“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.
Santa Maria
by Jeff Cercone
“Can you believe these people? What the hell’s the matter with them?”
Rob ignored his friend and pushed his way through the crowd, bumping an elderly Hispanic woman in the shoulder. He started to apologize, but she was too preoccupied to notice.
“Santa María, Madre de Dios, ruega por nosotros pecadores ahora y en la hora de nuestra muerte…” She whispered the prayer, tears soaking her grizzled cheeks and her arms clutching what Rob assumed were her two grandchildren, who stared wide-eyed at the spectacle.
Dozens of
people, the devout and the curious, had gathered at the underpass of the Kennedy freeway, positioning for a glimpse of the stain on the wall. A certain civility had taken hold despite the stifling Chicago heat and the decidedly unholy stench of exhaust fumes, sweat and urine.
Most kept a respectful distance, queuing up and allowing a few at a time, usually a family or a group of friends, to move up to get a closer look. Rob noticed, then felt guilty for pushing his way to the front.
“They’re nuts!” Mitch said, not caring who he offended. “It doesn’t look anything like her. It’s a freakin’ stain!”
“I dunno, if you stare at it long enough, it could look like her,” Rob answered.
Behind them, people held their camera phones up to capture the image on the wall.
“So how do you explain the one that appeared in rust on the water tower in Des Moines?” Rob asked. “And then there was the other one that was supposedly just a random case of brown patch on that football field in Texas…”
“I had a rash once that looked like Danny DeVito if you saw it in the right light, but nobody was asking me for autographs,” Mitch said, shaking his head.
“You’re all class, Mitch,” Rob said, chuckling inappropriately loud.
It was Mitch’s idea to come here, not because either of them was religious; he just thought it would be worth a laugh, and he suggested that Rob could get some footage for his film class. They had been friends all through high school and Mitch hadn’t changed a bit, Rob thought. He wished he could say the same about himself. Iraq had done a number on him. But it was good to be home and among friends. And nice to be able to laugh again.
A small, middle-aged man in front of them turned and frowned.
“Show some respect, boys. The Virgin came to see us and all you can do is make jokes?” He shook his head, the brim of his fishing hat stained with sweat.
“Sorry sir,” Rob said sheepishly while Mitch rolled his eyes.
A young woman was hugging the stain on the wall as her three little girls watched, the youngest with a beat-up plastic doll that was missing an arm and the oldest holding the leash of a large black lab who had plopped down in a mud puddle to cool off.
“Come up here and tell the Virgin your sins!” the woman barked at the girls, who approached the wall cautiously. “Ask for forgiveness.”
They waited another twenty minutes for their turn, Rob only having to shush Mitch a few times. The man in the fishing hat was on his knees at the wall now, holding rosary beads in one hand, his other touching the stain. After a few moments, he struggled to his feet and put the beads in his pocket. He looked at Rob and Mitch and tipped his hat, then turned and walked toward the sidewalk.
As they moved closer, Rob took out his video camera and began filming the crowd, then swung around to follow their gaze. In front of the wall, an impromptu shrine had emerged, with a couple dozen or so glass candles, the kind they sold at the discount store on the corner, some with pictures of the Virgin, others with Jesus. People had left bouquets of flowers, cards, rosary beads, bibles and teddy bears. Rob noticed that the little girl had left behind the one-armed doll, probably at her mother’s urging.
“Unbelievable,” Mitch whispered. “Isn’t it scary to think about how many desperate people live around you?”
“Come on, now. If they want to believe in something, who’s it hurting?” Rob retorted, panning and tilting the camera on the stain. “It does look a little bit like her.”
“You’ve been overseas too long, dude,” Mitch said.
Rob zoomed in on it. If you stared at it long enough, it certainly looked like the outline of a woman wearing a robe, her head tilted slightly. He could sort of make out a feminine face at the top right and hands clasped in prayer above her chest. On the news, city officials were claiming salt runoff from the highway above caused the stain.
“Come on, dude. I gotta get back. I’m meeting Melissa for dinner,” Mitch said, tapping Rob’s shoulder.
“I think I’m gonna stay here and get some more footage.”
“Whatever, Jesus Freak. Call me later, dude.” Mitch said, then headed back to the car they had parked a few blocks away.
Rob waved the next group in line forward, then stepped back a little to give them some space, filming the whole time. The three old ladies didn’t seem to notice him as they added to the pile of offerings against the wall and fell to their knees.
Rob was kneeling as well as he zoomed in on the women, panning from their feet and up over their hunched backs to the stain on the wall. He began to pan toward the shrine but doubled back to the stain. He was sure that he’d seen a pair of eyes open where the woman’s face would be.
He focused again on the stain for a moment until he shrugged it off as his colorful imagination working and turned the camera back to the shrine.
He zoomed in to capture some detail of the gifts and felt drawn to the one-armed doll. He wondered if the little girl missed her doll or had already forgotten about it.
“It’d be nice if they can forget, wouldn’t it?” a booming voice said behind his ear.
Rob jumped to his feet, almost dropping his camera, and spun around. There was no one within ten feet. He looked at the nearest person in the crowd, a bald man who was praying the Rosary.
“Did you say something?” Rob asked.
Annoyed at the interruption, the man shook his head, then returned his gaze to the wall.
Rob stepped around the group at the wall and resumed filming over their shoulders, zooming in on the stain.
This time there was no mistaking it. The eyes were open. And staring at him.
He lowered his camera and looked around, convinced Mitch was somehow playing a joke on him. He moved a few steps closer and stared at the stain with his naked eye and saw nothing staring back. He raised his camera and zoomed in.
Again, her face was alive. Soft and feminine and bathed in yellow light. Her open eyes followed him. Then she spoke.
“Your case will be heard tonight, Rob Tanziger. Be here at 3 a.m.” she said, again in a deep, gravelly voice that reminded Rob of his drill sergeant.
He lowered his camera again and stared at the wall. Still nothing but a dark stain. But he heard the voice again, this time as if he were thinking it.
“Don’t make us come find you.”
Rob backed up, quickly making his way to the sidewalk, staring dumbfounded at the wall the whole time. Okay, he thought, that didn’t just happen. You didn’t just get threatened by a fucking stain on a fucking wall that looks like the fucking Virgin Mary. Maybe you should call the counselor tomorrow. Maybe you need to talk about what happened over there in the desert.
“Watch it, man!”
The guy he ran into was solid as a wall. Rob groped around for his camera, then picked himself up.
“Sorry buddy, my bad,” he said, gazing up at the tall, chiseled black man in front of him.
“You heard it too, didn’t you?”
“Heard what?” Rob said. “What are you talking about?”
“She spoke to you too, didn’t she? I can tell the way you’re high-tailing it out of here.”
“I don’t know what you mean. Excuse me,” Rob said, scurrying around the man and heading toward the bus stop.
“She said something about ‘a case’, didn’t she?” the man said, his voice cracking. “What does she want? How does she know?”
For once in Rob’s life, the Fullerton bus came just when he needed it. He boarded, took a seat, and gazed back at the man, who had his face in his hands and was weeping on the sidewalk. He seemed much smaller now.
* * *
Rob got off the bus at California and headed home, jogging at first, then sprinting the five blocks to his studio apartment, passing by the El Ranchero, where he usually stopped for a burrito.
He tossed his backpack and keys on the kitchen table, then headed toward his desk, fumbling the video camera out of its case.
“Watch out, Cletus,” he said.
Rob took the disk from his camera and began downloading it to his computer.
He grabbed a beer from the fridge, and noticed his hands shaking as he opened the bottle. Harry Caray shouted “Cubs win!” and it startled him. The voice was coming from the bottle opener his little sister had given him a few years ago, despite knowing he was a Sox fan.
He took two large swigs and settled down in front of the computer.
He watched as the scene he had witnessed earlier played back. The devoted followers. The gifts at the makeshift shrine. His lens focused lovingly on the one-armed doll. The footage was beautiful, he thought. Surely he could get an ‘A’ on this project.
Especially if he caught the stain coming to life on film. But that didn’t really happen, did it? And to his relief, there was nothing on the tape. No eyes opening. No Virgin Mary speaking to him. Just a dark stain on a freeway underpass wall that if you tried hard enough, you could see anything you wanted to in it. He’d done it plenty of times with little puffy clouds on clear days.
Okay, then you imagined it. Call Dr. Hammond on Monday and get your appointment moved up.
He’d almost convinced himself it never happened when he remembered the chiseled black man he’d smacked into. He knew he hadn’t imagined that guy. The bruised shoulder he could feel beginning to throb was proof of that.
There was only one thing to do. He packed some fresh batteries into his bag and slid a fresh disk into his camera, then laid down for a nap. It was going to be a late night.
* * *
His dreams were vivid and intense, and, as usual, made little sense. He could see the one-armed doll, its eyes open, its mouth moving, but nothing coming out. He saw Cletus standing on two feet opening the fridge and asking Rob where his food was. He saw his sister crying and running from him when he tried to talk to her. Like she was scared of him.
Then he was back in Iraq. This part of the dream made sense. This part was always too real. The Humvee exploding in front of him, one of the doors tumbling to a stop near his feet. His eyes burning from the brightness and the heat of the noxious flames. Pulling his buddies out of the wreckage, one by one. Two already dead and his friend, Ryan, on fire, his skin smoldering as he rolled in the dirt…
The Best of Horror Library: Volumes 1-5 Page 23