Day of the Spiders

  He bit down on the inside of his cheek. The pain was fresh and scalding and he began to taste the coppery warmth of his own blood on his tongue. The laughter that had been bubbling up inside of him subsided. He felt his focus coming back. He loosened up on his cheek and then ran for the next car. This one would take him one car away from being right opposite that alleyway and into the clear. He was nearly there. He felt a pulse of excitement roar through his innards, making him want to laugh out loud. He gnawed the cheek again, bringing the pain that shut those ideas down. He was almost at the car and he suddenly lost his footing. He began to stagger forwards, wheeling his arms to try and get his balance. He managed to pull some of it back, but it didn't stop him from crashing into the car hard enough for the door panel to cave in a little. His head struck the side window hard enough for him to see stars. He thought that he had got away with it, that his clumsiness hadn't tripped him up this time, when the cars in built alarm started to go off. The high whistling tone rose and fell causing Braden to put his hands over his ears. The lights on the side of the car began to flash on and off.

  "Shit," said Braden. The game was up. The police were going to come down the street to see what the hell was going on. He was caught. The whole thing was going down the shitpan right now. The only thing he was going to get from running out on his wife and daughter was a night in the fucking cells. Unless....unless..

  The policeman on the door was yelling for his partner. His eyes were off the car just for a moment. Braden sprang forwards to the nearest house and pressed the door handle down. Mercifully the door was unlocked and he piled himself inside. He closed the door behind him and sat with his back against it breathing hard. He reached his hand up to the knot that was growing on his head. It came away clean, he hadn't cut it open which was a good thing. He closed his eyes, breathing slowly again, hoping that the occupants of the house didn't find him and turf him straight back out onto the street for the police to deal with. He would try and talk to them, he would sell them a nice ol' bag of Braden Benson bullshit, and hopefully they would let him stay. Perhaps if the bullshit was a high enough grade then they would give him a cup of tea and a biscuit whilst he picked through their brains to try and get more evidence for his story. He tensed up as he heard footsteps outside. It was soon followed by muffled voices. Braden couldn't make out what they were saying. The pvc door was too well insulated to let much in the way of sound through. He began to pray to himself that they wouldn't try the front door.

  Please....please...please....

  The car alarm stopped and soon the voices and footsteps began to move away. Braden let out a long and shaky breath. He slowly got to his feet and saw a letter on the little table just inside the door. He picked it up and squinted at the name.

  Jenny Roberts.

  The name escaped him for a moment until he realised that this was the house of the mutilated cat. On the wall just to the left of him was a framed picture. It was one of those nauseating frames that was crafted into a word. Mary had tried to convince him to get one of them once upon a time. He had refused, telling her that they were tacky. Looking at this one, he wasn’t inclined to change his mind any time soon. The letters of the frame spelled out the word ‘love.’ Right in the middle of the ‘O’ was a picture of Jenny Roberts. She was beaming, showing her big horsey teeth. Next to her was a man who looked like he had been smoking too much dope. His half-lidded eyes and his gormless expression gave the game away. Jenny was holding up a ginger and white cat that looked as if it took no enjoyment out of having its picture taken. The cat looked mean and pissed off. This was the house where that poor little bugger had met his fate. Perhaps he could ask a question or two here before he moved on to the Richmond’s place.

  He guessed that it wasn’t going to be that simple. After all, nobody had come to challenge him for coming into their house. Perhaps they had gone out this morning and forgotten to lock up. Perhaps they had left to get away from all the hassle that was going on at the top of the street and had forgotten in their hurry to leave. But Braden began to get the sense that something wasn't right in this house, something wasn't right at all. He couldn't quite explain what it was that was making him feel like that. The hair on the back of his neck felt like it was standing to attention. A shudder wracked though his body turning his skin into goose pimples. He felt the strongest urge to just get up and go right back out of the door again. He even toyed with the idea of throwing himself on the mercy of the police, anything to get him the hell out of here. He....

  He caught sight of something in front of him. From where he was sitting, he could see right through into the kitchen. From the looks of it, there had been some serious money spent in there. The set up looked like it was almost brand new. The floor was covered in tiles that could only have been a few weeks, perhaps a month or two old. They weren’t showing any signs of any wear or tear like his own kitchen at home which looked like they had been shitting on it for three hours every day. Some of the floor was wet. The sunlight coming in from the windows was highlighting the large puddle on the floor. At first Braden thought it was just water, but as he stood up and took a step forwards. There was something else in there too. It looked like a pile of clothes that were somehow propped up against the cupboard under the sink. The bright sunlight streaming in from the back windows made it difficult for Braden to make it out clearly. He took another couple of cautious steps towards the kitchen and then he saw something out of the corner of his eye. To his right-hand side was a doorway which led into a living room. There was a sofa against the back wall and an armchair jutting at a right angle from the edge of it. Braden looked at the floor and saw the pink jumper that had caught his eye. At first, he thought there was another pile of clothes on the floor and then his mind finally allowed him to recognize that he was looking at a dead body. He clapped his hands over his mouth and felt his stomach clench into a tight knot. for a moment, he thought he was going to vomit, but he managed to stop the bubble of acidic tasting bile from getting any further than his throat. The body on the floor was barely recognizable as a human being. The body was Jenny Roberts. He could tell by the section of her face that still remained. The left side of it looked like it had been burned away. The bone of the girl's skull was an open, bloody hole. Braden could see right into the girl's mouth and brain cavity. He could see the large teeth, the same goomers that he had seen in the photograph in the hallway. They were unmistakeable. Whatever was left of her brain was slowly dripping out of the hole and onto the polished wood floor below. Her eye was sitting in the middle of the pool of pulp, bright blue and glazed over. One of her legs was jutting out at an unnatural angle and the other one was missing below the knee. Every wound on the body gave Braden the impression that it had been gnawed, eaten by something. He turned away from the scene. He was breathing hard, feeling like he was going to pass out at any moment. He bit down on his already wounded inside cheek, bringing fresh and sobering pain through his head. The faintness began to recede and he started his slow breathing. In the back of his mind, he knew that the pile of clothing he saw in the kitchen was also a dead body, and one that was probably in a similar state to the one he had already encountered. He pulled his phone out of his pocket. He had to get a picture of the body. He had to go and report it to the police, and then he had to get the picture to Darren Masterson. Braden knew that something inhuman had inflicted those terrible injuries. He had his suspicions on what it was

  (spiders)

  but he didn't have enough evidence to prove it. His only real hope of that was to actually find one of them.

  You could be wrong, you could have all of this so wrong, he thought. He wanted to be wrong, he wanted so badly to be wrong. Either way he would have a story that would be worthy of the front page. Perhaps whoever or whatever had done this had done the same to Lottie Richmond. He turned on the camera, quickly pointed it at the body and hit the button. The phone flashed and he stepped past the living room door so he wouldn't have to look at it aga
in. He still had another body to deal with in the kitchen, but he needed to get the wheels in motion first. He tapped a few buttons and then he was sending the picture to Masterson. Braden started to psyche himself up to go and look at the body in the kitchen. He decided that he was just going to get as close as he could and get a quick snap of it without looking directly at it. His stomach had always been a little weak. He liked a good horror film as much as the next man, but the sight of real blood and guts was always a little too much for him to take. He took a few more deep breaths and then he crept towards the kitchen. The smell coming from the kitchen reminded Braden of the time that the drains had once started backing up during a pretty violent rain storm a few days after Newtown had gone up. Despite his deep breaths and mental preparation his heartbeat was still hammering away ten to the dozen. His phone suddenly rang in his hand. He let out a reflexive yell and he nearly dropped the damn thing. He looked at the screen and saw that it was Masterson. He punched the button and held it to his ear with a hand that was shaking badly.

  "Darren, I can't talk right now, I've.."

  "Are you still in the house?" said Masterson, cutting him off. He was puffing and blowing almost in a frenzy.

  "Yes, there's anoth.."

  "Braden, get the fuck out of there now. Now goddammit," roared Masterson.

  "I just need to get one more picture...."

  "Forget it Braden, get the hell out of there, that picture that you sent me....the spiders Braden, the spiders..."

  "What the hell are you talking about?" said Braden. Masterson was really beginning to freak him out now. His feet were beginning to twitch, as if they wanted to rebel against the rest of him and start running all by themselves.

  "The fucking spiders in the picture, in the corner of the room. Now get the hell out of there, get out now," screamed Masterson.

  Braden's breath caught in his throat. It wasn't possible, it just wasn't possible. He cut Masterson off and opened the folder containing the pictures. The picture he had taken of the body popped up in front of him. The picture was at a slight angle. The bottom half of the dead body was missing from the picture, but the skirting around the top of the wall where it met the ceiling was visible. Right there in the corner was a collection of black spiders. The skin on the backs of the spiders had caught the light coming in from the living room window. It looked as if they had been coated with a glossy black paint. Braden had seen the footage of the spiders from Newtown. They had been ugly, mutated parodies of their former selves. These spiders were something different. They looked almost normal. Now he knew what that email was talking about. This was something new, something utterly terrifying. Braden felt his bladder let go in a hot gush. It warmed his inner thighs and then went as cold as his insides. They were in here with him and they had killed the occupants of the house and eaten parts of them away. How long had they been here? A week? A month? He didn’t want to know. The front door was less than five feet away, but to get to it he had to go past the living room again. He closed the picture and returned the phone to his pocket. Whatever happened now, he had got the scoop that he was in turn hoping for and hoping he would never see for the rest of his life. He heard something in the living room. It sounded like a steady patter of water dripping down from the ceiling, but he knew that it was them. They knew he was here. The sound broke his paralysis. They might have just decided that they wanted Braden Benson for pudding. He ran, his feet slipping in the steaming rank of his own piss. He nearly lost his footing, but he was so determined to get the hell out of there that he managed to hold his balance. As he bolted past the living room and he couldn't help but glance into the doorway. The spiders were on the move. they had already made it to the arm of the chair and were making their way, like a black scuttling carpet onto the dilapidated corpse of Jenny Roberts. He roared in panic and stone-cold terror. He reached for the door handle and tore the door open into his own knee. Still bellowing like a mad man, he got out of the door, turned around and saw with horror that the spiders were tearing across the hall floor towards him. He scrambled the door shut, trapping two of them under the door sill. Their legs twitched and shook, firing random commands as the life was crushed out of them.

  “Oi, what the hell are you playing at?” said Officer Weston. He saw Braden bolting out of the door and he was making his way over to Braden.

  Braden took off up the street as fast as he could. Weston was going to give chase, but he had far more important things to think about and he couldn’t leave the scene of a crime anyway. He watched Braden go and shrugged his shoulders. Some people acted nuts just for the sheer hell of it.

  Braden charged away. His wet legs felt like they were beginning to freeze as the wind hit them. His chest felt like it was going to burst. He couldn't get enough air into his lungs, such was his panic and effort to get away. He ran blindly down the alleyway and stopped only when he had got back onto the main street.

  All he could think about was Mary and Jax. His beautiful Mary and Jax. They were going to die. They were all going to die.

  18.

  Thompson had just closed the door of his car when his phone began to buzz in his pocket. He snatched it out and answered it without bothering to check who was calling.

  “Thompson, what the fuck is going on?” bellowed Roberts down the earpiece. Thompson winced at his own foolishness. If he had looked at the screen properly, he would have ignored it. It was hard enough to get a word in edgeways when you were standing right in front of Roberts, it was damn near impossible over the phone.

  “I have reports of another death on Corsica Road and a journalist asking me for a statement on a girl that was injured on the same street. What the fuck are you trying to do to me? Do you not think I should have been informed before everyone else? Do I have to be the last person to know everything that’s going on in my department?”

  He paused for breath and Thompson pounced. “We are on our way in right now. This is a more serious situation than we first thought.”

  “Then why didn’t you call it in sooner?” said Roberts. It sounded like he was gritting his teeth hard as he was speaking. When Roberts was in this kind of mood, there was no telling what would happen. Just after his promotion, Roberts had once thrown Thompson against a door for filing his reports and hour later than he had asked for. Thompson could still point to the places that were left angry and bruised by Roberts’ actions. He had almost filed a complaint, but he had been talked out of it, and Roberts had been a lot nicer to him for a little while after.

  “We weren’t in possession of all the facts. What use would it have been to come back with half a story?” said Thompson. He was doing his level best to keep the tone of his voice non-confrontational. He didn’t want to cause any more trouble for them.

  There was a momentary silence at the other end of the phone. Thompson was sure that he could almost hear the cogs in Roberts’ mind turning over.

  “Just get back here as soon as possible,” he growled down the phone and then he hung up.

  Thompson let out a long breath and returned the phone to his pocket. He started the car up.

  “I’m guessing that we are in trouble?” said Wells.

  “No more than usual,” said Thompson. He put the car into gear and began negotiating the route back out onto the main road.

  “I’ll let you do the talking,” said Wells. He was trying to be funny, but the joke fell to the floor and died bloodlessly there.

  They stayed silent for the rest of the drive back to the station. Wells rubbed at his bitten hand. It had begun to itch again, not in the same maddening way it had done before, but enough to make him want to gnaw at it. He rubbed at the dressing, trying to get a little relief, but it did no good. He flexed his fingers, stretching them out as much as he could. The bones around his knuckles crackled, making him wince. He couldn’t stand it when anyone popped their knuckles, the very sound of it turned him green. He returned his hand to his lap and left well enough alone.

  Thompson
pulled his car into his designated space and turned the engine off. He turned to look at Wells.

  “Listen, I’ll take the heat for this one ok? No sense in us both getting into trouble,” he said.

  “Oh no you don’t,” said Wells. “You keep trying to pull this one on me and it doesn’t wash. We’re partners. Any shit you walk in, I walk in it too.”

  Thompson opened his mouth to protest.

  “I won’t hear another word about it,” said Wells cutting him off. He got out of the car before Thompson could say anything.

  They buzzed themselves back into the building and headed for the staircase. They made it to the second floor and went in through the heavy fire door. The buzz of activity felt like it simmered down a little as they walked in. Thompson suspected that the gossip chain had been active in the last few hours. News of their impending dressing-down must have reached the ears of pretty much everyone in the department. Thompson would have felt more annoyed about it had he not joined in with the gossip chain on a regular basis. He supposed that he had to take his turn being on the wrong end of it a few times just to balance the whole thing out. Roberts saw them coming. He raised a hand in the air, snapped his fingers and then pointed down.

  You, here, now! said the gesture.

  Thompson let out a long sigh, puffing out his cheeks and trying to keep the nub of irritation at this ridiculous man down to an acceptable level. He had a pretty good idea that he was in some deep water, and he needed to swim rather than allow his head to be pushed under.

  They went into Roberts’ office and shut the door behind them. Roberts was sat behind his desk, his hands placed on the top of the oak as if he was about to recite poetry, or give a rousing speech.

  “Explain yourselves,” said Roberts.

  “What do you need to know?” said Thompson in his usual, overly calm voice. It was a voice that he saved just for Roberts, just to needle him as much as he could without raising his voice.