Read House of Skin for Free Online Page A

Myles.”
    “And I’m here, aren’t I.”
    Annabel turned and moved toward the veranda steps.
    “That’s it?” he said and despised the plaintive note in his voice.
    She descended the steps into the lawn, and for the first time he noticed she was barefoot.
    He was about to shout at her, tell her that David didn’t deserve her, that he was probably off in the woods with another woman, when a cry erupted from within the house.
    It wasn’t a normal cry, like a man who’d been cuckolded or a woman who’d been groped. It was a cry of anguish, of heartbroken doom, and as he pushed through the crowd gathered near the bandstand he realized it was Maria’s wail he was hearing. It rose up to the chandeliers, knifed through his eardrums, and he spotted Maria’s mother then, old and haggard and covered with blood. He thought at first she’d been stabbed, but then the crowd opened up and he saw Maria kneeling there in a lake of blood, her little boy clutched to her blood-shiny chest, her dead little boy whose throat was slashed so deeply it hung open like the mouth of some toothless animal.
    Myles turned to look for his brother, for David, who would know what to do in a situation like this. But David wasn’t around. Everywhere he looked were shocked faces, weeping men and women who were too stunned to move. Myles turned, not wanting to face the grotesque spectacle any longer but unable to block out the sound of Maria’s wailing, and as he did he beheld a solitary figure standing in the open French doors, leaning there in a shimmering white dress.
    It was Annabel, and she was smiling.

Chapter Five
    Sam Barlow was in the middle of a nightmare when the phone rang. He sat up, disoriented. He slapped the snooze button on the alarm clock, dropped onto his side, but the ringing persisted and he realized something was wrong.
    He’d run for sheriff expecting to have many dreams interrupted by the ringing of the phone, but the truth was, Patti rarely bothered him at home. Shadeland had its share of domestic disputes and ornery teenagers, but all in all, he knew he had it good.
    “Um-hmm?” he asked.
    “Patti here.”
    “Yeah. I figured as much.” He couldn’t bring himself to be annoyed with his secretary. She bothered him too seldom for that.
    “We’ve got a bit of a situation down here, Sam,” she said, sounding flustered. He found himself waking up fast.
    “What kind of situation?” he asked.
    “A missing person,” she said. Then, quieter, “Well, he’s not technically missing. He’s only been gone for a few hours, but still…”  
    “Who is it?” Sam scooted up against his headboard, rubbed crust from his eyes.
    “A lawyer. His name is Ted Brand.”
    “Never heard of him.”
    “He’s not local. He came to deliver something to the Carver House.”  
    “The Carver House?” Sam slid forward, his bare feet slapping the cold wooden floor.
    “For the new owner.”
    “I didn’t know there was a new owner.” Sam reached over and twisted on the lamp. It was black, and there was a hula girl on it. He’d seen it at a garage sale a few years back and liked it. The half-naked girl watched him, frozen in mid shimmy. Had he married, he never would have been allowed to keep it.
    It was little consolation.
    “…and she really seems distraught, so I figured—”
    “I’m sorry, Patti,” Sam broke in. “I missed part of that.”  
    “The lawyer’s wife is here. She’s convinced something bad happened to her husband.”
    “She giving you a hard time?”
    “It’s not that,” Patti said. “She’s very civil.” A pause. “Look, it’s probably better if you come down here yourself, Sam.” Patti’s voice went lower. “It’s probably a matter of the lawyer stepping out on his wife, but I can’t very well tell her that.”  
    Barlow smiled, whatever unease that had been building since the phone rang vanishing under the light of Patti’s logic. She ought to have been a cop , he thought. She’d have