Salt Skin

by Victoria Leyto

  “No police.” And while trying to say something else, he fainted once more.

  The next morning, Rose awoke to noise outside the window. The cries of agitated people, gathered somewhere near the hotel, made her jump out of her bed and go out to the balcony. An unusual picture appeared before her eyes: a crowd of paparazzi, police, people in business suits and other townsfolk surrounded the courthouse, from which a woman in handcuffs, hiding her face from the flashes of the cameras, was being taken. Having completely forgotten about the fact that Margaret’s hearing was supposed to take place on that day, Rose, whose thoughts tossed around the half-alive Martin, at first was not even able to put all the pieces together.

  In the news, she learned that Margaret Strasberg, who was a suspect in the case of her husband’s murder was now accused of murder and, this time, was taken into temporary custody in order to await trial there.

  “What will be the outcome in the case of John Avery’s murder? We shall find out in two and a half weeks in the eighth hearing on the case of Margaret Strasberg! Stay with us, we have only the latest news!” A half-bald journalist winked at Rose from a TV screen.

  Thus, a week passed. Gradually, Martin began to get up and even tried to hold a fork in his hand. He ate very little. It was obvious that this process took much of his energy. The cough that accompanied him even in his sleep, escaping him involuntarily, was deafeningly loud and deeply guttural. Probably the long imprisonment in the dungeon among the constant cold and nasty damp served as a trigger for different kinds of illnesses. He slept most of the time and, occasionally, stole a glance at the woman as she was trying to surround him with care and motherly love. But as soon as she locked eyes with him, the man would shudder and lower his eyes.

  It seemed that he was frightened by everything. The slightest rustle made him anxious. The woman even had to unplug the hotel phone because once, a phone call, suddenly breaking the silence, made the man jump in bed, absolutely startled. That time he pulled up his knees, leaned against the wall with his whole body and, groaning, started scratching the wallpaper with his dirty bitten nails. The woman’s heart ached, but she still kept hoping that once Martin regained his strength, he would finally start talking.

  At first, he only moaned in his sleep or bellowed occasionally when he was awake. Probably, having adjusted to long silence, he did not talk, ignoring all of his rescuer’s questions about why she should not go to the police and her endless requests to tell her everything. After a week since being rescued, he woke up and, upon seeing the lively eyes of Rose sitting next to him, he once again repeated in strict and more confident voice,

  “No police. I will explain everything later.”

  The woman herself was afraid to address the guardians of justice, despite her great wish to do so. She was waiting for Martin to be able to communicate clearly. More than anything, she feared for the man because she, like nobody else, understood the kind of deeds her stepson did in their homeland. It was not the deceived people who continued to blindly believe in each story but Rose Krisi’s great connections, which allowed her to save her stepson from having problems with the law every time. After her husband’s death, she moved to the capital with her own four kids where she soon secured a good position at the embassy. She left Martin Krisi to live with his brother in the house, which they inherited from their father. Although Rose knew about the tense atmosphere in the family, she decided not to take the eighteen-year-old man with her, believing that an adult should learn to provide for himself. Despite that, she helped him more than once, from afar, while living in another city so his reputation would stay clean in the eyes of the law.

  Thus, idle because of the strict order from her stepson, the woman was completely dismayed, overpowered by the questions buzzing in her head as usual. “What was stopping Martin from going to the police? What could he have done? Was it possible that he was involved in John Avery’s murder? Oh god! He killed Margaret’s husband out of jealousy! No, wait, it can’t be! Then why would he be chained in the basement and for how long was he there?” Rose was lost in guesswork.

  One more week passed. Martin started walking, eating and drinking more and it seemed that he became a little stronger. His appearance changed as his face rounded up a little and anxious fearfulness in his eyes was replaced by flashing seriousness. Despite the fact that he was completely safe, it was obvious that he was wary. Even when he went to the bathroom, he would leave some solid object between the door and the doorframe, which would prevent the door from closing. The woman was afraid to damage the fragile psyche of the already fearful man so she decided not to turn on the TV and even hid all the newspapers, waiting for news from Martin himself.

  However, she was worried about him as much as she was afraid of him. In fact, this was a man unfamiliar to her, completely new and different, aged and frightening in his exhausted appearance; a man with a grim and angry look on his face. When she went to sleep, she would quietly lock the door of her room, so he would not hear it and would often leave the release in the keyhole.

  The day of the eighth hearing on Margaret’s case was nearing. She was in custody. Rose noticed with relief that this woman shrouded with mystery had not yet been in her house, which meant that she had no idea that Martin had been found. While she was drinking a cup of strong coffee, an interesting idea came to her mind. Having contacted her colleagues with the right connections in London, she requested that she be appointed one of the jurors on the Margaret Strasberg/John Avery case. After some time, some necessary calls and several proper conversations, she was given a positive response.

  She was unable to sleep on the day of the trial. She personally wanted to look in the eyes of the woman whose cruelty had no equal in any person she had ever met. Therefore, in the early October morning, she woke up to the British sky still unilluminated by the light of dawn. Having gone out of the room, Rose, abruptly stopped, frightened by something. In the room, Martin sat on the sofa in front of her, clutching the very newspaper in his hands, which had brought the restless woman here to look for him. Upon turning around, with his eyes reddened from tears and anger, the man resembling an old person blinked pitifully and a single small crystal droplet of water rolled down his cheek. The woman, frightened of this stranger but at the same time loving him, came closer, sat next to him and timidly and cautiously touched his hand.

  The man flinched, as if awakened from stupor into which the article on Margaret and her husband immersed him. Unexpectedly for Rose, who was sitting with downcast eyes, he uttered in a trembling voice,

  “What date is it today?”

  Not expecting something like this, the woman, still unable to believe her ears, made a great effort not to spook Martin with her unrestrained joy bursting from her heart of a mother.

  “October 23rd.”

  “And the paper is from the 4th,” he said ambiguously.

  Rose did not know what to say. The questions inside her screamed but she was afraid to ask them and she was unwilling to get accustomed to his dead silence once again.

  Then the man, with his thin, old hand, skin dry and cracked, put the paper away and freed his other hand from the warm palms of the woman who was staring at him gently but anxiously at the same time.

  “And the year?” Making a great effort, the man finally asked undeniably the most important but the most dangerous question for him. Sometimes, the less we know, the easier the life is. One piece of information gives us confidence and strength, whereas the other throws us with a heavy load on our feet into the cold abyss of the ocean filled with the waters of sorrow.

  “1997.”

  The man only gave away a slight moan and his cold palms, wet from excitement, covered his face, distorted with pain.

  “That means I am thirty-two. Eight years have passed.” Martin let his head fall to his knees, hiding his face in his hands, and sobbed silently.

  Chapter 18

  Rose’s heart froze and she was unable to move or touch the man for fear
that he might get scared and withdraw into himself again. However, having raised his head from his knees, he wiped his eyes, red from tears and exhaustion, with the sleeve of his sweater and spoke for the first time in a long while,

  “All this resembles some kind of a terrible dream... One big terrible dream... The reality has faded in my mind to such a degree that I don’t even believe I am here right now,” he laughed suddenly. His teeth, once white as snow, blackened from poor care or lack of the same, crumbled in some places and exposed his damaged gums. Martin’s laughter sounded eerily ominous as his eyes widened and started to dart around. He turned abruptly, bending his neck, as if he was afraid that someone would hear him. A whole tsunami of shivers ran through Rose’s body and she decided that the man was equally crippled on the inside as he was on the outside. She thought that he was completely mad.

  “In fact, I managed to escape once...,” He began once more, looking into the distance sadly and longingly. “I was supposed to be in his place...” Martin changed the topic. “And these shots...? How did she manage...? How long have I been here?”

  He started speaking in unrelated sentences, snatching pieces from different periods and incomprehensible stories. When he stumbled during one such sentence, he looked at stunned Rose, who was backing away towards the phone and was probably going to call the police, having finally realised that she should have done it a long time ago. After all, there was not much hope for Martin’s sanity.

  Having covered his eyes with his hands again while gathering the last of his strength, Martin asked her to sit back down and promised that he would explain everything.

  “I don’t know exactly how much time I had spent in that room. It was constantly cold in there and the smell of damp accompanied me, it seemed, even in my sleep. The air was dusty and stale. It always seemed to me that my lungs must have been stuck to each other every time I took a breath. My God, so much time had passed and I had spent it alone. The only other person I had seen during that time was Margaret. That damn vixen Margaret!” The man ground his teeth from anger. “I still can’t understand how I could have fallen for her evil deception! I was such a fool!”

  The severe cough, coming from deep inside, interrupted the man’s story again.

  Clearing his throat, he continued,

  “I hated her with all my heart during all those eight years. The only thing that fuelled my strength and supported a worthless life, unfortunately for Margaret, was my fierce hatred and the promise of having my revenge one day, a desire that is not quenched even now. I have surely lost my mind a long time ago and this is all a gruesome nightmare... No, I know! I must have died! That bitch did kill me, right? Now I am... In heaven?” The man looked up at Rose with his eyes full of tortured thoughts and a boyish lustre lit up their black whirlpools.

  “I was unable to keep track of time. There were no natural or other marks but I counted her visits to me. I stopped somewhere around two hundred and forty when I finally had an escape plan. When I first found myself in that empty black room, I did not immediately realise what had happened. I knew Margaret, or rather, I thought I knew her very well but I could not fathom the one hundredth, one thousandth portion of the cruelty that lived inside her.

  At first, I decided that she was playing a joke on me and she wanted to frighten me. However, the Margaret who usually visited me was very much unlike the Margaret I knew once. Her eyes were so black, darker than night itself and their look was so evil that the devil himself would be unable to embody it.

  She must have come two or three times a week, I can’t say for sure, and brought me food. Mutely, this creature threw packages at me and went away. At first, I begged her to release me. I kneeled and cried as a baby. I swore. I asked for forgiveness. I tried to make a deal with her but it was all in vain. Embittered and having finally realised that she was not joking with me, I was beside myself and grew furious. The chains that fixed my hands and legs to the wall, allowed me to walk only two metres away from it. Enraged, I would rush towards Margaret and try to knock the tightly secured pieces of iron out of the concrete in order to attack her and break her fragile delicate neck.

  She relished all my attempts to run away. Standing one metre in front of me, with her thin arms crossed on her chest, she only grinned maliciously as I tried to get off the leash and throw myself towards her like a beast who wanted to kill. Then she would move away. After some time she no longer turned the lights on, leaving me in never-ending night.

  This continued for a long time. I don’t know how long exactly, but it seemed like eternity to me. Even when she wasn’t there, I would lose my mind and throw myself towards the dark space, shouting different profanities and asking for help in a voice that wasn’t mine. But even then, I knew perfectly well that no one would hear me.

  On one such mad occasion, when I remembered the frightening but self-satisfied look on her face, which was in front of my eyes constantly, I freaked out so much that I didn’t notice that I had damaged my wrist badly as I was raging and fighting the air full of ghostly shadows. Without feeling pain, I continued to vent my anger but after ten minutes I realised I no longer felt heavy chains nor, in fact, my left hand. It could mean only one thing: I stopped feeling pain in that hand and I decided to remove the irons around it. I guess I was in a state of shock or something, for even the crunch of the bones of my fingers didn’t stop me as I pulled the thick iron ring off my wrist and, most importantly, I don't remember anything about pain.

  The plan was simple, to play dead and to allow Margaret to come closer. I didn’t have to wait for long. I remember that I was very happy that she had come on that day. She came in, turned the dim lights on and called for me. I tried to lie so still and so plausibly dead that I myself, for a second, thought I had died. She called for me again and then once more. I heard the slow approach of her footsteps. She walked on tiptoes. Having come very close, she reached out, poked my shoulder with her fingers in order to move me and retracted them sharply, pulling away. However, my body just wobbled lifelessly.

  It seemed to me that I could hear her thoughts, uneasiness, doubts and the making of a decision. Eventually, the surrendering side allowed Margaret to come so close to me that she could feel the pulse on my neck, protruding from the blankets. She barely managed to touch me once again when I pulled the arm with broken fingers and put it around the neck of the girl leaning over me and grabbed it tightly. My other hand, which was still in chains, I wrapped around Margaret’s waist and turned her back to me. The blanket, under which I had been lying and which hid my freed hand, was very thin. Therefore, having turned the villain to myself and still holding her neck with my left elbow, I sat down quickly, clasping her fragile torso from behind with my legs.

  I wanted her to die! I craved killing her! I dreamed of getting even with that bitch! That visit was her two hundred and fortieth by my count. I must have spent more than a year there. I began to choke her and the wheezing, which was coming from her throat, was like music to my ears deprived of beauty. At some point, I anticipated victory, which decided to wag its tail to the other side. I was already imagining that I was going to leave this dungeon, that police would arrive, that Margaret’s lifeless body would be carried out on a stretcher under black covers and taken into the ambulance. Suddenly, the stream of my dreams was interrupted by excruciating pain, piercing my whole body from the tips of my toes to the roots of my stiff black hair. With softened hands, I released Margaret, who was still coughing and saw her clutching a stun gun in her hand.

  I will never forget her look darkened by wrath. She rubbed her neck with her free hand and looked at me under her brows. Lying motionless, I saw in her eyes that there was no hope for mercy.

  From that moment on, things became much worse. The next morning she came again and left me some food. I have no idea what happened next but when I woke up, I felt a heavy headache, my entire body was horribly twisted and my stomach was turning. On that day, Margaret purposely left the lights on. I saw my hand
, neatly bandaged up to the wrist, confined again in iron rings. A little higher on my arm a small puncture wound shone with bloody stains and capillary-like cracks.”

  “Painkiller?” Rose asked. She had been holding her heart for the whole time and was unable to restrain her curiosity.

  “Perhaps,” Martin said thoughtfully and quietly. “My arms started to be covered in such marks more often, just one at first and then another and another.

  I slept more often and ate almost nothing and I was, oddly, okay. For a very long time. I began to have colourful dreams. They were so realistic that it seemed to me that I could touch and feel everything that was woven around me by my imagination. At some point, I even loved that place, my dungeon. I began to think of myself as its guardian and master. After the most wonderful states and moods, threads of despair and sorrow came. The bright colours around me went dim and died out treacherously, dissolving in grey concrete-like shades and filling the void of despair. I went cold turkey. I began to shout and moan in pain. I needed to be immersed in those states repeatedly. They had become vital to me.

  I remember that a silent question came to my mind. What would I choose: to be so elated from happiness but trapped here or to go free and never experience such pleasure? The answer was obvious back then. It was not the latter. Afterwards, maybe months or years later, when the magic in my chamber completely ceased to appear and I finally stopped feeling pain breaking my entire body, I realised that Margaret had been giving me drugs, heroin or morphine. I don’t know which just as I don’t know for how long that lasted.

  From that moment on, I kept to myself and never uttered a word. She also never spoke to me again. The only incentive supporting my life was revenge, which I cherished in my mind for all those years. Everything else became indifferent to me. I didn’t fight with my chains or imaginary shadows anymore. I died in my own eyes. I gave up.”