Horror Library, Volume 4 Page 11

  ***

  At 13, Jeremy developed a painful crush on Missy Salinger when she pushed her bathing suit bottoms to her knees and showed him hers behind the boathouse. Jeremy put his family jewels on display for her, but she gasped and ran away, leaving him alone with his swim trunks around his ankles.

  Thinking about the freckles on Missy's pale thighs and where they led, Jeremy hiked through the woods between his family's vacation house and the Salingers' cottage. Her voice reached his ears before he got to the edge of the woods. Crouched behind a lilac bush, he listened to Missy and Toni Wilson chatter about girl stuff while baking their skin in the sun. He ignored their words and drank Missy in with his eyes.

  Her red hair, barely contained in a pony tail, shone in the sun. Jeremy imagined weaving his fingers through those curls. He untied his swim trunks and slipped his hand inside. Jeremy massaged his erection until Toni's words stopped him cold. The flesh in his right hand softened.

  "You saw it?" Toni asked. "You really saw it?"

  "Yeah, it was all shriveled and gross."

  "So it was small? Where did he show you?"

  Jeremy's skin burned to the tips of his ears.

  "Behind the boathouse. I can't believe he really did it."

  "Did you—"

  "Ew! Of course not."

  Jeremy sucked in deep breaths, but it didn't calm the anger flooding him. The word liar rested on the tip of his tongue. He breathed in a mosquito buzzing among

  the lilacs and coughed it out of his throat.

  Both girls sat up on their towels.

  "Who's there?" Toni called.

  Crouched low, Jeremy ran back into the woods. Behind him, the girls giggled.

  Missy's words followed him through the trees. "What a creep."

  ***

  He's finally dying. A down comforter pins the old man to the bed, his outline faint. The rise and fall of his chest doesn't move the blanket, but the thick gasps tell Jeremy it's not quite over. Jeremy waits in a kitchen chair next to the drug-littered night table. Half-empty beer bottles stand among the prescription containers like trees. Jeremy gave up on taking away his father's vice when he found the Styrofoam cooler lodged between the bed and the wall. Instead he picked a handful of daisies and plunked them into a bottle. Now the flowers bend toward the floor, their white petals ringed in brown. His bags are packed and waiting in the car.

  Dressed in his vestments, Jeremy reads his Bible. Matthew chapter five, verse thirty catches his eye. "If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee." His father tried that. The cancer started in his testicles. Doctors took those almost a year ago, but surgery came too late. The disease marched through his body to the lymph nodes, the bones, and finally to the major organs. Doctors removed every offending organ they could, but it was never enough.

  His father struggles under the covers. Jeremy pulls the blankets off his chest and dabs at his sweaty forehead with a cool cloth while muttering meaningless words, telling his father it'll be all right. The old man grips Jeremy's wrist with the strength of a child.

  "Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned." He gasps for breath, his toothless mouth a dark window into his diseased body.

  Jeremy picks his father's fingers from his arm and looks away. "There's no need." Some things even a priest can't bear to witness.

  The old man collapses onto the mattress, his uneven breath hitching into something that resembles a sob. He looks up at Jeremy, his eyes alert for the first time in days.

  "Son?"

  "I'm here, Dad."

  "Remember when we went to Virginia Beach?"

  Jeremy had been nine, Lisa six, Mom healthy. What Jeremy remembered best was that the cooler had been filled with soda instead of beer, and they'd built a sandcastle as a family. Dad drove them home before the tide washed it out to sea.

  "I do, but then Mom died."

  Jeremy checks his watch. It's just after 11. The thing wearing his sister's skin usually visits around midnight. Part of him would like to be gone by then. Part of him will miss her when he returns to his life of penance. It's the most contact he's had with his little sister in years, even if it is with just her skin.

  His father shivers under the sheet. Jeremy gets up to open the window and let in the cool air. When he turns back to his seat, she's at the end of the bed, robe pooled at her feet. Her toenails are painted glitter pink.

  She raises one finger in the air and looks at Jeremy. Wait. He wraps his hand around the crucifix dangling from his neck. The cross is big enough to be hung on the wall, but he's always preferred the weight of it around his neck.

  The thing that's not his sister pulls the sheet from his father's withered body. Somehow the old man has the strength for an erection. Jeremy tries to close his eyes, but they disobey. Heat gathers in his groin.

  His father cracks open his eyes as she takes him in her.

  "No more," he wheezes. "I'm sorry."

  Jeremy's stomach churns. This thing has taken his father every night just before coming to his own bed. Jeremy tries to turn his head, but it remains fixed, his gaze on the two bodies.

  She thrusts against the old man, making his body flop against the dirty sheet. The pungent smell of sex mingles with the odor of medicine and beer. His father coughs, gasps for breath, finds none. Jeremy sees himself shove the thing off his father, but his body makes no move other than to slip one hand into his trousers.

  His sister—no, the thing wearing his sister's skin—makes no sound, she bounces against his father's hips, her gaze trained on the water-stained wall above the headboard. Jeremy watches with one hand clasping his crucifix and the other caressing his erection, as his father expels a breath and falls limp. The woman runs her knuckle along the old man's cheek, then slaps him before slipping off of his cooling body. His head rocks to the side, his empty eyes fixed on Jeremy, whose hand is still in his pants.

  She kneels in front of Jeremy, looks up at him with his sister's green eyes, and speaks with his sister's voice.

  "It never bothered you before."

  Jeremy extracts his hand from his trousers. She unzips them and takes him into her mouth.

  Not my sister, Jeremy thinks. His mind chants the reminder, trying to take control of his body. Not my sister.

  Jeremy focuses on his father's corpse, one age-spotted arm flung off the side of the bed. The yellowed nails are long because Jeremy forgot to trim them. He finds control of his own arms, they still have life. Jeremy grips the long end of the crucifix in both hands, rips it from the chain. He turns it upside down and thrusts it into the thing knelt before him. It slams into the base of his sister's skull.

  Not my sister.

  She gasps, choking on his member. Jeremy pulls himself from her mouth and brings the up-ended crucifix down again and again. In his hands, the metal cross pulverizes her spine. The sound of it reminds him of the crunch of gravel under his shoes on the rectory garden path. It reminds him of freedom. She falls forward, pushing Jeremy against the window. She curls into the fetal position, the blood darkening the wood floor around her head and matting her blonde hair. Not my sister.

  Jeremy buttons his pants and starts to clean the mess. His erection refuses to fade until he has the thing wearing his sister's skin hidden away in the parlor closet.

  ***

  Jeremy trudged through the house toward his bedroom where there waited a copy of a Victoria's Secret catalog he'd swiped from a neighbor's recycle bin. His father thumped down the stairs as Jeremy waited to go up.

  "You been to see that Salinger girl," his father said.

  "How do you know?" Jeremy braced himself against the wall as his father grabbed his shoulder to steady his balance.

  "You been sniffing around that girl since we got here." He limped to his easy chair, collapsed into the flattened cushions, and exhaled. His father had installed carpet before arthritis settled into his knee, twisting it into a gnarled formation that looked more tree than human and bent about as well as wood.
"That girl's nothing but a tease. She has no intention of putting out for you."

  "But I don't—"

  "Don't argue with me, boy." He dug a beer from the Styrofoam cooler next to the chair. "I was your age once."

  "Yes, sir."

  "If your mother was here, she'd say you was too young for sex."

  Jeremy stared at his feet and nodded.

  "She woulda kept both you and me on the straight and narrow like we should be." He twisted the cap off the bottle and threw it at the front door.

  Jeremy climbed to the third step.

  "But she's dead so you might as well grow up." He pulled the lever on the chair, popping the foot rest into place. "Boy your age needs to recognize that a cock-tease is nothing but a waste of time. Boy your age should be practical."

  "Yes, sir."

  "It's time to stop beatin' off to something you'll never have." He swigged his beer. "Got what you need practically right under your nose, too."

  ***

  Old people he doesn't remember fill the house, cluster around their fallen friend. Jeremy imagines he can hear them praying, "Please, God, not me next." His father had insisted on a traditional wake in his home, even asked Jeremy to clear out the parlor in preparation.

  Tired of hearing their stories about when he was "this high," Jeremy skirts the group. More often than not, he finds his back pressed against the closet door, palm on the doorknob, blood rushing to his groin, the smell of her lingering in his nostrils. Incense permeates the room, but barely masks her scent. Each time he compels his hands to grasp the oversized crucifix around his neck. It's bent, but he gathers more comfort from it now than ever. He scans the sea of blue hair for his sister's blonde head, then reminds himself that she refuses to step foot into this house.

  Jeremy settles those still living into chairs, begins his father's wake. When it's over, he forces himself to the front porch, where he accepts their condolences to the music of crickets. "You're so brave to preside over your own father's funeral," one bent old man says. Jeremy nods, but doesn't feel that way.

  The last car backs away and Jeremy means to follow, but he's left his Bible in the parlor. His father's casket dominates the room, surrounded by empty chairs and bouquets of flowers. His feet carry him past all of this to the closet. Exhausted, he surrenders, relying on the penance he'll do later.

  It's inside. Cold and stiff, half standing against the back corner behind his father's fishing jacket. He lifts it, and his sister's skin slides across the body underneath. Jeremy's stomach roils, his member hardens. He lays her body on the carpet alongside the casket, brushes her eyelids closed, strokes her hair. Blood has matted it at the back of her head, but the front is still soft and white-blonde. Leaning forward, he presses his lips to hers. His excitement dwindles at the cold lack of response. His hand wanders between her legs, slips a finger inside. What was once damp like a summer day at the lake is now a dry riverbed. The memory is enough for him. Trembling, he stands and fumbles with his belt.

  On the parlor floor, the body is sprawled, its torso stretched upward somewhat from rigor mortis, but legs wide and inviting. Jeremy looks away and opens his father's casket instead. Uncomfortable questions slide through in his mind.

  What if someone finds the body?

  What if I can never stop violating this thing?

  Jeremy uses the pocket knife on his keychain to slice a V into his sister's skin on the thing's thigh. He fingers the tip of the V wanting to pull it back, but afraid to see what lies beneath his sister's alabaster skin. Afraid to know what has tempted him into such vile acts.

  He yanks his hand away and leans over his father's casket, lets his forehead rest on his father's icy hands and sobs. "Holy Father, please forgive me." He repeats the plea until the meaning wanes and it becomes five words.

  Lifting his head, Jeremy stares into his father's face. "You." His voice is thick. "It happened because of you." Jeremy slaps his father's wrinkled cheek, but the casket prevents him from hitting with any force. The blow leaves a smudge in the pancake makeup and rocks his father's head.

  Jeremy clenches his hands into fists and pummels his father's face. Bones crunch under his punches. He steps back to catch his breath. The old man's lips sink deep into his mouth. Jeremy pries them apart. His dentures are now lodged in his throat. His nose sits at a crooked angle and a stream of embalming liquid drips from one nostril into his open mouth.

  Jeremy wipes sweat from his face with his forearm.

  He picks up the body, gently lays her on top of his father. The back of her head rests between his father's good shoes. He forces her stiffening arms to cross over her bare chest, and closes the casket.

  ***

  Jeremy climbed the stairs, leaving his father alone in the living room with his beer and memories. Pausing at Lisa's door in the hall, he tapped and went in. She scrambled for a towel to cover herself, but he caught a glimpse before she wrapped her body in terrycloth. The cleft between his sister's legs reminded him of Missy. The sun had left a similar spattering of freckles across her thighs.

  "What do you want?" she asked.

  "Just bored. What are you doing?" He plopped down on her bed and pulled a pillow across his lap to hide the stiffness growing between his legs. A mayonnaise jar sat on her night stand. Despite the holes in the metal lid, a colony of fireflies lay on the bottom, legs in the air.

  "I'm getting dressed. What does it look like?"

  "Let me see."

  "What?"

  He tried the same line that had worked with Missy a week earlier. "Show me yours, I show you mine."

  Lisa's eyes filled with tears. "Jeremy, no," she whispered.

  ***

  The funeral is over, but Jeremy asks for a few minutes alone to say his goodbyes. The congregation has left and the pallbearers wait outside the closed church door. Jeremy runs his hand along the casket's lid. Now that the corpse is cold and stiff, the thing wearing his sister's skin has no more power.

  He opens the casket and looks at her face. So like his sister, down to the scar splitting her right eyebrow. She was five, and Jeremy eight. He had her favorite stuffed bear held high in the air as she giggled and chased him through the house. Jeremy raced through the living room, but Lisa tripped on one of his trucks and fell into the glass coffee table. He runs his finger along the broken eyebrow. There was blood everywhere, splattered on the table, soaked into the carpet. Jeremy gave the bear back, but nothing would console his little sister.

  Lisa wasn't in the church that morning. He looked for her face among the elderly, hoping for a glimpse of her, and found nothing but disappointment. No surprise, Jeremy thinks. She's been avoiding their father for years. He leans over the casket to stroke her hair, press his lips to her stiff mouth. She could have at least come to their father's funeral.

  Reaching for the casket lid, he pauses. His gaze lingers over that V-shaped cut on her thigh. The point of skin has dried and curled.

  Jeremy takes it between his thumb and forefinger. He holds down the leg to be sure he separates the skin from the thing underneath. He peels back the V-shaped tab. Under her skin are the ribbed scales of the evil that possessed his sister, forced her into sinful acts. He blinks and the scales are gone, replaced by strands of muscle and gobbets of fat. The only thing he finds under Lisa's skin is his sister's flesh.

  Kim Despins lives in Colorado and has been writing as long as she can remember. Her short fiction has appeared in the +Horror Library+ Volume 2 and Dark Distortions. She has a story forthcoming in Black Ink Horror.

  —DRAIN BAMAGE

  by Jeff Strand

  Yes, I dropped my baby sister.

  Not on purpose. God, no.

  It happened while I was babysitting her. She was six months old, and I'd just turned nine. Too young to be responsible for an infant, but to be fair to my mom, she hadn't gone out for a wild night on the town or anything like that. All she did was ask me to watch Laurie for a few minutes while she went to talk to our next-door
neighbor. Laurie was asleep in her crib, so it really shouldn't have been a big deal.

  The thing is, when you're nine, you don't necessarily obey all of your mother's instructions. Such as, oh, I don't know, the one about not taking your baby sister out of her crib. I wasn't trying to hurt her. I just wanted to pick her up. She didn't wake up as I lifted her, but she did when I walked around the living room with her—I don't think I was holding her right.

  She started to squirm and cry and before I could get her back into the crib, she slipped out of my hands. Laurie hit the ground, head-first.

  The floor was carpeted, so it's not like I dropped her onto concrete, but I still let out a gasp of one-hundred-percent absolute horror. I scooped up my sobbing sister and hurriedly put her back in her crib, feeling like I was going to throw up and hyperventilate at the same time.

  I checked her head. There was a pink mark, but no blood or skull chips. I watched her for several minutes, stomach acids boiling. She stopped crying and went back to sleep.

  As soon as my mom came home, I said "I'll be in my room!" and ran upstairs. I didn't want her to see me trembling. I closed my bedroom door and sat on my bed, an open comic book in front of me, waiting for the inevitable shout of "Oh my God! What did you do to your sister?"

  It never came.

  My dad got home from work, and my mom called me down to dinner. We had a nice meal of Hamburger Helper and my mom didn't say a single word about me potentially ruining my sister. Maybe Laurie was okay.

  While Mom and Dad did the dishes, I walked over to the crib and peered over the side at her. The pink mark was gone. Laurie looked at me and giggled.