Day of the Spiders

by Brian O'Gorman

  The spider made its way up her lifeless body, acting on the only instinct that it knew. It had to hide. It had to hide and wait for its next victim.

  Exactly four minutes later, Perry arrived home.

  8.

  Thompson and Wells were sitting in the relative safety of their car. Thompson was on the phone to the hospital and Wells was nursing the bite on his hand. It didn’t hurt so much, but the damn thing was itching him like crazy. It took everything he had to stop rubbing at the damn thing and making it worse. He even licked it and blew on it in an effort to cool the skin down a little, but none of it seemed to help at all. He lowered his hand and tried to listen in on Thompson’s phone call. He fidgeted, not knowing quite what to do with himself. Thompson gave him a look that wouldn’t have been out of place at a four-year-old asking if they were there yet. Thompson went back to his phone call, offered a thank-you and then hung up.

  “Well, what a nice little turd storm we have walked in on,” said Thompson.

  “What do you mean chief?” said Wells. He was dying to scratch at his hand again, but instead he stuck it under his leg where he couldn’t get to it.

  “The little girl, Lottie Richmond. They are saying that she died of anaphylactic shock. She was allergic to stings. They found two on her leg” said Thompson. He sighed and rubbed his forehead with his fingers.

  “That’s not what we saw in that garden,” said Wells.

  “Nope. Which means we now have an investigation, and one we have to be very careful with. One false word to the wrong person and this one could blow up in our faces.”

  “So, what’s our next move?” said Wells. He couldn’t resist scratching at his hand any more, he pulled it from under his leg and drew his nails back and forth across it. It felt like heaven. Thompson frowned, watching him raking at his hand.

  “I want to take you to have that bite examined,” said Thompson.

  Wells dropped his hands into his lap as if he had been caught doing something nasty. “Why?”

  “I want to know if that little girl really was stung or if she was subjected to the same thing as you,” said Thompson.

  Wells looked down at the angry red skin, suddenly worried. “What if it is?”

  “Then we know her death was caused by a spider. Then, we will have to get the Environmental Agency involved, and that means, my dear old friend, that we are going to have to start knocking on doors and fetching their coffee until all of this is resolved. I knew I should have retired early, I just knew it,” said Thompson, shaking his head.

  “Should I call it in?” said Wells.

  “Not yet, we need to make sure that it was a spider that bit Lottie Richmond. If her bite matches yours then we will know for sure.” said Thompson. He started the engine and got the car moving.

  It only took ten minutes to get to the hospital. The roads were pretty quiet now that the morning rush hour had long since finished. Wells felt an uneasy tension creeping through his body, but there was at least a slight reassurance in the thought that if he was going to roll over and die because of the bite, he would probably have already done so by now. Still, there was a light sweat on his head and a crawling in his guts that probably wouldn’t go away until he had seen a doctor.

  They entered the A&E department and walked up to the reception desk. Thompson showed his identification.

  “And what can we do for you today?” said the receptionist with practiced politeness and a painted-on smile.

  “I’m afraid I can’t discuss it with anyone other than a doctor. It is a highly sensitive and classified issue and I hope I can count on your cooperation,” said Thompson. His tone was a little blunt which was out of character for him. He was normally polite almost to a fault.

  The receptionist’s smile faltered a little and then he nodded and got up from his desk. He disappeared from view for a few moments and then came back. He leaned over the desk slightly so he could talk quietly to Thompson.

  “You can go straight through. Doctor Wilson is waiting for you sir,” he said.

  Thompson offered his hand and the receptionist shook. “Thank you, that’s a big help to us,” he said.

  The receptionist waved it off, “It’s no problem sir.”

  They went through the waiting area which was littered with a few people sitting in the uncomfortable plastic seats. Some of them looked up at Thompson and Wells as they went by with a little bitterness in their eyes at having someone jump the queue. They went through the large double doors at the back of the waiting area and into the department. A young woman in a dark blue uniform was waiting for them as they came through. She offered her hand.

  “Doctor Wilson. I understand I can be of some assistance to you,” she said.

  Thompson shook, “Well, I sure hope so,” he said.

  Wilson nodded politely and led them to one of the side rooms. She offered them a seat on two lightly padded chairs which had looked like they had seen a hell of a lot of action over the years. Wilson took a chair opposite.

  “How can I help?” said Wilson.

  Thompson showed his identification again. “We are investigating the death of a little girl by the name of…”

  “Lottie Richmond,” Wilson interrupted.

  “You know about it then?” said Thompson.

  “I was on call when she came in. The press have been actively trying to get information on the case. I’ve had to get some of your boys in to help keep them away from Lilly, the child’s mother.”

  “Do you know what killed her?” said Thompson.

  “Severe anaphylaxis. It’s an allergic reaction. As far as we could tell, she had been stung on her left ankle. Her mother however…..she….”

  “What did she say?” said Thompson, leaning forwards slightly.

  “Well, it was hard to make it all out. She was hysterical, y’know? As you would be in that kind of a situation. None of us could really get any sense out of her. She is on the psychiatric ward right now dosed up to the eyeballs. I wouldn’t even go there for at least a week or so if you want to try and find anything out from her. I can get Doctor Rayton to keep you updated with her progress if you like,” said Wilson. She looked almost apologetic.

  “That would be great. We will, at some point, need to piece together what happened. Did she sustain any injury?” said Thompson.

  “No, nothing. Whatever stung Lottie had already gone by the time that Lilly had got to her.”

  There was a pregnant pause. Wells knew what the nest question was, he automatically covered the bites near his knuckles with his other hand. He felt like a child trying to hide a piece of chewing gum from the teacher.

  “We went to have a look around the scene this morning, my colleague here was… stung on his hand. I need to know if the injury he has is the same as the one on Lottie Richmond,” said Thompson.

  “By all means,” said Wilson. She fished a pair of glasses from her top pocket and perched them on her nose. She leaned forwards and reached out her hands towards Wells. He hesitated for a moment and then cautiously offered out his injury. Wilson took hold of it and began to prod around it a little with her thumbs. Wells felt a dull pain shooting up his forearm.

  “Hold still a moment,” she said, feeling Wells tensing up a little. The area around the bite looked red and angry. The two tiny pinholes were sticking up out of the skin, raised up by a small amount of swelling that had been exacerbated by Wells’ scratching and rubbing. Wilson suddenly pushed her thumbs together and a fountain of green and red streaked pus shot upwards from the wound and splattered on Wilson’s hand. Thompson jumped backwards, nearly overbalancing his chair as he did so.

  “Jesus….” said Wells in a strangled voice.

  Wilson seemed to be nonplussed by what had just happened. She squeezed again, harder this time and a slug-trail of secondary pus came running out of the bite. A smell began to fill the room. It was like somebody had just opened a month-old bag of fruit that had been left on a radiator. Thompson scrambled his handk
erchief out of his pocket and clapped it to his face. Wilson finished squeezing when the fluid from the bites started to run clear. She let go of Wells’ hand, stood up and headed towards the door.

  “Don’t move,” she said.

  She went out through the door and then a moment later came back into the room pulling a small trolley behind her that was full of bandages and other medical equipment. She brought it back over to Wells, sat back down and began to clean up his hand. She applied a small dressing to the punctures and then sat back in her chair. Wells clutched at the dressed hand, visibly shaking.

  “That wound was exactly the same as the wound on Lottie Richmond and it was infected in exactly the same way. In my opinion, whatever stung your friend here was also responsible for the death of Lottie Richmond.”

  “Are you sure about that?” said Thompson, lowering his handkerchief. His face was still wrinkled into a grimace from the terrible smell in the room.

  “I would bet my career on it. Lottie Richmond was allergic to stings, we know that for a fact. She had been in this hospital before with anaphylaxis and we brought her back out of it, no problem. This time she had no reaction to any of the antihistamines or the adrenaline that we administered. It was almost as if she had been poisoned beyond any help that we could give her.” said Wilson.

  “I see,” said Thompson.

  “Are you going to tell me exactly what stung your friend?” said Wilson.

  Thompson sighed. “He wasn’t stung, he was bitten.”

  Thompson paused, wondering if he should say the words that were hovering in his mouth. He ploughed on. “He was bitten by a spider.”

  Wilson’s forehead wrinkled into a frown, “A pet tarantula? Or…..it wasn’t…”

  “No,” said Thompson, cutting her off. “It was nothing like the Newtown spiders. This one looked normal, like any other regular spider.”

  Wilson sighed. “It looks like we may have a problem on our hands Detective.”

  “Possibly. I’m hoping that this was a one off, an anomaly. If there is a problem then I need more to go on before I start declaring an emergency and potentially starting a panic,” said Thompson. He leaned forwards. “I need to be able to count on you and your staff to keep all of this quiet, and to report to me any other cases that you might see coming here. If we get any more then I will contact the environmental agency, they have measures in place just for this kind of thing.”

  “Leave me your card. I’ll brief everyone that needs to know. If I see anything else I’ll give you a call straight away,” said Wilson.

  Thompson thanked her and pulled a card out of his inside pocket and handed it to her. He looked over at Wells who was just beginning to get the colour back into his cheeks.

  “Looks like it’s going to be a long day for us my friend,” he said.

  “Hasn’t it been already?” said Wells.

  9.

  During the time that Thompson and Wells were talking with Doctor Wilson, Katie Underwood arrived at the hospital. She was wheeled into the A&E department with Perry half running alongside her holding her limp hand. The shot of morphine that they had given her on the bathroom floor had put her into a semi-conscious state. Her half-lidded eyes were trying to focus in on what was happening around her, but the effects of the drug made them roll over white, the eyelids flickering for a moment and then close again. Every thirty seconds or so she would offer a weak cough and would croak Perry’s name. Every single time, he would give her lifeless hand a squeeze, bend down to her ear and whisper ‘I’m here babe, I’m here’

  Her leg was messed up bad. Perry knew that the moment he had found her on the bathroom floor. He had seen a broken bone before, many moons ago when he had been a little over fifteen years of age. His brother John had decided to show off the backflip he had been practicing at the swimming baths. But this time he was going to attempt it off the edge of the bandstand in Centre Park in front of Perry and his small entourage of friends, most of which were girls. John’s ego had told him that the backflip would be a piece of cake. It had told him that he would be able to pull it off just as well on the bandstand as he had done at the pool. His ego, however, didn’t take into account that every time he had done the flip at the swimming baths that he generally had hit the water knees first. It also failed to note that the distance from the edge of the bandstand to the ground was about a third shorter than the distance from the edge of the pool to the water. He had taken the jump, grinning like a loon at Perry and hoping that the girls he was with would be impressed by his athletic prowess and perhaps would want to hang out with him instead of his dorky brother. He took flight, his head rolling backwards and his body flipping almost perfectly. At least it did until his forehead caught the edge of the bandstand. The impact nearly knocked him out and it sent his body into a sideways spin. The first thing that ended up hitting the ground was his outstretched right hand which then absorbed the entire weight of John’s contorted body. It was a no-contest, and John’s forearm broke cleanly in half with a dull crunch and folded up under the rest of him.

  Perry had remembered that gobbling scream that his brother had made. He had never forgotten it, nor had he ever forgotten the sight of his mangled arm as he rolled around on the grass, uttering curses that Perry had never even heard before in his life.

  ‘Cuntmugger, fuckgibbon, my arm, you dirty bastard cocklolly, my FUCKIN’ ARM.’

  He had also remembered how he had stayed awake all night thinking about it, all alone in his house after his mother and father had gone to the hospital to put John back together again. He had thought about the bones breaking, the noise it had made, the sickening grinding noise as he tried to move it. It had gotten too much for him, he had to go and throw up, such was the effect it had on him.

  He hadn’t thrown up when he had found Katie, but the sight of her leg, all bent out of shape near her hip, and the sliver of bone peeking through the skin had for a moment brought all those nightmares right back again. He had cursed so loud that Katie had started to stir. He had seen her trying to move and he went down to the floor and held her still. He told her what to do, that help was coming, and he was here with her. He had felt a numbing sense of something taking over him, the same thing that had made him run to a phone box just outside the park gates to phone for an ambulance for John. And it was here again, scrambling his phone out of his pocket, making the call and keeping Katie as still as he could whilst she twitched and writhed and made strangled noises in her throat. The ambulance was there in six minutes, and to Perry, those six minutes were the longest of his life. He had never been so glad to hear the sound of a siren in his life. The moment the two paramedics had made it to the top of the stairs, he felt all of that anxiety, that residual old wound fading away and closing up. Katie would be just fine. A broken leg wasn’t going to kill her, he knew that much. Yes, there was a fair bit of blood soaked into the towel that was tied around her, but not enough to put her into any real danger. She would get fixed up just fine, perhaps a little surgery, perhaps a decent sized scar on her leg, perhaps a permanent limp and aches and pains during the winter months, but she would be alive, and that was all that mattered.

  When she arrived at the hospital, she was sent straight up to x-ray. Perry had to wait around for her to come back, sitting on the uncomfortable blue plastic chair that was in her cubicle. He drummed his feet nervously. There was a surprising amount of people in the department at this time of day. He logically thought that the department would usually be quiet until a Friday or a Saturday night when the head injuries and bruised ribs from alcohol induced street fights came to get patched up. But it didn’t seem to be the case today. Every other cubicle they had passed had a body in it, some young, some old, one or two with oxygen masks clapped to their faces.

  As he sat in the chair, wondering to himself how long it would take for them to take a picture of Katie’s leg, a long, braying howl came from the other cubicles which made him almost jump right out of his skin.

 
‘Don’t touch it…..don’t you touch….no…no…nooooooooo’

  The voice rose to a shriek and then fell into a series of low grunts. Perry thought that they had probably had a hit of what Katie had been pumped full of before they had carefully moved her from the bathroom floor. She had still yelled out when they had pulled the leg straight, even the deadening effect of the morphine wasn’t enough to kill the pain of the bone being pulled back through the skin. The thought of it made him put his head into his hands and wish that the madness could end. He closed his eyes and listened to the bustle of the department all around him. His mind was going through everything he needed to get done. He would have to talk to Katie’s mother and tell her all about the accident. She would then filter it to everybody who needed to know and probably a generous portion of those who didn’t need to know.

  He didn’t care for her mother, not one jot, but he had enough grit inside him to be able to tolerate her presence when he needed to. Hell, he might have to up his game over the next few months whilst Katie got better, he might need dear old Mother-In-Law’s help. He even entertained the idea of putting her up in the spare room for a few weeks. Christ, now wouldn’t that be something to come home from work to every day.

  What other choice did he have? He couldn’t count on his own family who had never approved of Katie in the first place. He often wondered how he had turned out the way he had after he had grown up living amongst such utter snobbery. It beggared belief. He had never really noticed it until he had left home and had become increasingly reluctant to attend another garden party or charitable fundraiser which, instead of serving his usual liking of a good strong pint of bitter or stout, would have foolishly named cocktails on the menu and the chance to bid on something that you didn’t even want all, in the name of a charity auction. And the people that went to these things. How he had not slapped one of them around their big, wet ears was beyond him.