Free In This Skin by Simon Clark Page B

tugging up her jeans. Behind her Leon managed to fasten his belt while carrying both flashlights; they lit the corridor with light beams that skittered crazily along the walls, ceiling, floor. In ten seconds Kay had reached the door at the back of the building to slip through the gap beneath the panel. She felt a tack snag a triangular rent in the denim of her pants. She didn't care. She wanted out of the Luxor. She needed out. All too clearly she remembered the face that had stared down as they made love on the table. The head was shockingly misshapen. Its eyes bulged like two pulpy balls from the head, while the mouth seemed to be formed from flaps of red skin, arranged like the petals of a rose. The figure had leaned forward, resting its belly against the lighting gantry guardrail, its two arms resting on the horizontal bar, only the arms were impossibly long. They were thin as rods and ap64 peared to taper into points rather than terminate in hands. Those monstrous eyes had looked deep into hers as if it recognized her. Dear God… Kay brushed the knees of her jeans with hands that fluttered like wings. She was shaking all over. Great shuddering tremors ran down her back.
        Leon scrambled through. ”Kay?”
        And was it wearing clothes?
        She remembered a lot of dark gray skin that glistened like the underbelly of a slug. A suggestion of mucus oozing through pores the size of wormholes. But clothes? Yes, there'd been dark clothes, only so worn they hung in fraying loops like bandages ”Kay?”… something like a loosely wrapped Egyptian mummy And those eyes that bulged from the face. Tumor eyes, she thought, sick to her stomach.
        Tumor eyes that each held a fierce black pupil that…
        ”Kay. Come on, snap out of it.”
        She blinked. Leon stood with his hand on her shoulder, gently shaking her; his face was so full of gentle concern for her that it made her give a gulping sob.
        ”Hey, don't worry, girl,”he whispered. ”We're fine now.”
        ”Leon.”A tremor in her voice yielded words in a stutter. ”D-did you see w-what was in there? Oh, Christ, did you see its face!”
        ”Yeah, some guy who jerks off while watching couples make out… the freak.”
        ”Freak?”She shook her head, trying to figure out what she'd seen on the gantry. ”Leon. It wasn't human”
        ”Hey come on, Kay!”He hugged her. ”It was just a weirdo in a mask. He was trying to put a scare in you.”
        ”No… You didn't see him properly His face was all-”
        ”Shh… hey It was just some jerk. Forget it.”He held her, making gentle cooing noises. Then he kissed her forehead. ”Take the keys and lock yourself in the car.”
        ”What for?”Then she realized. ”No, Leon; no way.”
        ”I left the poster behind on the stage, didn't I?”
        ”Leon, don't go back in there, please.”
        ”I'll be thirty seconds.”
        ”Leon, that thing was… if you'd seen it, you wouldn't go anywhere near it.”
        ”If I see him I'll stuff that mask so far up his ass he'll choke on it.”
        ”Leon, don't.”She grabbed his T-shirt to stop him. ”Come back to the car!”
        ”Thirty seconds. Tops.”
        ”Forget the poster.”
        ”But that's throwing away good money, girl. And who was kickboxing champion in the county league?”
        ”Please-”
        ”Here, take the flashlight.”He grinned. ”Start counting. Bet you a Steak and Shake I'm back at the car with that poster before you reach thirty.”
        ”I'm staying here then,”she said, defiant. ”I'm not waiting in the car'' ”OK. Start the count.”
        It was an old game they'd played since junior high. They'd time each other climbing trees or racing through the old service duct that ran in complete darkness under the tumbledown power plant near home. They'd synchronize the pace of the count to make it