Snakeskins

by Tim Major

  He bit his thumbnail. By now, the receptionist would have located Spencer, spoken to his teacher, and might at this moment be leading him to the gates. Russell peered through the gap in the metal bars but couldn’t see anybody.

  He should leave. The receptionist would shrug and take the boy back inside. Russell could go home and consider what to do more carefully. The concrete playground was still empty. There was still time to call this off. Yes, that—

  Something struck him on the back of his head.

  His cheek smacked into the metal gates, which made a dull ringing sound like a cloister bell. Then his forehead thumped onto the pavement and then there was nothing at all.

  * * *

  Gerry rang the doorbell a second time. She rechecked the scrawled writing on her notepad. Ivy Cottage: a ridiculous name. Not only was the building far too large to be classed as a cottage, she could see no evidence of ivy either.

  The door opened to reveal a man in a shabby black suit. His hair was ruffled, revealing two deep widow’s peaks. His black tie had been loosened and the top button of his white shirt was undone. He stank of whisky.

  “Mr Hext?”

  The man eyed her suspiciously. “You a journalist?”

  Gerry had already jammed her notepad into her coat pocket. “Yes, actually. How did you know?”

  He waved a hand. It was difficult to tell how drunk he might be. “Figured we’d lost you, that’s all.”

  “Lost me?”

  “Yup. All of you.”

  “I was hoping to talk to you.”

  “It can’t hurt now, I suppose. We’re all done and dusted. So to speak.”

  Gerry tried to see past him. The interior of the house was dark. “Do you think I might come in for a moment, Mr Hext?”

  He folded his arms, then unfolded them, then folded them again. “You know what— What’s your name?”

  “Gerry Chafik.”

  He nodded, as if that explained everything. “You know what, Miss Traffic? I’d like that very much indeed.” He sidestepped to allow her to enter, bumping against an umbrella stand as he did so.

  Gerry made her way along the passage, aiming for a sliver of light. She pushed open a door to reveal a large farmhouse kitchen, lit only by the lamp of an extractor fan above an electric oven and a portable TV showing grainy footage of Adrian Lorde at Number 10, looking imperious and ancient, propped up behind his desk. She flicked on the main lights.

  There was a half-full bottle of whisky on the table. The man noticed her looking at it. “I’m never much of a drinker normally. It’s a replacement for people. I prefer people, all things considered.”

  There was something about his shabbiness that was instantly appealing, as though she had known him for years, as though he were a favourite uncle.

  “Just back from work?” she said, indicating his crumpled suit.

  He looked down at himself. A crease appeared on his forehead. “No.”

  “May I sit down?”

  “Course. Sit down. Cuppa? Bugger, no teabags.” He glanced at the whisky bottle. “Water?”

  “Water would be fine. Thanks.”

  His hands shook as he passed her a glass. A spilled pool of water spread in a growing halo.

  “You haven’t asked what I was hoping to talk about,” Gerry said.

  “No. Seems obvious, though.”

  “It does?”

  “Doesn’t it?”

  “Sorry. I’m confused.” She glanced again at his suit, suddenly unsure of herself. “I wondered if you knew much about your family history, Mr Hext. Actually, can I call you Toby?”

  This produced a strange reaction. The man blundered backwards, halfway through the process of sitting down. He missed the seat and fell to the floor, then leapt up immediately. Even though he was groaning with pain, the accident appeared to have woken him up.

  “Why in God’s name would you want to do that?” he said.

  “I’m sorry. I’ll call you Mr Hext, then. Is that okay?”

  “No! I mean, why would you want to call me Toby? I’m Ian. I’m not that drunk.”

  Instinctively, Gerry pulled out her notepad. She ran her finger down the list of Hext family members that she had copied from library records. The names on the final line were Janet, Toby and Caitlin.

  She clapped a hand to her forehead. “I’d completely forgotten. Charmers lend their names to their spouses, not the other way around. So you’re…”

  “Ian Hext. Né Usborne. Janet Hext’s husband. I was proud to take her name. I don’t care about the Charmer rules, I’d have done it anyway.” His face crumpled.

  “I’m so sorry, Mr Hext.” From the records, Gerry had learnt that Janet Hext had died a few years ago in a car crash. “You must still be feeling her loss very badly.”

  “You’re commiserating me about Janet… So you really don’t know, then?”

  “It seems I don’t know much about much.”

  Ian grunted. “Toby Hext is dead too. He… well, he died. And today I went to his—”

  Now it was Gerry’s turn to groan. The shabby suit. The black tie. The drinking. “Oh shit. Mr Hext. Ian. I’m so sorry. If I’d known…”

  Ian pulled himself out of his chair awkwardly. He shambled over to the window. His shoulders shook.

  Gerry stood, too. After a few seconds of hesitation, she placed her hands on his shoulders. Instantly, Ian turned on the spot and hugged her, pressing his face into her neck. His wet cheeks skidded against her skin.

  A minute passed, or more. The shudders subsided. Ian pushed Gerry away gently. “I needed that. Sorry, though. Your top’s wet.”

  “It’s fine. I should go.”

  “No. Please. Stay. I’m rather—” Only the word ‘lonely’ could fill the pause that followed. “It’s good to speak to someone.” He sat down. “So. I’ll fill you in, and then your turn. Toby Hext – we always called him Tobe – died last week. They’re calling it suicide.” Another phrase with implications. “There weren’t many people at the funeral. A couple of his friends who played cards together. One of his old teachers. Me. My daughter and her best friend Evie. There were more, but nobody that he knew.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “We all arrived together, in two cars. When we got to the cemetery there were all these cars waiting. Journalists, we figured. Cait couldn’t bear the thought of being photographed.”

  Gerry thought of Zemma Finch’s attitude to news stories about sheddings. Toby Hext wasn’t a celebrity, and she doubted that journalists really had shown up to the funeral. But if those suspicious cars didn’t belong to journalists and photographers, then who did they belong to?

  Ian continued, interrupting her line of thought. “So we all headed off and left them to it. A body’s a body. We preferred to mark the occasion on our own, elsewhere, at this spot where we used to picnic. Tobe would have hated it, mind you. Hardly a word was said, and no fuss. We spent longer in the pub than up on the hill. Right, now your turn.”

  “It seems trivial now,” Gerry said, though in fact her mind was racing as she tried to process the implications of Toby Hext’s death. “I’m from Folk and I was hoping to do a piece about Charmer families. Nothing sensational. I’m thinking it should be the story of real families who happen to be a little different to— well, not ‘normal’ families, but you know.”

  “I know. Sounds like a nice piece.”

  “Except now—”

  “Except now we’re not much of a family. Two dead in three years. And I’m not a Charmer, just a hanger-on.”

  “That’s not what I was going to say.”

  “I know. But it’s still the case. It’s okay, and I’m still happy to help, if you want?”

  Gerry saw the pleading in his expression. She understood his craving for distraction.

  She nodded. “If you’re sure. Perhaps you can tell me a little about your wife, first. Her family.” It seemed best to avoid referring to Toby Hext directly. She wasn’t sure she coul
d bear to see Ian cry again.

  He drew himself upright. “They were a fine family. They went back all the way to the Fall. Well, that’s obvious, isn’t it, but I mean there were none of the confusions in their family tree that other Charmer families might have had. The Hext name was solid, and the Hexts tended not to marry into other Charmer dynasties, which I suppose was the usual way of things. After a bit of research, Janet was sure that ours was the only branch of the tree left. More of a twig, now, I suppose.”

  Gerry pretended to refer to her notebook. “I did a bit of preliminary research, about all of the families I was hoping to speak to. Do you know if I’m right in thinking that the Ilam Hexts – or the father of the family, at least – were shepherds? At the key moment, at the time of the Fall, I mean.”

  Ian nodded. “You’ve certainly done your homework. Janet was always proud of that. She once said that that’s the profession she ought to have taken up. As it was, she was in HR. Maybe it’s not so different. Herding sheep, herding people. I don’t know. She would’ve liked us to have more of a flock of our own. We never got around to it, but maybe we would have, in time. We only had the one child, in the end.”

  “And her name is Caitlin?”

  After a pause that Gerry found difficult to decipher, Ian gave a slight nod.

  It dawned on Gerry that Caitlin Hext was the only remaining Charmer in the Hext family. The list of names on her notepad was a list of the dead.

  “Would you like to see a photo of Janet?” Ian said in a cracked voice. “She was beautiful.”

  Gerry smiled. “I really would. Thank you.”

  “I don’t keep them out on display. That might seem strange. I found I couldn’t see her, not every day. Hang on.”

  He left the room and Gerry heard him bumping his way up the stairs. She couldn’t hear any other sounds from within the house. Was Caitlin here in the building?

  Ian returned a couple of minutes later, carrying three heavy-looking ring-bound photo albums. He gave a sheepish grin. “I couldn’t decide which one to bring.”

  He dropped them onto the table with a slam that echoed around the kitchen. Gerry’s smile was more forced now, but she told herself to indulge him. The Hext family was her only lead.

  She opened the first photo album. Janet really was beautiful. Her eyes sparkled with intelligence. Even in the faded photos, with their colours bleeding to sepia at their centres, the redness of her hair was exceptional. Her face was lean, her cheekbones high. In every photo she was either laughing or smiling. Ian was, too. His young face was suited to happiness. Gerry glanced up to see those same features creased in an altogether different way.

  She leafed through the pages, images of the young couple at parties, camping, sharing food, splashing in the sea. If she really had been intending to write an article about Charmer families, any one of these images would be a wonderful inclusion.

  Another man appeared often in the pictures. “Is this Toby?”

  “He might not have been one for socialising with others, but we had fun. Janet was the glue between us, of course. It was always a bit strained after she passed, even when Tobe moved in here. My fault, not his.”

  One photo was dark and difficult to make out. Gerry peered at it and made out Janet’s face, lit from one side. The photo must have been taken in a theatre. On the stage Gerry could see a figure sitting at the foot of a bed.

  “They’re puppets,” Ian said. He pointed at tiny figures on the right-hand side of the photo. Now Gerry realised that they were miniature rather than on a stage in the distance. “This was one of Janet’s favourite spots – the Museum of Automata on the Scarborough seafront. There’s a bit of a family history, I suppose. This photo was taken donkey’s years ago, but we went there most summers. One time, we lost Janet in there for hours and it turned out she’d been watching this little diorama again and again on a loop, burning through ten-pence coins. She was fascinated by portrayals of Charmers, especially from times gone by. Caitlin was only a little kid, though, and she was pretty shaken up by the whole thing.”

  “By Janet being missing, you mean? Because she thought her mum was gone?”

  “Yes, but only afterwards. By which I mean that it took us ages to convince her that the woman we found was her mum. She had a young, impressionable mind, I suppose, and she was coming to terms with being a Charmer and all that entailed, and then this episode at the museum… I think Cait ended up all muddled. She was convinced that the Janet we brought home was a Snakeskin. She had nightmares for weeks.”

  Gerry realised it was the last page in the album. She reached for the next one. On its first page was a single photo.

  In the picture Ian appeared more exhausted than Janet, as close to tears as he was right now. Sweat glistened on Janet’s brow, but she looked utterly at ease. She held up the newborn child in her arms, proud and content.

  Gerry noticed Ian turn towards the kitchen doorway, through which the stairs were visible. Caitlin was all he had left. She must be in the house.

  She flipped through the pages quickly. Baby Caitlin became a toddler. The toddler became a girl with red pigtails and the same proud expression as her mother. Her hair lengthened, so that she looked more and more like her mother when she was younger. And she looked increasingly familiar.

  Gerry leapt up from her chair. Standing, she continued rifling through the pages. Caitlin grew older, and now Gerry was certain.

  “I’ve seen her,” she said, breathlessly. “I’ve seen your daughter before.”

  “Where? The sixth-form? I assumed you weren’t local.”

  “I saw her at the care home. Has she shed?”

  Ian nodded. “Her first. Last week. Just before Tobe died. I keep worrying that it affected him somehow. He—”

  “Is she here? In the house?” she said breathlessly. She thought again of Ian’s mention of mysterious cars at the funeral. A thought chilled her: Perhaps the Great British Prosperity Party had followed exactly the same thread of logic as she had in her investigation. Perhaps their interest wasn’t only Ilam, but the Hext family. “Can I speak to her?”

  “What’s the urgency?”

  “I’m sorry, I really am. Please. I’d really like to speak to her.”

  Ian watched her for a few moments, perhaps trying to decide whether she was trustworthy. Finally, he nodded. “I’ll fetch her. Stay here. She might not be up to it, given the circumstances.”

  Gerry listened to the thuds and creaks of the stairs. At least now Ian was moving quickly – if nothing else, she’d managed to sober him up. She stood at the sink and peered out of the window. Outside, her car was parked badly, partly overlapping a circular patch of grass which acted as a roundabout in the centre of the wide driveway.

  Where the driveway dipped down to meet the main road, the nose of another car protruded from behind the bushes. Gerry shielded her eyes. The driver’s window was tinted so that it was impossible to see inside. The car pulled away smoothly. Its engine must already have been running.

  That was no journalist, and neither were the mysterious cars at the funeral. Representatives of the Party had been close behind her in Ilam. It was perfectly possible that they could have found the same links to the Hext family that she had. She had no idea why they were searching for the family members at this point in time, but this very urgency – and Toby Hext’s untimely death – spelled trouble. Getting Caitlin to somewhere safe was the most important thing now.

  A knock came from upstairs, and Ian’s voice called softly, “Cait?”

  Silence.

  She hovered at the kitchen door, then moved to the foot of the stairs.

  Ian appeared at the top of the staircase.

  “She’s gone,” he said, flatly.

  Gerry was determined not to reveal her panic. “Is that so surprising?”

  Ian plodded down the stairs, deep in thought. “No, I suppose not. She’s been acting… I mean, who wouldn’t, though. It’s been a tough day. A tough time.” He turned t
o look up the staircase. “Sorry. I got distracted. I can see the garage from up in my daughter’s room.”

  “I don’t understand. Why would that be distracting?”

  “Don’t know. I’ll go and check.” He pushed past into the kitchen. Gerry followed him, and then through another door into a scullery. Ian fiddled with a latch that led to a back garden. Badly laid crazy paving gave way to a lawn with a large shed and tall trees. To the left-hand side of the paved area stood a brick garage. Its double doors were wide open.

  Ian stood before the doors, looking from one wall to the other. Spades, rakes, saws and other tools hung from pegs on both sides.

  “No ladder,” Ian said softly. He turned to face Gerry. “It’s the strangest coincidence. I think I’ve been robbed.”

  * * *

  Caitlin understood that she was dreaming.

  Even so, she was horrified to see the skin of her chest begin to peel away to reveal raw, red flesh beneath. The thin surface curled like burnt paper, rolling up on itself. She clawed at her breasts and belly, trying to press the papyruslike, brittle skin back into place. Her exposed flesh stung. She screamed an undulating, two-tone shriek.

  She woke up, panting. Her fingernails were nipping into her chest. Her hair was damp with sweat and strands criss-crossed her vision, turning the ceiling into a hazy web.

  The shrieking sound continued.

  It wasn’t coming from her. It was an alarm.

  She could hear other sounds, too. Hurried footsteps in the corridor outside. Scuffles. Bickering, strangled voices, though she couldn’t make out the words. This wasn’t a drill.

  Then someone shouted outside her door. It wasn’t directed at her. “Central controls are down. The doors aren’t opening!” Another voice, further away, bellowed, “Some bastard’s stolen my ID!”