Dreadful Skin Read Free Page B

during his time in India, you know. That was where the event occurred that changed him so, though you do not think him much changed now. I can only say that there are nights when he must be seen to be believed—and days when we must close him away for fear of him, and for what he would do if left unattended.
    “He went out on safari with the son of a friend—I think you know him, so I’ll leave his name from the story, if you don’t mind—but he went out with a rifle and an elephant. They were hunting tigers, as you do when in a place such as that.
    “I’ve heard stories, you know—of places like that one. They tell me it is as if the whole land itself rises up and wishes you gone. Every stray plant has thorns and each new creature is deadlier than the last. I swear, I wish we had left it alone. I think so sometimes,” he added quickly, “but I know that it’s all for the best. I’m a brick for the empire, and my son was too. I mean no disrespect or disloyalty when I say these things. I only mean that it’s an inhospitable place, more hot and unwelcoming than hell. That is what I’ve heard, though you can take or leave it as you like.”
    I thought the marquess should leave it, personally, as my father was well into his cups, but inexplicably speaking less nonsense than usual. Let him tell the truth through a fog of alcohol. Stories told that way are always easy to discard when morning comes and a headache comes with it.
    Besides, India was not so bad. It was hot, yes. But England is cold, as often as not, and between the two I believe that I prefer the struggles of staying cool to the struggles of staying warm.
    Like so many other preferences of mine, my father would not understand it.
    “Somewhere under the jungle canopy they rode on their elephants with the brown boys guiding them, calling out sights and hushing the party when game felt close. I imagine he wore a proper helmet, and he carried that old gun of mine—I insisted he take it, though now I wish I’d lent him something bigger, or something faster to shoot.
    “But then a storm brewed up fast, as these things do in such hellish climes. They were too far into the bush to retreat, so they huddled for camp and sheltered themselves as best they could.
    “One of the brown fellows cried out, and was lost. It’s dark there, when the sun goes out and trees stretch high and thick above. They couldn’t see what took the man. They couldn’t tell if he was hurt, or dead, or only running. The storm did not relent, though. Water came down in drops as big as your thumb, and the elephants shuddered for wet and worry. They stamped their giant feet into the mud and wished to be elsewhere, as did the remaining men, I’m sure.
    “There in the sodden jungle, where it must have been quite dark, they could not see so well for the shadow and the pitching rain. They could not have known when the trees parted, and through them slipped the beast.”
    “A tiger?”
    “What else?” My father asked it drunkenly, sloshing his glass and gesturing at the window, at the ceiling with it.
    I had told him what else, as best I could. We both knew it was no tiger, but he had no other name by which to call the dread, so he gave it a word he knew.
    “It pounced at them, it leaped upon them!” And here he lost more brandy, or scotch, or whatever the drink was that night. “It fell upon them, you see—and my son had not stayed atop his elephant where there was more safety. They say that a tiger won’t disturb an elephant, and if my son had believed it—”
    I’d believed it, but I think it would not have mattered. The elephants were trumpeting, by then. The danger was too near, and it was something that made the big beasts break, and run.
    “He might have stayed there, atop the beast. But no. He had come down to the ground to chat with another man—and then the beast, it leaped! I said that, it leaped—and it fell on them both. The one man, the friend of my son, he died