The wall vibrated powerfully against his hand. A mystery all right; however, a mystery he wasn’t ordered or paid to solve, and one hardly relevant to the case of the missing lord.
As he walked away, the metallic popping changed. The sound morphed from pell-mell clattering to a unified rhythm: whatever objects or vermin that attacked the metal cladding had now begun to strike it at the same time; pretty much in the same way a dozen different drummers in a percussion band would strike the same beat.
The door swung shut behind; immediately the room crashed to darkness. He could see nothing. The pounding on the wall intensified — growing louder as it did so. Maybe it was Kirkwood’s claim that he was allergic to the house that caused the effect. But suddenly Newton’s skin began to itch. His chest tightened and breathing in that dark, little chamber became difficult. Quickly, he tugged open the door. The light from the bedroom spilled in. He quickly strode back along the narrow room to where the sound seemed to emanate from the rose-covered wallpaper. He balled his fist and slammed it against the wall. The drumming sound irritated him. For a moment, he even told himself that the metallic popping coming from the other side made his skin itch. His fingernails scratched at his face, making the looser parts of the skin slide over the jawbone.
The clatter from the other side grew louder.
“Shut up.”
He pounded the side of his fist against the wall again. If there were rats in there, they’d get a nasty shock. But the rodents or whatever made the noise didn’t scarper; instead the rapping grew louder. The sound goaded him. It demanded to know if Mark Newton HAD LEFT HIS MARK ON THE WORLD.
Remembering that line in his aunt’s letter twisted a nerve to the point he felt a blaze of fury. As the metallic drumbeat reached a crescendo, he stood back then delivered such a hell of a kick to the wall. His police training had taken over. He used that particular kick he’d practiced so often to kick down some drug peddler’s front door. The loud drumming against the metalwork had stopped at least. Now he could hear nothing but his own heartbeat.
When he looked down he saw, to his surprise, that he’d managed to slam the toe of his shoe through not only the wallpaper with its blood red roses, but the plywood panel. Damn it. Now he’d have to photograph the damage he’d inflicted on the house. Cop turns vandal. He imagined the Chief’s anger when Jeremy Kirkwood submitted the repair bill.
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.”