Sandy over-reacted, as usual. A molehill in anyone else’s life was always three mountains in hers. Duncan guessed when she didn’t get an answer for the fourth time, she’d added a cherry to those mountains, gone the whole hog, and made the call.
Great.
Just what he needed. Instruction to check on Aunt Sophie, AKA old hag from hell. If she hadn’t finally kicked the bucket – and it could happen, miracles do – he’d spend the next four or five hours trapped in her unmoving world. In fact, he’d come to believe that was what the old crone wanted. Don’t answer the phone and reel in a visitor. Hey presto, just like magic.
“She’s lonely,” Sandy had scolded. “You can’t blame her for wanting a spot of company.” And when he grumbled, she’d brandished the weapon he dreaded most: “I’ll walk over and check on her if I get chance, but puh-lease pop by after work?”
That did it. The puh-lease was fatal. Aunt Sophie may be the old hag from hell, but Sandy – pretty, blue-eyed, soft curved Sandy – could commit murder with a twist of her sweet little pinkie whenever she used that lethal word against him.
So there he was, parked in front of the detached house with the overgrown lawn, crumbling walls, and curtains which never opened. God forbid the sunlight should creep in, it might incinerate the old bat.
Duncan sniggered, but admonished himself in the same instance, wiping a hand over his day old stubble. He shouldn’t think like that. What if–
No.
He shouldn’t think like that either. Instead he climbed out the car, cracked his back, and eyed the house, which looked more like a tomb – a dark, encrusted cave buried from the eyes of civilisation. The residence wagged a metaphorical finger as its ambiance whispered menace and warning.
Duncan shuddered and decided not to delay the inevitable. Five strides took him to the front door, where he drew a final breath of free air before rapping his knuckles on the flaked paint.
‘Ooh, is that you, Duncan?’ Aunt Sophie would rasp, claws outstretched to snag her latest victim. Her sunken eyes would water while her false teeth clacked in and out of place – that’s if she was wearing them. If not, her lips would hug naked gums and she’d chew on a mouthful of invisible gristle.
Any second now.
No answer.
Duncan tapped his knuckles again, a little impatient this time.
“You here to see Sophie?” The voice came from behind.
Duncan spun on his heels and found himself nose to nose with dimple-cheeked, old Mr Thornton, Aunt Sophie’s talk-for-Britain neighbour.
“Yeah, you seen her today?”
“No, sir. Not since yesterday morning when she were pegging her smalls out round back.”
Duncan cringed at the thought of Aunt Sophie’s smalls, then cursed himself for allowing images of floral panties to flourish in his brain. Instead of letting the vision sharpen into irreversible clarity, he said, “Well, my wife Sandy tried ringing and didn’t get an answer. She said she was gonna come over, have you seen her today?”
Mr Thornton puffed his red cheeks out. “Nope, no one’s been round here, not since last week. It’s a shame. Old Sophie gets lonely, you know.”
Duncan didn’t reply. A twinge of guilt nibbled at the back of his neck.
Mr Thornton smiled as though aware of it. “Well, perhaps she’s been sleeping?”
Duncan half nodded but thought, Sleeping? Since when does the old hag from hell risk missing the chance to force feed a visitor from the jar of nuts she religiously sucks the chocolate off of?
“Maybe,” he muttered, knocking the door again. He pressed the bell for extra measure, nervous because he knew the vile-tempered woman hated the bell – ‘I ain’t deaf, sonny.’
Still nothing.
He peered through the frosted glass at the darkness within.
“Mr Thornton, could I...?”
The old man was gone.
Hmmm. Frustration tugged on Duncan’s nerves. This was the very last place he wanted to be. He’d come here, sentenced by his wife’s fatal puh-lease, and now found himself in a dilemma – to keep knocking until Sandy showed up and went ape-shit at him for not doing something more constructive like break down the door or call the cops, or break down the door and most likely come face to face with a livid Aunt Sophie.
What to do?
One more knock. One last chance.
He thumped the door harder than before. It creaked and swung open on a cluttered hallway, and Duncan murmured, “Jesus” when his eyes fell on an overturned pedestal with its contents strewn all over the floor. The phone buzzed upside down, its handset a twisted snake across the carpet.
“Aunt Sophie?” He took a step inside and shivered in a blast of frigid air. “Hello, anybody here?”
He buttoned his jacket and drew up the collar. His breath burst in dense clouds before his lips. “It’s me, Duncan. Sandy was worried.”
Eerie silence.
He picked up the upturned pedestal, grabbed the phone, and set it in place.
“Aunt Sophie? Hello?”
This is it, his mind chimed with shameful cheer. She’s finally croaked.
He pushed the somewhat hopeful, yet guilt-ridden thoughts aside before heading for the living room on his tiptoes, moving as though an ill-placed foot could shatter the universe. It was of course a ridiculous notion. He knew as much, and forced himself down onto the soles of his feet.
“Aunt Sophie?”
He stuck his head through the ajar living room doorway, where everything looked normal – everything except the pile of screwed up clothes planted in the seat of Aunt Sophie’s habitual rocker.
Duncan shook his head. Old lady knickers – and yes, his imagination enjoyed a brief triumph, they were floral – sat beside stockings, pleated skirt, and a threadbare pink cardigan. An entire set of clothes.
Okay, his mind reasoned. Perhaps it’s not that odd. She put her next day’s kit out the night before. (All screwed up, though?) Maybe she just never woke up?
He shuddered at the thought of finding Aunt Sophie dead in her bed. An illusion of her staring at the ceiling through bloodshot eyes, with a river of cold drool congealing on her cheek, crept through his defences and stuck in his mind. Nevertheless, he found himself en route for the stairs. He strode out of the living room, turned into the hallway, and shrieked when a mist-masked woman appeared in the mirror mounted on the wall opposite the front door. She pounded bloodied fists against the glass, wailing a cry that sent Duncan wheeling backward.
Jesus!
A second glance at the mirror and the horror was gone.
Of course it’s gone. It was never there in the first place.
“Easy, boy,” he muttered to himself. “No point getting all jumpy, ‘else Sandy’ll show up, find Aunt Sophie dead and you sobbing in the corner.”
He put his foot on the first narrow step and laid his hand on the rail.
“What?”
His fingers had connected with a tacky substance like semi-dried paint. A glimpse at his palm revealed a brownish-red coating. He screwed his nose up, rubbed his thumb against his sticky forefinger, and decided it was best not to contemplate it.
Just get up the stairs, and get it over with.
Halfway up, the stuff on the rail spread onto the carpet. A dirty streak grew as though something had been lugged up the stairway.
From halfway up?
Duncan bent at the waist and poked an inquisitive finger into the stained carpet fibres. They felt rough. Closer examination showed two distinct lines and – it couldn’t be, but it was – a handprint, facing downward as though someone had been crawling head-first down the stairs only to be dragged back up again.
How the hell can you deduce that? his mind demanded. Your imagination’s running off without your brains.
He swallowed a lump in his throat, but it lodged in his stomach where it wiggled like a net full of fish. It was odd. It was all odd – the knocked over telephone, screwed up clothes in the rocker, stuff – blood! – on the rail and halfway up the stairs, and a handprint that seemed to be a claw of desperation, a hanging on for grim life until the digits snapped, and–
Stop it!
Duncan shook his head to calm his thoughts, which seemed intent on galloping away with every craziness under the sun. He massaged his temples and stood up, only to find himself looking into the hazy face of the woman he’d seen in the mirror. She opened her mouth, threw her bloody fists in the air, and bellowed something he couldn’t decipher.
“Christ!”
He screamed, stepped back, and fell down the stairs. His head connecting with the wall sent a bolt of pain through him. For a moment he just lay moaning, hoping perhaps he’d wake safe in his bed, woken from a bad dream, nestled snug beside Sandy, who would feel sorry for him, get all passionate, and–
He opened his eyes to see Sophie’s front door creaking on its hinges. It towered above him as he stared from his lopsided angle on the floor. A slither of sunlight sliced the murk like an alien invader probing new territory with tentative fingers.
Duncan groaned and hoisted himself onto an elbow so he could cradle his aching head with his free hand. There was no Sandy to wrap him in sympathy, no bed sheets pulled tight to his chest, no pillow squashed beneath his crooked neck; only Sophie’s gloomy, cold house, which appeared to laugh as its door continued to sway.
“Shit,” he moaned into his palm.
Enough’s enough, his mind insisted. Get off your arse, up those stairs, and put an end to this. Now.
He obediently rose to his knees. After a quick rub of a tender kneecap, he was on his way back up the narrow staircase. This time he didn’t use the tacky handrail, and he walked straight over the two dark trails with the handprint – which he now decided couldn’t be a handprint after all.
At the top of the stairs, his nerves prickled with the certainty he’d face the apparition and her bellowing again, but when he turned his eyes to the dark landing, he only saw an overturned vase which had been knocked from the windowsill. Murky water pooled around it as two wrinkled, rather past their prime roses festered in the wreckage.
Duncan skirted past and rounded the corner where he stared at the landing banister. Thin strips of pale material dangled from it. A brownish substance dripped from their ragged ends every couple of seconds.
What the...?
He crept forward in a secession of dolly-steps, unable to eliminate the alarm bells or keep his imagination from conjuring terrible what-ifs.
The fabric was wafer thin, darker on the underside. Parts looked crusty, like dried beef partway through the drying process. Bits glistened with a slick red surface. Others clumped together in dense clots. The upper layers, blotched salmon-white, were speckled and smeared.
Aunt Sophie’s skin! His mind cried, coupling the sight with the old woman’s worst asset – her horrible, and horrible didn’t quite cover it, skin that always looked dead.
What? A voice of reason argued. That’s ridiculous. Just think about it.
The problem was, Duncan was thinking about it, and he was thinking some maniac had broken in, attacked poor (hag-from-hell) Aunt Sophie, stripped off her clothes (ew), dragged her up the stairs, and skinned her. He wasn’t crazy, the evidence was right in front of him. Leathery shreds of her skin spread before him like strands of discarded orange peel.
That’s enough!
Okay, so this wasn’t a pile of Aunt Sophie’s skin. It had to be something more feasible, he just couldn’t think what right now. Her clothes in the chair were nothing unusual. The stuff on the stairs was just murky vase water. And Aunt Sophie was ... skinned! No, she wasn’t skinned, she was dead in the bedroom.
Oh, and that’s heaps better.
“Fucking hell!” Duncan swore. It wasn’t like him to do so, but it seemed to help. The voices in his head silenced as though shamed by his outburst. He could picture them shaking their heads, turning away, and muttering ‘there’s no need for that’.
Still, it gave him a moment or two to gather his courage. Three seconds later, he stood hopping from foot to foot like a kid in need of a pee outside Aunt Sophie’s boudoir.
The door was closed. A nudge with his thumb made it squeak, a second poke shunted it forward an inch or two, before it skated back into its original position.
He waited a moment before slamming it with the flat of his palm. The door glided open and Duncan’s heart stopped. He readied himself to absorb the sight of Aunt Sophie’s haggard body rigid in bed, staring at him through bloodshot eyes. Perhaps she’d fallen onto the floor? Maybe she was halfway across the room with desperate arms extended as though a carcass in the desert, inches from an oasis.
The room was empty. The bed was made. The floor was tidy.
Duncan shook his head.
So where is she?
The other bedroom?
No, he’d passed that and seen nothing unusual.
Then where?
In the wardrobe?
What would she be doing in the wardrobe?
Finding fresh clothes?
That did it. A bout of laughter blasted through his lips at the thought. He doubled over, held his sides, and wiped a tear from his eye. This was ridiculous. Ludicrous. Utter madness, the lot of it.
As though to prove himself right, he steadied himself, and, still chuckling, walked across the room and threw the closet door open.
The ghost woman screamed when she shot out, arms outstretched, mouth a wide, bottomless pit. She tore across the room and slammed into Duncan, who gulped like a landed fish when the air gushed out of his lungs. He crumpled and fell the thousand miles or so it took for his body to bounce onto the bed.
The spectre’s cries rooted in his skull. It took courage to open his eyes and examine the empty room, and more courage still to turn his tear-smudged gaze to the wardrobe. The door hung off the latch, fluttering in a nonexistent breeze. Dark red-brown liquid oozed from it with a steady plop, plop, plop.
Duncan tried to swallow, but ended up sucking on a bone dry tongue.
She’s in there, his mind nagged. Aunt Sophie’s in there.
This time no argumentative voice quarrelled the odds. There were no odds. Not for Duncan. She was in there. No question. He just had to stand up, open the door, and see it for himself.
He stood up from where he lay prone on the bed, took four or five miniature steps to the built-in wardrobe, laid a shaky hand on the brass handle, and pulled.
There she was. Well, what was left – her skinned body swung from two deformed wire coat hangers, each embedded deep into her shoulders, visibly threaded through muscle, wrapped around bones.
Duncan stumbled from the skewered lump of meat with a yell. He trembled backward, bumped into something, jumped around on the spot, and came nose to nose with Mr Thornton.
The old man smiled, first at Duncan, then at the body in the wardrobe. “Bit of a shocker, ain’t she?”
Duncan didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He was about to attempt words when he spotted the claw hammer in Mr Thornton’s arthritic fingers. His mouth dropped open.
Mr Thornton chuckled and slapped the hammer’s blunt end against his palm. “Yes, sir, she sure is a shocker. I thought about coming up here a few minutes back, but then I decided I’d let you find her first. Have a little fun. Not much of that for us old folk nowadays, sonny.”
Duncan backed up until his back pressed on the closet. “What did you do to her?”
“Nothing she didn’t have coming.” Mr Thornton’s gray eyes glazed with the mist of contemplation. “Youth is wasted on the young.”
“Aunt Sophie was old,” Duncan said, his head snapping from side to side in search of aid. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“Aunt Sophie?” A note of confusion crossed Mr Thornton’s face, after which he recomposed himself. “Ah, yes, Aunt Sophie. I expect you’ll be wanting to see her new look... Sophie, you done yet?”
Duncan was about to scream his frustration when Aunt Sophie herself, naked as the day she was born, shuffled into the room with a Zimmer-frame.
Duncan gawped. What else could he do? The old woman stood in the doorway, false teeth clacking in and out of place, exposed breasts wobbling to and fro like a pair of dried-out satsumas topped with a couple of old raisins. Her knees trembled beneath the round pot-belly that hung between her legs. Thank God!
She must be confused, was Duncan’s first logical thought. She’s lost it, gone loop la, both her and Mr Thornton.
Aunt Sophie’s face screwed into a tight knot of age when she smiled and swivelled her creaky hips from side to side. “How does it look?” she asked.
That’s when Duncan realised she wasn’t naked, not entirely anyway. Thin shreds of the stuff – the skin! – he’d seen hanging on the banister were wrapped around her like bandages. Small trickles of partially dry blood blobbed her here and there. A faint stream of it trailed from the piece of skin she had tied round her neck like a scarf. Her wrists were adorned with additional strips, worked partway up the arms. A sheet of it draped one shoulder and ran down her hunched back. Another layer was slapped like a sheet of shoddy wallpaper just below her dangling breasts, more covered each of her thighs, and her feet were also swathed.
Duncan’s mouth fell open, but Mr Thornton wolf-whistled. “You look great, kid. Fifty years younger.”
“You’re mad!” Duncan exclaimed. He grabbed Aunt Sophie’s dressing gown from the bedpost and tried to wrap it round her shoulders. “Come on, Auntie, we’ve gotta get you to a doctor.”
Pain swallowed him in a mighty explosion, sent blackness careering through his vision, and summoned a croak of surprise from his throat. His knees folded as he toppled backward. A few seconds later he lay on the floor with the room spinning around him.
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