Dark Terrors 3: The Gollancz Book of Horror

Of course, there were single strand necklaces, and double strands, as well as triple. There were smooth beads, hardly larger than the thread used to string them; there were chunks of coral, and there was the branch coral that looked like so many fingers and toes hardened into bizarre angles.

Bizarre angels, he thought, and chuckled aloud, then looked away as he saw the old man and Bev staring at him.

You always laugh at your own jokes, she had once accused him after they’d argued about God knows what, and he always wondered what kind of vice that was. If that was the worst he’d ever done. laugh at his own jokes… then…But unfortunately, it wasn’t the worst of his sins. His sins were many. Sometimes they seemed to go on and on, page after page.

Sins of stubbornness, and negativity, and insensitivity, and pride. Could one be proud of the number of sins one carried around?

Probably.

Mea culpa.

‘What do you think, Jimmy?’

‘It’s nice, hon,’ he replied and realized he hadn’t even looked. He stared down at the necklace she’d clasped around her neck, and he imagined his hands around her neck, and how it would feel. Her skin so warm beneath his, and he shifted from one foot to another, feeling the response in his body.

Swell. Add another sin to the list.

He moved closer and dropped a kiss on top of her head. Okay, that took care of the sin. She looked up at him, her thin lips pressed together, as if he’d goosed her or something.

‘My hair. it’ll get mussed,’ she said.

Good God. He’d just kissed her; he hadn’t vacuumed her damned scalp, and if you asked him, her hair always looked the same, no matter what she did to it, no matter what colour she dyed it, and why she always asked him —

No, he thought and blinked hard and turned around to look at the light. It was fading now, the sun having shifted since he’d last looked, and sadness enveloped him. He wanted to go stand there, and let the dust drift around him, like little skins, drifting downward ever so slowly, drifting, drifting. drifting.

‘What do you think, senor?’ the old man asked.

‘What?’Jim turned around.

‘The necklace,’ Bev said, impatient that he hadn’t been attending every nuance of the deal going on, and she thrust a strand at him.

He took the necklace, and it was as if something at once both hot and cold touched him; he stared down at the white coral and thought of skinned angels. He felt the warmth of their skins seeping out, the coldness of the water creeping in, saw the agonized looks, saw—

He shook his head.

‘No?’ Bev said. ‘What about this?’

The next necklace thrust into his hands was a double strand of reddish coral, and he saw the blood swirling through the water, felt the coldness of the skins, and yet they were so soft, so pliant beneath his fingers, and he caressed the coral, and heard the screams, and he looked up to see the old man watching him intently.

‘This is nice,’ he said hoarsely, and the old man nodded as if he’d expected all along Jim to say that.

‘I don’t know,’ Bev said. She grabbed another strand and put that into his hands, and now he had another soft buttery skin beneath his fingertips, and as he stroked the supple skins, he groaned inwardly.

‘Well, Jimmy?’

‘Well?’ He stared at her, feeling befuddled. His senses had dulled, and he couldn’t smell the intense perfumes and spices as he had before, couldn’t hear much of anything as well, as if even the girls standing so close to him had stopped talking loudly and were now whispering.

He closed his eyes and thought about Bev and how their marriage was falling apart and how they didn’t have the good sense to admit it, and how he wanted nothing more than to make the marriage… to make something in his life work, how he wanted to make everyone realize they were wrong when they said he was stubborn and negative and callous, and all he wanted, really, was to stand in the sunlight and be left alone and not be told that he was this or that, all of it bad.

When he opened his eyes again, he was standing in the warm sunlight, looking out the window. Outside he could see Bev crossing the street at the corner, and at her side, but one step behind, was a man that he dimly recognized, and it hit him after a vague minute that the man with Bev was him.

Jim tried to move, but couldn’t. All he could do was stare out the window and feel the dust motes settling on him, like little dried-out angel skins, like the dried-out husk that he’d become, that Bev had turned him into.

He would have laughed, but he couldn’t. Nor could he weep. All he could do was feel the sunlight, and realize that the underlying smell of the place hadn’t been perfume or incense at all; it had been that of dusty dying souls.

* * *

Kathryn Ptacek lives in a 110-year-old Victorian house in New Jersey with her writer husband, Charles L. Grant, and is the author of numerous novels and short stories in the historical romance, horror and fantasy genres. She has edited three anthologies, including the highly acclaimed Women of Darkness, and she is also the editor of The Gila Queen’s Guide to Markets, a regular newsletter for writers and artists. About ‘Skinned Angels’, Ptacek says: ‘The incident with the two young women and the coral necklace is true. Years ago when I still lived in Albuquerque, a friend and I drove up to Santa Fe and wandered through various stores around the Plaza. At one place, a woman showed us the necklace and said it was angel skin coral. I said, suddenly inspired, that it was formed from the skins of angels, which had sloughed off and drifted down into the ocean to form coral. Well, I grossed out the clerk and my friend (who was a Catholic and did cross herself). Years later I started to write a story about angels, but instead I remembered the coral necklace incident, and it all came together in “Skinned Angels”.’