Ellen Datlow - The Best Horror of the Year. Volume 6

He crouched down before the hole he’d made … a gaping one at that, almost a foot wide. Outside, Jeremy Kirkwood must have clearly heard the crash, so no use in pretending this injury to the house had happened a long time ago. Duty and honesty dictated that he would report truthfully that he’d inflicted the damage.

The hole, large though it was, revealed nothing but shadow. No rats, no vermin of any kind. He raised the camera, centred the yawning black void on the screen, then took the picture. The brilliant flash dazzled him; however, a moment later his vision had returned to normal, and he could check that he’d accurately recorded the effects of his violence against the Tin House.

He studied the photograph on the camera’s screen. A second later, he scrambled to his feet and was running for the door. The image of what had been revealed behind the wall had fixed itself as firmly in his mind as it had been fixed into the camera’s memory card. He had not only photographed broken plywood, he’d also taken a photograph of a face. A human face.

Snow was falling again. November gloom crept in from the ocean so that the house resembled a block of shadow.

Newton hurtled outside through the front door. He raced past Jeremy Kirkwood at the driveway gates.

“Hey! What’s wrong?” bellowed Kirkwood. “Hey! Answer me!”

Newton threw himself into the driver’s seat, started the engine, and slammed the car into reverse. Jeremy pounded on the car’s roof as he hit the accelerator pedal.

The man yelled, “What are you running away from? What’s in there?”

He glanced up at Kirkwood’s stark, white face. There wasn’t just anger in his eyes, there was dread, too. Newton felt a huge lightning bolt of fear, because he remembered seeing the photograph of the face he’d just taken — the face in the wall.

He punched the vehicle forwards across the road, through the driveway gates, and across the lawn. When the headlamps blazed fully on that forlorn building, he braked, leaped out, and a moment later he pulled a crowbar from the back of the car. Before Kirkwood had time to react, Newton attacked the front of the house. He jammed the sharp end of the crowbar between where two sheets of tin cladding overlapped; once he’d done that, he began to lever them apart with a furious strength.

“Hey you!” Kirkwood actually screamed the words. “Hey! Leave that alone! Stop that!”

Newton put his foot against the wall to brace himself and heaved. Nails that fixed the tin cladding to the wooden frame began to snap with brittle-sounding bangs.

“Stop that!” Kirkwood bellowed from the end of the driveway, but he didn’t come any closer. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, you little bastard! Stop it, or I’ll report you!”

“Who to? The police?”

A section of corrugated tin flapped loose. He gripped one side of it before ripping away an entire six by four sheet. That’s when the car’s powerful headlamps revealed the secret of the grim house.

“You’re insane!” screamed Kirkwood.

“I’m not the one who’s insane.” He stared at what had been stretched tightly over the building’s timber skeleton. “It’s one of your damned ancestors that was insane. See! He went and covered the framework in skin … human skin … the skin of men, women, and children.”

“What!” Kirkwood gaped; his eyes bulged. “What did you say?”

“I kicked a hole in the wall upstairs. There’s a face on the other side … at least, the skin from a face.”

“You are insane.”

“See for yourself.”

This time the man did gingerly approach the house. He gazed at what had been illuminated by the car’s lights.

Newton gazed, too, with emotions that flashed from astonishment to absolute revulsion. There, nailed across the timbers, were the skins of human beings. They’d been scraped clean of meat, blood, hair, and subcutaneous matter. Clearly, they’d been treated too; some form of hide tanning process had been applied.

The tightly stretched-out skins were dark red in colour. Originally, the skins must have been black but the tanner’s chemicals had reddened the flesh. He found himself thinking that the skins resembled sheets of red plastic. They were glossy — even wet looking. The headlights shone through them, casting a blood-red glow on the vertical plywood boards behind.

Both men stared in silence. The spectacle was horrific — it was distressing, too. The skins had been cut away from each body in a single piece. Each skin, or “hide,” contained a face — a stretched-out face, like a leather mask. Eye sockets formed gaping holes. Lips had dried into hard circles. Nostrils, too.

One of the most noticeable and unsettling features were the fingernails; these were at the ends of strips of skin that had once covered fingers. Each fingernail was white — a gleaming, pearl white, as if it had somehow been carved from an oyster shell. He knew that was hardly a rational comparison — right now, however, he found it hard to stay rational, or calm.

Jeremy Kirkwood repeatedly swallowed; he was close to vomiting. “Who are they?”

“Your ancestors traded in slaves. Your family still lives on slave money today.”

“These are the skins of slaves? But … why do this?”

“In the past, books were sometimes bound in human skin. So why not a house bound in human skin?”

“No, you’re lying!”

Newton spoke with cold certainty. “Picture this: Two hundred years ago, your ancestors kidnapped thousands of men, women, and children from their homes in Africa. They were chained together, and they were transported in ships without adequate ventilation, food, or clean water. Hundreds would have died on the way. Those that survived faced a harrowing life of forced labour until they died.”

Kirkwood stared at the dried-out face of a young child. A split in the skin ran from the corner of its mouth to the distorted opening of an eye. “But why on earth would anyone cover a house in human skin?”

“Undoubtedly, your ancestors were superstitious. They were terrified that the ghosts of slaves would come looking for revenge. Superstitious people have been doing something like this to protect themselves from vengeful spirits for thousands of years. In some cultures, they make shrunken heads from their victims, or even eat part of their bodies. In the case of your ancestors, they decided to adopt elements from voodoo cults and incorporate the skin from a number of slaves into the fabric of the house.”

Despite his fear, Jeremy Kirkwood moved closer. “If they’re stretched over the entire frame of the building, there must be dozens and dozens.”

“And dozens of your ancestors must have been involved with this barbaric ritual.”

“What do you mean?”

“Even after the abolition of slavery, your ancestors continued to be wealthy because of the money they made from selling human beings. They also continued to believe that the slaves could somehow come back from the dead and hurt them, so they made sure they still kept these talismans for protection.”

“This house … I knew this house wasn’t right … even as a child, I knew something was wrong …”

“Your uncle knew, too. That’s why he rarely left what he believed to be the magic protection of this building. But he left in the end …”

At that moment, the wind started to blow from the sea. Newton thought he could hear those grim diaphragms made from tightly-stretched human skin softly hum as they began to vibrate. When the breeze quickened, the strips of finger skin fluttered. The white fingernails attached to the ends struck the tin sheets, making a popping and clicking sound. This is must have been what he’d heard earlier. Like tiny bone-hard fists hammering at the metal.