House of Skin (35 page)

Numb, he finished chewing and set his chopsticks down—she’d made him fumble around with them for her entertainment, she said—and followed her. The way she disappeared around the corner, the shadows swallowing her whole, reminded him of that first night in the rain. Just out of reach yet tantalizingly close. Now that she was giving herself to him, he couldn’t believe it was true. Something had to intrude, had to ruin it for them. Paul took the stairs two at a time. He caught a glimpse of her gliding up the staircase to the third floor. When he reached it he saw her disappear into the master suite.

He passed through the doorway and found Julia standing in front of the open window, facing him. Her stomach was dark above her white panties, and in the evening sun he saw soft golden fuzz on her skin. He approached her and knelt, his tongue tasting the flesh around her navel. He caressed her buttocks, slid his fingers beneath the thong. Her hands touched his hair, massaged his scalp, and he let his tongue pass over the outside of her underwear, going lower, his saliva melting into the wetness between her legs. Increasing the pressure, he felt her push into him, quivering now, the hands grasping his hair needful, frantic. He took his time, let her lean over him and knead his shoulder muscles. He moved her underwear aside and heard her moan. A few minutes later she hooked him under the arms, led him toward the bed. He took off her white tank top and bra and began kissing her breasts, his tongue loving the large firm taste of them. When they were fully nude, he paused and looked at her for a moment. She smiled languidly. In moments they began. He knew then it was her first time, but rather than alarming him, the knowledge made everything better. At the end she clung to him, shuddering. Awhile later they made love again and with greater passion. Then she was crying out and covering his mouth with kisses.

They lay naked most of the evening, comfortable with each other’s bodies. It was well past midnight when she fell asleep. Careful not to rouse her, Paul stood and moved to the large window beside their bed. Was this the window, he wondered, that Annabel hurled Maria through? If it was, some of Annabel’s blood would have splattered here and there on the floor, for that was how his first novel told it.

The second novel was lying in the office, half-typed. In it, Barbara Merrow had just been murdered, leaving her daughter motherless. He fought the urge to go in there, finish reading what he’d written. Julia was in the book. What else would he learn of her? It brought him fully awake. Reading terrible things about her was the last thing he wanted to do now. He was in love with her, he knew. He thought she felt the same. His writing had only caused them problems. The first novel had already been rejected by one publishing house and was sure to be shot down by the other. If
The Monkey Killer
almost ruined their relationship, what would
Song of Annabel
do to them?
 

That decided it. He slipped out the door and moved to the office. Gathering the notebooks he’d filled, the pile of typed pages—even the paper with one sentence on it still in the typewriter—he hustled down the stairs to the kitchen. He grabbed the lighter and moved toward the door.

The laughter stopped him.

It was a woman’s voice. Lilting, playful.

Paul glanced about the gloomy foyer but found nothing to account for it. It continued, louder now, less pleasant. It came, he realized, from the ballroom. The voice had grown deeper, menacing now. Paul backed toward the door as the laughter swelled. It drove him out of the house, walking backward down the porch steps, following him through the door he hadn’t shut.

He refused to let it faze him. In a way it made perfect sense. The house had secrets, had seen terrible things. How could it not but retain some of the evil that had taken place within its walls?
 

Paul looked at the pages in his hands.

These were remnants of blacker days. Maybe by giving voice to the thoughts contained in them he’d propagated the darkness.

Paul’s jaw clenched.

But these were not bad times, he reminded himself. This was the beginning of a glorious era. He was stronger now, healthier than when he first came. He and Julia loved one another, and that would prove more powerful than whatever flickering shadows still resided within Watermere’s walls.

He took a deep breath, marched to the lawn to the fire pit he’d dug for the Fourth of July. There was no breeze, so it was easy to light the pages, watch as the flames licked them, curled them in on themselves, the terrible words blackening to smoke. Paul savored the sharp tang of it, but even more so the truth it represented. The past could not harm them. Whatever Annabel was, she was gone. Myles and David too. They’d had their time.

The notebook was taking longer to burn. In the scant light cast by the fire Paul could see the florid hand, the writing that was not his own, combusting slowly, reluctantly. Eventually, though, it became a blackened twist of illegible pages.

Paul felt the skin on the nape of his neck tingle. He whirled, certain he’d see Annabel in the library window, escaped from her portrait and come to haunt him.

But it was Julia he saw, nude, standing in the picture window of the master suite. She spread her arms for him, and though for a crazy moment he was sure she’d jump, he soon realized she was beckoning him back to bed.

Paul returned.

“You look happy today.”

Julia glanced up at Bea, who was staring at her over her bifocals with a look that begged details.

“I am,” Julia said.

“And may I ask why?” Bea set her copy of
Good Housekeeping
on the desk.

“I’m in love.”

Bea’s mouth worked, her hands kneading one another excitedly. “That’s
wonderful
, dear. How did this happen? Who is it, the Carver boy?”

Julia laughed. “He’s not exactly a boy.”

“He is to me.” Bea frowned. “I thought you two were through. You sulked your way through most of July because of it.”

“I forgave him.”

“Did he deserve to be forgiven?”
 

“I think so. We all deserve to be, don’t we?”

“Most of us, at least. So when did this start up again?”

“Recently.”

Bea waited.

“Last night,” Julia said, and they both laughed.

The older woman stood, fidgety in her giddiness. “Oh, dear, I hope this is the one. Why you’ve never married is something I’ve never understood. I’ve lost sleep over it.”

“You needn’t have.”

“You don’t know how it is. Bill and I never had children, so I suppose my maternal instincts get dumped on you.”

“I wouldn’t use that word,” Julia said and took Bea’s hand.

“
Used
on you. How’s that?” Bea said.

“Better.”
 

Bea turned, clouding. “Now I feel guilty about tomorrow night.”

“Don’t be.”

“But spending your Friday night here helping me with the book sale is probably the last thing you want to do. When I asked you I thought you were single.”

“I am single,” Julia said, smiling.

“Perhaps,” Bea answered. “But maybe not for long.”
 

Had he seen Snowburger upon entering the bar, Paul would’ve left right away and things would have turned out differently. As it was, he didn’t notice the exterminator until Julia’s expression changed and she said, “Do you know those guys?”

Paul turned and knew there’d be trouble. Snowburger and a larger man that could only be his brother were staring at him from the back of the bar where they stood leaning on pool sticks, the smoke skirling about them obscuring their faces. Snowburger, his red hair slicked back ridiculously, would gesture toward Paul and the larger guy would nod and grin an ugly barracuda grin.

Under the table Paul’s hands bunched into tight knots.

“You want to go?” Julia asked.

Not taking his eyes off them, Paul said, “Why would we go?”

Julia cast a worried glance over her shoulder. “They look like they’re planning something.”

“So let them.”

“You know you don’t have to impress me, right?”
 

Paul didn’t answer, watched a third man join Snowburger, a scrappy-looking guy with a permanent scowl and a chin so deeply cleft it looked like a pair of butt cheeks. The guy stared boldly at Paul, said something to Snowburger and made to approach. The exterminator, his sleeveless denim shirt stretched tight by his immense belly, stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. The scrappy guy acted mad at being touched. Snowburger patted his shoulder placatingly and moved ahead.

Julia said, “I wouldn’t think less of you if we left and went to a movie. The food’s not that great here anyway.”

“This is where we had our first date.”

As the men neared, Julia said, “Let’s go to the movie.”

“We’re still going to do that,” he said. “After we’re done here.”

“And when will that be?”

“Soon.”

“Soon,” she repeated. “And I’m supposed to act casual, as though these guys aren’t—”

“Here they are.”

The biggest guy was in the lead, his bushy red beard making him look like a mutant goat.

“Heard you picked on Bobby,” the Goat Man said. He was enormous, six-and-a-half feet tall at least. He threw a thumb at the exterminator standing a few feet away. The Goat Man was definitely Snowburger’s brother. This close, the resemblance was uncanny. They even exuded the same repellant body odor. Paul imagined a pack of bologna split open by the noonday sun and squirming with plump maggots. The only difference between the two brothers was their size. Snowburger was fat but only as tall as Paul. The Goat Man was a giant.

“Heard you refused to pay him what you owed,” the scrappy little guy said. Paul had not seen him move up next to their booth, but now he appraised the crooked nose, the flesh of the forehead mottled by scars.

“You threaten my brother?” the Goat Man asked, placing a huge freckled hand on their table.

Paul glanced at the middle-aged couple sitting in the booth behind Julia. The look on the guy’s face, he wanted to help but was afraid he’d get beaten to a pulp. Between the two Snowburgers Paul glimpsed the bartender, on the phone with someone. Sheriff Barlow, he hoped.

“He’s gonna shit himself,” a familiar voice said.

It was the first time Bobby Snowburger had spoken. He was confident standing behind his mountain of a brother. Paul couldn’t blame him.

“He get it up for you?” the scrappy little guy asked Julia. “Or he like you to strap it on and give it to him?”
 

Paul stood up in the booth. It was hard, the way the table pressed against his legs.

“Don’t,” Paul said.

The little guy seized the neck of Paul’s tee shirt, twisted. “You gonna do something, Carver? With a name like that you probably like to hang around playgrounds, kill little kids like your uncle.”

Paul raised his fist to smash the guy’s sneering face but Snowburger’s brother was too fast. The gigantic knuckles pounded the side of Paul’s face, knocking him into the corner of the booth. The little guy was on him then, assailing him with short painful jabs to the face and chest. Paul heard Julia shout something. There was a crash. Through the hands he’d thrown up to protect his face from the little scrapper he saw the Goat Man sitting on Julia, holding her immobile with his leviathan girth. He had ahold of her arms so that her nails hung useless in his grasp.

The exterminator was moving up behind the little guy. Paul realized what the crash had been: a broken bottle, shattered jagged and held by the neck. Bobby Snowburger tapped the little guy on the shoulder. “Hey, Kenny. Back off a second.”

Kenny did.

Before Snowburger could slash him with the broken bottle, Paul slammed a foot in his gut. Ignoring the pain and the blood trickling down his cheeks Paul yanked himself forward, out of the corner of the booth where Kenny had cornered him, and straight at Snowburger.

Paul tackled him low, under the belt, so that when they went over, the back of the exterminator’s head cracked the table behind him. He yelped as Paul followed through, driving with his legs, until the fat man smacked the floor, his head cracking a second time.

The little guy made to jump on him but before he could, Paul shot an elbow back and grinned savagely when he felt it connect with the little guy’s mouth. Paul spun and saw the guy spitting bloody teeth into his palm, and beyond him a trio of men with shocked faces.

Paul stepped toward the little guy, crouched and threw his whole body into an upper-cut. The impact sent the scrapper erect, turning and then tumbling face first onto the grimy floor. Paul looked in surprise at the prone bodies of Snowburger and the little man and thought,
Only one more
.

“You cocksucker,” the Goat Man was saying, but he was struggling to get out of the booth where he’d been sitting on Julia. As the huge man stood, Paul heard him cry out and for a moment all he could do was stare at Julia, who glared at the back of the man’s neck with such triumphant hate that it made his skin go cold. The Goat Man whirled and Paul beheld what Julia had done to the back of his neck. Flesh hung in bloody strips where her nails had torn him. The Goat Man advanced on Julia, who swung at his face again. The huge man staggered backward to avoid her nails, and as he did he backed right into Paul. Reaching up, Paul thrust a forearm under the guy’s chin in a chokehold and reared back.