Bachelor, an esteemed city art dealer, first heard that his nephew was missing when he received a letter from his Sister Agneta.
"It's a strange thing Roper. My Sister says Fenton has been gone a week. She called round to his rooms to find his bed hadn't been slept in. It was a week earlier that he told her by mail that his skin complaint had become much worse and he was visiting a doctor well-versed in such matters."
"And he's not been seen since?"
"Indeed not. Understandably my Sister is worried about her son. He's gone up to Cambridge to study Maths. Quite the young genius is Fenton"
"And what is this skin condition he has?"
"A rare ailment whereby he sheds his entire body of skin every hour"
"Every hour! The poor fellow! How on earth does he cope?"
"With great difficulty by all accounts. Agneta has confided that Fenton was at his lowest ebb this year and his studies, already largely restricted to his room, have suffered dramatically, his Prof advising him to seek urgent medical attention before continuing"
"Hence the visit to the skin doctor"
"Yes, one Doctor Tarz it says on the business card my Sister enclosed in her letter, a dermatologist of some note I understand but also of some notoriety if I'm correct. Along with his wife, both one-time and very visible members of varsity society, neither have been seen on the circuit for at least a year and his wife hasn't been seen in public at all in all that time"
"Most peculiar Bachelor. But how do you know all this?"
"The gossip columns Roper and the tittle tattle among the bridge players at my club. It pays to keep your eyes and ears open my friend, especially as we are in such dire need of new and arresting canvas for our gallery window"
"Indeed, but what do you propose to do about your nephew's disappearance and why hasn't your sister been to the local constabulary?"
"Agneta does not want Fenton's terrible affliction to be the butt of local prattle and has instead implored me to make initial but discreet enquiries"
"And?"
"It strikes me the most prudent thing to do is to pay Dr.Tarz a visit at his dermatology practice located in the rarified countryside just outside Grantchester, a visit for which I would very much appreciate your company Roper old boy"
"Certainly. When do we leave?"
"Immediately. Close the gallery and I will hail a carriage. And Roper, bring a revolver"
The journey to the meadowland was pleasant enough, the picturesque villages passing like slices of Sunday cake, but the two art dealers could not avoid a sense of impending doom enveloping their minds and as they drew ever closer to the practice it became a tangible tingle of fear.
Something dreadful had befallen Fenton, they were both convinced.
Before them was a large cubed fastness erected brutally by a burbling stream and totally at odds with the lush pastures of this rural idyll. The surgery rose from the lane like a white-washed prison, the windows barred and the front door a formidable and ugly steel affair.
A sign confirmed the location.
"Dr. Z. X. Tarz, BSc, MD, MPhil, Fellow of the Royal Dermatological College of Varnia"
They rang the bell.
A crumpled goblin of a girl opened the massive door and stared at them.
"Yes?"
"We have an appointment with the Doctor. My friend here, he has terribly painful skin"
Roper looked at Bachelor.
"Yes, indeed I have. Horrendous. Our appointment is at 2pm"
The goblin girl let them in. She herself was completely without any skin whatsoever, her face and hands a mass of glistening red muscles and tendons.
The two men stared in utter disbelief.
"Wait here"
They were standing in a vast pale hallway, barren save for two sofas, a coat stand, a table with a book and pen and a mammoth painting hung on one wall.
It was clearly a waiting area for the most discerning of patients.
Roper approached the wall painting and realized that it was a single canvas of colour, a sort of pallid pink, about six feet by two, hung in portrait format just a few inches from the floor, almost, he thought, like a mirror.
He stared closer at the grainy material used and noticed distinct holes in it. Suddenly he realized to his horror that there were two eye slits and a depression where a belly button would be. Fascinated and appalled he reached out to put his finger on it.
"Mary Mother of God, it's skin Bachelor! And I could have sworn it flinched when I touched it!"
"How bizarre! I wonder if he's selling it?" Bachelor joked, hiding his growing unease.
"The Doctor will see you now.
This way please"
invited the muscle girl.
They were shown into a gigantic library packed with thousands of old tomes.
A single desk, gas lamp and chair were placed directly in the middle of the room and a door to the rear was labelled Laboratory.
The books were alphabetically stacked within two tiered galleries stretching round the room. A ladder allowed the upper tier to be reached.
Bachelor spied the nearest spines whilst they waited.
Arousing Dying Skin, Accessing the Nervous System, Bringing the Dead Dermis to Life, Before Total Skin Death, Combining Human And Other Flesh, Degloving the Living Form.
"Good Lord Roper, we have here a Doctor very interested in dying skin I can tell you!"
"Indeed I am Sir!"
"Ah! Doctor Tarz I presume?"
"Yes. I am Dr. Zorb Xellent Tarz. Welcome to my house. How may I be of service to you Gentlemen?"
"Well, this is my associate Roper and I am Bachelor, respected art dealers from the city"
"You wish to sell me a painting?"
"No, although we are enthralled by your large canvas in the hallway. No, we are here on a personal matter on behalf of my Sister. You see, her son, my nephew, has been missing for a week and she believes that he may have visited you Sir"
"And why would he do that?"
" He has a very rare skin condition, which needed urgent treatment"
"I see. And what did you say your nephews name was?"
"Fenton. His name is Fenton"
"Ah, yes, Fenton. Of course, the young man. He did seek my council about seven days ago, but I sadly advised him that his ailment was beyond my particular scope"
"Really? I would have thought that a boy who must shed his skin every hour was right up your street so to speak Doctor"
"Alas, my interest lies in repairing the stable skin mass and not a constant de-gloved envelope to use the parlance"
Roper interjected.
"A skin mass like the one you have hung in your hallway Doctor Tarz. Who's is that if I might ask?"
"Not that it's any of your business Mr. Roper, it is the complete dermis of my female assistant Hesta"
"Preposterous! That girl is a mere four feet tall. The skin in your hall is at least six feet!"
"You're correct Sir. Hesta has shrunk since I had to remove it, an unfortunate but completely natural effect of de-skinning. She is, in effect, drying out"
Roper was becoming annoyed.
"And why would you want to de-skin the poor thing in the first place Doctor?"
"You test my patience Mr. Roper, but if you insist on knowing, Hesta came to me with her skin coming completely loose, so I have basically removed and stored it until I can stop her muscle mass rejecting it. Does that satisfy you Mr. Roper?"
"And you had to hang it like a canvas in the hall. Isn't that a little moribund?"
"Our hallway is a constant temperature and ideal for flat dermal stasis. But I shall not bore you with any more medical matters, I expect that you wish to leave post-haste Gentlemen"
Bachelor wasn't ready to go.
He'd heard what he thought was a whimper from behind the laboratory door.
"When exactly did Fenton leave Doctor? The day and time. It's crucial I get my facts straight for my Sister as her next port of call will be the Police"
"The Police! My, is it really that unusual for a student at Cambridge to go missing for a week?"
"How do you know he was at Cambridge?"
"He must have mentioned it in our brief meeting. Let me go and check the register in the hallway. Excuse me one moment"
The Doctor left the room.
"Quick Roper, to the Lab! He's lying, I can feel it in my bones I tell you!"
The two men darted through the rear door and descended a flight of white marble steps into what was clearly an operating theatre of some kind.
All around was a profusion of flasks with a myriad of sickly coloured liquids. Test tubes bristled in racks. Bunsen burners flamed and fluids boiled like blisters in large conical bottles.
Everywhere were petri dishes full of quivering membranes reacting to the light and sound in the room.
In a larger dish were two eyeballs with eyelids, straggly optic nerves and part of a face sat in a pool of viscous blood.
Bachelor looked closer and to his horror the eyeballs blinked and followed both him and Roper as they tip-toed round the shelving.
It was then that the blood froze in their veins as a sight so unfathomably horrible it should never be seen by mortal eyes.
Before them was a gigantic spasming mass of purple and red flesh on the floor. It was pulsating and quivering like a dreadful boil the size of a table. Huge bleeding tracts covered it's entire form and pus oozed out of loathsome squares, which had at some point been stitched.
The two men realized to their disgust that the stitching was surgical and that the squares were..... grafts of skin!
But where from?
Alas, it was Bachelor who found the answer and one he wished to his dying day he hadn't seen.
On a steel gurney under a bright gas light lay a pitiful figure, whose whole body had been ravaged by scalpel, where sheets of skin had been cut and lifted away to reveal the wet crimson musculature beneath.
A fresh sheet had been placed in a shallow bath of blood on a steel table beside the body.
Bachelor went closer and grimaced as he saw that the eyes, eyelids and cheeks had been removed and he recalled what they had seen in the petri dish earlier and shuddered.
But it it was his recognition of the form before Bachelor that nearly tipped him into the realm of complete madness.
Even without his eyes and face Bachelor knew that the affronted figure before him was his nephew Fenton, who had stumbled into this piece of Hell a week earlier.
"Oh my dear Fenton, I am so terribly sorry. I am too late!"
Suddenly the figure's hand shot out and grabbed Bachelor's wrist.
Startled to near death, he leapt backwards in fright and the figure was dragged upwards, where it staggered off the gurney and lurched forwards towards the man.
It stared at him with empty sockets and a piteous gurgle sounded from it's faceless mouth.
"Kill me! Please kill me!"
"What? I can't kill you Fenton, you're my Sister's boy!"
"Uncle? Uncle Bachelor? Is that you? Then for pity's sake kill me before the Doctor carries on taking ... More!"
"I wouldn't kill him if I where you Sir!"
Bachelor whirled around to see Doctor Tarz standing there pointing a gun at him.
"You see, your nephew here, well, he's a unique donor capable of creating new sheets of skin every hour! He's a godsend and just what I needed to save my beloved wife Iluna from certain death"
"That .. thing ... Is your wife?"
"Ah, yes, for the layman she's difficult to stomach I agree, but as I was responsible for her dreadful condition, an experiment sorely misjudged, then I am duty-bound to save her from her otherwise inevitable and agonizing end. Besides which, I love her and she needs skin. Lots of skin!"
Roper, who had been hitherto out of sight, stepped in front of Tarz pointing his revolver at him.
"Put down the gun Sir and kick it away"
"Ah, Mr.Roper, I'm afraid I can't do that. You see, it's time for my wife's hourly graft and I've a fresh one waiting"
Tarz appeared to raise his weapon and at that very moment Fenton staggered forward falling on the startled Doctor, who fired and missed as he twisted and lost his balance, stumbling straight onto his wife's gelatinous pile.
She began to shudder and latch onto the doctor.
"No, Iluna! Nooooooo!"
But it was too late. Iluna's colloidal arms of bloodied flesh enveloped her husband and immediately began to rip away his skin in appalling swathes and drape it over her juddering bubbles.
The doctor screamed in excruciating pain as he was flayed alive by his wife, who convulsed in the ecstasy of the near complete graft.
A little more skin was all she needed.
Iluna began to stand.
The two men backed away, pausing to lift Fenton to his feet. Roper pocketed the dish of eyes and nerves and together they shuffled towards the staircase to the library above.
Iluna followed with outstretched arms, leaving a glistening trail like a garden snail.
"I want your skin!" She screamed.
In the hallway the retreating party were met by Hesta the goblin girl, who's membrane hung on the wall behind.
The monstrous shambling Iluna saw the hanging skin and her eyes widened.
"I must have it and then I will be whole!"
Hesta stood before her with the Doctor's gun.
"No, it is mine. You cannot have it!"
"But I must! I must!"
Staggering forwards towards the hanging, Iluna stopped dead as two lethal shots entered her jellied mass, piercing her heart and spleen.
"Hestaaaaaaaaa!"
The dying creature fell onto the girl and both hit the floor with a sickening splat.
Hesta reached out towards the terrified trio and gurgled out four words before perishing Iluna's caustic folds.
"Use my skin Fenton!"
Roper, Bachelor and his beleaguered nephew stumbled towards the main road, where they hailed a passing carriage.
Bachelor threw his jacket over the shivering Fenton and Roper placed his bowler on his head, so as not to terrify the driver with the boy's missing face.
"Any luggage Sir?"
"Yes, just this large framed canvas Cabby"
With the goblin girl's precious gift safely stowed they drove away at speed towards the comforting lights of the City, only once nervously looking back at that loathsome and terrible house of skin.
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