Skinner Read online

  Table of Contents

  SKINNER

  Connect With Us

  Other Books by Author

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  About the Author

  About the Publisher

  SKINNER

  David Bernstein

  First Edition

  Skinner © 2015 by David Bernstein

  All Rights Reserved.

  A DarkFuse Release

  www.darkfuse.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  CONNECT WITH US

  Find out why DarkFuse is the premier publisher of dark fiction.

  Join our newsletter and get free eBooks:

  http://eepurl.com/jOH5

  Follow us on Twitter:

  http://twitter.com/darkfuse

  Like us on Facebook:

  http://www.facebook.com/darkfuse/

  ++++====++++

  Join the DarkFuse Readers Book Club:

  http://www.darkfuse.com/book_club/

  ++++====++++

  OTHER BOOKS BY AUTHOR

  RELIC OF DEATH

  SURROGATE

  Check out the author’s official page at DarkFuse for a complete list:

  http://www.darkfuseshop.com/David-Bernstein/

  CHAPTER 1

  The sky was mean-looking, ominous and dark, like a crinkled piece of carbon paper. There hadn’t been a storm in the forecast. Golf-ball-sized snowflakes were coming down as if a pillow fight were taking place in the heavens above. The blacktop had disappeared a few miles back, replaced by a sheet of deepening powder. The surrounding forest—consisting mostly of pine trees, bear oaks and maples—was blanketed in what seemed like a continuous sheet of white. Needle-lined branches were weighed down, hanging low like the shoulders of depressed mental patients.

  “I think we should turn around,” Aria said, gripping the passenger-side door handle. She had a round face, full lips, beautiful piercing blue eyes and auburn-colored hair that shined with radiance every time she moved her head.

  “Are you nuts?” Mark asked from the middle row of seats. He put his arm around Sara, his girlfriend of two years. “I’ve been promising my baby a weekend away for some time. Used half my vacation time for this trip.”

  “We’ll be fine,” Rob said, patting the Jeep Commander’s steering wheel. “This bad boy was made for weather like this.”

  From the third row of seats and sitting next to his girlfriend, Spencer, Jeff said, “Yeah, who knows when Rob’s boss will let him use the cottage again.”

  Rob glanced in the rearview mirror at his lanky, redheaded friend. “Are you saying I’ve peaked?”

  “Let’s hope not,” Jeff said. “But it’ll probably be a while before you close another client like Wellman. You have to admit, you got lucky landing him.”

  “Luck had nothing to do with it,” Rob said. “I pursued that whale for two weeks. Hard work and determination were the things that got the deal done. I’m a born closer, you’ll see.”

  “Stockbrokers are nothing more than excellent voice actors,” Jeff said. “At least the really good ones. You scumbags don’t really know what’s going to happen. You call people up, read from a pitch sheet, get them all excited about it, sound busy and convince those rich assholes to take a chance at being part of the next big thing so they can brag to their buddies how they have this killer broker who made them rich or got them in on some hot deal.”

  “Like selling real estate isn’t a scumbag operation at times,” Rob said. “I know how you hide a house’s faults, covering shit up like noisy neighbors, rot and termites.”

  “Still, I’m not swindling millions out of people,” Jeff said, “and bragging like I knew what I was doing.”

  “Keep thinking that, Jeff my boy,” Rob said. “I’ll admit, there are some unqualified people at the firm that don’t know a thing about the market. And yes, they basically read from a script, but I’m not one of them. I’ve got an eye for stocks. I investigate and do research. My performance speaks for itself. I was right about Indek Industries because I know my shit. It’s what’s going to make me partner one day.”

  “Twenty-five and he’s already thinking about making partner,” Jeff said.

  “I plan to do it by thirty and become a multimillionaire by thirty-five, give or take a year.”

  Aria slid her fingers through Rob’s thick, dirty-blond hair and massaged his head, her newly acquired engagement ring rubbing hard against his scalp. “That’s right, babe. Don’t listen to the doubters. You can do whatever you want. I have confidence in you. But right now, I need to have confidence in your driving, so keep your concentration on the road or I’ll rip that rearview mirror right off.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Rob said.

  As the SUV ascended the winding mountain road, the blizzard intensified. The flakes were coming down more rapidly, the snow heavier. Visibility was reduced to no more than a few feet. Rob slowed the vehicle to a paltry ten miles an hour. The Jeep’s four-wheel drive was being put to the test.

  Truth be told, he was beginning to worry. There had been no word of a storm on the news. When the flakes first began, he thought it was a passing storm, the equivalent of a sun shower. But it hadn’t let up and had gotten much worse. He’d never seen snow accumulate so quickly. Thank goodness they had the Jeep or they might’ve had to cancel the trip. But he figured as long as he drove slowly, they’d be fine. He glanced at Aria.

  She looked as stiff as a corpse in rigor mortis. Worry lines creased the corners of her mouth like rivers on a map. Her eyes stared through the windshield, unblinking. She hadn’t let go of the handle since the roads had gotten dangerous. Her state did little to calm him, and in fact was making him more nervous. He needed her to loosen up a little. The Jeep’s passengers’ lives were all in his hands.

  “We’re practically crawling through the snow,” he said, and rubbed Aria’s arm tenderly, hoping to convey tranquility through his words and bodily contact.

  Instead, she tensed, then she grabbed his hand and forcefully guided it back to the steering wheel. “Two hands on the wheel, please.”

  Rob wanted to laugh, partly from Aria’s reaction, but also from the nervous feeling he had in his gut. “We’re fine. This thing’s heavy as hell and has four-wheel drive with all sorts of traction-control crap, so relax. We aren’t going anywhere but to my boss’s bungalow.”

  “Okay, just get us off this mountain in one piece and I’ll do all the relaxing you want.”

  Rob glanced in the rearview mirror and saw Jeff leaning against the window with his eyes closed. Spencer rested against him, her head on his shoulder. He wasn’t sure if they had fallen asleep, the couple having just been awake minutes ago, but he was grateful. Their ability to relax set his mind at ease.

  Spencer was pretty, but not beautiful. She had soft-looking dark eyes and long, flowing silky brown hair. Her angular face and pronounced cheekbones went along with her thin lips and skinny frame, save for her recently enhanced chest, which, according to her, gave her figure some much-needed shape. She’d made sure to reveal her “girls”—as she called them—to everyone she came across, whether male or female, at the time.

  Mark and Sara sat snuggled together
, Sara’s bleach-blonde hair mixed with his shoulder-length coffee-colored locks. They were watching something on her iPad and sharing headphones, both with grins on their faces.

  Again, Rob thought about turning the Jeep around, heading back to the Lake George area and waiting for the storm to pass. They could stay at a motel where they’d be safe and warm, and then head out early the next day. But going back might be as dangerous as pushing onward, for they were double-digit miles from anywhere in either direction. So he kept on.

  Every so often, they passed a pull-off area—flat ground where vehicles could park and people could stretch their legs or rest. He thought about stopping at the next one he came across. They could all sit for a spell and wait for the storm to let up, but the way the snow was coming down, he guessed they’d wind up sleeping in the Jeep all night. No one would want to lose an evening at the house. It wasn’t like there was much farther to go, at least when it came to getting over the mountain. From there, it would take maybe an hour or so—depending on the weather—to reach their destination. Maybe the storm hadn’t even breached the mountaintop, and the clouds were only emptying themselves out so they could get over the rocky protrusion. If that was the case, they could easily outrun the storm.

  Thinking about how remote the area was made Rob’s gut queasy. If anything happened to the Jeep, a skid-out or engine trouble, they’d be stranded. He was so used to being in populated towns and neighborhoods, seeing people out and about at all hours and where there was a gas station or some other place of business on every block. Up in the mountains the world was so different, so solitary. The last thing resembling civilization had been a dilapidated old gas station that sat a few miles before the mountain. A sign reading Last Chance for Gas was plastered on the side of the establishment. The only person there had been a creepy old man, who Rob guessed was the owner. He felt his flesh ripple into goose bumps just thinking about the guy.

  * * *

  The Jeep’s gas gauge had read a quarter tank when the mountain loomed in the distance. He couldn’t believe he’d forgotten to fill up when they were on the thruway, but no one else had said anything either. That’s when he saw the run-down gas station. The scene oozed 1980s horror flick, with its faded gas sign flapping in the wind and the battered pickup truck that sat off to the side. A number of paint-faded and rust-spotted old cars—shells mostly—and a large broken-down farm tractor were tangled with overgrown brush, as if one day they’d simply be pulled into the earth and forgotten.

  Rob wanted to keep going until he found a better-looking place, a named place like a Mobil or Sunoco station, where the gasoline hadn’t been in the tank since the establishment’s creation. But when he asked Mark if there were any other gas stations nearby, his friend said there was nothing around for miles. “To be honest, I don’t remember this place being here. And I’ve traveled this road for the past fifteen years every fall. But hell, we might as well fill up. Gas is gas.”

  Rob pulled into the station. The gas pumps were stout and rounded along the top. There were no digital screens, only turn-style numbers like something from the 1950s. There were no Pay Before You Pump stickers either, the notices something he’d grown used to seeing nowadays. He decided to put sixty dollars’ worth of high-test in the Jeep, surprised to have the option at such a place. While he pumped, the numbers clicked when they changed and every gallon was met with a ding.

  The station’s interior smelled musty and dank, cave-like. The air was stale as if neither a door nor window had been opened in decades. The floorboards were warped as if they’d been underwater at some point, and creaked with every step. The spaces between the wood planks were caked with grime. A soda machine rested next to the counter, humming loudly like it was on its last legs. A row of candy bars sat below the counter in a metal rack, the wrappers lined with a lint-like sheet of dust. But the most disturbing thing about the place was the numerous wolf pelts—heads attached—that covered almost every inch of the walls and ceiling. Every snout was a frozen snarl and the canine teeth were bared. The dead beasts’ eyes had an eerie life to them that sent shivers down Rob’s spine and made the flesh along his forearms ripple into goose bumps.

  “Man, this place is…” Spencer began, holding her manicured hands to her chest.

  “Incredible,” Mark said, finishing her sentence. His mouth hung open, his eyes taking it all in like a kid in a candy store. At six feet three inches, two hundred twenty pounds, he towered over everyone. His bushy long hair and full beard made him an even more imposing figure.

  “Of course you’d say that,” Spencer said. “But this is too much, even for a hunter like you.”

  “They can’t all be real, can they?” Rob asked, walking up to a pelt and studying the head.

  “Yes, they are all real,” said a scratchy, high-pitched voice.

  Rob turned and saw an elderly man standing behind the counter. A wolf’s pelt was draped over him, the dead creature’s head resting atop his own like a Davy Crocket coonskin hat. It wasn’t a single coat though but appeared to be a patchwork of various pelts, each a different color. The garment was gorgeous and had been woven together with incredible skill.

  The man had a long, narrow face. His skin was weathered and cracked with numerous wrinkles, reminding Rob of worn leather. Stringy white hair hung past his shoulders. The man’s jowls wiggled like melted rubber as he glanced with eager-looking eyes from person to person. He looked to be pushing ninety, except for the eyes, which had life in them.

  A smile broke over the man’s face, and Rob thought he saw shark-like teeth, but then he blinked and saw that they were the yellow-stained, rotted teeth of a person who hadn’t seen a dentist in years.

  “Are these all yours?” Mark asked, still looking around in amazement.

  “Mostly, but if I’m being honest, I had some help with a few,” the old man said.

  Rob approached the old man and placed three twenty-dollar bills on the counter. The air had a coppery scent to it now. The old man reached out with a shaky, red-stained skeletal hand—the fingernails cracked and long—and snatched up the cash. Looking past the old-timer and through a doorway, Rob saw a workbench and what appeared to be the remains of an animal upon it. Chunks of meat and body parts—intestines, bones, a heart and kidneys, among other things—littered the table. Knives of various shapes and sizes lay scattered about, all of them covered in blood. A wolf’s pelt was drying on a rack, the floor below it dotted with crimson.

  “Will that be all?” the man asked, cocking his head.

  “Y—yes,” Rob said. “That’s it.” He turned around and saw the rest of the group waiting by the door, save for Mark, who was still admiring the pelts, even rubbing his hands over them.

  Rob waited for Mark at the exit as the others went back to the Jeep.

  “Be careful going over the mountain,” the old man said. “Storm’s coming.”

  Rob ’s eyebrows came together. “Storm? I kept an eye on the weather all week. There isn’t a storm in the forecast.”

  “Them city folk with their fancy equipment,” the old man said, shaking his head as if disappointed. “Always relying on machines to give them answers, to predict the future.” The old man spat. “I feel it in my bones, boy. Storm’s coming. Going to be a nasty one, too.”

  * * *

  At the time, Rob thought the old man was a crazy old coot and probably drunk on moonshine or some other kind of homemade booze. But now, driving in this horrible weather, he knew the old-timer had been spot on.

  “Is this weather ever going to end?” Aria asked.

  He opened his mouth to answer, but said nothing, not knowing what to say.

  “It should lessen when we reach the top of the mountain,” Mark said. “The clouds are dumping whatever moisture they have in them so they can get over the peak. The other side should be clear.”

  Rob had thought the same thing, but hearing it from Mark made him feel better. Soon, they’d be in the clear.

  “I hope s
o,” Aria said. “This is getting ridiculous.”

  “Might not even be any snow on the other side,” Mark said. “Just have to wait and see.”

  Rob silently hoped his friend was right.

  If anyone knew winter weather patterns, it was Mark. Besides having spent hundreds of hours outdoor as a cable repairman, and now as a roofer, Mark had been an avid hunter since the age of twelve. He traveled backcountry roads all the time—including the one they were currently on—going on hunting trips with his father and uncle were a regular event. Mark hadn’t missed a season yet. He was hard-core and had spent overnights in frigid weather almost every year. Though he grew up on Long Island, New York, his family was originally from the upper part of Vermont, where most of his relatives still resided.

  Ten minutes after Mark’s statement, the road leveled out. They had reached the top of the mountain and were now traveling along, more or less, even ground, though the road twisted and turned like a snake’s trail.

  Rob took the turns slowly, making them much less treacherous. The snow had let up a little, though it was still coming down and the pavement was covered.

  Rob guessed either Mark was right or they had simply gotten ahead of the storm. Regardless, he was able to relax a bit, but not completely, thanks to the steep slope of earth off to his left. A wrong move could prove deadly. The mountain was full of numerous peaks and valleys throughout. Whoever had originally carved out the one-lane thoroughfare had decided circumventing the rock was the easiest course, making for a winding road. If he lost control—took a turn too fast or hit a slippery patch—a tumbling down they all would go.