In the Skin

Gary McMahon IN THE SKIN

Dedicated to Dennis Etchison

and Ramsey Campbell,

who led a young reader into

The Dark Country,

and keep him there still,

Needing Ghosts…

ONE All Alone Together

1

The timing is unfortunate.

Just two weeks after we move into the new house I am called away on business. New York. The Big Apple. Across The Pond. Adi is aghast when I agree to go; she fails to see why a succession of dull business meetings is more urgent than helping to settle my family into the new place. I appreciate her opinion, but the way she goes about communicating it seems pointlessly selfish.

Adi fails to see a lot of things, and can never quite grasp the importance of my job in the grand scheme of life. Sometimes I’m sure she believes I pull money out of the air, like dead leaves falling from an autumn tree.

I watch her as she crosses the small living room and stands by the open window. Pale light scars her face with dull yellow abrasions, making her features look sharper than they actually are. She winces as the sunlight catches her in the eyes, screwing up her face like a child demonstrating distaste. I swallow hard, counting to ten. Adi is… fragile. The pills she’s been prescribed are messing with her head, making her seem vague and disconnected and slightly less than real. I don’t think she has been real for a long time, and my own reality shifts constantly, like a series of slides overlaid on a picture board, each one depicting a slightly different version of the same scene.

“This is an important time in Max’s life,” she tells me, still looking through the glass, her eyes narrow and unfocused, unable to lock onto anything for longer than a few seconds at a time. As if she’s gazing at ghosts. “He’s three-and-a-half, just beginning to form his proper personality. His character is peeking through the tangle of babyish needs.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

This is not a lie: I am almost painfully aware of how, at Max’s age, a few days away from him can feel like a week. A week can feel like a month. The changes a child undergoes in a limited period of time during these early formative years are nothing short of phenomenal, as if they are discarding beta versions of the final product.

“When do you leave?”

I pause before answering; I know how much it will hurt her, how she’ll feel it like a knife between the ribs. “Tomorrow night.”

Adi bows her head, clenches her fists, making the already prominent veins on her skinny forearms bulge. I almost expect her to scream, but she doesn’t. She just cries, silently, and shakes her tousled head as if someone has died and no one told her until now, when it’s far too late to matter.

“I’m sorry. I’ll make it up to Max…and to you.”

At last she turns her head, looks me directly in the eye. Her irises are tiny, like little black dots drawn on the front of a vast white mask: I can see things moving in there but I can’t make out what they are. Black bugs. Insects. Sorrow. Regret. A bunch of stuff like that.

“I know you will.”

I have no response. I can’t even fake one. So I smile, but the expression hangs off my lips like a flap of loose flesh from an open wound. It’s about as convincing as a deal made in a dark room between naked strangers: the promises we make each other when our relationship is new and the whole wide world stretches before us.

But Adi seems calmer here, in the country. The city was bad for her, especially after the attack. She is afraid of empty urban spaces; tube stations bring her out in a cold sweat; underground car parks drive her to distraction. She jumps at the arterial spray of darkness on a concrete wall when night falls, the way city shadows are all spikes and sharp edges. The rigorous regime of exercise she puts her body through at the gym is designed to anneal her to further physical harm: to make her capable of fighting off any assailant. Sometimes she frightens me, but most of the time she simply leaves me cold.

Not long after my wife has gone upstairs, I pour myself a whisky. The room is growing dark; late afternoon is turning into early evening and the nightbirds are waking in the garden, singing their odd discordant songs — or am I the only one who finds no apparent tune in their idle whistling? I close the curtains and sit in an armchair, sipping at my drink and trying not to weep. It’s all becoming too much to bear.

Something brushes against the outside of the main window, perhaps a bird or a bat taking to the air. I think about going to see what might have caused the noise but can’t seem to move my legs. So I sit in the chair and I drink, listening to Adi as she sings softly to Max, bathing him in the undecorated bathroom — another chore I’ll put off for months, making increasingly weak excuses not to finish the job until Adi finally stops reminding me. She sounds like one of those birds: shrill and alien to my ears.

He laughs lightly, my son. His knee or elbow knocks gently against the side of the tub and makes a dull, loud sound which echoes strangely down the stairwell, like a recording turned up too loud. He laughs again, but this time it seems closer to tears.

My heart is a stone lodged inside my chest, pressing against the bones and the gristle, grinding into my ribcage and flaking away little calcium deposits to infect my bloodstream. The pain is beloved to me, like a forced kiss, and I close my eyes to savour it. I am alive and I hurt: the love that I have for my family causes me an exquisite agony.

The sensation subsides; my heartbeat returns to normal. Once again there is a muscle beating in my chest, shifting blood around my system and helping to keep me alive and in full working order, like a busy little machine chugging away towards extinction.

I drink more whisky. I cannot open my eyes, so I stare backwards, into the dark that lives inside me, under the skin, and try to identify patterns in the void.

2

I’m on the plane before I know it, staring out at the runway at JFK. I have no recollection of the flight, nor can I remember saying goodbye to Adi and Max. They are just an absence, an open wound at my centre, sucking away all feeling. But they must have waved me off, like a good little nuclear family. Surely they wouldn’t let me go without wishing me a safe journey.

I check through customs without incident and wait for my luggage to come around on the slow-moving carousel. There are too many bags to count, and as more are added to the shifting procession, I begin to fear I’ll be stuck here forever, watching the conveyor belt go round and round, but never quite able to pick up my belongings.

A huge plaid bag passes me for the second time, split down one side and with its insides bulging out. The entire package is wrapped in strips and bandages of transparent plastic — baggage control must have opened it and