into her ear; she leaned in to hear him, and she nodded.

Eileen couldn’t quite catch it, but the effort honed her control further. And when the music had stopped, there was one less thing to distract her. The swollen, aching, chaotic thing inside had less to feed it, then. She forced it back, willing it back and down, and away.

She wanted to see this reverend.

He took the stage in a black suit that must have been dreadful in the sun (but oh yes, the sun was sinking—the sun would be sunk in another hour, or less than two). Reverend Aarons was a tall man, lanky inside the death-black suit, with bird-black eyes and a shock of astonishing white hair that framed his head with the shape of a halo. He hushed the crowd when he opened his hands; he opened his mouth, and the tones that poured forth were as dark and thick as tar.