Skin Read online

  “You mean one of them? One of the others?”

  “Runa was too quick with the blade, too eager to peel back their skin. It’s almost as if she enjoyed it. What did it prove? We knew Arne was not the monster.” Liv brushed a thickening layer of snow from her shoulders. It was swirling heavily now, caught by the wind, blowing so hard that the eaves no longer sheltered them.

  “And Elof, talk about quick with the knife. The way he cut Arne’s throat.”

  “You think it’s him?”

  Hemming retreated further beneath the overhang but the wind chased him. He could not escape. “I don’t know. Honestly it could be any of them. Think about it. Sigurd barely says a word. He stands there awkwardly. And Helga? What if her story about the body not being in the storeroom earlier is not true? How can we trust what she says? The body could have been there overnight for all we know.”

  The pyre shifted, the logs suddenly cracking. The charred bodies dropped, and the flames surged. But then just as quickly the flames died back, almost swallowed in the steadily falling snow. Hemming thought about showering the logs with more oil but the bodies were blackened. Nothing would rise from the ashes.

  “We should go,” he said.

  “Back down to Riverton?”

  “No. Away from all of this. Away from the people. Away from the demon. We should just get away. You and me. I could help you hunt. That hut you talked about, is it big enough for us?”

  She stared at him, her lips pursed, and he thought at first that she wouldn’t answer. She touched his elbow. Her skin was pale, the knuckles red with the cold. She squeezed the fabric at his elbow more tightly than he expected.

  “The two of us could live in the hut,” she said. “If we need more room, we can build an enclosure for the dogs.”

  His lips quivered and then he smiled.

  “We need to wait, though,” she said. “This storm is getting stronger. Night is coming. It would be better to leave in the morning. Before the others wake.”

  They watched the dying flames until the snow blanketed the pyre. “Tomorrow then?” he said.

  Her hand found his elbow again. Her breath became visible just beyond her lips. “What about the monster? It’s out there somewhere. Can we really just pretend it doesn’t exist?”

  “Let the rest of the world deal with its own problems for a while,” said Hemming. “I’m tired fighting for others. I’m tired of being the hero.”

  16

  Hemming woke to a muffled silence. He cracked open his wooden shutters and looked outside. The storm had not weakened overnight. The land was covered in thick, freshly fallen snow, and still the snow continued to fall. The clouds swallowed the distant peaks, making the world seem as if it barely extended past the walls of the keep.

  Chickens clucked in the courtyard below. The air was sharp against his nose and lips. He wondered how far Liv’s hut was. It must have been within a day’s march otherwise she would not have suggested they go there. Or maybe she knew of somewhere halfway between where they could stop.

  He did not look forward to the journey. When they finally arrived at the hut, they would need to dig the snow away from the door. He imagined them piling inside with the dogs and struggling to start the fire, and the growing heat of the close quarters forcing them to strip off their furs and armor, the room getting so hot that their skin reddened.

  The day before when they had spoken of escaping, Liv’s gaze had lingered on him and she had touched his elbow. Even so, he was still not sure of how she felt about him or even how he really felt about her. She did make his breath catch in his chest but what was that really? Was that enough for him to be with her? He had never been married and never had much time in the last decade for much more than bloodshed and survival.

  Was this what had been missing from his life? Was this lacking what had set him apart all these years and kept him so isolated and lonely?

  He closed the shutters and gathered his things. Other than an extra shirt and pants, the kit for tending his armor and axe, and the chess set, he would bring nothing else. It all fit easily in a sack that he tied to his waist. He grabbed his axe and shield and hurried down the hall towards Liv’s room.

  Her door was open. Her things lay on her pallet and the floor, scattered about, not yet packed. A candle had been knocked over and lay on the floor. Liv was not there.

  His stomach clenched and he suddenly struggled to breathe.

  He began walking then running towards the great hall.

  Liv stood in the middle of the room, knife in fist, looming over skinned bodies piled on the floor.

  Hemming slowed, hands tightening on the handle of his axe.

  “Liv, what is this?”

  She wheeled about, eyes wide. Her face was drawn and pale, weary looking as if she had not slept the night before. “Hemming? Is that you?”

  He stared at the corpses: three bodies tangled together, blood-soaked, chests torn open.

  She saw how he hesitated. “Oh, you don’t think…”

  “I don’t know what to think.” He lowered his axe so that it hung by his knees. He needed to believe in her.

  “I came here to fill a sack with dried fruit and hard bread for our journey. I found them here. I thought I heard noises last night, in my dreams, screaming in the distances. I thought it was just in my dreams.”

  Hemming had a vague recollection of screams at the edges of his dreams. He came up alongside her pulling her away from the bodies. “We need to get out of here now. Let’s get the dogs and go.”

  “You and me, the last ones left.”

  17

  Hemming and Liv weren’t more than a dozen steps into the corridor when a figure stumbled towards them, silhouetted by the torches behind it. Hemming squinted. He could not tell who it was but he saw the bright glint of a knife in the figure’s hand.

  “Into the dining hall!” He shoved Liv’s chest and forced her backwards.

  “Who is that?” She stumbled, turned, and started towards the center of the room.

  “Stop,” he said. “If we stay here, we can cut the fiend off at the doorway. We can’t let it get behind us.” He weighed the axe in both hands, and bent his legs, shifting his weight onto the balls of his feet. Breathe, he thought to himself. Breathe and relax.

  Tension surged in his muscles. He clamped the axe haft in his sweaty hands. He could not draw in a full breath. He had faced down hundreds on the battlefield but at this moment, he felt the hairs raising along his spine, a deep uncontrollable scream boiling in his chest, ready to burst out at any moment. What he was facing was not a man.

  He spared Liv a quick glance. The knives trembled in her hands, and it was then that he noticed one of her blades was smeared red as if blood had been hurriedly wiped from it.

  But before he could fully form his suspicion, the figure stepped out of the corridor. It was Elof, covered in blood. Deep parallel cuts ran down his bare chest. The skin at his hairline flopped over. Blood seeped darkly towards his eyes. He blinked hard several times, knife wavering before him.

  “Elof, stop right there!” Hemming backed up another step. He squeezed the axe so hard that his knuckles cracked and his palms burned.

  Elof’s gaze narrowed on Hemming. “You?” Then he focused on Liv. “Both of you? Thank the gods I found you.”

  “What happened to you?” asked Hemming. “Whose blood is that?”

  Elof’s eyes widened at the realization of what Hemming was suggesting. “It came for me. An hour or so ago. Didn’t you hear me fighting against it?”

  The memory of a scream-filled dream bubbled at the edge of Hemming’s thoughts.

  Elof continued. “It’s not me. You can sure see that. It’s me. Elof. I was attacked. I was sleeping. Right before dawn I heard a noise, a muffled scream, what sounded like a body being dragged in the corridor. I am not afraid to say that I hid in my room, made my bed look like I was sleeping in it, and then I shrunk into the shadows.”

  “You didn’t go af
ter it?” asked Liv. “You heard screams and a body being dragged and you hid?”

  Elof’s legs suddenly buckled and he collapsed to the ground. “You’re interrogating me? While I’m bleeding to death?” His body went rigid as he suddenly noticed the pile of corpses. “What is this? Did you kill it? Are we the only ones left?” He struggled to get back to his feet.

  “Stay where you are,” warned Hemming.

  “You think I did that? I wasn’t even here.” His eyes suddenly widened. “Wait! How do I know it’s not one of you?”

  Hemming fought the urge to look at Liv and retreat further from her.

  “What happened in your room? How did you survive?” demanded Hemming.

  “I was hiding in the shadows. I heard it moving down the hall, and then it stopped at my door. I heard it turning as if to leave. I thought I was safe and then it smashed the door in and was at my bed, its talons slashing where I had been lying just moments before. I didn’t wait. I attacked. I stabbed that damn thing, stabbed it where its heart should have been. But it turned on me, slashing and rending. Look at me! I got another blow in, a good one, and it raced off howling.”

  Liv spoke in a low voice. “He’s lying.”

  “I heard that,” said Elof. “Look at me. How could I be lying? I’m bleeding to death and you think I’m making up stories?”

  “His skin. Is it even his?”

  Hemming stared at the cuts, the glistening muscles beneath. Were these cuts just like the ones they saw on Brit? A monster had slithered into her skin. Elof’s skin was torn and charred where he had been burned by Arne. For a moment, Hemming thought he saw the skin shift as if it were not attached to the muscles beneath. Then Elof looked normal again.

  “Are we the only ones left?”

  Hemming shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  Elof looked past him. “Three bodies. Helga, Runa, Sigurd. If the demon is here, it has to be one of us.”

  “Or maybe it prowls the keep, without one of our skins,” said Liv.

  She did not look right to Hemming. Something about her eyes seemed off, and the weariness on her face looked exaggerated. Her face appeared different, her cheeks less prominent as if the bones had flattened.

  He felt dizzy. He sucked in several deep breaths. Even the fresh air barely held back the sudden vertigo.

  He turned back at the bodies. Elof was right. Three bodies. It had to be one of them.

  “The dogs,” said Elof. “We should go to the dogs. They’ve been able to sense the beast. We stick together, and go to the dogs. It’s the only way we will know.”

  18

  The dogs were dead.

  Hemming turned away from the kennel doorway and sucked in deep breaths of icy air. It was so cold now that the air burned his lungs with each inhalation. His chest constricted as if he had been plunged beneath the waters of a frozen lake.

  The snow came down harder now. Hemming could no longer see the trail of their footprints that led back to the great hall of the keep. The clouds had closed in. Mist seeped over the walls of the keep. Soon even the stone would vanish from his sight. He imagined the walls fading away and himself lost, unable to determine which way to go.

  With this growing storm, Hemming was not sure that they could make it to the safety of Riverton, much less Liv’s cabin.

  It wasn’t just the cold air that made him short of breath, but also what remained of the dogs. His lungs wheezed as if they were so brittle that they might crack apart.

  He stared back into the kennel. Gloom filled the chamber, and shadows filled the corners. But even the darkness could not hide the massacre. Liv knelt on the ground, running her fingers through the fur of the dead animals. Her pale braids swung with the shifting of her body. Her dogs had been slaughtered – throats slit, disemboweled, jaws ripped apart. Hemming winced at the blood-soaked, white fur.

  “Every single dog,” said Elof, trembling beneath a fur cloak. His shivering seemed to have opened his wounds. Bright red blood dripped from the clotted black scab at his hair line. “You’d think the dogs would have put up a fight. A cornered animal fights the hardest.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  Elof pressed his lips together and let his gaze fall on Liv. “Did you hear barking last night? I heard nothing. Not a single yip or bark. If that demon came for them in the dead of night, the hounds would have been howling loud enough to wake all of us up. Dogs like this do not die quietly.”

  “Maybe it snuck up on them while they were sleeping.”

  “They would have sensed it. They smelled the spoor of it in the great hall. The old one tasted its blood. No way they would have not woken.”

  “Just spit out what you’re dying to say,” growled Hemming.

  “The dogs knew who came to kill them. Maybe it was the one person they trusted.”

  “You’re saying Liv is the demon.”

  “How else could all these dogs have been killed? Hemming, use your head.”

  “And how do I know it’s not you, Elof? Trying to get me to turn on Liv. Or who knows, maybe it’s not any of us. Maybe the demon fled after attacking you, and we are all being paranoid.”

  “Count the bodies. Whose skin is it wearing? It has to be one of us. And if it’s not you or me?”

  “How do I know it’s not you?”

  Elof pinched his cheek and pulled his skin. “It’s not coming off. I’m still me. Elof. The hostage.”

  “But’s that still, Liv, too.” He watched her move to the last of the dogs, furrowing the fur with her fingers, her lips pressed close to the dead dog’s ear as if she were telling it a secret. “You talked to her. I talked to her. She’s normal. How do we even know it’s here anymore?”

  “The bodies.”

  “Maybe it left. Maybe it found a skin it liked and it left.”

  “Hemming, why are you trying to fight against the obvious? It killed the dogs because they would attack it if they had the chance.”

  “Why didn’t it leave?”

  “Everything needs to eat.”

  “Why doesn’t it just kill us then?”

  “I don’t know. But we’re all that’s left. And if it gets out of the keep, it will go to Riverton. It will slaughter everyone. We can’t let it do that.”

  “I don’t owe them anything.”

  “You say that. You act like you care nothing for other people but I know that’s not true. Would you really let that demon out among women and children?”

  Liv returned to the doorway. She shook her head. Her eyes were dull, not full of the tears that Hemming would have expected. She seemed to have lost her vigor. Her face looked drawn.

  Hemming glanced at Elof. His skin, too, did not look right on his face, puffy, almost lopsided.

  Liv spoke to him but Hemming heard nothing but the sound of his own breath. They both looked like their skins did not fit. He felt like all his blood was suddenly pooling in his ears. His view tilted, his balance lost for a moment. A burning sensation prickled across his face, and he turned away as Elof reached for him. Hemming stumbled out into the courtyard, falling onto his hands and knees, the snow frigid against his hands and penetrating through his pants bringing him back to clarity.

  “Hemming, Hemming, what is it?” Liv asked.

  “Be careful. Don’t get too close,” whispered Elof to Liv.

  Hemming rose to standing. The snow fell heavily from the sky but it was of no weight, no consequence.

  “We need to get out of here,” said Liv. He could see her clearly now – the world had steadied beneath his feet, but she sounded as if she were at the far end of a tunnel. “We have no choice now. We need to get down to Riverton.”

  “Not to your cabin?” he asked.

  She stared at him, her head tilting. “Riverton. People are there. We should go to Riverton.”

  “What do you think, Elof?”

  “You know what I think.”

  The snow flurried in a sudden gust, sheeting between them, and for a momen
t Liv and Elof faded from Hemming’s sight. He wished they would disappear forever.

  But the wind stopped blowing and he saw them clearly before him.

  “Let’s go back to the hall,” he said. “We’ll wait the storm out. We can’t let this monster get to Riverton.”

  19

  The three of them sat at the long table in the great hall, several bottles of mead in the center of the table. Elof lifted his cup to his lips, taking small sips, his pinkie finger lifting which each tilt of the cup. Liv held her cup in both hands but had not taken a sip yet. She glowered at the liquid in the cup.

  Hemming kept one hand on his cup and the other hand touching the cold handle of his axe.

  “It’s one of us,” said Hemming. “It’s in one of our skins.”

  “It’s not me,” said Elof.

  “It’s not me,” said Liv.

  “What do you propose that we do?” asked Elof. “Drink ourselves into a stupor and then wait for it to tear out of its skin and attack us?”

  “What if you’re wrong, Hemming?” asked Liv. “What if it’s none of us? Maybe it is gone. Why can’t that be in the realm of possibility?”

  “We wait,” said Hemming.

  “But why?” asked Liv. “We should just go. Get out of this place. Away from all this.”

  “We can’t.” He ran his fingers over the axe handle. It was smooth and stained dark with years of blood. “We can’t let this thing get away. It can mimic us. It can be one of us right now. If we walk away from this, the monster will kill whoever comes along next. Or worse, it will escape down to Riverton: the soldiers in the barracks, the families, everyone will be slaughtered. We have a duty beyond ourselves.”

  “It’s her,” said Elof. “Hemming, it has to be her.”

  Liv pointed her blood-stained knife at Elof. “You killed my dogs. You think I don’t know that?”

  Hemming sipped another mouthful of the mead. He let it sit and swirled the sweet liquid in his mouth. He could taste the honey and a faint flavor of blackberries. He longed to return to his family farm one last time, to stand in the wide meadows beneath the warm sun.