House of Skin (43 page)

He started toward the car before remembering he’d left the keys in his jeans, which were still on the lawn. Desperately, he raced through the yard to find them, certain they had somehow disappeared.

He spotted them, lying where he’d left them.

Sobbing with relief he snatched the jeans from the grass and without bothering to put them on, he hurried toward the Civic as his hands probed the pockets. It was impossible, he told himself, that she had returned, that he’d made love to a corpse, but he knew what he’d seen was no illusion, none of this a bad dream.

His fingers closed on the keys. With a cry Paul yanked them out and bolted toward the car.

A white shape glided down the front porch steps, barring his way.

“Oh my God,” he whimpered. As he fled the white figure something flashed in his periphery, and he knew she was about to overtake him. He lengthened his strides, and focused on the opening in the woods ahead.

Paul left Watermere and felt the smooth forest floor meet his bare feet. He ran as he never had before, the sanity that remained in him guiding him toward Julia’s house.

Ahead, the figure appeared on the trail.

Paul screamed and wheeled off the path. He jumped over a fallen branch and dashed madly into the forest. Blindly, he barreled through the trees and undergrowth, stones twisting his ankles, thorns opening his flesh. Knowing at any moment Annabel’s hand might close on his shoulder, he bulldozed his way through a twisted snarl of brambles. With one hand he covered his privates, with the other he flailed to clear the way. A sharp branch pierced his torso under the armpit and ruptured the skin through the nipple. Weeping with pain and terror, Paul surged forward through the last of the branches and fell forward onto the grass.

He gasped when he saw where she’d led him.

The graveyard was resplendent, its markers glittering like hideous gems.

Paul staggered to his feet, but the blood drizzling from his multitudinous wounds sullied his vision. He tripped, fell to his knees and felt his face crash against something sharp.

The air around him cooled, a breeze whispering over his supine form.

Paul raised his head, read what was printed on the small white rectangular marker:
 

ANNABEL SADLIER 1901-1928

Paul crawled away from the gravestone and read the taller one beside it:
 

ANNABEL LILITH WILSON 1850-1893

“Jesus Christ,” he said.

Paul rose and turned.

And sank to his knees as Annabel extended her hand.

“Please don’t hurt me,” he said. His wounds pulsed agonizingly, the blood pumping out of him onto the tall grass. “Please don’t kill me, Annabel.”
 

Fingers touched his shoulder. Gently, he felt her helping him to his feet. He was aware of her smell, no longer sour. Now her scent was sweet and cool, lilacs and spring. Not wanting to see her face again, her awful, half-restored face, Paul read a cluster of markers: WILLIAM SADLIER 1896-1939, MARTHA SADLIER 1898-1922, JEREMIAH SADLIER 1909-1922, DESSA SADLIER 1920-1922.

He felt himself growing faint, the arm locked with his supporting him.

The grandfather clock gravestone loomed to his left, and in the brilliant light Paul read ANNABEL GENTRY 1786-1839. Through the waves of lightheadedness he read other names and dates, Gentreys and Wilsons, Singletons and Shadelands.

A larger granite marker to his right read DAVID CARVER 1917-1950.

Beside it, an open grave.

“That’s meant for me,” he said.

Tears rolling down his cheeks he forced himself to look at Annabel, to ask the question again. He opened his mouth to do so but was transfixed by her almost beautiful face. The words
gradual resuscitation
flashed through his mind, though this creature didn’t look resuscitated. She looked like what she was—a supernatural creature who wasn’t quite immortal. She had to die in order to live, and because of this necessity, her body had decomposed as any body would. Even now, despite the substantial restoration, the hair wasn’t quite rid of the graveyard dirt. One eye socket still gaped black, the long ago worms and centipedes that feasted there now surely dead too; ragged holes on her forearms and her jaw still in the process of regenerating.

Yet despite these flaws Annabel was already obscenely breathtaking. Her cheeks, her breasts, her sex…the sleek, muscled legs that seemed to never end… God, even her bare toes made him ache.

Then she swiveled her head slightly to see something beyond him, and the spell of her beauty was broken. He watched in aghast fascination at the membranous flap growing out of her head, a new ear where none had been. The nascent skin bulged a moment, then a maggot as wide as his middle finger wriggled out of the hole and tumbled into the grass.

Bile rising in his throat, Paul turned to see what she was staring at, and when he saw it he clapped a hand over his mouth and dropped to his knees.

Julia hung suspended, her naked body pinned with ropes against the enormous black gravestone. Paul followed the ropes to the giant oaks standing sentinel beside the gravestone, which now clearly read ANNABEL LILITH CARVER. No date was listed, but beneath the name the epitaph read LOVE ENDURES.

On hands and knees Paul stared at Julia.

She watched him wild-eyed, the rope around her throat stealing her voice. Her arms and legs were crushed against the marker by the thick rope. Dried blood traced black lines on her flesh. She mouthed something to him but he could not understand it. He felt himself blacking out.

Steely fingers coiled around his neck.

“
Time
,” the voice above him croaked.

Paul whimpered, cowering in her grip.

“
Choose
,” Annabel said.

He opened his mouth to ask her what she meant. A hatchet landed on the grass before him.

Paul looked at it, then at the empty grave beside David Carver’s.

The hand on his neck squeezed. Paul felt the vertebrae there crunch, the cartilage giving way.

“
Choose!
” she thundered.

He lunged sideways, trying to rid himself of her, but the grip on his neck tightened, her muddy fingernails puncturing his skin.

“Please don’t,” he said.

Wordlessly, she dragged him toward the hole.

He felt his feet sliding over the grass, his flaccid member dripping blood. His face moved over the lip of the grave, his shoulders.

Paul felt himself going forward, falling into darkness.

“
Wait
,” he cried.

She held him there, suspended.

“I’ll do what you ask.”

She pulled him away from the lightless pit. Weeping, he crawled back to the huge gravestone and grasped the hatchet.

Standing, he regarded Julia.

She watched the hatchet, horror washing over her features. Squirming against the smooth black stone she fought against the ropes but they refused to budge, holding her as surely as an insect under glass.

Paul shut his eyes. He felt acid sizzling in his throat. He gazed at the hatchet in his hand.

“What will happen to me?” he asked.

He felt Annabel’s grin. “
You will take his place
,” she said.

He turned away from Julia and saw Annabel standing there, the starlight dyeing her blond hair silver, her limbs glowing ethereally. Within hours and perhaps even minutes, he knew, her new body would complete. Beneath the roiling nausea and paralyzing terror, he was appalled to feel another stirring of lust.

Forcing himself to look away, he turned and studied Julia’s splayed arms, her pinned legs. He could see how the rope at her throat had made wounds there, the fresh blood shiny.

She was dying. He peeled his eyes off Julia’s glistening body and met her eyes, which regarded his mournfully. Her gaze flickered back and forth from Paul to Annabel, the vengeful wraith at his shoulder.

Paul saw Julia’s eyes widen.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

He raised the hatchet.

Turned and brought it down on Annabel’s head.

It felled her, yet even as she crumpled he knew something had gone wrong. He stepped back from her shuddering body, sensed Julia squirming behind him.

He watched Annabel rip the blade out of her temple. She cast it aside. When she faced him he could see the wound closing, the angry ripped flesh knitting itself.

She stepped toward him and fingernails like scythes swept his forehead. As he fell the flap of torn scalp folded over his eyes. He batted frantically at the loose flap of skin. Through the blood spewing out of his forehead he caught glimpses of Annabel leaping forward, teeth bared, her nails rending and tearing at Julia’s exposed flesh. He heard Julia’s strangled cries and watched in sick horror as Annabel set to work on her neck and her face. Annabel’s head twitched as she fed, the arterial spray soaking her white gown. Julia convulsed as Annabel’s snarling teeth ripped through tendons and cartilage.

Paul held the loose flap of skin to his head and tried to look away as the spasms ceased, Julia’s body hanging limp against the gravestone.

Her features painted red, Annabel turned and grinned at him.

He tried to crawl away but she was already on him, digging at his exposed crotch. His hands moved to block her.

She tore them apart too.

He felt his consciousness dissolving in a blackening tide of agony. She stood and seized him by the hair. He felt himself dragged through the grass. Then his body was plummeting into the darkness of the open grave. He landed on his back, his eyes glazing.

The last thing he saw as the dirt poured over him was Annabel’s grinning red mouth. She said something about the walls of the house, but he couldn’t quite make it out. Then, as he began to suffocate, he realized what she meant and why he’d seen Myles Carver’s face in the wall. It brought on one last scream, but the falling soil swallowed it up.

After

Watermere was alive.

Even out here on the veranda, Tommy McLaughlin felt the carnal energy, the throbbing desire charging the air. The band playing inside had the couples worked into a frenzy, the guitarist going off on a chaotic riff, the drummer and bass player following wherever he went. The salacious odors of hard liquor and cigarette smoke wafted out of the open French doors.

Tommy had seen Sheriff Timmons stealing up the stairs with a woman much younger than his wife. Mrs. Timmons, liplocking with a cute little redhead, didn’t seem to mind. McLaughlin had never pegged her as the bisexual type, but there she was, her long fingers massaging one of the redhead’s pert breasts through her dress. He never would have guessed the Timmonses were swingers, yet lately it was all the rage, the whole goddamn town intent on sleeping around until marital vows were punchlines.

Maybe it was in the air, the hot thrum of lust driving them all crazy. Maybe it was the warmth of the summer night after the months of snow and rain and investigations and mourning. Maybe the booze had something to do with it, though Tommy suspected it was something far less obvious, some fundamental alteration in the collective psyche.

Whatever it was, he had to steal out here into the moonlight to get his thoughts in order.

He’d recovered from Sam’s disappearance, though he still wondered about him sometimes. It was assumed that the sheriff had gone the way of Ted Brand, the Memphis girl who used to date Carver, that poor old woman from the library, Julia Merrow and that dumb shit Daryl. Yet unlike the others, Sam’s body had never been recovered, and it wasn’t as if that maniac Paul Carver had bothered concealing all his victims. Despite the midnight shroud of sultry air baking him, Tommy shuddered at thought of the Henderson girl, dead in her car. The craziest part about it—even crazier than the fact that she’d made it all the way to Shadeland only to crash on a stretch of road about as safe as a city sidewalk—was the look on her face. Or what was left of her face. As if she’d gotten the world’s worst scare. Tommy took a big swig of whiskey and fought to put the image out of his mind.

And speaking of scares… Jesus, he still couldn’t believe the number Paul Carver did on the Merrow girl. Her once terrific body—which, if he was absolutely honest, he’d lusted violently over and had often fantasized about until he was too sore to piss—looked like it’d been gotten at by a pack of machete-wielding werewolves. Add to the five dead bodies Sam Barlow and you had a bona fide serial killer, the first ever in this part of the state.

Tommy shook out a cigarette—Annabel had gotten him started on the things—and lit up. He thought of Julia’s mutilated throat, the rope marks on her arms and legs…
 

Yet Paul Carver was still on the loose. Thinking of Carver, Tommy sipped his whiskey, glared at the forest surrounding the yard. God, what he’d give for five minutes alone with the vicious son of a bitch. He’d make him scream for every rip in Julia’s flesh, every bite mark on her once-beautiful throat. And the librarian… What the hell had been her name? Merten, he thought, Bea Merten. Who the hell did something like that to a defenseless old lady? Her whole damn face torn clean off her head, the only thing left a pink tongue lolling from a red-stained skull.