Skin

by Ben Mezrich

  Then the wonderful feeling grew, as a softly accented voice rang out from an inner room in the house. “Allan? Is everything all right?”

  Tien leaned back, rubbing the back of his hand against his lips. He unslung his rucksack and placed it lightly on the floor next to the body. Then he retrieved his straight razor and slipped it back beneath his sleeve.

  “Everything is just fine,” he whispered. “It’s just an old friend stopping by to say hello.”

  He rose to his feet and slid quietly across the front entrance. He could hear the small woman approaching from around the corner, and he waited with his back against the wall, measuring the distance by the sound of her feet. When she was just a few feet away, he leapt forward, his body uncoiling like a striking snake.

  Rina Trowbridge saw him and froze. Her pretty features contorted as she saw the razor flash out from beneath his sleeve. She tried to run—but he was too fast. His free hand caught her by the hair, and she was yanked backward. The razor arced toward her throat. There was a spray of blood—and her small body slumped back against his chest. He leaned close, so that his bloody lips were inches from her ear.

  “Hello,” he whispered, as he twisted the razor free.

  18

  “Hello? Is anyone home?”

  Mulder stood in the arched entrance to the stone temple, staring down a long, dark corridor with smooth, rounded walls and a packed-mud floor. Although it was still midafternoon, shadows played across his shoulders, dribbling down against the tops of his waterlogged shoes. He glanced upward toward the canopy of tree branches that stretched, like living tentacles, over the domed roof of the building. It seemed as though the trees were clutching at the temple, malevolent green fingers trying to drag the brutalized stone back into the encroaching wilderness. Mulder smiled inwardly at his own dark thoughts.

  It had not been difficult to locate the temple at the far edge of the village. After he had dropped Scully off at the town hall—a meandering wooden construct of offices and meeting rooms—he had simply followed the main cobblestone road to its conclusion, then taken a hard right toward the forest. Fifty yards from the road, he had caught sight of the charcoal-colored building jutting out from beneath the tree cover.

  At first glance, the temple looked as if it had been carved from a single, mammoth boulder; the temple was shaped like the top half of an egg, with smooth outer walls that curved upward nearly twenty feet to the domed roof. The roof was tiled with alternating strips of gold and silver, and the walls were decorated with Thai script, white and black letters curling across almost every inch of the smooth structure. Just above the entrance was another statue of the Buddha, this one chiseled out of shiny green jade. Set against the massive temple, the Buddha looked helpless and forlorn, and Mulder wondered if the idol had been an afterthought. The Buddha did not seem to fit with the architecture of the temple, which seemed more archaic, a product of a totemic-styled cult rather than a religion based on philosophical enlightenment. Compared to the rest of Alkut, the egg-shaped temple had been built on an artificially impressive—and emotionally driven—scale: more evidence that there was real gravity behind the legend of the Skin Eater, at least in the minds of the villagers. They had not skimped in their efforts to placate the beast.

  Mulder took a tiny step forward, listening to his own voice echoing back at him from the darkness. He had been surprised to find the heavy wooden door to the temple hanging partially open, and he had waited a full minute before allowing his curiosity to tempt him forward. He knew it was bad form to trespass on a religious shrine—but he couldn’t wait forever. In half an hour, he was meeting Scully outside the town hall to discuss her progress with the lawyer—and Mulder had three centuries of myths to decipher in that short time. Even if David Kuo could help them track down Andrew Paladin—Mulder was sure that the legend of the Skin Eater was somehow involved.

  His mind made up, he continued forward down the dark corridor. The air was dense and cool, a stark contrast to the sweltering atmosphere outside. The walls on either side were smooth stone, polished to the point of reflection. There were wooden torches that smelled vaguely of kerosene mounted every few feet along the walls, none of them lit—and Mulder chided himself for not carrying matches. Then again, he didn’t know if it was proper etiquette to trespass into a temple waving a burning torch. Instead, he watched as his reflection dimmed, each step moving him farther from the gray light of the outside world.

  A few yards before total darkness, Mulder came to a second door, covered in some sort of frayed cloth. Mulder felt around the face of the material, but couldn’t find anything resembling a doorknob. The cloth felt strangely warm, and Mulder wondered if there was something burning on the other side of the door. He pressed both palms flat against the thin material and gave a gentle shove.

  The door swung inward. A sudden wave of heat splashed against Mulder’s face. The strong scent of burning oil hit his nostrils, and he stifled a cough. He blinked rapidly, his eyes watering from the strong smell. As his pupils adjusted to the flickering firelight, Mulder saw that he was standing at the mouth of a circular inner chamber, with a polished stone floor and high, roughly hewn rock walls. There was an ancient-looking clay altar in the center of the chamber ten yards ahead of him, a waist-high pedestal construction with a wide rectangular base. Bright flames leaped high into the air above the clay, barely contained by a red-hot steel bowl filled with flammable, pitch-black liquid. Just beyond the steel bowl, seeming to shiver in the intense heat of the flames, stood an enormous statue made of some sort of shiny black stone. The statue was like nothing Mulder had ever seen before.

  “Gin-Korng-Pew,” Mulder whispered, as his eyes rode up the face of the stone beast. The black statue had a long, ridged snout like an emaciated wolf. The lips were curled back to reveal multiple rows of razor-sharp fangs. Two five-foot-long, curved tusks jutted out from the stone creature’s bottom jaw, crisscrossing together just below its flared nostrils. The beast’s eyes were enormous, with bright red spirals instead of pupils. Hundreds of spaghetti-strand tentacles sprang out of its head, each tipped by a single curved claw. It was a nightmare turned to stone—and it set off something primal inside Mulder, something he couldn’t begin to explain. Though he knew it was a statue, he had the sudden urge to run. At the same time, his muscles felt paralyzed, he couldn’t turn away.

  “Every culture has its monsters,” a voice suddenly echoed in his ears. “But they are all cut from the same soul.”

  Mulder whirled toward the voice. He saw that the far wall of the chamber was lined with dark alcoves, dug directly into the rough stone. Each alcove was at least five feet tall, and it was impossible to gauge how deeply they were dug into the temple. As Mulder watched, a stooped figure stepped out of the center alcove. The figure was wearing a bright red monk’s robe, tied around his bare shoulder. His bald head glistened in the light from the fire. He looked at Mulder—and Mulder realized that he recognized the monk’s face.

  It was the old man who had watched him and Scully drive into town. The man with the multiple amulets who had stood at the edge of the road, smiling as if he had expected them all along.

  Mulder stared at the man, stunned. The old monk noticed his expression and laughed. “Are you more afraid of the statue, or of me?”

  Mulder swallowed, trying to regain his composure. Scully would say it was a coincidence, of course. The old man was a member of the Skin Eater cult. He had been standing by the side of the road when they had driven into Alkut. No mystery, no magic.

  But the one thing Mulder didn’t believe in was coincidence. He cleared his throat. “You speak English.”

  The monk nodded. “I spent three years at the university in Bangkok. As you can imagine, I was a theology major. My name is Ganon.”

  Mulder gestured toward the statue behind the flaming altar. “And is this the Skin Eater?”

  Ganon paused, his gaze still pinned to Mulder’s face. “Nobody alive has ever seen Gin-Korng-Pew. Thi
s statue is based on an ancient drawing found in a cave not far from this temple. Perhaps it is the creature. Perhaps it is a fairy tale, chiseled out of polished stone.”

  Ganon made a brief motion with his hand, and a teenage boy in a similar red robe stepped out of one of the other alcoves. Mulder wondered whether there was a roomful of monks behind the wall, waiting for Ganon’s cues. He shifted his eyes back to the old monk. “But you don’t believe it’s a fairy tale. You believe the monster is real.”

  Ganon shrugged, a coy smile on his lips. He snapped the fingers of his right hand, and the teenager quickly crossed the room to where Mulder was standing. The boy was extremely thin, almost emaciated, with an oblong, shaved head and sunken eyes. Without a word, the boy pulled a small glass vial out of his robe. The vial was filled with some sort of clear liquid, with tiny leaves floating inside.

  “It is unimportant what I believe,” Ganon said. “I am a lowly servant of this temple. My role is to keep that altar lit. And to offer my protection to those who seek it.”

  He nodded, and the emaciated boy opened the vial and poured a few droplets of the clear liquid into his palm. He approached Mulder and reached for Mulder’s cheek. Mulder involuntarily drew back.

  “Malku will not hurt you. The balm is a spirit repellent. It is designed to protect the skin. All who journey into the mountains surrounding Alkut must wear the balm—or risk a horrible fate.”

  Mulder raised his eyebrows as he let the boy rub the liquid into his cheeks. It had a strong scent, bitter like almonds, with a tinge of something sulfurous. “And you think I’m going to journey into the mountains?”

  Ganon shrugged. “Again, it is unimportant what I believe.”

  Mulder narrowed his eyes, trying to read the expression on the old man’s face. Meanwhile, the teenager stepped back, then placed the vial in Mulder’s hand. “Take. Makes skin taste bad. Take.”

  Mulder watched as the boy turned and shuffled back toward his alcove. “Is that what the creature does—eat the skin? As its name implies?”

  “As the story goes,” Ganon answered, moving gracefully toward the altar, “skin is the source of its immortality. Gin-Korng-Pew feeds on the skin of the unlucky—to replenish itself. When it is asleep, it does not need to feed. Only when it is disturbed does it feel the hunger.”

  Mulder watched as Ganon reached the altar. He wasn’t sure yet how the information fit into the case—but he knew it was significant. Skin is the source of its immortality. The words echoed through Mulder’s thoughts. Somehow, the Skin Eater was connected to Emile Paladin—and through him, to Perry Stanton. Mulder had to fill in the links.

  “So the MASH unit woke the creature and sent it on a hungry rampage,” Mulder said, “Somehow, Emile Paladin upset the beast, and the town suffered because of him. Now the creature is once again in hibernation. Somewhere in the mountains.”

  Ganon did not respond. Instead, he reached beneath the altar and pulled out a long metal staff with a tiny cup on one end. He carefully dipped the end of the staff into the flammable liquid in the metal fire bowl and gently stirred in a circular motion. The flames rose higher, daggers of orange twisting like living ropes around the tusks of the monstrous statue.

  “Somewhere in See Dum Kao,” Ganon repeated, staring at the flames. “A vast cave called Thum Phi—the spirit cavern.”

  Mulder had a sudden, strange feeling that Ganon was hinting that he knew where Thum Phi was located; the old monk knew where the mythical beast lived.

  Mulder looked at the glass vial in his hand. Then his gaze shifted to the statue of the Skin Eater. Maybe Ganon was just telling him what he had already guessed—that the answers he was looking for were in those mountains.

  Waiting for him.

  Thirty minutes later, Mulder found Scully sitting on the partially enclosed front steps leading up to the town hall, leafing through a manila folder. The steps bisected a small flower garden, row after row of colorful buds creeping up between high blades of bright green grass. The air was thick with the scent of foreign pollen, and Mulder’s throat itched as he dropped down next to his partner. He ran both hands through his sopping-wet hair, glancing back at the entrance to the town hall behind them. Above the high double doors he saw two floors of shuttered windows, and near the thatched roof an iron rain gutter like the one he had seen ringing the top of the clinic.

  Mulder had barely noticed the perpetual gray sheets on his quick walk back from the temple. His thoughts were still consumed by Ganon and the Skin Eater; when he closed his eyes to blink, he could see the creature’s face, the wolfish snout, the crisscrossed tusks, the razor-clawed tentacles.

  Scully finally looked up from the manila folder, noticing the expression on his face. “You look as if you just met the bogeyman.”

  Mulder smiled. “I think maybe I did. How was your visit with David Kuo? Anything interesting?”

  Scully sighed. “He doesn’t know anything about Andrew’s whereabouts. He was Emile Paladin’s lawyer—but only in name. He had very little contact with the man since the war, and almost zero contact with his brother.”

  “So what’s in the folder?”

  Scully patted it with her fingers. “Kuo retrieved this for me from the town hall records. It’s the ME’s file from Emile Paladin’s autopsy. And before you start telling me about your bogeyman—Emile Paladin died from a broken neck. The pathologist estimated a fall of at least fifty feet.”

  Mulder’s expression didn’t change. He reached down past the edge of the steps and yanked a yellow flower out of the garden. The petals were almost as long as his fingers. “And what about his skin? Or lack thereof?”

  “Again, no great mystery. His body was mutilated by three different types of predators—all readily identifiable by the teeth marks. Two types of wolf and a mountain lion.”

  Mulder nodded, yanking one of the petals free. He hadn’t expected an autopsy report full of tusks and clawed tentacles. It was never that simple. “Sounds like Paladin made quite a picnic.”

  “The damage was so bad, the positive ID was made from a dental match. Two teeth, to be exact—a left front incisor and a right canine. But there was no doubt. It was Paladin. According to the report, Andrew claimed the body, and it was cremated a few days after the autopsy.”

  Cremated. Mulder leaned back against the steps, stretching his neck side to side. Scully rolled her eyes. “Mulder, the body was cremated after the autopsy, not before. There’s no mystery here. Emile Paladin died in a hiking accident.”

  Mulder didn’t respond. Scully exhaled, frustrated. “It’s a myth, Mulder. A fairy tale. And it has nothing to do with our case. Perry Stanton didn’t have his skin eaten by some beast. Neither did Emile Paladin.”

  Mulder nodded, tossing the yellow flower back into the garden. He still couldn’t shake the idea that the Skin Eater was involved. He remembered what Ganon had told him—that the Skin Eater’s source of power was its supply of skin. It coincided closely with his own theory about the source of Stanton’s invulnerability, and his incredible athletic feats. And the timing of the Skin Eater’s hunger—the link to the MASH unit and to Emile Paladin’s presence in Alkut—was impossible to ignore. “I just don’t think we can discount anything out of hand.”

  “Mulder,” Scully started, but she was interrupted by a frightened shout from down the street. Mulder looked up to see a pair of orange-robed monks running toward them, their faces masks of terror. Mulder noted that both monks were wearing latex gloves. He realized he had seen them before. They were the two monks from the clinic.

  “Quickly!” the larger of the two shouted. “Please! Terrible thing! Terrible thing!”

  He waved his arms wildly, pointing down the cobblestone street. The second monk was babbling in Thai, and Mulder saw that there were tears in the corners of his eyes. Mulder rose quickly, following Scully down the steps. The monks nodded vigorously, then turned and rushed down the street. Mulder and Scully had to jog to keep up. The cobblestones were tricky to navigat
e, but there was no sidewalk, and the mud on either side of the street would have been even worse. Mulder kept his head down, ignoring the buildings that flashed by on either side, as he and Scully struggled to stay close to the sprinting monks.

  “This sounds pretty serious,” Scully shouted, as she leapt over a puddle of murky rainwater in front of a small, open-air shop selling bowls filled with fishtails. “How did they know where to find us?”

  Mulder shrugged, narrowly avoiding a rusted bicycle lying at the side of the road a few feet past the fishtail shop. He thought about Ganon and the man’s knowing eyes. But he decided it was probably nothing so mysterious. “It’s a small town. And we’re pretty hard to miss.”

  The monks turned an abrupt corner, winding out of the center of town. Residential homes sprang up on stilts to the left and right, triangular thatched roofs spitting rainwater toward the street in controlled, noisy waterfalls. With a start, Mulder realized the direction they were heading. “Scully, don’t the Trowbridges live down the next street?”

  Scully looked at him. Both agents hurried their pace, catching up to the monks. As they approached the Trowbridges’ home, Mulder saw that a small crowd of people had gathered on the front lawn. Mostly women and young children, dressed in loose smocks and homemade sandals. The women were whispering to one another in worried voices, and Mulder made out the distinct sound of weeping. He swallowed, a dull feeling in his stomach. Then he saw Ganon at the edge of the crowd, and their eyes met. Ganon nodded, his mouth moving, the words disappearing in the gray rain. Mulder didn’t need to hear them to know their sound.

  “Gin-Korng-Pew.”

  19

  Scully squared her shoulders as she and Mulder worked their way through the crowd. Her face and body quickly took on the controlled veneer of a career federal agent as her left hand slipped to her shoulder holster, checking to see that the snap was undone. She could tell by the grim faces in the crowd that something horrible had happened, and she prayed that the thoughts streaking from her own imagination were way off base. Then she caught sight of the open door, stained in bright red blood—and her heart sank. There was no longer any doubt; they had arrived at a crime scene.