Day of the Spiders

  “Shit,” said Wells and bent down to pick up the piece of rusting metal. As he did so, the smell of decay became momentarily stronger. He looked up at the door and saw that he was eye-to-eye with the newly exposed letterbox hole. Something caught his eye. He couldn’t quite make out what it was at first. It looked to him like someone had discarded a latex mask in amongst the piles of rubbish that were stacked inside in the door. After a moment, Wells’ mind deciphered what he was seeing. The mask wasn’t a mask at all, it was the face of a man lying in a twisted wreck on the floor. Wells shot up to his feet.

  “I think that there’s a body in there chief,” he said to Thompson.

  Thompson squatted down to the letterbox hole and screwed his eyes up to see inside. He popped back up again, his face contorted into a grimace.

  “Let’s get this door open,” he said.

  Both of them shouldered the door, Thompson at the top half and Wells at the bottom. The door let go without much of a fight and swung open, spilling Wells to the floor. Thompson stumbled but managed to stay on his feet. Wells scrambled back up to his feet sending wrinkled plastic bottles and squashed cans scattering in all directions. Thompson covered his nose and mouth with his sleeve for a moment. The smell from inside the house was so strong that Thompson was pretty sure you could have sliced and eaten it.

  “What the hell happened to him?” said Wells, dusting himself down. The body of the man was contorted in a way that neither Wells or Thompson had ever seen before. He looked like he was kneeling in prayer facing the wall at the bottom of the stairs. His trousers were around his ankles and a humming chorus of flies were dancing around his unsavoury end. His arms were splayed out sideways and his head was tipped backwards at the most unnatural angle possible. Thompson knew what the cause of death was straight away, and he had a pretty good idea of how it happened.

  “I think our friend here took a tumble down the stairs and snapped his neck clean in two,” said Thompson.

  “How long do you think he’s been here?” said Wells.

  Thompson squatted down in front of the body. The dead man’s face looked like it was caught in one final and eternal scream. His eyes had been stuck open long enough for them to dry out and to take on a phoney plastic-like appearance. The skin on his face had taken on a darkened and shrivelled tone. The moisture had been taken out of it, probably, by Thompson’s estimation, by a week of lying out there on the floor. He was about to pass the information onto Wells, when his eye caught something else. There was a small trail of blood running from the corner of the body’s mouth onto one of the many newspapers scattered all across the floor, along with endless bags of rubbish and empty takeaway cartons. He cautiously dabbed his finger into the small pool on the newspaper and, although it was mostly clotted, it was still malleable. Some of it got onto the tip of his finger and he smudged it across the newspaper. He stood up again, his tongue stuck into his cheek and a deep frown on his face.

  “How long?” said Wells.

  “From the look of his skin, a week. But look at the blood from his mouth, it’s freshly spilled. It just doesn’t add up,” said Thompson.

  Wells squatted down to look. He saw the blood and the smear from Thompson’s finger. His eyes wandered across the body, looking for anything else that Thompson might have missed. Then his eyes caught onto something. On the outstretched right hand, on the first finger he saw a raised pin-prick, not unlike the one that he had on his own hand.

  “Chief, look at that,” he said pointing to the hand. Thompson moved carefully around the body and took a look at the hand.

  “Oh Christ, another bite?” said Thompson.

  “I think so. Could that have been the cause of death?” said Wells.

  “No,” said Thompson, “The broken neck was the cause of death. He fell down the stairs. If I was to hazard a guess, I would say that he fell over his own trousers….” he trailed off, looking up the stairs and back down at the body. “Taking a shit? Something scared him? He tries to get away…..and bang.”

  “And let me guess exactly what it was he was trying to get away from,” said Wells, pointing at the bitten finger.

  “I think we need to get out of here, seal the area off and call it in,” said Thompson, standing back up.

  Wells stood up, his knees popping as he did so. “I agree. This is one coincidence too many.”

  Thompson’s eyes widened as a light bulb went on in his head. “That reporter, he said something about a girl being taken to the hospital. I think we should go and have a chat with her, see if she has a bite too.”

  “I think we should call this one in first,” said Wells. He was unconsciously rubbing at his covered hand.

  Thompson looked down at the body and then at Wells. “You’re probably right. Ok, we’ll call it in. But, I want to go and speak to that girl. I need to know if it is just a coincidence.”

  “Good enough,” said Wells. They both headed for the broken door.

  They were both glad to get out into the fresh air again after the stench of the putrid house they had just been in. Thompson looked up the road and saw the uniformed officer still standing outside of the Richmond’s house.

  “I have a better idea,” said Thompson. “Let’s get them to call it in.”

  Wells looked up the road and then nodded his approval. If they called it in then the first reply would be to come back to the station and start filling out the paperwork on the Lottie Richmond case. But they both knew that the case wasn’t closed yet, no matter what the doctors or indeed the coroner said.

  Thompson made his way over to the uniformed officer, and soon they were on their way back to the hospital.

  The uniformed police called for backup. They needed a full team to come down, including forensics. Officer Gardner sighed after he had finished using the radio. His whole day was going to be spent standing outside of front doors. He thought it a fine waste of his training and skills, but soothed himself with the knowledge that at least he wasn’t going to get yelled at, spat on, or assaulted during his shift and he should at least be grateful for that. If nothing else, he could stand guard and add up the money he was making by simply doing nothing. He glanced inside the broken door just once to get a look at the body. He turned away from it, pulling the cracked door closed behind him. He had to resist a very strong urge to gag and retch, not only at the smell but the state of the body inside the house. His running buddy Officer Weston came with the yellow tape to put across the door. He too couldn’t resist a quick look inside and his reaction was far more significant. He leaned over the edge of the pavement and vomited his breakfast into the grid below. The reporter that was milling around saw what was going on and got his camera crew to start recording again. He started to make his way across the road, microphone in hand before Weston intercepted him and sent him packing. Weston had a violent case of the hiccups after sending his breakfast into the sewers. Gardner couldn’t help but laugh at the sound of Weston trying to bark orders to the reporter with his words being interrupted by loud, jolting hics.

  As Gardner stood on guard outside the broken door, waiting for the backup team to arrive, the body of Boris Nelson began to twitch and shake, as if it had somehow begun to re-animate right there on the floor of his house. The rigor-mortis in his joints prevented him from moving from his final resting place, the lifeless, staring eyes still saw nothing, but his entire shell was buzzing and shaking, causing it to rock quickly from side to side as if it contained a malfunctioning clockwork. It continued for a few moments and then it was still again.

  The skin on the left cheek of the dead body of Boris Nelson began to bulge. Little by little the bump grew bigger and more and more deformed. The dried-out skin began to split and tear until there was a hole no bigger than a penny broke open. Something small and black fell to the floor into the pool of drying blood. Eight legs uncurled from the small black body and began to whirl in the air. The spider managed to get itself onto its feet and it sat on the floor for a moment, as if i
t was trying to get its bearings before it made a move. It might have stayed there for longer but another small black body fell from the open hole, causing to scuttle out of the way. The open hole on Boris’ cheek suddenly tore open wider and a steady stream of bodies began to patter onto the floor. As soon as they made contact, they ran for the dark areas of the room and hid themselves away.

  13

  Perry was sat at Katie’s bedside. He was thumbing through a copy of the Times newspaper, trying to engage himself in the reports to try and pass the time. Katie had come around after the operation for a few minutes. She had tried to speak, but the anaesthetic had stunted her ability to string any words together. She was pumped full of morphine for now and he would have to wait until it started to wear off before he could have anything that resembled a conversation with her. He was desperate to know what the hell happened to her above anything else. How on earth had she managed to fall and smash her leg up so badly. At first, he thought that she must have fallen out of the shower, that she had slipped on the wet bathtub and gone right over backwards. Plenty of times before she had nearly fallen getting out of it. He had heard her swear and crash into the towel rail that they had hung on the radiator many a time. Every time it had happened it had made him laugh right out loud. He would even tease her about it when she appeared at the bottom of the stairs dressed in her ‘scruffs’ as she called them which was usually a pair of grey jogging bottoms and a vest top. She would get him back for teasing her by shaking her red, and wet hair all over him, causing him to rise from his seat bellowing curses. One time she had done it and he had chased her into the kitchen, pinned her in the corner of the kitchen counters and started tickling her. She had shrieked and dug him in the ribs several times to try and get him to stop.

  Perreeeeeee, stop it…..i’m…..i’m…..gunna pee myself, she had squealed through fits of laughter. He had stopped and wrapped his arms around her middle, preventing her from escaping.

  Okay then, if I can’t tickle you, then I’m going to have to EAT YOU UP, he had yelled playfully. He had buried his head into the smooth, sweet smelling skin between her shoulder and her neck and begun to nibble gently with his teeth. Her knees had buckled and she had let out another breathless yell into his ear. But then her hands had gone around the back of him and gripped his denim-clad buttocks and pulled him in close. Her legs had lifted up and wrapped themselves around the top of his hips. He could feel her heat, the heat of her arousal and excitement. His mouth moved from her neck and onto her lips and the kissed, deeply and passionately, her tongue darting in and out of his mouth, inviting him to come and play.

  Play they did, right there on the kitchen side. The memory of it was causing a stir in the trouser area right now, and then he looked over at her, lying on the bed, helpless and in pain. His insides ached, seeing her like this. His love for her, his deep unremitting love for her glowed inside him, bringing with it a horrible sadness and regret that he hadn’t been there to take care of her when she had been hurt. His just hoped and prayed that she hadn’t been lying on the floor like that for too long before he found her. The idea of her being there, afraid and alone was almost too much for him to bear.

  He could make it up to her though, and that’s exactly what he was going to do. He was going to take care of her until the metal was out of her body, until she was free from the pain of it all, until she could walk again. There was so much for him to sort out. He needed to take time off from work for a start, so he could be at her side for the first few weeks. He didn’t really know if he would be any good as a nurse, but he was willing to have a bash at it. He was a damn proud man, and he always liked to turn his hand to anything that was put in front of him. He was always trying to please wherever he could. He knew all too well where his self-competitive edge had come from. He had shared a room with the reason for his main character trait for eleven years, his older brother John, he of the broken arm. John sure was the golden boy of the family. Perhaps it was something to do with the fact that he was the first born, and Perry himself had come along five years later, completely unplanned and unprepared for. It was as if his parents didn’t have a clue as to what to do with a second child, almost as if it had unbalanced the perfect little world that they had made for themselves. For John, they had great and wonderful things planned, to do well at school, then onto college and then onto the finest university that they could get him into. They wanted him to be someone important, someone with standing, like a surgeon or even a politician, it didn’t matter as long as it was a job with a title. Perry was always trying his hardest to compete, or even outdo John at every step of the way. But, no matter his efforts, he still couldn’t break out of John’s mighty shadow for love nor money, even when he did better at school than John, even when he had all of the opportunities that John couldn’t aspire to, no matter how much coaching, no matter how many private tutors he had. In the end, he had become a lowly doctor, willing to serve his local community with his vast medical knowledge. A few years ago, John had come down from Cumbria where he was now living with an almost perfect looking wife by the name of Lesley. They had put off having children over and over again, and that day when he came to visit and they had spent an evening drinking themselves senseless in the Flying Horse pub, Perry had discovered why.

  John had confessed his hatred for what their parents had put him through, trying to make him into something he was never going to be. It wasn’t the fact that he didn’t have the ability to do it, he just didn’t want to become a trophy for his unshakable parents.

  “I can’t tell you how much seeing them again made me want to puke,” he had confessed, slurring his words through the six pints of best bitter that was infesting his blood stream. Perry was shocked, his own half-drunk pint forgotten in his hand.

  “They still tell everyone that I’m a surgeon, even though they bloody well know that I’m nothing of the sort, and I never want to be either,” said John and took another large gulp of his drink.

  Perry had turned it over in his mind, trying to get it all to fit. It was hard to do it, it was like trying to cram a piece into a jigsaw that just didn’t quite fit. John had gone along with everything in an almost sycophantic way, kissing arse and doing as he was told, and now here he was telling him the exact opposite had been going through his mind the whole time. Perry felt a pang of sympathy for him. He looked at him, staring down at the table in front of him, his bottom lip twitching and quivering as if he was about to burst into tears at any moment.

  “Why don’t you just tell them?” Perry had said.

  “I have, but they don’t listen. They just want something good to say to their rich arsehole friends. You know what they’re like. That’s why I don’t ever want to have children. I don’t ever want to fuck up a child like they fucked me up.”

  His suddenly raised voice made heads turn and the mumble of conversation around the pub die down for a moment. John put his head in his hands, and took a few shaky breaths.

  Perry had brought him home and allowed him to crash on his couch. Katie hadn’t objected, and she never would. Even though Perry had spent a large amount of time during their relationship telling her the story of the mighty John, she quite liked him when they finally met and found it easy to strike up a decent conversation with him. After that night, and after John’s revelation, they had all got on even better. John made a visit every few months and he made sure that he stayed at Perry’s house rather than stay with their parents.

  Sitting here right now at the side of Katie’s bed, running through his own personal history, over analysing everything that was going through his head, he knew that he had made the right choices in his life. He had managed to serve himself pretty well, and that any decision he made about Katie’s care as she healed would also be the right ones too. So what if he had to have time off work, this was far more important, and if they didn’t understand then fuck them, there was always other jobs for a skilled man like himself. He began to think of the possibilities of oth
er career paths that he could take himself down. Perhaps he could be a doctor himself, or even a nurse, spending his working life caring for others. It was a pretty appealing prospect, and he was sure that he could do it.

  He was snatched out of his daydream by Katie. She let out a long, moaning sigh from the comfort of her bed. He stood up out of his chair to see if she was waking up, but she had only turned her head to the side a little and gone back into her drug-induced sleep. Perry sat back down again, and let out a sigh himself. Christ knows how long he was going to be here. He would have got out his mobile phone and found a game to play, but the battery was already an hour dead. He folded up the newspaper in his hand and put it under the chair. It was one of those high-backed ones that he imagined old people sleeping in all day in a nursing home. It was amazingly comfortable for a piece of NHS furniture. He laid his head back, tucked his feet under the chair and closed his eyes. The warmth of the hospital was making him feel sleepy. The moment he set foot in a hospital he would start to yawn. Perhaps it was the never-ending warmth, or the sight of all those beds that set him off, he didn’t know. All he knew right now was that there was no better way to pass an hour or so than grabbing a nap. Everyone else on the ward was silent. He couldn’t see if they were sleeping, or reading or doing something else peaceful because the curtains were still drawn all around them. He really didn’t want to open them either, he just wanted to enjoy the silence for a little while.

  He listened to the ambience of the ward around him, the occasional footsteps, the rattling of trolleys or the soft purr of one of the phones. All of it was soothing, gently stroking his brain into a comforting doze.

  He didn’t know how long he had been floating just below the surface of consciousness when the clacking of shoes had pulled him back to the surface. He opened his eyes just in time to see the curtain drawn back to reveal a doctor and two well-dressed gentlemen standing just behind her.