People Skins Volume I: Dark, Strange and Fantastic Stories

By Morgan Delaney

Everyone's the same… on the outside.

 

Peel these People Skins apart to reveal why:

• a picturesque Irish fishing village with a dark past doesn't want visitors;
• it's crucial to know where that voice in your head really comes form.
• a sick man has to spend his final holiday alone;
• people now leave out teeth with the milk and cookies each Christmas;
• a frozen angel can't be thawed out of the cave it's trapped in;
• and more!

Uncover the dark, odd and incredible secrets behind these 10 tales of unsettling fantasy and subtle horror.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Morgan Delaney
• Release date: Jun 10, 2021
• ISBN: 9783985660025

Morgan Delaney

Morgan is a lifelong reading addict and horror fan.  He is a professional ex-pat and working on his debut novel.

Book preview

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Copyright © 2021, 2022 by Morgan Delaney.

This is a work of fiction. I made everything up. Any similarity between the characters and situations within its pages and places or persons, living or dead, is unintentional and co–incidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the contact email address below.

Published by Morgan Delaney

Contact: [e-mail]

www.morgandelaney.info

Edited by Claire Rushbrook and Julian Barr

Cover design by MiblArt

People Skins Volume 1 / Morgan Delaney. —1st ebook ed. 2021, 2nd ebook and 1st print ed. 2022

Ebook ISBN 978-3-98566-002-5

Audiobook ISBN 978-3-98566-008-7

Print ISBN 978-3-98566-007-0

Contents

Beauty is skin deep. Cut deeper.

Dedication

1. The Lonely Ocean

2. With A Woman In It

3. Teethgrinder

4. Egghead

5. One Last Look

6. Unreality TV

7. Straight Out Of From Behind The Looking Glass

8. The Gooseberry Plant

9. Married To The Mountain

10. Something Hungry In The Woods

Beauty is skin deep. Cut deeper.

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also By Morgan Delaney

Beauty is skin deep. Cut deeper.

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People Skins, Volume 0: Hidden Cuts features 5 more tales of off-beat fantasy and surreal horror—but only for subscribers:

a sheriff finds ice-cold dread in the middle of a red-hot desert;

Ireland’s miracle of moving religious statues becomes a nightmare;

Rose, Henry, and Reg are friends, lovers, and playing a deadly game;

Maria doesn’t believe a ghost haunts the phone box. But she will;

a fugitive pirate ship encounters a wreck with a mind of its own.

Join me to get your Hidden Cuts now!

(https://morgandelaney.info/newsletter/)

For Nadine, my queen

The Lonely Ocean

My very first note for this story is A blackmailer, a fisherman, a piece of string.

Two out of three made it into the final draft. I won’t reveal which two, you’ll have to read on to find out. And that’s not the only secret waiting to be discovered at the heart of this slow-burn fantasy mystery.

I set this story in 1950s Ireland, in the fictional town of Drumgorm. Although the town doesn’t exist, and most of us now live in 2021 (or later), I can recommend plenty of other damp Irish B&Bs for anyone interested in recreating Meredith’s holiday. Just get in touch!

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Father told me I mustn’t stare at the man, he was Poor. When our maroon Rover 90 pulled into Drumgorm yesterday evening, the fisherman was already there.

Our poor car! First the twisty, pot-holed Irish roads, and now the salty wind coming off the ocean and the blatting rain. We parked on the main street, behind three old wooden frames, just off the beach. They looked like gallows, but Father said they were used to hang the biggest fish for auction.

The fisherman sat in his boat on the beach, mending nets. Really, it was just a slope of gritty, chicken-feed coloured sand. A handy place for the town’s fishermen to pull their boats in out of the water.

Bits of red, orange and black stone, washed smooth by the waves, caught my eye when I looked away from his stare. The place stank of fish and I had the feeling that he wasn’t the only one watching us. Curtains twitched back into place as I looked around the town where we were to spend our holiday. We dragged our suitcases around the corner to our Bed and Breakfast lodgings with a Mrs Doyle.

They were soaked and she wouldn’t let us take them up to our rooms, in case they dripped on her carpet. We had to keep going up and down the stairs instead.

He was there again the next morning, still in his boat, under a tarpaulin sheet with a tangle of netting, as we splashed down Main Street. Only one side of Main Street had buildings, the other opened onto the beach, and faced the Atlantic Ocean. I felt a ticklish yawn in my stomach when I looked out into the distance. Like when I went up in the basket of the big wheel at the fairground. There was nothing between me and America on the far, far side.

I was going to boarding school when we returned. I couldn’t wait. Daphne was in France for her holiday. Even Claudia, who was kept at home for kissing a boy, would be at the gymkhana every day, surrounded by horses. And boys. And I was in Ireland with my parents and my awful little brother. I didn’t usually mind them—especially Father, who was a dear—but the rain was like Chinese water torture and everyone was taking advantage of Father.

Main Street only had two shops. We had visited one of them yesterday. Mother can’t sleep without a glass of milk beside the bed and none of us had dared to ask Mrs Doyle for one. Instead, we slipped back into our raincoats and escaped while she was in the kitchen.

Someone disappeared around the corner as we arrived back on Main Street and someone else, a man with large ears and grey hair, ducked back into his house when he saw us coming. The fisherman was there watched us enter the dusty, dingy greengrocers’ shop. The shop sold bread, milk, butter, apples, potatoes and tonnes of biscuits. All the biscuits were plain, except for one sinful option, with a chocolate coating on one side. The shop smelled of the manure mixed in with the soil that clung to the potatoes. When we got back to the B&B, Mrs Doyle was waiting for us in the hallway.

She didn’t say anything, but I got the impression that we shouldn’t have left without her permission.

Now we were on our way to the Maritime Museum which was right at the end of Main Street. We passed by the town’s other shop. It sold hardware. Judging by the window display, that meant it sold everything except bread, milk, butter, apples, potatoes and biscuits.

A woman and a man watched us through the window as we passed. They didn’t move at all, not even blinking, and a minute later I wasn’t sure if I had imagined them.

We spent an hour (and a half-crown each, for Mother and Father, a shilling apiece for Jonathan and I!) in the Museum, which was just a shed. There wasn’t much on offer and the windows and glass cases were crusty with dust, so it was hard to make out the few things they had. Wind whistled through the door, for which I was glad. The stink of tar, oil and ancient fish would have been even stronger otherwise.

There were two highlights. The first was the woman who took our money at the door. Her hair was tied up under a purple and red scarf, from which she had freed three fat greasy curls to sit on top of her shiny forehead. She wore a tan raincoat buttoned up to her chin and sniffed constantly as she followed us around. She had given me a Look, because I had gasped when she told Father the price.

Father, of course, had paid without a murmur, but I stewed as we went from one piece of petrified wood (A Real Piece of The Wreck Of The Mary, 1884) to another (A Real Piece of The Wreck Of The Benediction, 1897) to another (A Real Piece of The Wreck Of The Angelus, 1907).

Father said that they must charge a lot because museums are important but not popular. It was hard not to feel we were simply being soaked, however. What couldn’t I have done with seven bob!

The second highlight was an old, worn-out rowboat. It had been hung from the rafters, which showed through its holey bottom. After that, we looked at fishing pots, fishing rods and knives. Scraps of rope covered one entire wall. The longer scraps were knotted and named things like Tom Fool’s Knot, Clove Hitch or Monkey Fist. The shorter scraps were lined up in a row and nailed top and bottom to the wall below a plank of driftwood that read Types of Rope.

And all the time the rain rattled on the tin roof.

Eventually, we gave up. When we left, Jonathan ran ahead and dashed down