Day of the Spiders

by Brian O'Gorman

  He was rationalising again. He was trying as hard as he could to justify his ruining of their perfect day out. The bottom line was he was going to have to sacrifice something. He was either going to have to give up his nest egg or he was going to have to hurt his family again. He was leaning on the side of just letting it go, making good on his promise and then his phone buzzed in his hand. He had an email. It was an email from his informer, his man on the inside. He opened the message and read it through. Then he read it through again. The content of the message changed everything. This wasn’t just a story now, it was a mission.

  He made his way out of the cubicle, out of the toilets and back over to where Mary was sitting with Jax. They were giggling about something, their smiles almost identical, save for the gaps in Jax's teeth.

  “Where have you been, I was just about to send Jax in after you. Are we.....” she broke off when she saw the look on his face. A bolt of dread went through her. She had seen that look on his face far too many times. She had really believed that she would never see that look again, especially after last night, especially after today had got off to such a good start.

  “Braden?” she said. Perhaps it wasn't what she thought. She was praying to God that she was wrong.

  Please, don't let him do this, don't let him.....please, not today....please...

  “I have to go,” he said in a quiet voice. He couldn't meet her eyes. He couldn't watch her heart break right in front of him, not again.

  Stop this....stop it, stopitstopitstopit....

  But he couldn't stop it. He couldn't let this one last opportunity go. She would see sense when he came back with his nest egg and his p45. She would forgive him, she would see.

  “Daddy? Where are you going?” said Jax. Even she had seen this too many times. The tears were already building in her eyes. Yes, even she knew he was selling them out for one last story.

  Mary didn't even spare him the dignity of going outside to chew him out where Jax couldn't witness it. She stood up, bumping the table. The glasses on the surface gossiped briefly.

  “You bastard. You PROMISED!” she screamed at him. The bowling lanes fell silent and every head turned to look at them.

  "I....I...I have to, just this one last time, that will be it, I prom..." He cut it off, he couldn't ever make a promise ever again, not now.

  "I don't want to hear another word from you. I've put up with this shit for long enough, long enough." Jax covered her eyes and began to sob uncontrollably. Braden put out his hand to try and console her and Mary slapped it away, hard. "Don't you fucking touch her," Mary shrieked.

  Braden opened and closed his mouth. He was at a loss. He wanted to say something, just something that could make her understand. But he saw the blazing fury in her eyes and he knew that she wouldn't listen. He just stood there for a moment and Mary gathered Jax up and held her whilst she cried her little heart out.

  "Well, what the fuck are you waiting for? Go and chase your little story. Forget about us, your family who have stood by you all these years." She levelled a finger at him, "When you are done playing mister news man you can come and pick up your things and get out of our house. I won't put my daughter through this anymore. Now get out of my sight," she yelled at him, her cheeks turning a shade of scarlet with the force of her shout. Braden turned and walked towards the exit. The sound of his daughter crying seemed to follow him as he went out of the door.

  Braden Benson had never felt so low, so disgusted with himself in his life. He had blown it for the last time and he knew it. But, there was that little voice in his mind again that was talking to him.

  Make it worth it. Make it worth it and she will take you back.

  He had to believe it, he had to.

  11.

  Doctor Forbes, the orthopaedic surgeon had just finished making his first incision on the broken leg of Katie Underwood when his patient began to have trouble breathing. The ventilator began to sound its alarm, sending Doctor Ochre to the top end of the prone body on the operating table.

  “What in the blue hell is going on?” Forbes roared.

  Ochre ignored his anger, as she always did. He was a cantankerous old fuck at the best of times. She pulled the ventilator off and shone a light down the tube that was holding Katie’s windpipe open.

  “I can see something, a blockage. Hold on for a second,” said Ochre. Whatever it was down there, it was almost fully blocking Katie’s airway. Perhaps it was a piece of chewing gum, or a dislodged tooth from her fall that she had sucked down as she went under. It had happened before, she could deal with it, no sweat. She grabbed the thin, long grippers, the same ones she had used for a thousand other problems just like this one and she delved into the tube. She managed to get hold of the object with her first go and a moment later it was lying in a metal dish on the counter. Ochre reconnected the breathing tube and Katie began to take in the correct amount of breath again.

  “Can we carry on without a fucking circus now?” said Forbes, the bloody scalpel still in his hand.

  “Yes Doctor,” said Ochre. She tried to hide her contempt for Forbes in her voice, but she didn’t quite pull it off. He shot her a look that could have stopped a clock.

  “Sorry Doctor,” she said quickly.

  Forbes went back to work, with a shake of his head and Ochre took a moment to go and see what it was that she had just pulled from the throat of their patient. She picked up the dish and looked into it with a frown. She couldn’t make out what it was exactly. It looked to her like a black date with strings attached to it. She prodded the thing with her thinly gloved finger for a moment, trying to work out exactly what it was. Was it soft or hard? Was it a piece of food or something else? She just couldn’t work it out.

  Suddenly the thing in the dish came to life. Ochre quickly realised that it wasn’t string attached to the thing it was a set of long spindly legs. They waved in the air for a moment and then it flipped over. It was a spider. A big black house-spider. It was covered in slime that had come from the inside of the girl’s throat. The spider suddenly ran over the side of the dish and onto Ochre’s wrist. She let out a yell and dropped the metal dish to the floor with a loud clatter. At the same moment, a small flash of pain flared in Ochre’s wrist, not unlike the sting of a nettle. She shook the spider from her arm and it fell gracelessly to the floor. It lay on the ground, stunned for a moment, just enough time for Ochre to move forwards and step on the spider. The small body crackled under the weight of her shoe and she dragged it backwards just to make sure that the job was done. She turned back to the rest of the crew in the operating theatre. Every masked face was looking directly at her including Forbes whose visible features were contorted into a look of rage.

  “Are you done turning my theatre into a circus, Ochre? I’m trying to save this girl’s leg, if you don’t mind,” he snapped through the muffle of his mask.

  “Sorry Doctor, we had a spider in here, I took care of it,” said Ochre.

  “A fucking spider. God give me strength,” said Forbes and went back to work.

  It took three hours to fix Katie’s leg. By the time the operation was finished Katie had a beautifully constructed metal brace on the outer side of her leg. The four metal bolts poking into the skin were holding the broken ends of the bones together perfectly. Katie was wheeled out and into recovery.

  Doctor Ochre went to clean down, pulling her theatre gown off and dumping it in the bin. She pulled the gloves off and had a look at the wrist that had been bothering her since she had the encounter with the spider. There was a raised lump there and, what looked like, two pin pricks sitting in the middle of the inflamed flesh.

  It bit me, she thought, The little bugger must’ve bitten me.

  But that was impossible. House spiders didn’t bite, they didn’t bite at all.

  They don’t sit in the throats of unconscious girls either.

  That was true.

  She decided to go and look it up, just to be sure. Research was always the bes
t defence, she had learned that at university. She set off for the office to go and find out about spider bites. Christ, the damn thing itched. Whatever the spider had done to her, it itched like hell. She had to ball up her other hand into a tight fist to stop herself from scratching at it. She walked quickly through the corridors trying to avoid all eye contact with everyone so that she didn’t get embroiled in a new patient. She set her face into a deep frown and kept her sight down to the floor. She picked up her walking pace and then the illusion that she was already on her way to do something important and she wasn’t to be disturbed was complete. Her little performance got her all the way to the office. She opened the door and froze. The room was full of doctors and most of the nurses that were on shift. They were collected in a semi-circle around Doctor Wilson who was in the middle of talking to them all. She looked over at Ochre and beckoned her into the room.

  “Close the door behind you,” said Wilson.

  Ochre did as she was asked and then stepped forwards to join the group. She put her hands into her pockets to keep herself from scratching the wound on her wrist.

  “I’ll repeat that again, Lottie Richmond, who died here earlier today of anaphylactic shock might have been bitten by a spider. Now, the police officers who are investigating the death came into the hospital earlier. One of them had a bite on his hand that matched very closely the wound on the body of Lottie Richmond. They have asked us to inform them immediately if any other people come into the hospital with similar injuries. If any of you see anything that makes you ask questions then you need to tell me or the senior registrar straight away. Anyone that has a bite must be isolated immediately until a full assessment of their condition can be made. Needless to say, I don’t want anyone talking to the press. Just keep your eyes and ears open. Are there any questions?” said Wilson.

  Everybody said no, or shook their heads, Ochre included, although there was a sweat prickling her skin. She thrust her bitten wrist deeper into her pocket and felt a shiver of fear ripple through her body. Part of her wanted to speak up, but she was damned if she was going to be put into isolation. Her shift was pretty much over, and she was going to head home and get the information she needed off her own laptop.

  “Right then. There are pictures of the bite on Lottie Richmond’s body saved to the system if you need to cross-reference. Let’s get back to work,” said Wilson and everyone started to move with a murmur.

  Ochre started to move and Wilson came straight over to her. “How did the surgery go? Any problems?” said Wilson.

  “N….no, not at all. It went by the numbers. The girl is going to be just fine,” said Ochre.

  “Are you alright?” said Wilson, seeing the beads of sweat standing out on Ochre’s forehead.

  “Fine, just tired. I’m ready for a glass of wine and my slippers,” said Ochre. She even managed a smile.

  Wilson clapped her on the back. “Well, you get going. Everything is pretty quiet ‘round here at the moment.”

  “Thanks,” said Ochre. She set off for the lockers so she could grab her stuff and get the hell away from here as quick as she could. Her mind was racing with thoughts of her keeling over behind the wheel of her car or dropping dead of poisoning in her flat.

  I’ll make a diagnosis, she thought to herself. If I start getting sick, I’ll phone for an ambulance.

  It gave her a little reassurance, after all, who knew her body better than her?

  12.

  Thompson and Wells got back into the car and set off again. Wells was clutching his bandaged hand in a way that was beginning to needle Thompson somewhat.

  “Leave it alone will you?” he barked.

  Wells snatched his hand down to his side, his face coloured a little. “Sorry,” he mumbled.

  “You’re acting as if you have just had a finger off.”

  “Sorry.”

  “And….”

  “Stop apologising, I know. Sorry,” said Wells, a smirk breaking out on his face. It lightened the mood in the car a little. Thompson managed a smile too. They drove on in silence for a few moments.

  “Where are we going?” said Wells.

  “Back to the station. I have to make sure the Environmental Agency has been informed, and we can hand in the sample we collected. I don’t know about you but I don’t want to spend the rest of the day walking around with a mashed spider in my pocket,” said Thompson.

  “What then?”

  “Perhaps we’ll go knocking on some doors, see if anyone has seen anything out of the ordinary,” said Thompson.

  “I don’t think Roberts will let us go around asking people if they have seen any spiders lurking about. You know what he’s like about the paperwork. He couldn’t be more anal about it if he had a whole filing system stuck up his arse. Unless we can convince the Environmental Agency to let us help them we will be doing paperwork on this for the next month.”

  Thompson let out a sarcastic chuckle. “Those fuckers won’t let us wipe our own backsides without written permission and neither will Roberts. You know how it is, they don’t want a panic on their hands, blah blah. They probably won’t even acknowledge that a child has been killed. I’m willing to bet that our involvement in all of this is over the moment I hand that sample over,” said Thompson. There was a deep bitterness in his voice, his hatred of the bureaucratic red tape had a habit of grinding his gears.

  “Unless….” said Wells cautiously.

  “Unless what?”

  “Unless we happen to take a little detour on the way back to the station, go and ask our questions anyway,” said Wells.

  Thompson pulled the car over to the side of the road. One or two other road users honked their horns in anger as they went past.

  “Are you suggesting that we ignore protocol, that we choose to break those nice little rules that were put in place in an effort to perhaps save more lives?” said Thompson. He was looking Wells dead in the eyes as he said it.

  Wells shrugged and then he nodded. “Yes, I am….I think….yes.”

  Thompson faced front again. His tongue came out and began to run over his bottom lip. He weighed it all up in his mind. He could very well get a serious bollocking for this, perhaps even a nice little suspension, that would be a nice conversation piece over dinner with Cindy. But then his mind went to the pictures of the little girl that was killed, and to the idea that her mother was still in the hospital, so distraught that she had to be sedated and taken off to the psychiatric ward. He wondered what it must have felt like to have your child killed right there in front of you and have a doctor tell you that there wasn’t a damn thing they could do about it. Was it worth a bollocking? Was it worth a month-long holiday without pay? He certainly had enough savings put away for a rainy day, so…..

  “Fuck it. You’ll go far Johnny boy, you mark my words,” he said. He turned the sirens on and hauled the car around in a full one-eighty and pointed it back in the direction of Corsica Road.

  It took them just under ten minutes to get there. Thompson pulled the car into the side of the road a few doors down from the Richmond place. The police guard was still on the house, as was the yellow tape. The large number of reporters that had been hanging around earlier had largely dispersed. Now that Lottie Richmond was dead, and they had an ‘official’ cause, they had lost interest and gone on to hassle somebody else. There were two news crews still hanging around. One of them looked as if they were in the middle of filming. A smartly dressed young man with collar length hair was saying something into a microphone in front of the camera. Wells looked out of the car window at them just in time to see the cameraman alert the reporter to their presence.

  “Watch out, here comes trouble,” said Wells.

  Thompson saw the reporter striding over, self-importantly with his camera crew in hot pursuit.

  “No comment, routine enquiries,” he said to Wells.

  They got out of the car just as the reporter made his way over to them. “Kevin Tooms, Hemmington Local News. Can you giv
e the people any indication of what went on here this morning?”

  “No comment,” said Wells, smartly.

  “But, you had a little girl killed here this morning, and then just a few hours later a young woman, Katie Underwood was taken to hospital with a pretty nasty injury. That’s two serious incidents on the same road just a few hours apart. Is there something that the police aren’t telling us?”

  Wells looked over at Thompson with a frown. Thompson walked around the front of the car and stood in front of Wells. “All we are doing is routine enquiries. The two incidents are unrelated. It’s called a coincidence, Mr. Tooms. Now could you please fuck off and let us get on with our job.”

  Tooms winced and made a cutting motion with his fingers to the cameraman.

  “Will that be on the six o’clock news, or the ten?” said Thompson with a smile.

  “Ho ho, you’re a riot, buddy” said Tooms. He retreated with the cameraman to the opposite side of the road.

  “Right, come on, let’s get this over with. Most people will probably be at work anyway, so it shouldn’t take too long,” said Thompson.

  They knocked on the first two doors down from the Richmond’s house. As they first suspected, there was no answer. They got down to the third house, which looked from the outside as if it had been abandoned years ago. The green paint on the door was dry and flaking and the letterbox was hanging on by one very loose looking screw. There was a whiff of decaying rubbish in the air as they stood in front of the dilapidated door.

  “Christ. It smells like something died in there,” said Wells. He rapped on the door with his closed fist. The door shook and bounced with the force of the knocks, causing the letterbox to finally give up the ghost and clatter to the floor.