Refuge

I awoke to the smell of something like burnt rubber. Slowly, objects around me took shape, their edges fuzzy and indistinct. Everything blurred together like an abstract soup. The carpet, red, wove snake-like through the hardwood. Coats hung from the wall. Shades of beige and brown and black bled into one another, filling the gaps between them, each spilling over into its neighbor. For a moment they seemed to breathe—rising, falling, rising, falling—until I realized this effect came not from the coats, but from the glow of a candle flickering atop a desk. Behind the desk, a hunched figure, features obscured in shadow.

           “Awake, child?”

           My eyes rolled up to the ceiling where dancing candlelight cast patterns shaped like people.

           “Such a cold night to be out in the rain. Lucky I found you.”

           There was a sound like an engine chugging. After a few seconds it stopped. Then it started again. And stopped. It continued on like this, never lasting for more than ten seconds at a time, but never stopping for long either.

           “Where am I?”

           “I brought you home to wait out the storm.”

           I noticed for the first time that I was wrapped in a blanket. It looked soft, but I was too numb to feel it.

           “Leave the blanket. You need warmth. You were trembling when I found you. Half-purple.”

           I left the blanket wrapped around me, feeling neither hot nor cold. Was that a sign of hypothermia?

           “There’s tea. Hot tea, soothing tea.”

           “Thanks, I’m okay though. Maybe in a bit.”

           The chugging started up again. It was really more of a whir or a grind, punctuated by a series of hard taps.

           I looked for the source of the noise, now that I felt more oriented. At first, it had seemed to be coming from all around, but now I saw that it originated from an object on the desk. The hunched figure operated a crank while sliding something along the surface of the desk. A sewing machine, that’s all it was. I relaxed, having identified the unknown.

           “What are you sewing?” I asked, more out of polite conversational conventions than curiosity.

           “A new coat,” she said. I think it was a woman, though I wasn’t certain. There was a scratchy quality to her thin voice, as if her words had to pass through a pepper shaker on their way out. She also wore a hooded cloak which kept her face shrouded in darkness.

           “But you already have so many.” My gaze returned to the coats hanging from the wall. Their outlines, undefined, still ran together, their features nondescript, my vision still impaired.

           “Not enough, never enough.”

           I understood. Sewing, for her, was a compulsion, a way to pass the time. It was more about the act of sewing, of keeping busy, than it was about the practicality of amassing such a collection, though I assumed she felt proud of the accumulation of her work along the wall.

           She cranked the machine.

           “I don’t know your name,” I said.

           Tap-tap-tap

           “I don’t know yours.”

           The room was growing dimmer. The only source of light came from the candle on the figure’s desk. I found it incredible that this one candle had produced enough light to fill the room. Now that the wax was melting, the candle was shrinking, and so too was its flame.

           “William.” I don’t know what compelled me to give her my full name when everyone in my life, whether close friend or distant acquaintance, had only ever called me ‘Will.’

           Tap-tap-tap-tap

           “Such a cold night to be out in the snow.”

           I nodded. A cold night indeed. I was lucky to be inside. Lucky to be alive. How would I have ever found my way through all that snow?

           Snow?

           “I thought you said it was raining.”

           “Rain, snow. Sleet. Weather never knows.”

           Always changing, weather. My memory of the night was vague, coming back in scattered flashes. A path through woods. Moonlight in the trees. Leaves blown like confetti in the howling wind.

           “Do you even wear all these coats?”

           “New coat for a new moon.”

           “But the moon is full.”

           It was meant as a joke; I heard no laughter.

           “Made by light, worn by night. Sew it when the moon is bright.”

           And bright it was. Stars washed out in the haze of its silver glow. Shadows stretched tall and thin. Gnarled trees with barren limbs stood as echoes of themselves, branches curled like skeletons.

           “Do you give them away, the coats? To friends, family?”

           “Wouldn’t fit. Sewn for me.”

           She probably didn’t have anyone. She lived alone in a remote hut in the forest. Were we still in the forest? How far had she carried me? How had she carried me? What had she been doing out there in the first place?

           “Where did you find me again?”

           “Out in the cold. Lost, alone.”

           “But how far from here? Maybe I should see if the storm’s let up, and I can start walking home.”

           “Still too cold. Stay. No trouble, no trouble at all.”

           “It can’t be that cold. You could always lend me one of those coats.”

           The tapping stopped. The sewing machine wound to silence. The hooded figure stared, though I could not see her eyes. I felt them. Dense. Heavy. They returned to the machine, leaving me dizzy as the whir and tap-tap-tap-tap started again.

           “Wouldn’t fit. Not for you.” She threw the words out as if tossing aside old fruit.

           Less than half the candle remained. Taking note of the melting wax, the waning light, the woman worked faster. Perhaps this was her last candle. Perhaps she simply didn’t want to interrupt her work to fetch another one. Whatever the reason, it was clear she hoped to be finished with the new coat by the time the wick stopped burning.

           “Tea? Still hot. Might soothe.”

           “Maybe in a bit, thanks.”

           I wanted to leave. I felt less comfortable the longer I stayed, but I also felt drained. I was in no shape to walk home, especially if it was still raining, or snowing, or whatever the hell it was doing out there.

           I didn’t remember it snowing. Then again, there was a lot I didn’t remember. I didn’t remember being rescued, for one. I didn’t remember needing to be rescued, for another.

           But what did I remember? Disorientation. The smell of autumn. Hard earth, wet leaves. All sense of direction stolen by the breeze. Shadowed figure carved by moonlight beaming through a broken cloud. Eyes, new to me, but eerily familiar. As if I knew the feeling of them on me. Not the eyes of a person, but of something other. Eyes of autumn. Eyes of night. Eyes of shade and shadow. They made an impression, those eyes. The last thing I remember before waking up—those eyes closing in.

           The candle melted faster. Her pace increased to match it. Time was speeding up, but I was slowing down. I wanted to move my hand to my chest to feel my heartbeat, but it wouldn’t budge. Too relaxed. My body felt numb, locked in place as if asleep. I lacked the will or the strength to force it to move against the grain of its desired state.

           Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap

           Everything stopped. The machine gave way to silence. The candle’s flame drowned in the pool of its melted wax. Darkness swooped in.

           I fought to stay conscious. My eyelids had never felt so heavy. Not that it mattered. Even with them open, I couldn’t see. Shadows had eaten my surroundings. The only thing penetrating the darkness were two red beads, like tiny embers, where the woman sat. Her eyes, fixed on me, eerily familiar.

           Panic struck me. I found the strength to move my sedated muscles, casting aside the blanket as I sat up in the darkness. The eyes didn’t blink. They rose, then disappeared.

           My feet were bare. That was okay. I could do without shoes, no matter how cold, no matter how much snow waited outside. I needed to leave the hut. Fumbling through the dark, I searched for a door, finding only wall. I kept my hand against it, searching for a seam, or a crack. Instead, I landed on something not quite silk, but not quite rubber. It had qualities of both, and qualities of neither.

           “You can’t leave,” cowed a voice in my ear. “You’ll catch cold.”

           The eyes were back, red and burning in the dark.

           “You haven’t seen my new coat. Perfect fit. Perfect fit.”

           A match was struck, a candle lit. Behind the candle on the desk, the figure stood, face exposed. She wanted me to see her for who or what she was. Skinless. Corporeal shadow. Substance made of smoke. A burnt corpse patched with soot. Her mouth was shadow, but from the gleam in her eyes I knew she was grinning. I didn’t even notice the coat until she tilted back her head and pulled the hood over her dilapidated features. When she faced me again, she no longer bore the image of nightmares, but of something much worse. I was staring back at my own face.

           “Beautiful, no?”

           It wasn’t just the face. The voice was mine too. The body was more than a resemblance. It was me. It had hair sprouting from all the right places. The same dip in the collarbones. The same flab around the waist. I looked down at myself, seeing only muscle and bone. I knew then, without looking, what I had found on the wall. Another coat. Someone else’s.

           “What have you done to me?”

           “I love my new coat. I’ll wear it well. I always do. I have a way of accommodating my coats, as they accommodate me. You will join the others. You’ll fit in so nicely.”

           I had no intention of finding out what any of that meant. In the light of the candle, I saw the door across the room from where I stood.

           “I feel dizzy,” I said. “Does the offer for tea still stand?”

           She smiled, using my face. The features were mine, but the smile was not.

           “Drink the tea. Feel better. Relax.”

           She turned, reaching to remove the teapot and cup from the hearth above the empty fireplace. I didn’t hesitate. I grabbed the skin off the wall, then ran to the door, snatching the candle from the table as I did. She didn’t pivot until I reached the door, swinging it open to feel the cold night air clinging to my bones. I’d never been happier to greet the cold. Dead leaves crunched beneath my naked feet.

           The creature in my skin screamed. She ran out the door, pursuing me into the night.

           The house was surrounded by what appeared to be a wall of stone. When I drew closer, however, the candlelight revealed faces caught in eternal moans, stretching from bodies of sinew and bone, glossed in coarse sediment. My fate if the creature from the hut caught up to me. With the light of the candle signaling my position, she wasn’t far behind. But I couldn’t cast aside the candle just yet. I would be lost in darkness, where my pursuer would surely be at home in it. I needed first to find my way. Then disappear.

           I made a break for the gap in the wall lined up with the front of the house, only to find the skin-thief already there, waiting with an impish grin on my stolen face. The only choice left to me was to climb.

           The wall was only a little taller than I. It would only take one set of handholds and footholds to hoist myself up over the top. But I had no room for error. If I slipped, if I failed, the creature would be on me before I could try again.

           I picked the most feasible course with the aid of the flame. Then I set the candle down in the dead leaves. Fire crawled across leaves, a welcome draft of heat at my back. The creature ran towards me as I hurled the skin in my hand over the top of the wall. Cupping a fossilized skull in one hand and a femur in the other, I pulled myself up, finding just enough of a seam on somebody’s petrified back for my feet to cling.

           The skin-thief had reverted back to her true voice. Hate and terror had stripped away her commitment to imitating mine. I found stability atop the wall, using it to hoist myself the rest of the way as a fingernail scraped against the bottom of my foot. Taking advantage of the creature’s indecision over pursuing me or stamping out the fire spreading toward her hut, I picked up the stranger’s skin and ran.

           I stumbled over roots and rocks in the dark, but stayed on my feet, never falling, never stopping. Moonlight burned a hole through clouds to illuminate a path forward. I followed it to a river, finally stopping to catch my breath and slip into my new skin. In the dark of the hut, I’d grabbed the closest coat. Now that it was draped over tissue and bones, and I saw my image reflected in the water, my heart sank.

           The face looking back at me was old and wrinkled. The backs of my hands were peppered with age spots. I plucked a single strand of hair. Holding it skyward, I lost it against a backdrop of pale moonlight.

           As the creature had warned, the coat didn’t fit right. Most would see the standard sags of an old man, but I knew better. The subtle looseness made it feel all the more like a costume. Wearing it felt slimy, reptilian. I was an intruder in someone else’s house. A nomad walking in dead man’s boots.

           I followed the river out of the woods that night, all the way to my house. The lights were on. My parents were silhouettes on the other side of the curtains. They wouldn’t recognize me. Wouldn’t believe my story. It would come off as the ramblings of a loony old man. I turned around to leave, not knowing where I would go. A police car stopped me two blocks down the road.

           “A little late to be out for a stroll, don’t you think?”

           I shrugged.

           “Where are your clothes?”

           Another shrug. I didn’t have any.

           “What’s your name?”

           “Live around here?”

           I had no answers to any of their questions, so they took me in. They asked if I knew anything about a young man who had gone missing. Eighteen years old, about six feet, sandy blond hair.

           I felt sick.

           By my fingerprints, they identified me as Frank Mueller. I spent the night in the station. They gave me clothes. Apparently there were no records of Frank Mueller for the last twenty years. Passport, license, credit cards had all expired with no attempted renewals. Pronounced dead fifteen years ago, with no remaining family. It had been the bank who reported him missing. Frank Mueller had a sizable trust fund that he hadn’t drawn from in more than two decades.

           “Where you been all this time, Frank?”

           I drank a deep gulp of cold water. I hadn’t spoken all night. Hadn’t spoken at all in my new skin. When my voice came out, it sounded gravelly, and tired. It matched the face I’d seen in the river.

           “Guess I needed to get away for awhile.”

           The officers made no effort to hide their surprise at hearing me speak. I don’t know what shocked them more, the fact that I’d spoken, or that I’d said something coherent.

           “So what brought you back?”

           “It’s lonely out there.”

           “And where’s that?”

           I gave them directions to the skin-thief’s hut in the woods. It was hours before anyone returned. When they did, they claimed to have found nothing in the way of shelter. Just a strange wall surrounding an empty pit in the forest. No coats. No signs that a man had been living there undetected for twenty years.

           Their frustration was palpable, but I held no answers for them. Ultimately, they let me go. I received a card with various numbers on it in case I felt confused, or needed help. I assured them I would be okay. They offered me a ride, but I refused. I left the station, and walked out into afternoon sunlight.

I drew upon Frank’s trust fund to buy a cottage on the lake where I’ve spent the past two years in quiet relaxation. I have neighbors that I greet in passing, and birds that sing in the morning. It’s a nice way to spend one’s later years in life, though I can’t help but feel robbed of the early years.

           I think a lot about the hut that was never found. Did it burn to ash? Did the skinless woman cover it up or move it after I escaped? Whatever the fate of the hut, one thing is clear to me: the skin-thief is still out there.

           My true face walks among the crowds. The skin that is rightfully mine smirks in the shadows, waiting in the woods for victims wandering alone in the dark.

           I wonder if she is seeking me out. I’m a loose end, after all. The one that got away.

           I never sleep when the moon is full. I draw the curtains and bolt the doors, sitting upright in my reading chair, rifle in hand, jumping at every creak that could be a footstep on the porch.

           Somewhere the skin-thief adds to her collection. Made by light, worn by night. Sew it when the moon is bright.

           The night is clear, a full moon reflecting in the lake. An autumn wind rattles the windows. Nights like this bring unwanted visitors.

           Wood creaks. Door shakes.

           No face exists that I can trust.