Salt Skin Read online

  “Oh Lord, ‘oly Mary!” Mr. Schwartz started praying, raising his hands to the heavens. “And what, ‘e crashed?”

  “No, Monsieur Schwartz, it was only the second floor and he was wearing shoes. Only muffled cries resembling the moan of a wounded beast left to bleed on the roadside echoed in Margaret’s ears, coming from somewhere below. At first, none of the four understood what had happened. No one expected something like that. When the group finally decided to look what lay beneath them, they saw nothing. There was not a trace left of Martin Krisi. No one decided to chase him because they all considered that they made him understand quite clearly that every adverse action would certainly lead to an equally adverse outcome.”

  “Your shift, Monsieur Pierre, is done? It is almost midnight. Let me buy you a bottle of dark ale.”

  “Why not, Monsieur Schwartz!”

  “I only beg of you, continue the story. I still don’t understand ‘ow the wreath on the entrance to the ‘otel ‘as anything to do with the story.”

  “You will find out in a moment. We started to keep the ‘Anniversary of Three Deaths’ in our town eleven and a half years ago after the events that happened subsequently to the things I have already told you.”

  Let us go back to Margaret. Multitude of rumours and conversations hovered in the air, shocked with drama, after this occasion. Some people said that she gradually started to lose her mind when Krisi tormented her with his love mixed with beating. Others said that she went mad after she lost her baby; supposedly she had had a shattered psyche before that and needed only a small detail to push her over the edge. No one will ever know when exactly Margaret lost her mind. Just like no one will dare say: “What if she was completely sane?”

  Inspired by revenge, whose frightened eyes haunted her everywhere, causing her to smile crookedly, Margaret decided to start a new life. But infusing the fresh mountain air into the old black lungs of a chain-smoker amounted to killing him. After a few days of Krisi jumping out of her window, she accidentally saw him on the street, walking around with completely confident gait, embracing the waist of the girl whose red hair fell on her shoulders as a flowing waterfall.

  Not being able to fully realise and believe in Krisi’s insincerity, Margaret became as upset as if she was seeing this for the first time. A sharp pain of betrayal again stabbed, as if with a knife, her heart bleeding with tears. Now she was genuinely crying and weeping.

  Without discerning the road and not realising where she was going, she waded through narrow, lonely streets until she found herself at the train station. Watching the silver trails through a heavy veil of tears spontaneously appearing in the honey brown eyes, she unconsciously stepped to the very edge of the arriving platforms and silently looked down. Her face was expressionless. Not a single muscle trembled. Only droplets of smeared mascara rolled down the flushed cheeks, announcing that the person whose image of grave stupor froze in the cold station was still alive.

  A strong gust of wind from a passing train twirled Margaret’s hair in its vortex, erasing the remnants of makeup from her reddened eyes. She stood frozen and lonely, with her head lowered, legs tightly clenched and, crossing the fingers of her hands to her chest, as if she were praying. A train racing by only slightly shook this statue moulded from delicate fibre of heartache, soaked in the water of bleeding lies.

  Recovering with the stern and lingering train signal appealing for caution, Margaret, still poorly realising what she was doing, headed with an unsteady gait to the ticket office. She wanted to leave this pointless world, impregnated with chills of injustice, to dissolve in solitude and erase herself with a wave of oblivion and indifference from the memory of everyone she once knew.

  The young woman bought a ticket to the village where her grandpa formerly lived. She inherited from him a dilapidated house, battered by time and neglect. Having arrived at the place, she sensed an atmosphere of loneliness and abandonment enveloping her. “Here is my place. It resembles me so much now,” wrote Margaret in her diaries.

  And indeed, it was a dank autumn. The wind, considerably battering the trees, glided on the young woman's disarranged hair, accompanying her tossing thoughts and harrowing moans with its howling.

  Back then, the house was not enclosed with a two-metre brick fence. Only intertwined iron twigs around the perimeter, with holes made by local hooligans, served as a rail for it. Squeezing through one of these openings, Margaret heard some rustling in the house and a sharp clapping of windows somewhere at the rear. Apparently, some boys, upon seeing an old abandoned house, arranged their teenage meetings there and upon hearing someone’s steps, they ran away.

  A decrepit door, hanging from broken hinges, opened by itself with a lengthy creak, Margaret had barely touched it. The draught blowing from the window through which the kids ran away, lifted with its vortex old yellowed magazines and newspaper clippings. Minimalism that characterised the rooms, gave away the unfastidious and quite meagre life of its previous owner. In each of the three rooms there was a sofa with loose broken coils protruding from mattresses, several closets with old clothes, stacks of books lying on the floor and untouched by local hooligans, and several stools. Although the house stood empty for some time, people did not manage to destroy and steal things.

  However, the house was not empty only in the absence of its master. The life in it faded away quite a few decades ago, long before the death of its owner when Lucas Agostini, Margaret’s grandfather, lost any interest in it, unable to cope with the betrayal of his dearest wife.

  Having walked around the house, the young woman cleaned some scattered things, threw away empty bottles of alcohol left from frequent intrusions and, detached, sat in the single, old armchair in the corner of the room. Leaning back, she drew her head up and looked with an absent stare. Suddenly, she saw a strange inscription on the ceiling, carved in wooden panels with uneven handwriting, resembling a doctor’s scrawl. It was written in Italian and contained only one word “dentro,” which meant “inside.” Drawn by the intrigue, Margaret started to think hard, what was “inside” and “inside” of what.

  When she was a child, listening to the memories of her grandmother, she frequently paid attention to how fearful the tone of the narrator became when she talked about her first husband. Every time when the little girl asked about her grandfather, the only thing that her grandmother was willing to tell her was that he was a Sicilian. Margaret had never seen him but she knew this name was covered with some kind of unspoken taboo in her family, luring the girl with its unsolved mysteries. After receiving an unexpected inheritance, she visited this unnoticeable house only once, and being a little disappointed with the unjustified fantasies of her childhood about the secret figure of her Sicilian grandfather, she came to our town without returning to this “house with a surprise.” Until the very day when she, by the miracle of providence, saw this inscription on the ceiling.

  Suddenly, all her childhood fantasies about the mysterious grandfather revived with a new, demonic power. She even forgot about Martin and his betrayal, about his warm but rough hands, about the alluring smell of skin, about the joy languishing in the cage woven with the curse of their sinful and infernal passion, about the smiles genuinely sparkling with happiness of those two she had recently seen in the town. Everything went somewhere so far away that Margaret herself felt transported as though to another reality.

  Intuitively, feeling like a little girl once again, she jumped out of her seat as if stung and, narrowing her left eye like a true detective and rubbing her chin thoughtfully, suddenly began to circle the armchair, leaning over and straightening without stopping, without breaking eye contact with it, as if she were scanning. She sank to the floor, peering under ancient junk. She found nothing. Margaret felt the fabric thinned by time, however, she did not feel any irregularities. The young woman pulled a cushion, but she found nothing underneath it. Suddenly, she ran out of the room, took the biggest knife from the kitchen, returned, and began to shred the poor
armchair, ruthlessly slashing with the blade across its already worn out material. Engrossed, she went into such rage that she did not stop until something small and metallic smashed to the floor with a thin, tinny sound. Breathless, the women came to her senses and saw two keys in front of her. One of them was small and made from brass. The other one was nearly the size of her palm, an antique key crowned with intricate and ornate curves. Having calculated the approximate trajectory of their fall and with her eyes raised to the heavens from interest and pleasure, she fumbled with her hand in the cut padding.

  Although Margaret was, at that moment, possessed with the spirit of adventure in the old abandoned house and intended to find something interesting there, she could not restrain a cry of surprise when she drew out of the armchair a neat leaflet folded four times and inscribed with the same handwriting which she had seen on the ceiling. Having opened her mouth in astonishment and anticipation rocking her unbridled imagination, she made herself comfortable on the floor and slowly, holding her breath, began to unfold this unknown secret message.

  The letter was written in Italian. It contained various schemes of some structure unknown to Margaret. Furthermore, the text was of following content,

  “If you, my de_r, are holping this letter in your hands, it means that I pecame the one who wil prsonally tell you... Wishout a douht I em no longer amongst dhe living, but if you are a cmart girl, you will _ffortlessly _ive this _ife _s it should be. Although I was not the_e and I have never ceen you, I pray that you are hea_thy and hoppy, unlike your sear grendpa. My blood for signa_ure.

  I leave you this house, live in it and protect it. And forgive my terrible Italian, I have completely forgotten to write in it. If I am right to count on you, you will find a worthy use for my letters. Burn them. I will see you in heaven, farewell.”

  The last five sentences were written without any mistakes, which ran contrary to the first part of the letter. Some letters in the words were missing due to cigarette burns in the worn paper. Apparently, the old man smoked, sometimes forgetting to shake the ash off. The rest of the letters were strange childish mistakes.

  Finding glimpses of the trap and hearing the steps of fleeting clues, Margaret, possessed by the ghost of Poirot, began to examine the letter more intently and thoroughly, turning and twisting it in her hands in every way possible. Suddenly, she cried from shock, stunned, clapped her hands and, covering her mouth with them, only whispered, “My God, of course!”

  The young woman re-wrote the letters, which needed to be corrected, then those, which were burnt by ashes. Marvelling at herself, she read four words: “Apple, Shed, Cellar, Closet.”

  It seemed that she was now consumed not only by the excitement but by some homicidal-frightening impatience.

  Chapter 12

  Having discovered this secret, and with it, the heavy cover of the bunker, Margaret was unable to come to her senses for a long time. Downstairs, she found a small, dark, cold room with a semblance of a sewer hidden by the screen on the left, opposite the stairs, and four large rusty chains attached to the adjacent wall. The walls were lined with various canned goods and jars of food. There was a mattress on the floor, along with five warm, soft blankets. Next to this improvised bed, there was a stack of thick old notebooks tied up with a string. They say that was when Margaret conceived that eerie idea, compelling the blood to freeze in the veins.

  Having sat on the top of the straightened blankets, she began to untie the string, which seemed to deter someone's storming thoughts trying to break free. To her great amazement, she found the same curvy and poorly legible handwriting in Italian. There were forty notebooks, equal to the number of years though which Margaret’s grandfather had lived alone.

  Having made herself comfortable, the woman began to read with overt interest. Without feeling hunger or desire to sleep, she devoured page after page, understanding much clearer the mystery, which caused the disintegration of her family. Increasingly, she understood her grandpa and found a lot in common with him: his thoughts, reasoning, the way he wrote, what he felt. Without noticing the boundary between reality and grandfather’s otherworldly stories blurring before her eyes, immersed in the Sicilian’s work, the young woman fell asleep.

  My friend, who is a journalist, said that when Margaret’s diaries were found, the very first thing written was gratitude towards her grandfather for “wanting to write her own life;” he inspired her to describe everything that happened next. But Margaret’s diaries were forbidden to be published after seven scandalous articles strengthened the confidence of the townspeople that the woman was insane. The diaries were confiscated from the hands of journalists by federal authorities and, according to some people, were placed into a special secret archive. Others state that the writings were destroyed, burnt. There is still no reliable evidence to support either of these theories, but the legend is still hovering in the air above our agitated town; the most delicious morsel for any of the journalists is to discover the diaries of the deceased Margaret.

  Lucas Agostini’s diaries were never found either. Everything I have described were words of his granddaughter, written in those provocative articles that the ubiquitous journalists managed to publish. They say that the Sicilian, as they started to call her after she died, afraid to say her name aloud, hid these diaries somewhere and purposely did not mention them in her own writings, leaving another murky mystery as an appetiser for the people.

  Margaret, having awakened the next morning and found herself in a dark cold space, went upstairs, and what do you think, Monsieur Schwartz? No, she did not return to the house, nor did she run away. She closed the shed door tightly, then she closed the door of the cellar from the inside. She went downstairs and, according to different sources, spent a week there, engrossed in the insane revelations of her crazy grandfather.

  Emerging into the light a number of days later, blinded and transformed by a grim seriousness, Margaret shielded her eyes with her hand from the bright sun and, staggering from the intoxicating mouthfuls of fresh air, trudged to the train station. An incredible amount of the most vicious thoughts were swarming in her mind, making her ill imagination go mad. Having arrived home to her rented flat, she found letters from her worried colleagues slipped under the door. That day, Margaret, appearing at work as if nothing were amiss, was fired and some snidely-smiling clerk was given her desk. Turning around on high heels, not a bit upset, she left the office and, with a confident gait, walked straight to the dormitory where her ex-lover lived.

  Having ambushed him, she saw Martin Krisi, not distraught at the loss, walking merrily with a smug smile on his face and not a single drop of remorse.

  Inside, one part of Margaret was upset, feeling again the wild pain clawing at her chest rising from fast breathing. Filling her honey coloured eyes with a translucent veil of tears, the other Margaret closed the young woman's eyelids to open them completely blackened, with shimmering devilish sparks.

  The decision was made. Final and irrevocable.

  Chapter 13

  Eight years after Margaret had originally discovered Lucas Agostini’s secret bunker, on one autumn day in London, there landed a small charter plane from Lusaka, the capital of Zambia. A fifty-five-year-old woman deplaned. She had dark skin, wore a pink pantsuit and had slightly fussy hair, which was not appropriate for her business-like style of clothing. She was carrying a leather briefcase and, after passing customs, sat in a black limousine, which was waiting for her at the airport exit.

  The woman wearily leaned back on the seat and sighed heavily. She seemed to be very uncomfortable to be here now. The car drove her to the Embassy of Zambia in London and the woman, who was about to leave, for a second stopped her wandering look, fixed under black eyelashes that framed her small, closely set eyes on the new London press folded in half. In the newspaper announcement, glistening on the front page in screaming capital letters, it was written: “A millionaire killed her husband! The seventh hearing on the case is nearing!” Under
the title, there was a photograph of a thirty-year-old woman whose cuffed hands held the restraining bars in the courtroom. Despite her sullen and tired look, it was hard not to notice a special beauty that characterized the defendant. The woman in the car was interested, took the newspaper with her and left the car. Eight years ago, here in the cold England, her stepson went missing. Every day the woman reproached herself for sending him to college so far away from home. Her name was Rose Krisi and for several years, she had been a second ambassador of Zambia in England.

  Having attended a few business meetings and having set appointments for a few more, the woman finally entered her luxurious suite in a five-star hotel paid for from the national budget of her country. Having ordered a strong coffee, which she usually drank before bedtime, the woman put on her reading glasses and unfolded the newspaper, which had been inviting her to open it for the whole day. Sipping delicious English coffee and holding the newspaper with her other hand, she slid her eyes along the sensational lines which had caused a public response.

  In the newspaper, the article on Margaret Strasberg was written on three pages and seasoned with photographs. A photo of Margaret behind bars. A photo of her dead husband’s smiling face. A photo of both of them together, embracing each other and genuinely laughing in the rain, which had caught the couple unawares. On the third and final page, there was a photo of a small girl, seven or eight-years-old, smiling broadly for the camera with her huge, black, sparkling eyes. The girl, despite the bright, olive complexion, did not have entirely European face features, but more... African. Under the photo of the adorable little girl, there was another screaming caption: “In case that she is found guilty, who will raise the millionaire’s child?” Then, a small note indicating that the mother of the defendant had already taken the girl for an indefinite period of time.